Book of Abstracts - University of Hull

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IPA 2016 Hull
Book of Abstracts
2
Note
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1- The Neo-Liberal Transformation of the University: Critical Reflections on the Education Industry 5
3 Critical and Relational Action Research: Integrating Transformative Ambitions and Challenging Practices of
Collaboratively Addressing Policy Issues
8
4 Immigration and Asylum Policy: critical analysis
15
5 Critical Discourse Analysis
22
6 Critical Discourse Analysis, Discourse Theory and Hegemony
28
7 Health Policy Research: theory and method
33
8 Narratives in Public Policy Making
38
9 Expertise and the Moral Economies of Austerity
45
11 Bringing linguistic ethnography to interpretive policy analysis and interpretive policy analysis to linguistic
ethnography
50
12 RETHINKING 'RESEARCHER' AND 'POLICYMAKER' INTERACTIONS 52
13 De-/Re-politicizing communities as spaces of power
55
14 The global energy transition as an interpretive problem: issues, incidents and interpretations
59
15 Policies, practice and critique: exploring the practice perspective in critical policy studies
63
16 Social Innovation; contemporary challenges of counterhegemonic knowings and doings
69
17 Teaching Interpretively
76
19 Public action languages and the performance of public affairs
80
21 Constructing Policy, Crafting Spaces: critical perspectives on policy and space.
83
22 Advocacy as negotiated practice in policy and politics
90
23 Morality, politics, discourse
92
24 Everyday Moral Judgements of Street-Level Bureaucrats
94
26 Transformative Perspectives and Practices: Toward a Policy Analysis for Environmental, Economic, and
Social Sustainability
99
27 Using STS to disrupt and recast environmental policy problem-solution trajectories
103
28 Epistemology and Ontology Panel
107
29 Making the green city: Questioning urban sustainability initiatives
109
30 Critical perspectives on conflict: designing for critique and improvisation
113
31 The politics of animal welfare: contestation, deliberation, and power
116
32 Reflection: a crucial aspect of interpretive approaches?
121
33 Between sustainability, governance and democracy: interpreting the politics of food
123
35 What counts as evidence? Quantification in policy practices
130
36 Doing interpretive frame- and framing analysis
136
37 Producing knowledge and promoting interests: think-tanks and their role in crisis situations
141
38 De-Centralisation and Power: Partaking Between Acceptance and Deliberation
143
39 Understanding Meaning Wars during the Policy Process
146
40 Analyzing Policy Knowledges and Policy Practices: Governmentality, Problematization, Discourse149
41 Reflexivity and Governmental Capabilities in Sustainable Change
155
42 “When citizens step in”. Citizen participation in environmental topics. Conditions and obstacles158
42 Governmentality and expertise: imagining economy after crisis
163
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44 The Emergence of Deliberative and Interpretive Policy Analysis in Asia
166
46 Participation in Public Policy
169
47 Direct PublicAction and Unruly Politics: Discursive policy amidst rising global inequality and Conflict
173
50 Open Panel
174
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Note
This book contains the paper abstracts submitted to the IPA 2016 Hull International
Conference. We have arranged the abstracts by panel, given the convenors of the panel
and, within each panel, papers are organised by the session in which they appear in the
conference programme. However, there have been some alterations to the timetable since
this book was put together so, please, refer to the Conference Programme and
announcements at the conference for the definitive timetable.
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1- The Neo-Liberal Transformation of the University:
Critical Reflections on the Education Industry
Panel Convenors: Frank Fischer; Alan Mandell
Revisiting Academic Capitalism in the Light (and Dark) of Neoliberalism
Bob Jessop
Paper2
Alan Mandell
Paper 3
Rosana Boullosa
The Low Politics of Higher Education: The Neoliberal Assault in Indian
Universities
Navdeep Mathur
Neo-liberalising higher education in the Global South: lessons learned from
policy impacts on educational commercialisation in Thailand
Piyapong Boossabong
InthepastpoorpeopleparticularinGlobalSouthwhoaccessedhighereducationwerecalled
whiteelephantsastheywererare.Todayuniversitieswithacademicworkerswelcome
everyoneastheircustomer.Thefree-marketideologyineducationindustryhasbeenshaped
byeducationpolicy.Thispaperillustratespolicyimpactsoneducationalcommercialisation
fromThailandcasewhichstartedclearlywhenasuccessfulbusinessmanbecameaprime
minister.Itfocusestheprivatisationandqualitycontroloftheuniversitiesbasedoneconomic
rationalityaspolicyinstrumentsthatactivateneo-liberaltransformation.Thepaperargues
thatprivatisationisthewaytoentrepreneurialisepublicuniversitiesratherthantopromote
universitiestotrainstudentstobegreatcitizens.Thehighereducationthusisnotsensitiveto
structuralinequalityandperceivesknowledgeashow-todosomethinginhighlycompetitive
economicworld.Topromotequantitativequalitythroughrankingshapesthewaramong
universitiesasreputationisrelatedtoatrustworthinessofcustomersandpavesthewayto
earnmoremoney.Besides,universitiessupporttheiracademicworkersinbeingpublished
theirjournalarticlesmainlybecausethismeasureaffectsranking.So,theyareinterestedin
countingthemratherthanappreciatingtheirqualityintermofcontributiontoknowledge.
Thepaperalsoemphasisesimpactsofpublicpolicyoneducationalloansforpoorstudents
andresearchagendasettingforbeinggrantedbynationalresearchfund.Itanalysesthatpoor
studentsneedtogainknowledgeforseekingmoneytopayback.Theythentendtobe
conservativewhoarerarelyinterestedingoingbackformakingchangesoftheirhometown
andadvocatingsocialjusticeforthewholesystemasitisnotmatterfortheirstrugglein
economiclife.Ontheotherhand,mostresearchesareforpromotingefficiency,effectiveness
andproductivityofpublicandprivatesectorsincapitalistworldwithoutchallengingitsrules.
Thekindofknowledgethatgainslegitimacyandpowertodayistechnicalknowledgeshared
byepistemiccommunitiesrelatedtomarketforcesoutsidetheuniversities.Theuniversities
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needtoprovidesuchknowledgewhichisproducedbyhegemonicpublicagenciesand
corporationsratherthantoplayaroleinleadingthecreationofknowledge.
Playing a plastic concept. Higher education quality dynamics in Dutch
national policy texts since 1985
Kasja Weenink; Noelle Aarts; Sandra Jacobs
Highereducationqualityisavague,ambiguous,multipleandairyconcept.Thismakesit
contested,difficulttodefine,valueorgrasp,andawickedproblemforpolicymakers.Quality’s
flexibilityishoweveralsosaidtoenablepeopleholdingdifferentviewstorecognise
themselvesinitsdifferentversions.
