Abstract
Since the 1990s, the tar sands enterprise has evoked a collision of worldviews. At one extreme: proponents of the industry’s growth and the development of what they perceive as a valuable energy source that creates investment, jobs, taxes and royalties, with reparable or justifiable costs. At the other: critics alarmed at the socio-ecological disruption associated with the extraction and consumption of “dirty oil”, all for the sake of enriching vested interests. This chapter introduces the conceptual framework and analytical tools we use in this study to contemplate the nature, implications, and possible outcomes of this collision. Our goal is to understand better how certain courses of action with significant social and environmental consequence are justified or challenged. Such an analysis requires a close look at material realities: namely flows of money, labour, oil and waste. But even more so, it requires analysis of discursive representations and interpretations of those material realities and the complex global system through which information, ideas, materials and political power flow. Language and imagery embody the power of material consequence, and therefore, this study is first and foremost an analysis of discourse: the examination of meaning-making (New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, 2005). In this book, we are interested in the discursive strategies used by politicians, corporate representatives and their critics in open debates, in carefully crafted political speeches or reports, and in web-based communications, to frame in words and images their behaviours and concerns, to portray imagined new actions, and preferred alternative futures (see Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research, 2003; Critical Discourse Studies 1(1): 1–7, 2003 [cited in Urban Policy and Research 24(1): 39–52, 2006] and Urban Policy and Research 24(1): 39–52, 2006). Using NVivo qualitative data analysis software as well as an archival research methods, we have collected, coded, analysed and classified over two decades of public documents pertaining to tar sands development, including public hearing transcripts – particularly from the Oil Sands Consultations held in 2006–2007; transcripts of sessions of the Alberta Legislative Assembly provided by the publicly available Alberta Hansard database; as well as corporate-sponsored publications and documents; public speeches; impact assessment reports; newspaper articles and editorials; and organization websites.
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Davidson, D.J., Gismondi, M. (2011). Observing Global Flows. In: Challenging Legitimacy at the Precipice of Energy Calamity. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0287-9_2
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