Accounting signifiers, political discourse, popular resistance and legal identity during Pakistan Steel Mills attempted privatization

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Using the privatization of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM)as an empirical site and drawing on Laclau and Mouffe's (1985)discourse theory, this paper traces the discursive struggle between two discourses on the valuation and privatization of PSM. Specific signifiers were articulated and re-articulated into different chains of equivalence to create an appeal for each discourse surrounding the steel mill's valuation. The anti-privatization discourse's ‘success’ derived from its ‘interdiscursivity’ i.e. drawing on disparate signifiers from different meta-discourses; accounting, nationalism, state corruption and ‘informal’ signifiers such as ‘family silver’, ‘market value’ and ‘throw away price’. In contrast, the pro-privatization discourse drew on a homogenous (financial)economics discourse using more formal and technical signifiers such as ‘going concern’ and ‘sensitivity adjusted discounted cash flow value’. The anti-privatization discourse, with its diverse and informal (accounting)signifiers gained ‘empirical validity’, ‘narrative fidelity’, ‘and experiential commensurability’, appealed more to the masses, the media, and the judiciary. It convinced them selling PSM was a grave injustice, which must be prevented. Hence the Supreme Court reversed the privatization decision, which soured executive-judiciary relations, and led the military government to suspend the Chief Justice of Pakistan, and later the judiciary, media outlets, and the Constitution, which precipitated a successful social movement for an independent judiciary and the restoration of democracy. Events were shaped by the various interests of parties concerned and created new identities for them. The paper concludes by reflecting on how the findings contribute to, and add new issues for accounting research using discourse analysis.

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Accounting signifiers, political discourse, popular resistance and legal identity during Pakistan Steel Mills attempted privatization

10.26686/wgtn.13687789.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

MJ Ashraf ◽

F Muhammad ◽

Trevor Hopper

Keyword(s):

Discourse Theory ◽

Military Government ◽

Discounted Cash Flow ◽

Popular Resistance ◽

Independent Judiciary ◽

Steel Mills ◽

The Supreme Court ◽

The Media ◽

The Masses ◽

The Military

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Aestheticization of Fear and Violence via Public Relations

Advances in Media, Entertainment, and the Arts - Handbook of Research on Aestheticization of Violence, Horror, and Power ◽

10.4018/978-1-7998-4655-0.ch019 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 369-393

Author(s):

H. Burcu Önder Memiş

Keyword(s):

Public Relations ◽

Industrial Revolution ◽

Military Government ◽

Sedentary Life ◽

Definition Of ◽

The Masses ◽

Post Industrial ◽

The Military ◽

Industrial Societies ◽

Shed Light

Fear is a human emotion that allows a person to survive. It has a function to ensure the continuity of life. The definition of fear has changed over time. Along with human development, transition to sedentary life, the industrial revolution, and modern life, fear and the things feared have changed. Fear has started to be marketed, especially in post-industrial societies. The governments have seen that fear and violence work to regulate, control, and passivate people. Political governments have had the unique opportunity to use fear as a mechanism for control and surveillance. The governments have aestheticized the fear and presented it indirectly with the support of media. The masses have been shaped as weak, scared, anxious, and helpless in the shadow of fear and violence. This study tries to shed light on the attempt to persuade the society about the legitimacy of the military government by presenting fear and violence to people in aestheticized forms in the 1980s in Turkey.

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Legal and Constitutional Changes in Nigeria Under the Military Government

Journal of African Law ◽

10.1017/s0021855300004551 ◽

1966 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 92-105 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

E. A. Keay

Keyword(s):

Public Service ◽

Collective Responsibility ◽

Military Government ◽

High Court ◽

The Supreme Court ◽

Service Commission ◽

The Military ◽

Court Of Appeal ◽

Public Service Commission ◽

Constitutional Changes

Prior to the events which began on January 15th, 1966, Nigeria was a Federal country consisting of four Regions and the Federal Territory of Lagos (a small area including the capital and adjoining areas). Each Region had its own Constitution providing for a bicameral legislature; a Westminster-type ministerial system and cabinet with collective responsibility; a Regional High Court, from which restricted appeal lay to the Supreme Court of Nigeria; a Regional public service with power of appointment and dismissal vested in an independent Public Service Commission; and over all a Governor whose functions were those of a constitutional Head and carefully spelt out in the Constitution. In addition, the North's Constitution provided for the Sharia Court of Appeal, a court of status coordinate with that of the High Court and having exclusive and final appellate jurisdiction in civil cases based on Moslem family law.

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Apocalypse Now?

PROKLA Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft ◽

10.32387/prokla.v31i125.725 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 31 (125) ◽

pp. 603-624 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Iris Bünger

Keyword(s):

Print Media ◽

September 11 ◽

The Media ◽

Discursive Strategy ◽

The Masses ◽

The Military

The role played by the media in the construction of societal reality is both – determined by discourse and determines discourse. The media can be regarded as a kind of „magnifying glass” that collects information and focuses it for the masses. The reporting of the BILD-Zeitung, a leading figure in mass print media is analysed after the attacks on US-targets on September 11, 2001. The discursive strategy to define terror as war and to prepare the military counter attacks entailing „unlimited German Solidarity” is demonstrated by illumination of the argumentation strategies and collective symbolism.