Theactualinterplayofdifferentversionsofhighereducationqualitythroughtimeandhow
theyinterrelatewithchangingcontextsishoweverempiricallyunderstudied.Howandwhere
arequalitydifferencesandunitycreatedingovermentalpolicies,andwhatdoesthismeanfor
thepolicyprocess?Theproposedpaperfollowsaconstructivistresearchapproach,anduses
Wittgenstein’snotionof‘languagegames’tointerpretwhereandhowthroughtimequality
unityanddifferencesarecreatedinDutchstrategicgovernmentalpolicytextssince1985.
Thepatterningshowsthatqualityisenactedasaunifiedconcept,howeverindifferentiated
ways.Qualityremainsvagueinitsdifferentiatedpolicyuses,butisnotundirected.Thenotion
of‘qualityasexcellence’inacompetitiveglobalcontextbecomesforegrounded.Theanalysis
alsoshowsameta-conceptualgame,wherebyqualityisunderstoodasanabstractandunified
resultofthenewlyintroducedNewPublicManagementsteeringconceptions,andadaptation
tosocietalcomplexity.Thesteeringrelationshipwiththeinstitutionsisthepivotalnotionin
thepolicies,andqualityisperipheral.Itisabstractandhastogaincolourbyinstitutional
practices.
Qualityisnotthefocalnotion,andtendstobebroughtforwardwithoutmuchdeliberation.It
doesmakesensehoweverforotherpolicypractices.Thedifferentqualityenactmentsdonot
pileuptoasoundnotion,andqualitylosesmeaningatboththeconceptualandthemoral
level.ItistherewithwhatPoerksencallsa‘plasticword’,awordwithoutmeaning.Its
plasticitysuggeststhatitfunctionsasamodalitybetweenactionandstructure.
Reconceptualising the rise of impact: academic impact narratives in civil
society research
Sioned Pearce
Conceptualisationsofimpactinacademicresearchhavechangeddramaticallysince2007
when,thenPrimeMinster,GordonBrownstatedaneedtoprovetheeffectofscientific
researchinthepublicsphere.Sincethendemonstratingimpactinresearchhaswidenedto
includethehumanities.
TodaytheEconomicandSocialResearchCouncilandResearchCouncilsUKrequirea
statementonacademic,economicand/orsocietalimpactinallfundingapplicationsandmore
recently,forthefirsttime,theResearchExcellentFramework2014dictatingallflowsof
fundingtouniversitydepartmentsincluded‘impactcasestudies’.
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Thisriseofimpactimpliesasharpchangeinthedirectionandpurposeofacademicresearch
inpolicyandthirdsectorinstitutions.
Thispaperprovidesa(counter)narrativeonimpactdrawnfromqualitativeinterviewswith
academicsresearchingcivilsocietyacrossEnglandandWaleswithinfourdifferentdisciplines:
sociology,socialpolicy,humangeographyandeconomics.Thefindingsshowaseachangein
thewayimpactisperceivedandperformedinpractice,significantinitsbreadthandits
differentiationfrompreviousmovementstowardsneoliberalistculturalshiftswithin
academicinstitutions.UsingtheworkofBurawoy,Dally,PowerandWatermeyeramong
others,thepaperwillexploretheroleofthepublicintellectualinthiscontext.
ThepaperispartofawidermixedmethodsprojectrunbytheWalesInstituteforSocialand
EconomicResearchDataandMethodsCentreonCivilSociety,examiningthedefinitions,
methodsandmotivationsforacademicresearchimpactinpolicyandthirdsector
organisationsusingcivilsocietyasalens.
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3 Critical and Relational Action Research: Integrating
Transformative Ambitions and Challenging Practices
of Collaboratively Addressing Policy Issues
Panel Convenors: Koen Bartels ; Julia Wittmayer
Critical and Relational Action Research: Sharing Experiences for a
Sustainable Future
Koen Bartels; Julia Wittmayer
Wecurrentlyfacepolitical,social,economic,andenvironmentalcrisesthatbegurgentaction,
yetaresurroundedbydeepknowledgeuncertainty.Moreover,theyhighlightfundamentaland
relationalinterdependenciesandexposethebankruptcyofhegemonicsystems.Climate
change,unstablefinancialandeconomicsystemsandextremistpopulism,tonamebutafew,
revealboththeecologictragediesandcracksofmoderndemocraticcapitalism.Inthispaper
wearguethat,toaddressthesecrises,atypeofknowledgeandresearchisneededthatisnot
onlyactionable,butalsorecognizes,workswith,andstrengthensinterdependencieswhileat
thesametimecriticallyandconstructivelytransforminghegemonicsystems.
Actionresearchfitsthispictureneatly.Inthefieldsofpolicyanalysisandtransitionstudies,
actionresearchisincreasinglyadoptedtocombineapracticalandnormativeanalytical
orientationtoknowledgedevelopmentwithtransformativeambitions.However,action
researchisstillmarginalizedbymainstreamscholarship,itsacademicandpracticalvalueis
hotlydebated,anditcomprisesanumberofinherenttensionsandchallenges.Thelatter
includeinstrumentalizationbypowerholders,identitycostsforallparticipants,andquestions
concerningevaluation.Fundamentally,actionresearchinvolvesdealingwiththedouble
challengeofnegotiatingthefocus,methods,findings,andimplicationsoftheresearchaswell
asthemeaningof‘knowledge’and‘research’.
Inthispaper,weproposethatdealingwiththesetensionsandchallengesinresearchwhile
developingeffectiveandworkableresponsestothecurrentcrises,requirescriticaland
relationalapproaches.Beingcriticalmeansincreasingawarenessofandpushingfor
transformationofhabits,discoursesandpowerinequalitiesengrainedinhegemonicsystems.
Beingrelationalimpliesmaintainingtrust,sharedgoals,andcommitmentaswellas
pragmaticallyacceptingthingsforwhattheyareandwhatispracticallypossible.Weargue
thatenactingcriticalandrelationalpracticesinconcreteactionresearchsettingsisavitalway
forworkingouthowtheinherenttensionsofthismethodcanbehandledandthecurrent
crisesaddressed.
Using audiovisual media to support deliberative governance on vulnerability
to climate change in Nepal
Floriane Clement
Currentclimatechangeadaptationprogrammeshavebeenshapedbyassumptionsonwhat
constitutesvulnerability,whichhavebeenlittleinformedbytheexperiencesandperceptions
ofthosewhoaretargetedbytheseprogrammes.Suchassumptionshavelargelycalledfor
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quick-fixsolutionsthathavenotchallengedthestructuralpoliticaleconomiccausesof
vulnerability.
