Mikkelsen A., Langhelle O. (eds.) Arctic Oil and Gas. Sustanability at Risk?

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World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD; 2002) The Johannesburg

Declaration on Sustainable Development, WSSD, Johannesburg: United Nations.

Zadek, S. (2001) The Civil Corporation – The New Economy of Corporate Citizenship,

London: Earthscan.

Zeitlin, M. (1989) The Large Corporation and Contemporary Classes, New Brunswick,

NJ: Rutgers University Press.

86 Bjørn-Tore Blindheim

5 Framework and methodology

Regulation and discourse analysis

as a research strategy

Ove Heitmann Hansen, Oluf Langhelle and

Robert Anderson

Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to give an overview of how the project ‘Arctic Oil

and Gas – Sustainability at Risk’ was developed and carried out, and to describe

the framework and methodological approach that underpins the country studies of

Alaska, Canada, Norway and Russia (Chapters 7 to 10). Our approach to collect-

ing, understanding and presenting the data is based on a framework flowing from

regulation theory and discourse analysis as our research methodology.

This book is a comparative case study of the different stories brought forward

by stakeholders about oil and gas activities in the Arctic. The Arctic Human

Development Report (AHDR) contained a reflection on what was described as

the ‘general perspectives that stakeholders bring to consideration of human devel-

opment in the Arctic’. This was further said to provide a ‘broader context for the

AHDR accounts of conditions prevailing in the Arctic’. This was elaborated the

following way:

It is tempting to assume that we can characterize a region like the Arctic in

objective terms that will somehow capture the perspectives of all those who

are active in the area as well as those who are interested in the region even

though they are not players in the Arctic in any direct sense. But efforts of

this sort are doomed to failure. There are many visions of the Arctic, and the

appeal of individual visions varies as a function of the vantage points and

interests of individual actors. Thomas Berger’s familiar phrase “Northern

Frontier, Northern Homeland,” for instance, captures the distinction between

those who see the circumpolar Arctic as a storehouse of natural resources of

interest to industrialized societies to the south and those who reside in the

Arctic and see themselves as the current representatives of peoples who have

lived in the region.

Important as it is, this dichotomy does not do justice to the range of

Arctic visions that have framed northern issues and shaped the interests of

individuals and stakeholder groups during the course of modern history.

Many of the visions have given rise to distinct mindsets. Because these

mindsets tend to spawn dramatically different and sometimes conflicting

approaches to Arctic issues of public importance, they provide an important

backdrop for the Arctic Human Development Report.

(Young and Einarsson, 2004: 22)

There are strong reasons to believe that oil and gas activities in the Arctic are

framed and structured very differently in different regions and countries, depend-

ing on the legal and institutional framework, level of development, social welfare,

state of the environment and community viability and the historical path of the

discourse. This is partly what lies behind the choice of a comparative case-study

approach. We have used regulation theory and Hajer’s discourse analytical

approach to describe, and compare, the ‘interaction’ between contextual factors

and political processes concerning oil and gas activities in different localities in

the Arctic.

This chapter has two major sections, the first dealing with the theoretical

framework and the second dealing with the research methodology. In the first

section, we introduce regulation theory and the concepts of Regimes of

Accumulation and Modes of Social Regulation and how the two of them come

together in particular times and places to produce Modes of Development.

Then, we introduce a framework based on these concepts (Figure 5.1) that allows

us to explore the interactions among communities, states, supra-national bodies,

88 Ove Heitmann Hansen, Oluf Langhelle and Robert Anderson

Outcomes

Unconditional

participation

Indigenous people as

potential strategic

partners/resource

Indigenous people as

a problem or threat

Indigenous people

as neither potential

nor threat

Assertively pragmatic

participation

Transformational

participation

Resistance and non-

participation

Local or

indigenous

community

Modes of development

Integrating,

transforming

and

excluding

mechanisms

Corporation as

principal actors

in the global

economy

Supra-national bodies

The state

The civil sector

Figure 5.1 Major actors associated with the oil and gas industry in the Arctic (Anderson,

MacAulay, Kayseas et al., 2007).

Framework and methodology 89

organizations of the civil sector and corporations in the context of developing of

oil and gas resources in the Arctic. The interactions we analyze are the discourses

in which these are engaged.

