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The Mediation of the Concept of Civil Society in the Belarusian Press (1991-2010)

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The Mediation of the Concept of Civil Society in the Belarusian Press (1991-2010) THE MEDIATION OF THE CONCEPT OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE BELARUSIAN PRESS (1991-2010) A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2015 IRYNA CLARK School of Arts, Languages and Cultures Table of Contents List of Tables and Figures ............................................................................................... 5 List of Abbreviations ....................................................................................................... 6 Abstract ............................................................................................................................ 7 Declaration ....................................................................................................................... 8 Copyright Statement ........................................................................................................ 8 A Note on Transliteration and Translation .................................................................... 9 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ 10 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 11 Research objectives and questions ................................................................................... 12 Outline of the Belarusian media landscape and primary sources ...................................... 17 The evolution of the concept of civil society in historical and geographical contexts ....... 21 Shifting theoretical paradigms of ‘civil society’ ........................................................... 21 Shifting meanings under contextual conditions: ‘civil society’ in the Soviet and post- Soviet contexts............................................................................................................. 24 Rediscovery of the concept of civil society by Central and Eastern European intellectuals.................................................................................................................. 24 Civil society and the media in a Soviet and post-Soviet context ................................... 26 Emergence of interest in civil society and the media in Belarus .................................... 29 Method ........................................................................................................................... 34 General Principles of CDA .......................................................................................... 34 Particular aspects of CDA theory utilised in my research ............................................. 35 Applying CDA principles in practice ........................................................................... 38 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 44 1. Civil society discourse, 1991-1993: the formation of the new Belarusian state .... 45 1.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 45 1.2. Context: perestroika and its aftermath in the former Soviet Union and in Belarus . 48 1.3. Qualitative transformation of Belarusian media discourse: ‘civil society’ as an index of social change ..................................................................................................... 51 1.3.1. Gorbachev’s speeches in Sovetskaia Belorussiia ............................................ 52 1.3.2. Local responses to Gorbachev in Sovetskaia Belorussiia: the battle for hegemony .................................................................................................................... 55 1.3.3. A perspective from below: responses from the political and cultural community ................................................................................................................... 61 1.4. Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 67 2 2. The mediation of ‘civil society’ during 1994-1999: indexing the past, projecting the future ........................................................................................................................ 70 2.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 70 2.2. Sources and data ................................................................................................... 72 2.3. Generic references to ‘civil society’: indexing official voices ................................ 73 2.4. Amplifying the notion of ‘human rights’ ............................................................... 76 2.5. Performing the ‘political community’ ................................................................... 83 2.6. Mediating the ‘third sector’ as a ‘legitimate enemy’ .............................................. 87 2.7. Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 96 3. Shaping media discourses on ‘civil society’ in the press, 2000-2004: the discursive struggle over the term .................................................................................................... 99 3.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 99 3.2. The appropriation of ‘civil society’ in the official discourse: establishing ‘a practical consensus’ .......................................................................................................101 3.3. Electoral politics: the battle over discursive capital ..............................................106 3.3.1. Appropriation of ‘civil society’ by officialdom .............................................106 3.3.2. Alternative uses of ‘civil society’: politicisation of the discourse ..................109 3.3.3. International flow of voices ..........................................................................111 3.3.4. The (re-)construction of official ‘civil society’: ‘pillars of the state’ ..............116 3.3.5. Transformation of ‘civil society’ discourse ...................................................122 3.3.6. Some aspects of ‘centrifugal’ tendencies in the press: irony, metaphor and ‘implicit consensus’ ....................................................................................................125 3.4. Conclusion ...........................................................................................................131 4. ‘Public Square’ 2006: between ‘heteroglossia’ and ‘monologism’ ...................... 134 4.1. Introduction .........................................................................................................134 4.2. A description of the specific methodological tools used in this chapter.................137 4.3. ‘Monologisation’ of ‘civil society’ discourse in Sovetskaia Belorussiia................139 4.4. ‘Public Square’ and the ideas of ‘civil society’ .....................................................146 4.4.1. ‘Self-organising society’ ...............................................................................146 4.4.2. Use of the idea of ‘civil society’ by the democratic opposition ......................149 4.4.3. ‘Independent Society’: shifting the borders between the civic and the national in Nasha Niva .............................................................................................................151 4.4.4. Challenges to ‘dialogisation’ in the alternative discourse ...............................155 4.5. Conclusion ...........................................................................................................158 5. Limited liberalisation: dialogic politics in the Belarusian press (2008-2010) ..... 161 5.1. Introduction .........................................................................................................161 3 5.2. ‘Dialogism’ and its discursive manifestations: clarification of the method ............162 5.3. Context 2008-2010: the multi-vectored approach and the Eastern Partnership programme .....................................................................................................................163 5.4. Content analysis of Sovetskaia Belorussiia: discursive trends...............................165 5.4.1. The Kuropaty Case: staging a dialogue in Sovetskaia Belorussiia .................171 5.5. The appropriation of EU voices in the alternative press: ‘civil society’ as the ‘third sector’ ..................................................................................................................178 5.6. The reporting of voices from the ‘culturally-minded’ community: historical and cultural roots of the term ................................................................................................181 5.7. Conclusion ...........................................................................................................186 Conclusions .................................................................................................................. 189 Revisiting objectives, research questions and major findings ..........................................189 Research Question 1: deploying the term ‘civil society’ in the Belarusian press ..........190 Research Question 2: power, discourse and social change ...........................................195 Research Question 3: strategies
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