Thisactionresearch,whichtookplaceinNepal,exploredtheuseofaudiovisualmaterialasa
transformativeandrelationalprocesstosupportdeliberativegovernance.Itwasbasedona
seriesofdialogueswherewasshowcasedafilmproducedbytwogroupsofmenandwomen
farmersfromtheTarai-Madheshregion.Theobjectivesweretomakeexplicitdiverging
framingsonfarmers’vulnerabilitiestoclimatechangetoselectedstakeholdersinanevocative
yetnon-threateningway.Thegoalwastoopenupsufficientdiscursivespaceforexploring
alternativeinstitutionaloptionstoaddressclimaticandagrarianstress.
Usingcriticaldiscourseanalysis,weexploredhowstakeholders,includingrepresentatives
fromlocalandcentralgovernment,fundingagencies,politicalpartiesandthecivilsociety,
discursivelypositionedthemselvesinresponsetothefilmandinresponsetotheclaims
farmersmadeduringthedialoguethatfollowed.Ouranalysissupportstheuseofartistictools
tosupportarelationalandtransformativeprocess.Reflectingontheroleofresearchersin
suchprocesses,wecallforusingstorylinesandnarrativesonwhat‘is’ratherthantop-down
argumentsonwhat‘shouldbe’tofacilitatedialogueandgovernanceprocesses.
Both applied and critical? The case of interpretive research on water
management
Liz Sharp; Emma Westling
Thispaperusestheexampleofacurrentresearchprojecttoreflectonthechallengesof
undertakinginterpretivegovernanceresearchwithinapredominantlytechnicalfield.The
premiseunderlyingthepaperisthatthereisatensioninherenttoallactionresearch.The
transformationalintentofactionresearchrequiresaformofcriticalsocialsciencethatwe
expectfrominterpretiveresearch.Thiscriticality,however,isoftenintensionwithanother
centralobjectiveofactionresearch–thatis,workingcloselywithpractitionersandproducing
knowledgethatisperceivedas‘useful’.
TheUKEngineeringandPhysicalSciencesResearchCouncilhasallocated£3.9millionto
supportthe‘Twenty65’project,studyingaseriesofdisruptiveinterventionsthatmightdefine
ourfuturewatersystemsby2065.Withinthefiveyearfundedproject,oneofthedisruptive
interventionstobeinvestigatedistheuseof‘mobilisation’,thatis,waterutilitiesengaging
theircitizens/customerstoundertakenewordifferentsocialpracticesinordertobetter
supporttheeffectivefunctioningofthewatersystem.Thispaperexplorestheprocessesof
definingand‘selling’this‘mobilisation’sub-projecttowaterpractitionersandengineering
researchersthatbeganduringtheproposalwritingstageandwillcontinuethroughthe
researchuntilandbeyondtheendoftheprojectin2021.Ateachstageinproject
development,thepaperwillhighlightthechoicesthatare/couldbemadeinordertoachieve
‘applicability’,andtheparallelstrategiesemployedtoretaincriticality.
UndertakingappliedresearchwiththeUK’sprivatesectorwatercompaniesmightbeseenas
‘sellingout’,andceasingtosupportprogressivesocialandenvironmentaljusticeagendas.A
counterargumenthoweveristhatresearchthatstandsoutsideofmainstreampracticemaybe
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very‘critical’,butprovideslimitedguidancetoprogressivepractitioners.Thispaperargues
thatwhilethepathisprecipitousandtakescarefulnegotiation,thereareroutesthrough
whichresearchcanbebothcriticalandapplied,andhencehasthepotentialtodevelopand
promoteprogressiveagendaswithinmainstreamtechnicalpractice.
Lipstick on a pig? Methodological challenges and ethical dilemmas and in
researching responses to austerity
Alison Gardner
TheUKgovernment’sausterity-relatedspendingcutshavecreatedastrongimpetusforjoint
workingbetweenpublicserviceprovidersandacademicinstitutions.As‘back-office’policy
andresearchpostsarecutbycentralandlocalgovernment,creativearrangementsarebeing
generatedwithuniversitiestoprovideresearch,intelligenceandtraining.Yetausterityhas
alsorenderedsomechallengesofcollaborativeresearchmoreacute:publicserviceproviders
ingeneralhavefewerstaff,lesstimefor‘blueskies’thinking,anddiminishedresourcesto
developfreshsolutions.
Inthiscontext,actionresearchissometimesperceivedasameanstoconstructivelydraw
togethertheoryandpracticewiththeaimofpursuingpracticalsolutions,encouraging‘the
flourishingofindividualpersonsandtheircommunities’(ReasonandBradbury2011).Assetbasedmethods,suchasappreciativeenquiry,havealsobeenutilised(particularlyin
communitydevelopmentandpublichealth)toidentifycommunityresourcesandpreventthe
processofresearchimpactingnegativelyonresearchsubjects(LudemaandFry2008).
Howeverinoptingforaction-researchand/orasset-focussedapproaches,researchersface
practical,intellectualandethicaldilemmasonhowtobalancesupportforthecollaborating
organisationwithacriticalortransformativeagenda.Forexample,attemptingtoidentify
organisationalstrengthsinacontextofradicalspendingcutscanbeseenaspromoting
‘neoliberalismwithacommunityface’(MacLeodandEmejulu2014)ormorecolloquially,
‘puttinglipstickonapig’.
This paper draws on experiences of utilising action research and appreciative inquiry to
examine responses to austerity within an English local authority. The paper will reflect on
the advantages, tensions and limitations of combining action-research and asset-based
approaches in organisations under stress as a result of spending cuts. It will also outline
considerations for researchers as they plan new collaborative projects.
Facilitating participation, co-producing knowledge or enabling change?
Critical reflections to a Finnish action research experiment
Helena Leino; Minna Santaoja; Markus Laine
The densification of urban areas set new challenges for public participation, which is
illustrated in our case study from Finland. In an institutionally ambiguous situation, we as
action researchers organized a new kind of participatory event for enabling public
discussion on urban densification. We placed an office container to the market square of a
contradictory planning area for 10 days and welcomed people to discuss. In this paper, we
analyze the aftermath of this living lab experiment. As action researchers, we were
facilitating public participation and co-producing knowledge, but what were the other
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consequences? The locality of the event turned out to be a crucial success factor, allowing
the issues to be discussed on-site. Moreover, the experimental method allowed ‘publics’ to
develop their understanding of urban infill. We interpret the experiment as boundary
interaction, where different boundary objects were used to facilitate communication. As
researchers we position ourselves as knowledge brokers. However, despite the positive
feedback received from the experiment, we end the paper by asking what were we actually
co-producing: brokered knowledge, social impact, political impact, or just a performance?
