CONTEXTOS REALES
2.2. Tareas matemáticas escolares
The empirical part of this study is developed into an analytical nar-rative on the consolidation of neo-populist advocacy of welfare na-tionalism in the Finnish public debate by operationalizing the theo-retical framework with regard to two principle features that inform the research design. These features are the methodological focus on the rhetorical discourse analysis of collective narratives and the illustration of critical turning points of political welfare nationalism by triangu-lating between the data collected from salient arenas of public debate.
The common methodological approach that guides the empir-ical analysis is that the material in all of the five data sets is first operationalized as collective narratives that can be then studied with rhetorical discourse analysis (see, for instance, Billig 1987; Potter 1996; Jokinen, Juhila and Suoninen 1999). Among contemporary narrative researchers, narratives are commonly regarded as a dis-tinct form of discourse where the concerted ordering of the material is a crucial factor that shapes the process of meaning making (Chase 2011). The focus on collective narratives in the operationalization of the data emphasizes the fact that the material is produced by multiple authors or discussants. Regardless of their often divergent individual affiliations or personal motivations for employing certain kinds of rhetoric or conceptualizations, the discussants enter a col-lective process of meaning-making in public fora, thereby contrib-uting to a wider public understanding concerning the social phe-nomena they discuss.
In order to first identify specific types of narratives from the material, the empirical chapters employ the analytical lenses of na-tionalist boundary-drawing welfare state idealization and strategic neo-populist social action (as discussed in 2.4). As such, while the subsequent rhetorical discourse analysis is empirically grounded, the operationalization of the material into collective narratives en-tails a theoretically informed approach to the processes of thematic sorting and coding of the material. This way of operationalizing the data does not seek to reconstruct the multiplicity of narratives produced by the discussants in a given data set, but instead focuses on “what is socially accomplished” in the contested, collective
pro-cess of narrative storytelling within specific arenas of public debate (Holstein and Gubrium 2011, 6–7).
The method of rhetorical discourse analysis makes it possible to examine in detail how the most successful and persuasive col-lective narratives employ various, often implicit justificatory strat-egies, through which discussants in public debate seek to alter and manage public perceptions concerning acceptability, justifiability and necessity of welfare nationalist politics of immigration control.
Some of the narrative strategies that rhetorical discourse analysis of public narratives can make visible include fact construction through invitations for an imagined audience to complete suggestive nar-ratives, favorable speaker positioning and enemy representations (Potter 1996, 114–128, 142–169), reductive quantification of com-plex qualitative questions, lists and repetition (Jokinen, Juhila and Suoninen 1999, 146, 152–154) and metaphorical conceptualization of social action (Billig 1987, 40–41).
By employing rhetorical discourse analysis as tool in the narra-tive analysis of public stories, it is also possible to alternate between the three analytical lenses to assess how distinct narratives seek to bundle the questions of immigration, national belonging and the future of the welfare state. For example, by juxtaposing the per-ception of increasing demands from growing immigrant minorities with the state’s idealized capabilities for providing encompassing redistribution of welfare (illustrated through the welfare state ide-alization lens), it is possible to employ exclusionary categorizations of national belonging (revealed by the nationalist boundary-drawing lens) for the purpose of presenting the neo-populist advocacy of heightened immigration control as benign welfare nationalist social policy (a subject positioning narrative examined through the lens of strategic neo-populist social action) (Billig 1987, 149–150).
The other key feature for advancing the analytical narrative en-tails selective triangulation between the data collected from salient public arenas order to illustrate the critical turning points of how welfare nationalism is debated in the civil society. First of all, the chronological ordering of the three chapters of analysis presents a historical reconstruction of the consolidation of welfare nationalist advocacy in three critical turning points. The data from the early 2000s focuses on the politicization of role of the welfare state in the
management of immigration, the data collected from the period of near the 2011 electoral victory of Perussuomalaiset illustrates the neo-populist mainstreaming of the welfare nationalist political agenda and, finally, the data from 2013 and 2014 emphasizes the narratives employed in the mediatized catalysis of neo-populist identity-work.
Obviously, these critical turning points could not be used as the guideline for data collection, because identifying these three as the critical turning points could only be established post hoc. The pre-requisite for identifying the turning points was first identifying an emergent public arena for debating a salient facet of welfare nation-alist politics, and then collecting data from the debates conducted within these arenas. The results from the analysis of the narrative data collected like this made it possible to emphasize the particu-larities in each data set and then use them to identify the critical turning points. This was established by illustrating what features of welfare nationalism were first debated in public in conjunction to which arena and what was particular in these debates, and naming these accordingly as the critical turning points.
This progressive process is documented in detail by the analytical narrative that is advanced in the three chapters of empirical analysis and in the synthesizing concluding discussion. Before proceeding to the empirical part of this study, two important features linking the data triangulation and the analytical narrative on neo-populist consolidation of welfare nationalism in three critical turning points should be emphasized here.
Firstly, the decision to advance the analytical narrative through the concept of consolidation of welfare nationalism and its neo-pop-ulist advocacy was made possible by the observation that, from the early 2000s to 2013, the most salient emergent arenas for debating welfare nationalism in public have become increasingly informal.
In the early 2000s, welfare nationalism was only debate in pub-lic within the high political arena. During the electoral victory of Perussuomalaiset, the most heated debates were conducted in the mainstream publicity. Finally, the narratives for justifying welfare nationalism within the intimate, quasi-public sphericules of social media helped to develop neo-populist advocacy into a resonant col-lective identity.
Secondly, analyzing the narratives by triangulating between the data indicates that the subject matter of what is being debated vis-à-vis welfare nationalism is specific to the arenas and the critical turning points. In the high political arenas, the level of abstraction is high, and much of the debate pertained to the aims and ideals of welfare nationalism. In the analysis of these debates, the lenses na-tionalist boundary-drawing and welfare state idealization are partic-ularly useful. When welfare nationalism is debated in mainstream publicity, the focus is on how the neo-populists are able to justify their anti-immigration oriented political agenda to the wider public as the proper interpretation of welfare nationalism that can save
“our” welfare state. Analyzing these debates requires complement-ing the analytical tools with the strategic neo-populist social action lens. Finally, when neo-populist advocacy is heavily challenged in mainstream media, the political agenda of welfare nationalism is barely discussed in the data. Instead, the debates are mostly con-testations between subject positioning narratives. While anti-popu-list discussants are keen to employ narratives that delegitimize the neo-populist advocacy by focusing on their inability to keep the rampant racism at bay, the neo-populists seek to construct the po-sition of a “true” neo-populist advocate as impossible for racists to hold, thereby presenting the accusations against the true advocates as false by definition.
The subsequent empirical chapters employ the data and methods as described in this section, approaching the material as collectively produced narratives through rhetorical discourse analysis. In these three chapters, I aim to offer an analytical narrative that explores critical turning points in the consolidation of welfare nationalism and its neo-populist advocacy.