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REPRESSION AND RESISTANCE: the great press in Brasilia during the Military Dictatorship (1964-1985)

Revista Observatório ◽

10.20873/uft.2447-4266.2020v6n4a9en ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (4) ◽

pp. a9en

Author(s):

Raphael Diego Greenhalgh

Keyword(s):

Qualitative Approach ◽

Military Regime ◽

Truth Commissions ◽

Military Government ◽

Military Dictatorship ◽

Descriptive Research ◽

The Press ◽

The Media ◽

The Military ◽

The Relationship

Censorship in the Military Dictatorship has its origins in the processes of repression of the press institutionalized in the Estado Novo. In the military government, in addition to prior censorship, there was also a widespread repression on the media, based on methods such as: surveillance, harassment and punishment of journalists, and coercion of the press through tax audits and advertising control, among other means. The paper aims to analyze the relationship between the great national press, leading local press and journalists based in Brasilia, with the censorship apparatus of the military regime. Based on an exploratory and descriptive research, with a qualitative approach, it used archival materials from institutions and truth commissions, as well as interviews with journalists. The paper concludes that despite the repression of the great press in Brasília, there were also resistance initiatives.

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Concealment and Disclosure: The Cholera Crisis of 1969–70 in Korea

Korean Journal of Medical History ◽

10.13081/kjmh.2021.30.355 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 30 (2) ◽

pp. 355-392

Author(s):

Kyu-hwan SIHN

Keyword(s):

Medical Professionals ◽

Military Government ◽

Successful Model ◽

Cholera Epidemic ◽

Disease Information ◽

The Media ◽

The Government ◽

The Military ◽

Previous Scholarship

The anti-cholera measures of 1969–70 represent one of the most unsuccessful quarantine cases in modern Korea. The military government, which overthrew the democratic government in 1961, tried to amend the Constitution aiming for a long-term seizure of power, and had to overcome the cholera crisis of 1969–70. Previous scholarship has emphasized the limitation of the state power when it came to controlling the cholera epidemic or the poor sanitation system of 1969–70. However, it is undeniable that the military government did have organizations, facilities, and human capital available. When a cholera epidemic broke out in 1963–64, the military government defended its people against cholera as part of the Revolutionary Tasks. Furthermore, it took counsel from a team of medical professionals knowledgeable in microbiology. In 1969, the possibility of bacteriological warfare by North Korea emerged while the government responded to cholera. To avoid this crisis, Park Chŏng-hŭi’s military government, which had been preparing for longterm rule, had to provide successful model in the cholera defense. For the military government, the concealment and distortion of infectious disease information was inevitable. Many other medical professionals trusted the activities of international organizations more than they did the government bodies, and the media accused the government of fabricating cholera death statistics. As the government failed to prevent the cholera crisis, it tightened its secrecy by concealing facts and controlling information.

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The Judiciary and the Media

Israel Law Review ◽

10.1017/s0021223700018148 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 44 (3) ◽

pp. 499-513

Keyword(s):

Rule Of Law ◽

The Rule Of Law ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Independent Judiciary ◽

House Of Lords ◽

The Press ◽

The Supreme Court ◽

The Media ◽

The Relationship

I am an English judge speaking in Jerusalem at a lecture to honor the memory of an Englishman who was the first member of the English Jewish Community to be appointed to the House of Lords, now the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. That was 60 years ago in 1951. So this is an important anniversary.This evening, I am seeking to highlight some of the issues that relate to the role of the media and the role of the judiciary in upholding the rule of law, and the interaction of their relationships in a democratic society that respects the rule of law. My experience is British, but my intention is to address questions that arise in any civilized democracy. The essential principles are unaffected by geography.My overwhelming belief is that the most emphatic feature of the relationship between the judiciary and the media is that the independence of the judiciary and the independence of the media are both fundamental to the continued exercise, and indeed the survival, of the liberties that we sometimes take for granted. I have said before, and I do not apologize for saying it again, these are critical independences, which are linked but separate. As far as I can discover, there never has been, and there is no community in the world in which an independent press flourishes while the judiciary is subservient to the executive or government, or where an independent judiciary is allowed to perform its true constitutional function while, at the same time, the press is fettered by the executive.

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Executive Assaults on Supreme Court of Pakistan and Movement for Independent Judiciary: 2007-09

Global Political Review - Fall 2018 ◽

10.31703/gpr.2019(iv-iv).12 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol IV (IV) ◽

pp. 107-113

Author(s):

Hina Malik ◽

Sana Ullah ◽

Ayaz Ali Shah

Keyword(s):

Civil Society ◽

Supreme Court ◽

Rule Of Law ◽

The Rule Of Law ◽

Independent Judiciary ◽

The Supreme Court ◽

The Will ◽

Entire Nation ◽

The Moment ◽

The Military

Pakistan, since independence, has become a laboratory for constitutional experiments, with the judiciary playing the most controversial role. Under the theory of necessity, the superior judiciary has legalized military takeovers. Although controversial as a judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Iftekhar Muhammad Chaudhry was found to be a changed person the moment he took his seat as a Chief Justice of Pakistan. However, the situation was not conducive for any action that went against the will of the military ruler. But the Judge-Bench collaboration supported by the entire civil society initiated a movement to negate and nullify the dictates of a dictator. The movement led by the Black Coats community extended over years, bearing hardships of all kinds. The movement was successful in forcing General Musharraf to uphold the provisions of the constitution and rules of established law. The entire nation emerged victorious in upholding what is called the rule of law.

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