How critical stand should an action researcher take when analyzing her/his own action
and its direct and indirect impacts?
Action research in the face of conflict – The power of creating shared history
Martien Kuitenbrouwer
This paper examines practice, methodology and underlying theory of action research in
creating ‘shared history’ in public conflicts. It explores the role of history through reflection
on experience with a particular practice—the creation of ‘shared history timelines’.
The practice combines features of ‘action-research’ with specific features of ‘actionlearning’ in situations where diverse groups of stakeholders have become stuck in conflicts
over policy issues. The effort to plot memories of incidents and events as a sequence brings
the contested character of this history into focus. Stakeholders see that their perspective
has been heard. They also get a chance to see each others’ perspectives. And they can, at
times, build on this reciprocal recognition to create a common understanding of the
dynamics in which they are mired. Reflecting of the interplay among perspectives around a
common event sequence from the perspective of conflict dynamics appears to provide a
stepping stone for stakeholders to move from destructive conflict to more meaningful
disagreements and more constructive disputes. At times, this initial engagement with
history and memory through a form of collaborative action-research can open new insights
sometimes leading to transformative action.
This paper explores the practical theory of (action) learning that has developed in three
cases: a conflict over the development of a windmill park in Groningen; a conflict over a
park-and-load zone of a supermarket in Amsterdam and a conflict over a street profile and
children’s playgrounds also in Amsterdam. Two key insights into the transformative
quality of interaction in these settings are explored: The first is that action-research in
conflict, designed as a setting for collaborative learning about the past, is invariably a
process of remaking. By creating space for joint reflection and allowing different
perspectives to be part of one past, the past is remade into a complex storyline,
comprehensible to all, not reductive, and generative of new insights. Second, the setting of
‘collaborative action research’, rather than, say, external policy-evaluation can provide an
important space for stakeholders immersed in conflict seeking to find a way to move
forward that may open the possibility of further steps or, even, a breakthrough.
CriticalMomentReflection:amethodforinteractiveknowledgeproductionin
policymaking.
NankeVerloo
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This paper reflects on an ongoing collaboration among scientists from the University of
Amsterdam and policy practitioners in the Amsterdam Eastern borough. In the past two
years policy practitioners adopted new forms of participatory planning around the decision
making and construction of local playgrounds. Scholars from the Public Mediation
Program and local policy practitioners collaborated in a program that combined research,
reflection, and capacity building for practice. Two local decision making processes in
Eastern Amsterdam were followed in detail. Through what we called ‘critical moment
reflection sessions’ practitioners and scientists actively reflected on critical moments in the
decision making process. The analysis of performance, experience, and intention in these
moments where the relationship among policy practitioners, citizens and other
stakeholders was at stake were the input for new forms of participatory practices that were
immediately performed in the process. Through reflection sessions in each critical moment
and the construction of timelines, practitioners and scientists interactively produce
knowledge that aims at both transforming and improving democratic practice as well as
generating scholarly insights on local decision making. Besides proposing the ‘critical
moment reflection’ method, the paper reflects on the local process of participation, and
rethinks the relationship between reflective practitioners and scientists.
WherethereisnohistoryOntheemergenceoftrustinlearninginteractions
JasperdeVries;SeverinevanBommel
Trust is seen as important in learning settings. In these settings various characteristics are
attributed to trust. Trust enables people to be open, to share information and to exchange
ideas. In these studies and other studies on trust, trust is often conceptualized as a set of
positive expectations about the others’ actions and decisions, based on experiences in the
past. However, it are especially learning settings, such as workshops, seminar or discussion
fora where people are expected to share insights, expertise and knowledge without
knowing each other. In other words, in these situations there is no history. However, this
does not mean that trust does not play a role in these settings. Therefore the question
emerges: how does trust emerge and develop where there is no history?
This contribution focusses specifically on this situation. We studied a workshop setting
around innovative ideas for dealing with storm water in Uppsala, Sweden. In this setting,
groups of students consulted several actors separately. These actors were involved around
the dealing with storm water in specific area of Uppsala. In doing so, we focused on the
interactions between the actors and the students, what they said and how they responded
to each other. In addition, we also used an evaluative focus group discussion afterwards. In
our analyses we took a dynamic perspective on trust, focusing on its emergence and
development in interaction.
The results show that it is not necessarily agreement or similarities in ideas that resulted in
trust but more the micro-dynamics that made trust emerge. More specific, finding
recognition and confirmation of points of departure, ideas and thoughts. In these
dynamics, language, the choice of words and how these connected to the world of the other
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played a major role in trust emergence. This led to further sharing of ideas, open
discussions, and in the end the creation of a short common history as basis for trust.
Discourse analysis in action to improve gender-specific policy advice
Tira Foran; Fraser Sugden; Chanda Gurung Goodrich; Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt
This talk explores the challenges and opportunities of discourse analysis to inform face-toface dialogue in South Asia around the topic of reducing gendered vulnerability to global
change. We introduce a novel conceptual framework which is applied in desktop and
participatory ‘action research’ settings to compare and improve the findings of three
important recent studies focusing on women’s livelihoods in the Gangetic plains and
upland Nepal. Our framework, Argument-Representation-Implementation (ARI) (cf.
Foran et al. 2015), extends the work of Fairclough and Fairclough (2012) in several
directions, including concepts to analyze specificity of institutional designs (Crawford and
Ostrom 1995), as well as concepts relevant to policy implementation (Ostrom 2007).
Discourse analysis revealed a consistent, bleak portrayal of the challenges facing women.
While men migrate for better livelihood opportunities, women work in a context which
superimposes inequitable and exploitative relations of gender, class, and caste. Analysis
also revealed vague reform recommendations lacking specific reference to responsible
actors and policy instruments. In response, we report on outcomes of a multi-stakeholder
workshop (planned for March 2016 in Kathmandu) aimed at improving the specificity of
recommendations for more resilient, engendered rural development, based on the three
reviewed studies and the ARI framework.
References
Crawford, S. E. S. and E. Ostrom. 1995. A Grammar of Institutions. American Political
Science Review 89:582-600.
Fairclough, I. and N. Fairclough. 2012. Political Discourse Analysis: A Method for
Advanced Students. Taylor & Francis.
Foran, T., R. Nelson, and J. Bourgoin. 2015. Argument – Scope – Implementation. An
analytical framework to support participatory development of food security policy. Second
Global Food Security Conference, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 11-14 October 2015.
Ostrom, E. 2007. Institutional rational choice: an assessment of the institutional analysis
and development framework. Chapter 2. Pages 29-71 in P. A. Sabatier, editor. Theories of
the Policy Process. Westview, Boulder.