In the methodology section, we outline discourse analyses as a research strat-

egy. We explain how we use the concepts of storylines and discourse coalitions to

study the stakeholders’ relations to, and interests in, oil and gas activities in the

Arctic. This allows us to bring the relationships identified in the framework to life

and explore the interactions that are giving rise to modes of social regulation and

hence modes of development, sustainable or not. At the end of the chapter, we

discuss some limitations of the study.

A regulation theory framework

Modernization theory has dominated much of the development paradigm and

practice in the middle decades of the twentieth century. There are a number of

notions that are part of this theory. First, progress is seen as passing through vari-

ous stages. It implies that, in order to progress and develop, traditional societies have

to move towards modernity (Crewe and Harrison, 1998). ‘Modernization’and

‘development’ came to be used as synonymous terms. Second, monetary income

and, therefore, economic growth are regarded as key elements in measuring the

quality of life. Third, humans are, or should be, motivated by self-interest and

rational economic behaviour (Burkey, 1993; Crewe and Harrison, 1998). From

this point of view, development is measured in Western economic terms, with the

expectation that underdeveloped nations over time will assume the qualities of

industrialized nations (Burkey, 1993). One of the underlying assumptions of

modernization is that traditional culture and social structures are barriers to

progress. This can be seen in the following quotation:

Pre-existing social relations ... family, kinship and community, constitute

obstacles to business enterprises and achievement ... Successful capitalism

involves some rupturing of existing social relations and possibly the diminu-

tion of affective relations to leave more space to impersonal, calculating

forms of social interaction believed to characterise the market economy.

(Moore, 1997: 289)

Dependency theory emerged as a critique of the failure of the modernization

agenda to deliver the anticipated development outcomes, but even more funda-

mentally to draw attention to what was seen as a new form of colonization. In

this analysis, the corporation and the developed states (particularly the United

States), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the General

Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) are cast as the villain or villains

(Hancock, 1989; Klitgaard, 1990). Rather than leading the underdeveloped to a

developed state, the actions of the developed world are seen as the original

(through conquest and colonialism) and continuing (through economic

exploitation) causes of underdevelopment. According to the dependency

90 Ove Heitmann Hansen, Oluf Langhelle and Robert Anderson

critiques, participation by the underdeveloped in the global capitalist economy

as it is currently constructed can only exacerbate their circumstances, not improve

them. The evidence since the Second World War certainly offers some support for

this view. The gap between the rich and the poor within and among states has

widened, not closed, in spite of six decades of development efforts of various types.

Even as modified in recent years, the modernization and dependency perspec-

tives present incompatible views of the relationship between a developing people/

region and the developed world. In particular circumstances, one or the other of

these approaches can often adequately explain what happened. However, when

applied in any particular circumstance to offer insight into what might happen,

the two produce conflicting answers, thus providing contradictory guidance to

groups searching for a path to development, as they perceive it.

In the closing three decades of the twentieth century, the conflict between the

modernization and dependency perspectives led many to conclude that both are

incomplete (as opposed to wrong), with each describing a possible but not

inevitable outcome of interaction between local regions seeking what they regard

as a better form of life, and the global economy. In this vein, Corbridge says that

there has been a powerful trend towards ‘theories of capitalist development which

emphasise contingency ... a new emphasis on human agency and the provisional

and highly skilled task of reproducing social relations’ (Corbridge, 1989: 633).

As Tucker states, this allows ‘for the possibility of incorporating the experience of

other peoples, other perspectives and other cultures into the development discourse’

(Tucker, 1999: 16). Development need not be as defined by the ‘developed world’

and the interaction between a particular people and the global economy need not

be as envisaged by the modernization or dependency perspectives; it can be some-

thing else entirely. Why not that which is being sought by indigenous people –

development as they define it?

Regulation theory is one of the new approaches to development that empha-

sizes contingency and human agency. Hirst and Zeitlin say that it executes:

A slalom between the orthodoxies of neo-classical equilibrium theory and

classical Marxism to produce a rigorous but nondeterministic account of the

phases of capitalist development that leaves considerable scope for historical

variation and national diversity.

