‘The World Has Changed’: Discursive Struggles over an Industrial Shutdown in the Media, a Case from the Finnish Pulp and Paper Industry

Abstract

This paper is a critical analysis of media discourse on a corporate restructuring case in the pulp and paper industry in Finland. The analysis indicates that discursive struggles over the legitimacy of corporate restructuring initiatives, especially industrial shutdowns, are highly contextual processes, deeply embedded in the socio-historical specificities of the locations where they occur. Legitimation of the various restructuring measures is a political and a fundamentally historical process. It is argued that analyses of legitimation strategies need to deploy a processual, historical approach to be able to effectively engage with the practice of legitimation. The importance of, and the differences in, nationalist discourses in securing or challenging the legitimacy for drastic restructuring measures is analysed in the specific context of Finland.