From reflection to reflexivity to generativity: The importance of horizontal
relations in Participatory Action Research
Nicolina Montesano Montessori; Danielle Zandee
This paper focuses on the generative potential of Participatory Action Research (PAR) in
combination with Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Montesano Montessori & Schuman,
2015). Generative processes of collaborative inquiry are transformative because they
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challenge the taken-for-granted and utilize such dislodgment as openings for the
development of innovative thought and action (Zandee 2013, 2015). Drawing on
experiences of the authors with PAR in the fields of education and healthcare, we present
our insights about processes of generativity which emerge and then can be conducted
through a solid but flexible research design based on the PAR cycle of orientation,
exploration, experimentation and evaluation. Our focus is on the last two stages and we
share examples where, through the inner dialogue inherent in PAR, innovative knowledge
was created. Moving beyond the common action/reflection cycles, we see PAR as a
reflexive practice in which the habitual is punctuated and transformed. Reflexivity entails a
process of shaping and making meaning about our world from within by questioning
common beliefs and actions and their underlying discursive logics (Ripamonti, Galuppo,
Gorli, Scaratti & Cunliffe, 2016). It is nurtured by designing appropriate instruments for
experimentation, a consistent system of feedback from the research facilitators, dialogue
within the group, and monitoring for workability and meaning making. We argue that
reflexivity demands a plural role of the facilitator and the forming of a horizontal
community of knowledge in which mechanisms of power are constructively handled.
Reflexivity becomes generative when dislodgment and friction can be inquired into with
openness, curiosity and imagination. The presence of critical friends, horizontal relations
and a secure climate are, in our view, essential to reach a transformative process of
generativity.
Montesano Montessori, N., Schuman, H. (2015). CDA and participatory action research: A
new approach to shared processes of interpretation in educational research. In M. Griffiths
(Ed.), International handbook on interpretation in educational research methods (pp.
374-370). Dordrecht: Springer.
Ripamonti, S., et al(2016). Pushing action research toward reflexive practice. Journal of
Management Inquiry, 25(1), 55-68.
Zandee, D. P. (2015). Strengthening AI as a generative process to action research. AI
Practitioner: International Journal of Appreciative Inquiry, 17(1), 61-65.
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4 Immigration and Asylum Policy: critical analysis
Panel Convenor: Lucy Mayblin
Social Aspects of Migration: Is Economic Deprivation An Accurate Indicator
in Predicting Moldovans’ mobility levels?
Ludmila Bogdan
Literature on migration continues to increase; however it lacks a body of cumulative
knowledge to explain the main reasons why some people are more willing to migrate while
others are less. I try to fill this gap and to contribute an interdisciplinary paper to the
existing body of literature suing the case study of Moldova. I analyze some of the factors
that play a role in people’s decisions to move abroad. I use quantitative data to analyze
migration aspects from a political science and international studies perspectives and
qualitative interviews from sociological and psychological disciplines. I theorize that
younger, more educated, less economic prosperous people are more willing to move
abroad based. Young people with higher level of education are more likely to want to move
abroad based on perceived belief that they deserve and can do better in a place with more–
economic, social, and intellectual opportunities. I found enough support for this theory;
however I also found some unexpected results that play an important role in peoples’
decision to stay or to migrate. This interdisciplinary project contributes to the existing
scholarship and sheds light on important aspects that make Moldovans willing to move
and settle abroad.
Asylum policy: Evidence based policy or policy based evidence?
Poppy James
This paper explores the relationship between asylum policy and policy related research on
asylum. It focuses on research related to the policy discourse of the economic 'pull factor'.
In recent years European governments have tried to reduce the number of asylum
applications received by reducing what are perceived to be economic 'pull factors'. These
include rights to take employment and access to welfare payments in host states.
Considerable empirical evidence concerning the determinants of asylum flows has
relatedly been produced by government agencies, academics and refugee interest groups.
This paper explores the relationship between policy and research first by describing the
findings of a systematic review of the literature on the determinants of asylum flows.
Second, it explores the extent to which this evidence base may have been influenced by
value laden beliefs about what a policy intervention should achieve, and the processes by
which change can be elicited. Finally, the paper offers an epistemological critique of this
work drawing on critical migration studies and behavioural economics. The paper is part of
a wider ESRC funded project on the economic rights of asylum seekers in Britain, currently
being undertaken at the University of Sheffield.
Fortress Europe: Penalising Abjects – The UK Asylum System and the Culture
of Disbelief
Alexandra Embiricos
This paper utilises the theoretical framing of Loïc Wacquant (2008; 2009; 2010) to argue
that the British state penalises the most marginalised members of society by recourse to a
16
narrative of ‘insecurity’, which Waquant posits results from the diffuse anxiety caused by
interrelated social changes in the neoliberal era. In the paper, I identify the most
marginalised group to be the asylum-seeking woman of non-European origin, defined as
the black or Muslim body immigrating from outside the Eurozone. The term ‘Fortress
Europe’ has increasingly been used to describe the environment of deterrence and
aggressive policies designed to control so called ‘illegal immigration’ into the EU. The UK
has been selected as an example in this paper due to its particularly aggressive antiimmigration policies, yet the 'culture of disbelief' – the belief within government structures
that refugees are 'bogus' until proven otherwise – has been found across EU member
states. The paper analyses how the 'culture of disbelief' is part of a broader mechanism of
'Fortress Europe' designed to deter specific populations, designating them as 'illegal' and
confining them to the unlivable spaces of social reality. I posit that the ‘culture of disbelief’
is the expression of the state’s penal tendency outwith the sphere of judiciary and policy
practices, rather manifesting itself as a bias to disbelieve the credibility of asylum
claimants, following a meta-message of deterrence (Jubany, 2011: 84). The paper will
analyse how women seeking asylum are understood to be the ultimate abject (Butler,
1993); triply marginalised by race, gender, and immigration status, by including an
overview of the way these marginalities intersect to create the identity of ‘the asylum
seeking woman’. Finally, using statistical analysis of UK asylum trends it will prove that
the ‘culture of disbelief’ disproportionately affects women in the asylum system, as the
ultimate abjects, subjected to state penalisation and potentially ‘locked out’ of state
protection.
Chasing the rainbow: the twists and turns of ‘resilience’ in the Syrian refugee
response
Katharina Lenner
This paper explores the translations and negotiations around ‘resilience’, the master
metaphor dominating the political response to the Syrian refugee crisis in the Middle East
in the past years. It traces the term’s journey through various (sub-)disciplines and fields
of application before arriving into humanitarian operations, specifically the Syrian refugee
crisis. In doing so, it shows how ‘resilience’ has become an integral part of the neoliberal
attempt to reduce the costs of humanitarian and other missions through fostering selfreliance. Building upon this base, the paper then explores how ‘resilience’ has taken on a
life of its own in Jordan, where it has become particularly prevalent over the past years. It
looks at how the concept has come to be so popular, and how it has been translated and
negotiated by and between different agencies involved in governing the Syrian refugee
crisis. Among these are international organisations as well as governmental agencies, all of
which espouse different, at times contradictory understandings of the concept and its uses.