(Hirst and Zeitlin, 1992: 84)

Expanding on this notion of variation and diversity, Elam says that, on one

hand, national and regional units are constantly in a state of flux as they adjust to

the influences of the global economy. All must accommodate themselves at least

to some extent to its hegemony. At the same time, these broader global influences

‘are seen as having essentially local origins’ (Elam, 1994: 66). This translates into

a counter-hegemonic potential in terms of the activities actually undertaken by

people as they negotiate their way locally through the global economy. It is not

simply a case of conform or fail.

Framework and methodology 91

In the vocabulary of regulation theory, the ‘regime of accumulation’ is ‘a

historically specific production apparatus ... through which surplus is gener-

ated, appropriated, and redeployed’ (Scott, 1988: 8), at the level of the inter-

national economy as a whole (Hirst and Zeitlin, 1992: 85), that is, the global

economy.

A mode of social regulation (MSR) is ‘a complex of institutions and norms

which secure, at least for a certain period, the adjustment of individual agents and

social groups to the over arching principle of the accumulation regime’ (Hirst and

Zeitlin, 1992: 85). The ‘mode of development’ is the combination of the currently

ascendant regime of accumulation and the various modes of social regulation

(Hirst and Zeitlin, 1992: 84–85).

While regulation theory does not prescribe the exact nature of a particular

mode of social regulation, it is generally agreed that: ‘a regime of accumulation

does not create or require a particular mode of social regulation, each regime, in

short, may be regulated in a multiplicity of ways (Scott, 1988: 9). Because modes

of social regulation are based on such things as ‘habits and customs, social norms,

enforceable laws and state forms’ (Peck and Tickell, 1992: 349) unique modes

‘can exist at virtually any territorial level – local, regional, national, global’

(Storper and Walker, 1989: 215).

Another aspect of regulation theory – its historicity – adds further strength to

the argument that modes of social regulation, and therefore modes of development

differing considerably one from another, can and do emerge at every geographic

scale. Corbridge (1989) says regulation theory indicates that the global economic

system has gone through four stages in the twentieth century. In stage one, the

system was in equilibrium. Stage two was a period of crisis or disequilibrium

resulting from a shift from the extensive to the Fordist regime of accumulation.

Equilibrium returned in stage three when suitable modes of social regulation

emerged. The fourth (current) stage is also one of crisis caused by a failure of the

monopolistic mode of social regulation (in all its variants) to accommodate a

‘selective move from mass production (the Fordist regime accumulation) to

various forms of flexible production’ (Norcliffe, 1994: 2).

Forces resulting in the shift to the new flexible regime of accumulation include:

1 technical limits to rigid fixed capital production techniques;

2 working class resistance to Taylorist and Fordist forms of work organization

(Jessop, 1989);

3 a change in consumption patterns ‘toward a greater variety of use values ...

[that] cannot be easily satisfied through mass production’ (Amin, 1994: 12);

4 the increasing mobility of capital and the resulting ability of transnational

corporations (TNCs) to move among spatially bounded regulatory jurisdic-

tions in the pursuit of greater profits (Leyshon, 1992);

5 in the face of this internationalization of capital, the inability of national

Keynesian policies (all variants of the monopolistic mode of social regulation)

to avert crisis (Komninos, 1989).

Everywhere and at every geographic scale – community, sub-national region,

national, supra-national region and globally – indigenous or not, people are

struggling to develop modes of social regulation that will allow them to interact with

this new flexible regime of accumulation on their own terms. While it is a ‘work in

process’, the nature of the flexible regime of accumulation is becoming clearer and

multiple overlapping modes of social regulation are emerging. Dunning says:

We are moving out of an age of hierarchical capitalism and into an age of

alliance capitalism. This is placing a premium on the virtues needed for fruit-

ful and sustainable coalitions and partnerships (be they within or among insti-

tutions), such as trust, reciprocity, and due diligence.

(Dunning, 2003: 24)

As a result of the emergence of the flexible regime of accumulation, there has

been a shift in which companies consider to be stakeholders and how they behave

towards these groups. Nowhere is this truer than in the relationship between compa-

nies and the communities where their customers and employees live and where

they conduct their activities. In spite of globalization, everything a company does,

it does somewhere, every employee and every customer lives somewhere, and

inputs of raw material and capital goods come from somewhere; and all these

‘somewheres’ are located in communities of some sort. Because of this, as

companies forge networks of suppliers, sub-contractors and marketing channel

partners and seek to control them through ‘collective social and institutional order

in place of hierarchical control’ (Storper and Walker, 1989: 152), they are much

more likely to see communities as valued members of networks as opposed to

something external to them. This general predisposition applies no less to indige-

nous communities who increasingly control key resources or represent an impor-

tant component of the labour force in certain areas.

In response to the change in the regime of accumulation, the nature of regulation

is changing. The locus of regulation is shifting from the nation-state in two

directions – to the supra-national and the local. For example, Amin (1994: 1–40)

say the crisis in the global economy has resulted in ‘new opportunities for the

location of economic activities’and that ‘the geography of post-Fordist production

is said to be at once local and global’. Scott (1988:108) says that new industrial

spaces result from ‘a very specific articulation of local social conditions with

wider coordinates of capitalist development in general’. Finally, Dicken (1992: 307)

emphasizes that successful participation in the global economic system ‘is created

and sustained through a highly localised process’ and that ‘economic structures,

values, cultures, institutions and histories contribute profoundly to that success’.

Local modes of social regulation can be, in Gramscian terms, both hegemonic

and counter-hegemonic to the extent to which they consent to the capitalist global

economy, attempt to transform it or dissent from it. Hegemonic and non-hegemonic

responses are associated with three different analytic or intuitive starting points

that motivate policies and programmes in local modes of social regulation. The

first of these starting points is an analysis that claims that peripheral communities

92 Ove Heitmann Hansen, Oluf Langhelle and Robert Anderson

Framework and methodology 93

have been excluded from capitalism and that the objective is to remedy this

through inclusion. The second is an analysis that claims that capitalism is at least

in part culturally alien and that it is necessary to transform the ‘alien’ aspects of

it as part of the process of participating in it. The third is an analysis that claims

that capitalism is exploitative and beyond redemption and that the need is to

exclude or resist it. These analytical/intuitive starting points are not simply

abstract concepts. They, and the beliefs and discourses about the economy asso-

ciated with them, are present in varying combinations and varying strengths

among the members of indigenous and all other communities.

People in a particular community do not adopt their perspective on the global

economy in isolation or in abstract. It emerges in response to their direct experi-

ence with actors in the global economic system. The four groups of actors with

whom they are most familiar (and, therefore, constitute the face of the global

economy) are:

1 the exogenous businesses (henceforth called corporations for simplicity

sake) with which they interact as customers, employees or suppliers;

2 the ‘state’ at local, sub-national, national and international levels;

3 myriad groups of the civil sector, including non-government organizations

(NGOs) of all types, and special interest groups, such as Amnesty Inter-

national, the World Council of Indigenous People, the Sierra Club and so on;

4 global and transnational cooperation, such as the World Trade Organization,

the World Bank, the European Economic Union, North American Free Trade

Agreement (NAFTA).

Corporations are most closely associated with the regime of accumulation;

indeed for many they are the face of the regime of accumulation. That it is not to

say that corporations are not influenced by and do not influence modes of social

regulation; of course they are, and they do. The state at all its levels is most closely

tied to the modes of social regulation. Indeed, the sum of the actions of the state at

all levels constitutes the bulk of the modes of social regulation at any particular

time and place; the bulk but not the entirety. The organizations of the civil sector

also play an important role directly and through their influence on the state and on

corporations. Increasingly, transnational institutions are taking on a powerful role

in the economy that is more than the expression of the collective voice of member

states. Transnational organizations and agreements are becoming a regulatory

force, with considerable impact on states, corporations and communities.

The institutional landscape is also changing in the Arctic. As argued by Young

(2005: 9), the Arctic has experienced ‘a dramatic shift from the status of sensitive

theatre of operations for the deployment of strategic weapons systems to that of

focal point for a range of initiatives involving transnational cooperation’. These

initiatives take a variety of forms and involve different actors:

Some, like the establishment of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy

(1991) and the creation of the Arctic Council (1996), involve straightforward

intergovernmental agreements. Others, such as the construction of the Northern

Forum (1991), feature leagues of subnational actors drawn together in pursuit

of common interests that differ from those of national governments. Still

others, like the founding of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (1977), the

development of the International Arctic Science Committee (1990), and the

launching of the University of the Arctic (2001), take the form of nongovern-

mental arrangements designed to address specific Arctic issues and to

convey a sense of the significance of these concerns to the world at large.

