Cultural understandings of economic globalization : discourse on foreign direct investment in Slovenia

Bringing together perspectives from the new economic sociology and new cultural sociology, this paper proposes that because economic phenomena are imbued with meaning they can be studied as cultural objects. In particular, the goal is to analyze the public discussions surrounding the sales of domestic assets to foreign owners in postsocialist Slovenia, in order to find out how individuals understand cross-border transactions and what it is that structures their interpretations. The content analysis of newspaper articles shows that the debate about foreign influences is framed in relation to national interests. But the particular understandings of how foreign investment affects national interests are multiple, even opposing. They are shaped by historical and macrostructural conditions as well as the social identities of actors, who ground legitimacy of their justifications in several different, often contradictory, institutional orders concurrently available in the changing postsocialist landscape. Ultimately, cultural understandings help actors make sense of uncertain consequences of economic globalization, assess possible strategies of action and provide justifications for the positions they adopt in public debates.