Refining the research question

At the heart of this doctoral study lies the question as to how discourses ‗frame‘ the meaning-making process in regards to issues of development and progress along the antagonistic frontier between mainstream and Islamic conceptualisations. It does not aim to provide discourse commentary which might seek to expose an underlying hidden, deeper meaning or an essential truth. Foucault (1972: 234) called discourse analysis ―pure description of discursive facts‖, meaning a focus on the signifier rather than the signified. In line with Foucault‘s analytical strategy about the importance of a non-reductionist approach which focuses purely on the discourse (Andersen 2003), the ‗how‘ in the research question addresses in this study seeks to deal with

‗development‘ by neither seeking to describe or ontologise it (i.e. the ‗what‘ or the contents of development policy) nor to focus on its cause (i.e. ‗why‘ particular policies were drafted in a particlar manner). In the Foucauldian sense, only a ‗how‘ question about a statement (see below for a discussion about Foucault‘s use of the term) can grant full attention to the statement (the signifier) itself without immediately shifting away from it (Andersen 2003).

In the research question, the term ‗frame‘ has been chosen with reference to the process of framing in social theory, which offers a range of meanings beyond the simple semantic of ‗constructing‘, ‗articulating‘ or ‗setting in frame‘ (Oxford Dictionary, 2009). The reason why the instrumental term framing was chosen to articulate the research question for this study was to link it to the more specific understanding of the concept of ‗frame‘ as a schema of interpretation, a collection of anecdotes and stereotypes or discourses that generate ‗understanding‘ (Geoffman, 1974). Framing is seen as an unavoidable control over the individual's perception of the meanings attributed to words or phrases (Scheufele 1999). In this analysis of meaning-making, Benford and Snow‘s (2000) framing approach is a helpful concept. The concept of frames refers to ―interpretative schemata that offer a language and cognitive tools for making sense of experiences and events in the ‗world out there‘ – what is elsewhere called discourse (e.g. Foucault, Laclau & Mouffe)― (Benford and Snow, 2000: 614). A frame, in other words, is the window through which entities view the world and

framing is the construction of this window, thereby denoting ―an active, processual phenomenon that implies agency and contention at the level of reality construction‖

(Benford and Snow: 614). Hence, the diction of the research question, when deploying the term ‗frame‘, refers to a process of understanding the interpretative schemata used to make sense of the world.

Since the framing approach is conceptually underpinned by understandings of discourse, which will serve as the main conceptual and methodological tool for this study of meaning-making and the power relations that it is underpinned by, the research question is about how discourses give meaning to development. Of particular interest is the situation where a discourse has given rise to a hegemonic formation, arguably, the mainstream development discourse, whilst an antagonistic discourse continues to act as the primary frame for alternative policy making, as is assumed to be the case with Islamic development thought.

Hence, in order to understand what role these antagonistic discourses play in the process of making meaning of ‗development‘, a detailed and historically

contextualised investigation into the nature of these discourses is imperative,

followed by an exploration of practices within the development policy field to illustrate the power/knowledge nexus. In pursuit of the research question - how do discourses frame contemporary ‗Islamic‘ conceptualisations of development - the core query that will help to elucidate this is an identification of the breadth and depth of assumptions embedded within the dominant mainstream development and alternative Islamic discourses in the literature and the case study context. From there, a number of questions arise:

o What positions do mainstream and Islamic development thinking respectively espouse in relation to:

 the human being (nature, agency, the social world, values)

 the political, economic and social order (epistemology, nature, doctrine)

 poverty (conceptualisation, measurement, outlook)

 progress, growth and development (conceptualisation, measurement, philosophy,

operationalisation/interventions/strategies)

o What type of concepts are used by mainstream and Islamic development actors in development policy-making and why?

 How, if so, are these different?

 Where, if so, is the overlap?

 Are any potential dissonances due to diverging underlying discourses on poverty and development?

o What is assumed about why development practices are done and how they are done?

 Which social practices, relationships and/or events are included and/or excluded?

 At what level of abstraction are they represented?

 What is the proximity of the organisation to the supposed beneficiaries?

 Who is funding these practices?

o What is the nature of the development policy field?

 How is the development discourse framed?

 Does the use of terminology influence the type of relationships between actors, and if so how?

 How much scope is there for countering dominant development and poverty reduction discourses?

 What factors shape the way that State and Islamic institutions perceive their respective roles in poverty reduction policy making?

 Historical perspective (civil society, political processes, development strategies etc)

 Mandate, motivation & legitimacy

 Power relations

The next section sets out the methodology deployed to address the research question.

2.3 Methodology

This study seeks to deconstruct and interpret some of the ways in which power is exercised through relations between actors, institutions, knowledge and discourses

within the development space. The assumption is that the dominant discourse constitutes (or frames) the power relations in the Foucauldian sense. The dominant discourse is hence central to the ways in which interactions are played out within the field, through particular notions of development truths and what is deemed to be the desirable outcome of development.

The starting point for this study lies in the Foucauldian understanding of power through the production of truth and knowledge as discourses. Hence discourse theory, both as a conceptual tool, as discussed in the previous chapter, and as methodology offers a particularly insightful approach to understanding meaning-making, as is perhaps most clearly evident in the process of policy-meaning-making,

especially where dominant and alternative discourses compete. The next section will consider in more detail how discourse analysis is used as a methodology, in terms of both a Foucauldian genealogy at the macro-level and hegemonic analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis at the meso and micro level.