The paper argues that resilience should be understood as an essentially contested concept,
one which has served to tie together a heterogeneous set of agencies and interests to
produce a relatively coherent account of the refugee response. At the same time, it has not
resolved the underlying conflicts and struggles for primacy and resource distribution
between the different agencies involved in the crisis response.
17
European social citizenship: Functional in practice?
Nora Ratzmann
Is the European Union’s freedom of movement functional in practice? – The freedom of
movement of people, one of the defining principles of the EU’s common market, not only
entails the right of EU citizens to freely move, work or seek employment in another
member state, but also entitles them to access their host country’s social security benefits.
However, while EU legislation aims at guaranteeing equal social entitlements to EU mobile
citizens as to nationals, member states transgressed when transposing supranational into
national legislation. As the study illustrates, a mobile EU citizen in the UK faces different
conditions to social security access than in Germany.
Hence, to what extent can mobile EU citizens exercise their social citizenship rights? Based
on a comparison between Germany and the UK, the paper examines varying national
implementation responses to the EU’s social security legislation. Thematic analysis of EU
and national policy documents and interviews with policy makers allow conclusions to be
drawn on how national understandings of deservingness and symbolic boundaries of
belonging are embedded into national social security policy and law. The paper also delves
into institutional accounts, historical and normative underpinnings of welfare and
incorporation regimes, as well as socio-economic and demographic characteristics in order
to explain country-specific differences. The study highlights a newly emerging dimension
of inequality, as the practice of EU social citizenship remains conditional upon one’s
wealth and local labour market attachment. It concludes with a reflection on the
functionality of the open borders paradigm in the light of the persisting gap between EU
citizens’ formal versus substantive social rights.
Integrating in British society through ESOL for citizenship course: four female
case studies
Sundus Ameer
Over the years the UK’s Home Office’s policies have linked ESOL provision to
naturalisation and British citizenship. In my empirical study I have looked at the impact of
ESOL for citizenship provision on ESOL learners’ identities as well as on their integration
in British society. The data that will be presented in the conference will only focus on four
female case studies who completed ESOL for citizenship course in language centres in
Manchester and Lancashire region.
Since 1960s in the UK, policies addressing the social integration of migrants in British
society have been based on a complex and contrasting range of views (Cheong et al., 2007)
moving from seeing immigrants as good social capital to bad social capital, from
multilingualism to focus on one national language. The proposal for citizenship education
laid in Crick report placed explicit emphasis on social integration with English language
facility as both a key tool and a primary measure of an individual worth for nationality and
citizenship (Crick, 1998). This basic goal of ESOL for citizenship course to achieve the
target of social inclusion was even mentioned as the reason behind the new legislation that
was implemented in October 2013 by the UK Home Office. It was explained in the
18
statement by the UK Home Office that English language is the key to social integration
(Home Office 2013).
In the present study, four female case studies were interviewed at the start of ESOL for
citizenship course and then they were interviewed again at the end of the course. The
findings from this research study showed that social integration and getting involved in the
British community didn’t improve after completing ESOL for citizenship course. It was
found that social integration of a person depends on various personal factors rather than
their English language usage. Different personal factors that can affect social integration
are length of stay in the UK, the neighbourhood, cultural similarities and differences,
family background and social choices made by the family as a whole.
Who needs the Convention? Re-assessing the relevance and function of the
1951 Refugee Convention
Jean-Pierre Gauci; Sarah Elliott
With the recent surge in global displacement impacting upon Europe, the 1951 Refugee
Convention has become the subject of extensive political and academic debate. In the wake
of renewed calls for its revision or repeal, this paper critically engages with the instrument
and discusses its current purpose as both a source and a statement of rights and
obligations for refugees and States alike. It first shows that given the developments in
international human rights law and regional refugee law instruments since its adoption,
the impact of such a repeal would be more politically symbolic than legally meaningful.
The paper goes on to argue that a critical aspect of the contemporary relevance of the 1951
Refugee Convention and a potential renewed function or aspiration, is for it to act as an a
catalyst for State cooperation as urged by its preamble, especially when read in conjunction
with Article 35. Article 35 requires State parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention to
cooperate with UNHCR in order to enable the agency to exercise its functions, as set out in
its Statute and in particular, that of supervising the application of the Convention and of
promoting the execution of any measures calculated to improve the situation of refugees.
The paper discusses the meaning of ‘cooperation’ as found in the 1951 Refugee Convention
and its potential effect in practice. It further highlights areas were such cooperation
becomes difficult; for instance, in light of varied definitions of who is a refugee worldwide,
the scope of who can be subject to inter-State responsibility sharing becomes problematic.
The paper concludes by making a number of recommendations on how the 1951 Refugee
Convention’s preamble and provisions could be understood and amended in order to
ensure more effective protection – concluding with a much needed restatement of what the
1951 Refugee Convention actually stands for today.
Solidarity, freedom, and equality – for whom?Welfare, market-forces and the
case of EU-migrants living with uncertain rights in the Swedish social
service-system.
Simon Härnbro
19
Swedens mebership in EU has opened up for the establishment of an integrated mobile
market of capital, services, products and people. Lately, Swedish media reports of EUmigrant beggars living in Sweden under harsh conditions, far from acceptable standars in
the welfare state of Sweden. Media also mediate that municipalities act in different ways
when it comes to intervent in regards to the living contitions of EU-migrants in Sweden.
What does this mean when it comes to social citizenship and the relation between the state
and the citizen/non-citizen? How dose the swedish welfare state legitmate their actions in
regards to the EU-migrants? Where goes the boundary for solidarity when it comes to an
welfare-state with ambitions of universal rights? And what does this mean for inclusion/
exclusion and citizenship if the state no longer soley can control the market and the social
rights in its own territory?In my Paper i suggest ways in wich to study the construction and
meaning of citizenship, in the tension beteween a national social political idé of universal
social service benefits and the encounter with transnational migration and, particular,
socialy excluded EU-migrants living with precarious legal status in Sweden. The focus for
my paper is the municpality and how they, as an advocoate for the welfare-state, contribute
to the construction of substance and meaning of social citizenship.
