Comments on: Reframing politics

By: Ripping off the plaster – the next wave

Ripping off the plaster – the next wave — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 07:04:17 +0000

[…] say that your syntax always finds you out. Metaphors can be just as revealing. As George Lakoff observes, metaphors are the devices we use to frame the way we think about the world. In politics, according […]

By: Robin Hood, austerity, and the “burden” of tax | thenextwave

Robin Hood, austerity, and the “burden” of tax | thenextwave — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 17:03:09 +0000

[…] was that in recent years, the wealthiest and most powerful had stood the myth on its head. By some rapid re-framing, the poor find themselves in the box where the rich used to […]

By: Looting the public | thenextwave | Olduvaiblog

Looting the public | thenextwave | Olduvaiblog — Mon, 25 Aug 2014 14:36:59 +0000

[…] are still a couple of gaps here. The first is that these issues still need some framing to make them sharp enough to resonate, than than just rumbling along below the surface. The second […]

By: Looting the public | thenextwave

Looting the public | thenextwave — Mon, 25 Aug 2014 08:48:04 +0000

[…] are still a couple of gaps here. The first is that these issues still need some framing to make them sharp enough to resonate, than than just rumbling along below the surface. The second […]

By: Loosening the grip of oligarchy | Occupy Wall Street by Platlee

Loosening the grip of oligarchy | Occupy Wall Street by Platlee — Thu, 01 May 2014 11:45:54 +0000

[…] which government policy has acted to increase private sector profits in recent decades". Once the frame exists for discussion of these, politics […]

By: Loosening the grip of oligarchy | thenextwave

Loosening the grip of oligarchy | thenextwave — Sun, 20 Apr 2014 11:16:44 +0000

[…] which government policy has acted to increase private sector profits in recent decades”. Once the frame exists for discussion of these, politics […]

By: Ian Christie

Ian Christie — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 10:11:05 +0000

Thanks Andrew. The caveat you enter is important – frame analysis is important as analysis, but should not become the focus of the politics. We can see where that has got the USA: the (often mendacious and hysterical) representations of policies count for far more than the actual realities of those policies and the people experiencing them.
I think one weakness of the Lakoff approach – leaving aside his neuro-materialism – is the lack of attention to the unstable and conflict-inducing coalitions of ideas that we tend to clump together. The ‘conservative’ mindset in the USA is an attempt to reconcile genuinely ‘traditionalist’ values with commitment to free markets, hardcore capitalism and individualist consumerism. The latter values fit very badly with the former; what keeps the cluster together is common dislike of state regulation of business. The story of conservatism since the 1950s is one of unremitting cultural defeat, as social liberalism has co-evolved with economic neoliberalism, and as big corporations have gained in power, aiding and abetting the erosion of traditional ways of life and of US middle-class security. This is a recipe for baffled fury, scapegoating and the conflicted sense, for self-described patriots, of loathing one’s own country (see the Tea Party; Paul Dacre; etc).
Similarly, ‘progressives’ face the contradiction of wanting social and cultural individualism and group diversity, but also universalism of liberal values and communitarian regulation of enterprise. Politics is not just competition of frames between two fundamental mindsets – though it is partly that – but is also the endless conflict of values held in tension within unstable coalitions, inside our heads and in group form, in parties.
The Lakoff / Haidt models might be fruitfully combined with the Cultural Theory model of dispositions (individualist, egalitarian, fatalist and hierarchist), which does point to the generation of tense co-existence of values in parties and persons.
As for the US Republicans, it seems pretty clear that gerrymandering, plus a deep rage among a segment of ageing white males at what the USA has become since Goldwater was hammered, have produced a party that is verging on the psychotically angry and negative. Unable to win general elections, it uses the dysfunctionality inherent in the US constitution to block change. The rhetoric of some GOP members is now proto-fascistic and pretty well verging on calls to arms. I’m reminded of the great line in Don Delillo’s matchless novel of American cultural dread, White Noise: ‘War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard pressed to say anything good about their country’.

By: Nick Wray

Nick Wray — Sun, 13 Oct 2013 12:22:00 +0000

I didn’t want to nay say publicly on your blog, but there’s probably some caution necessary re ‘functional’ mri type interpretations:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/07/05/controversial-science-of-brain-imaging/

I think it’s an exciting and important field, but it’s complex. I wasn’t convinced that you described much more in terms of ‘framing’ than oratorical and logical ‘best practice’. Our ability to change opinion would – I think – suggest that some other process must be going on to challenge framed neural ‘memories’, beyond some kind of binary ‘strong frame-weak frame’ comparison. But then this might just be my cerebral cortex talking…

This looked quite interesting, too: