CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Ungár, Peter Karoly |
|---|---|
| Title | Green Trade: The Absorption of the Antithesis The Environmental Discourse of TTIP in the European Union |
| Summary | The evolution of how the relationship of global trade and the environment is conceptualized needs to be uncovered in order to understand to what extent, in what ways and through what mechanism the environmental discourses, like sustainable development, have been subsumed in the hegemonic discourse in our political institutions. By examining how the issues of environmentalism or sustainable development have figured in the debate of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in the European Union, the latest episodes of this evolution can be brought to light. To understand this discursive change a Gramscian scheme of thesis and antithesis is used, where the mechanism of discursive change is seen as the absorption of the antithesis into the thesis’s overlying logic and structure, keeping what was defined as legitimate knowledge and the overlying power-structures intact. This mechanism is examined in post-2013 texts of all major political groups on TTIP in the European Union, with special attention given to the Commission’s articulation of the pro-TTIP position. These texts are looked at through critical discourse analysis, which aims to uncover the relationship between language and power, thus defining discourse as language-in-use. The study found that in fact no fundamental antithesis with regards to the inherent question of the relationship between the environment and trade liberalisation was coherently put forth by any of the opposition groups. Moreover, the areas in which there has been successful opposition, resulting in the absorption of the antithesis in certain policy conflicts, has been in issues relating to regulatory standards, specifically food standards, which are now increasingly framed as a synecdoche for fundamental European values even in Commission texts. |
| Supervisor | Watt, Alan |
| Department | Environment Sciences and Policy MSc |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/ungar_peter-karoly.pdf |
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