The Struggles for Organizational Discursive Hegemony on the Sustainability of Fracking in Colombia

ABSTRACT

Over more than ten years different organizations in Colombia (South America) have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of implementing hydraulic fracturing processes (fracking) as a way to increase the production and exports of oil and natural gas. Drawing on the fields of critical organizational discourse studies and environmental studies, this manuscript explores how the Colombian discourses on fracking emerge, recontextualize, operationalize, and become hegemonic in order to present fracking as a sustainable or unsustainable practice. After performing a discourse analysis of organizational texts published between 2012 and 2020 by different Colombian organizations, I argue that the intertextual discourse on the sustainability of fracking reflects both interorganizational collaboration and disruption.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical organizational discourse
• Sustainability
• Environmental discourse
• Colombian hydraulic fracturing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Spanish is the original language of all organizational texts. I translated them into English trying to keep their colloquial or technical language. I am a Spanish native speaker with proficiency in English after studying a PhD in Communication Studies in the United States.

2. Cacerolazo refers to a common Latin American form of protest in which people hit saucepans to produce noise as a way to protest and communicate the need of being heard.

Additional information

Funding

This article is part of the project “Organizational discourses and sustainability practices in Costa Rica and Colombia” [COM-102–2021] funded by Universidad de la Sabana (Colombia) and ascribed to the School of Communication (CICCO Research Group).