A Comparative Study of EU and US Asylum Policy before and after 9/11
Sabrina Axter
The increasing securitization of immigration with a strong focus on perceived links
between migrants and terrorists has come to enter the mainstream discourse in debates
around migration and refugees. Many believe that 9/11 was a main driver for this
securitization. However, this assumption has been challenged. Other research shows that
the process of linking immigrants and security had already started before and that 9/11
only helped to intensify a trend that was already in the making. It provided policy makers
and politicians with a platform that served demands for tougher asylum policies. Placing
itself at the center of this debate, this paper examines asylum policies in the EU and the US
before and after 9/11. It thereby assesses what effect 9/11 has had on asylum policies and
how much these policies eventually changed. In contrast to most other research on this
issue, which is usually more policy and outcome oriented, the paper looks directly at the
relevant policies and uses critical discourse analysis to unpack the language used and the
perceptions of asylum seekers these policies are drawing on and reinforcing. It concludes
that indeed the trend of securitization had begun before 9/11 and has further intensified
since then. Comparing the two cases of the EU and the US will also shed light on the
difference in importance that was attached to 9/11
What are Good Citizens made of? Constructing citizenship in immigration
policy packages in Finland
Erna Bodström
This paper examines the construction of citizenship in social policy texts intended for
immigrants. Migration and, consequently, migration policy have become increasingly hot
topics in Europe. The issue is twofold: on the one hand, the discussion is about the borders
and boundaries migrants cross and, on the other hand, about the measures to be taken
once they have already entered. One of these measures taken up by Finland is to produce
20
information packages on migration policy to immigrants. When it comes to constructing
citizenship in the context of immigration, Finland is an interesting case in point, as it has
in a fairly rapid succession gone through three different phases of immigration policy and
seems now to have embarked a fourth one.
This paper looks at how Good Citizenship is constructed in nine information packages
produced by ministries in Finland. The purpose of the packages has been to inform
immigrants about migration policy as well as the country and its people. Having been
produced between years 2000 and 2011, the packages cover three different stages of
immigration policy in Finland. The paper draws on Bridget Anderson's (2013) concept of
Good Citizenship in order to acknowledge the several levels of citizenship. Citizenship is
understood widely: in addition to legal, citizenship can also be economic, social and
cultural. The analysis of the packages draws on Norman Fairclough's (2003) Critical
Discourse Analysis, which explicitly ties language to the social world.
The preliminary results indicate that Good Citizenship is twofold. When it comes to the
'natives', the requirements of good citizenship are clear but rigid and stereotypical. In turn,
when it comes to immigrants, the requirements are anything but. Thus, it seems the
information packages exclude the questions of inclusionary citizenship - what must one be
or do to become one of 'us' Europeans?
Between Conformity and Contestation: An Analysis of the Policy Narratives of
Migration Rights Organisations in the United Kingdom
Katherine Tonkiss
The migration policymaking literature has identified and explored the ways in which
powerful interests shape policy interventions, guided by the work of Gary Freeman and
others who have argued for the importance of ‘organised publics’ in explaining migration
policy. Within this literature, migration rights organisations – charities and other nongovernmental bodies campaigning for the rights of migrants and for more liberal migration
policies – tend to be characterised as relatively insignificant compared to more powerful
business groups and political elites. However, during the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015, the voices
of migration rights organisations became more prevalent than is typically assumed. Added
to this, public campaigns (such as ‘I Am An Immigrant’ and ‘Migrants Contribute’ in the
UK) have raised the profile of these groups in migration policy debates. Against this
backdrop, this paper aims to examine the policy narratives of migration rights
organisations in order to better define and explain the role of these organisations in the
policy process. The paper treats narratives as a medium of contestation over the definition
of the policy problem that migration presents, and draws on rich documentary and
interview data collected for a series of case study of organisations in the UK to build an
analysis of these narratives and their relationship to the migration policy process. The
paper shows that the narratives embody a contestation of the broad notion that migration
is a deviant behaviour, as well as of the specific ways in which it is constructed as a policy
problem across a range of policy areas, but also that they embody a degree of conformity to
dominant ideas about the migrant as a neo-liberal economic commodity. The paper draws
21
on these findings to offer insights about the role of both migration rights organisations and
policy narratives in migration policymaking processes, adding new layers of insight and
methodological innovation to the literature on organised publics and the migration policy
process.
Complexity Reduction and Policy Consensus: Asylum Seekers and the Right
to Work in the UK
Lucy Mayblin
It is illegal for the vast majority of asylum seekers in the UK to work. There has been much
criticism of this policy approach but no in depth analysis of how policy makers understand
the political economy of asylum and immigration, and how these understandings lead
them to maintain the ban on working. This paper will present early findings from the first
phase of a three year project on the politics of asylum, welfare and work in the UK.
Drawing on discourse data and interviews with policy makers, and using Jessop's cultural
political economy framework, the paper will discuss the means by which debates around
asylum and work are curtailed, focusing specifically on 'complexity reduction' and policy
'imaginaries'.
Externalisation-sexuritisation Nexus in EU Migration Policies: Reflections on
Turkey in the Syrian Refugee Crisis
Suhal Semsit
The migration management in the EU has been affected both from internal dynamics of
Europeanisation and global developments such as 9/11 events in the USA. The terrorist
attacks in Paris will be vastly affecting the evolution of internal and external migration
policies of the EU and strengthen migration-security nexus in this process.
The dynamics of externalisation/securitisation nexus in EU migration policies has resulted
in the development of a model of concentric circles in the external migration policies of the
EU. The EU externalized its control-oriented migration policies and applied different types
of conditionality for different groups of countries such as candidate countries, European
Neighbourhood Policy countries and countries such as USA and China.
Relations with Turkey which takes its place as a candidate country in this Model gained
momentum in the recent Syrian refugee crisis. Turkey as a country transforming into a
country of immigration and transit currently hosts around 2,5 million Syrian refugees and
is also a transit route for Syrian refugees seeking for better living conditions in Europe. The
Syrian refugee crisis one of the most challenging crises affecting both the EU and Turkey
and requires an effective crisis management with sustainable results. This paper analyses
the handling of this multi-dimensional crisis with a critical approach regarding the
external governance mechanisms of the EU.
22
5 Critical Discourse Analysis
Panel Convenors: Jane Mulderrig; Nicolina Montesano Montessori
Local Climate Change Adaptation in Australia
Diana MacCallum; Jason Byrne; Jean Hillier; Donna Houston
Large parts of Australia are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. More than
80% of the population lives in coastal cities and we are already seeing increases in severe
weather leading to destructive heat waves, bushfires, drought and flooding. Yet there is no
coherent policy framework for climate change adaptation; rather, Federal and State levels
of government fluctuate in their response according to political priorities. Within this
context, much of the action around this issue has fallen to local governments, who
routinely make decisions about urban planning, community infrastructure, and delivery of
environmental services. In recent years, many local governments have adopted and
published climate adaptation strategies.