(Young, 2005: 9)

For the most part, these cooperative arrangements are ‘neither regulatory in

nature nor endowed with the authority to make binding decisions on matters of

significance’ (Young, 2005: 10). What is important, however, is that Arctic coop-

erative arrangements have:

become vehicles for articulating regional interests and for protecting regional

actors from the side effects of global processes. In most cases these efforts

deal with the impacts of large-scale environmental changes and with the

effects of economic and social globalization.

(Young, 2005: 12)

According to Young, these cooperative arrangements remain fragile in the sense

that they have not yet ‘hardened into a well-established assemblage of social

practices featuring a common discourse that can turn expediential and transient

calculations of political interest into a mode of operation that becomes a matter of

second nature to its participants’. And to complicate it even further, global environ-

mental change and globalization ‘threaten to overwhelm efforts to carve out

coherent agendas at the regional level and to pursue them without undue concern for

the linkages between regional activities and planetary processes’ (Young, 2005: 14).

In any particular case, a complex set of factors influence the interaction of a

group of people with the forces of the global economy and the outcomes they

experience. These factors include:

1 The impact of the ‘state’ at all levels and the ‘civil sector’ on the multiple

overlapping modes of social regulation and, therefore, on participants in the

global economy, and the influence of these participants on the ‘state’ and the

‘civil sector’.

2 The community-in-question’s approach to economic development including

its history, current circumstances, objectives and approach to participation in

the global economy, including strategies for participation, transformation and

exclusion and actual outcomes.

3 Corporate (as the usual representative of the regime of accumulation encoun-

tered by communities) responses to the community-in-question. Particularly

motivating forces include the community’s control over the critical natural,

human and financial resources. Community members’ attractiveness as a

94 Ove Heitmann Hansen, Oluf Langhelle and Robert Anderson

market and corporate strategies and objectives may also affect outcomes.

Outcomes, of course, feed back to the ongoing process of development.

4 The expected mode of development and the actual mode that emerges in a

particular circumstance.

The mix of integrating, transforming and excluding mechanisms adopted by a

particular community in its approach to the global economy and, therefore, the

mode of development that emerges, is heavily influenced by the particular faces

of the state, civil sector corporations and international organizations that a

community sees now and has seen in the past. This ‘face to face’ meeting, while

heavily influenced by local circumstance, occurs within the context of the domi-

nant global regime of accumulation and multiple, overlapping and often conflict-

ing modes of social regulation.

In this ongoing story, we see all the players and forces in action, each influenc-

ing one another and the mode of social regulation, and hence the mode of devel-

opment that is emerging. Following Young, however, our focus is on the social

practices that attempt to create common discourses to turn expediential and

transient calculations of political interest into actions.

A discourse analytical approach

One important force in action among the actors is how different development alter-

natives are framed and justified. A discourse

can be described as the way we speak

about things such as the environmental or social consequences of oil and gas activ-

ities in the Arctic. Dryzek (1997) defines discourse as ‘a shared way of looking at

the world’ or as a ‘shared way of apprehending the world’. The adherents of a partic-

ular discourse will use ‘a particular kind of language when talking about events,

which in turn rests on some common definitions, judgements, assumptions and

contentions’. These are embedded in language, and it makes it possible for those

who subscribe to them to ‘interpret bits of information and put them together into

coherent stories or accounts’ (Dryzek, 1997: 8). This means that different people

use different bits of information and knowledge to promote their interests, but at the

same time borrow arguments to support their views. Actors in the debate of an

Arctic oil and gas activity will capture ideas and concepts that are useful to bring

their messages to decision-makers to obtain or increase support.

A discourse is also a comprehensive and significant system that regulates what

can be said and done, and what cannot be said or done within a social field or

subject area. It serves as a powerful force in determining our realities or ‘truths’,

the meaning we give to things (Foucault, 1980). Language is a particular way of

looking at the world and interpreting our experience, and it is the language in use

and practice as discourses we are looking for. Language reflects the social rela-

tions of power, domination and ideology. Ideology is the ability of a powerful and

dominant social group to impose its interpretations and particular meanings of

social reality on other groups in society through language. The point is that it is

not sufficient to ‘only’ read texts. Institutional settings and constellations of

Framework and methodology 95