In this paper, we critically analyse the discourse characterising adaptation strategies of
Australian local governments. At a national scale, we provide an audit of the coverage of
such strategies across the country, and identify some broad themes and approaches
through which climate change is framed as a local policy issue. We then examine a
selection of 8 strategies from municipalities within four city regions (Melbourne, Sydney,
SEQ and Perth) in more depth, with a view to understanding the semiotic means by which
local actors – councils, businesses, NGOs, citizens and non-humans – are construed in
relation to both the impacts of climate change and the possibilities for adaptive action.
The analytical approach, situated in the general theoretical framework of Systemic
Functional Grammar, combines a systematic content search with closer investigation of
the ideational and interpersonal meanings associated with the appearance of key words
including “climate”, “adaptation”, “greenhouse” and “risk”.
Preliminary analysis has identified a crucial gap in how climate change is represented – as
largely a technical concern in which local communities are seen to play only passive roles,
and which is almost completely segregated from matters of (eco-)social inclusion and
justice. This, we argue, leads local governments to ignore or foreclose alternative adaptive
practices and limits their capacity to engage citizens in meaningful action at the local scale.
This has further implications for how climate change adaptation is represented,
understood and, ultimately, acted upon within the Australian multi-tiered governance
context.
“Get back to work”: Discourse on youth poverty in Hong Kong
Ava Lau; Kwok-kin Fung
Poverty is an issue in both global and local context over the past decades. This article uses
Critical Discourse Analysis to examine how the Hong Kong SAR government constructs the
ideal youth, the text’s underlying assumptions about youth poverty and education, and its
discoursal effects. A number of policies and programme has been designed and
implemented by Commission of Poverty (CoP). Drawing on Fairclough’s (2009)
dialectical-relational approach, analyse of young people poverty by reviewing underlying
23
paradigms and approaches in poverty alleviation. This paper argues the government
constructed discourses which favour economic development, neglect the structural factors
contribute to the creation of youth poverty. The analysis shows how the discourse of youth
poverty being developed in the poverty alleviation programme in which evaluate young
people according to their incentive toward economic productivity, predominantly on
individual contribution. Furthermore, the policies tend to construct a hegemonic discourse
from neoliberal perspective, the focus of poverty alleviation measures fall onto youth
people’s responsibility for educational outcomes. This paper argues that the CoP lends
support to several dominant discourses regarding young people and their capacity, such as
the discourse on self-reliant and youth development, which encourages young people’s
continuing training and development. Implications for policy, research, and practice are
discussed.
MORALITY AND DISCOURSE IN TIMES OF CRISES: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC
PERSPECTIVE
Rosa Escanes Sierra
This paper investigates the role of moral evaluation in elite political discourse when
dealing with inequality, particularly in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis. It presents a
cross-linguistic study comparing budget parliamentary debates in Spain and the UK. Two
years, 2012 and 2006, were also compared in order to see differences and similarities
between a crisis period (represented by the former year) and a non-crisis period
(represented by the latter year). Three words were the focus of the analysis, fairness,
justice and equal and the data was mainly approached quantitatively (using corpus
linguistics).
The findings seem to agree with the broader tendency to re-moralise capitalism when
dealing with economic crises (Jessop, 2012) since moral invocations were more common in
2012 in both countries. The instances seem to focus on taxation in the crisis data, as
oppose to public services, which is much more common in the non-crisis data. Moreover,
cuts to public spending, in spite of their importance in the political agenda at the time, are
not framed from a moral perspective. Morality also seems to have a more prominent role
in the British context than the Spanish. The latter appears to be more guided by a frame of
urgency, very commonly represented by the use of the word ajuste (adjustment).
The paper will finish with some reflections regarding the benefits and challenges of a
political cross-linguistic analysis of this nature within Critical Discourse Analysis. The
study of ideological patterns behind global issues such as crises and inequality can benefit
greatly from this approach, since it allows us to observe both national specificities as well
as common grounds.
Jessop, B. (2012, November). Recovered imaginaries, imagined recoveries: a cultural
political economy of crises construals and crisis-management in the North Atlantic
financial crisis. Paper presented at the CPERC conference “Never waste a crisis: strategies
of representing and managing crises”, Morecambe, UK.
24
The Quest for the Institutional Holy Grail: A critical discourse analysis of
Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) and social justice in Nepal
Floriane Clement; Diana Suhardiman; Luna Bharati
Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) has been increasingly criticised as a
relevant institutional model for water management and governance in a number of
academic and policy circles. Using critical discourse analysis, this paper aims at shedding
new light on the polarised debates about the pros and cons of IWRM. We use the case
study of Nepal, where IWRM was introduced as the guiding model for water management
a decade ago. We explored how IWRM discourses have shaped the framing of water
problems, in relation to the national historical and institutional context. Our analysis was
based on stakeholder interviews, secondary data, and deliberative dialogues. We find that
the promotion of IWRM as an institutional holy grail has obscured critical issues of
(in)justice related to water resource development and water governance in Nepal. We
recommend that IWRM is envisioned as a deliberative process to strengthen institutions
rather as a prescriptive solution so that water management debates open up sufficient
discursive and institutional space to accommodate local development needs and
aspirations.
Investigating hegemony in critical policy analysis: The key role of CDA in a
transdisciplinary research framework in three steps
Daniela Caterina
The present paper sums up the core theoretical and methodological considerations at the
basis of a broader research project, whose key concern is to make a contribution in the
field of critical policy studies interested in hegemony and hegemonic struggles and thus to
shed further light on the investigation of the reciprocal interconnections among semiosis,
actors and their political strategies as well as mechanisms of power (re-)production.
To this aim, the paper sketches out the main traits of an innovative transdisciplinary
research framework in three steps merging cultural political economy (CPE), historical
materialist policy analysis (HMPA) and critical discourse analysis (CDA) respectively.
Building on the discussion of the potential of a joint CPE-HMPA perspective on the study
of hegemony, the paper is particularly interested in ways to enhance this research
framework by means of a further transdisciplinary collaboration with CDA.
In a nutshell, it is argued that the process of practical reasoning – with the development of
concrete practical arguments in favour or against a certain course of action in the face of
political problems and conflictual situations – is a key element implied both by CPE and
HMPA in their respective approaches to critical policy analysis. CPE, with its interest in the
interplay of agential and discursive selectivities, and HMPA, through the investigation and
analytical aggregation of political strategies, namely share a focus on the dynamics of
political debates and controversies. Consequently, it is argued, this dynamics should be
investigated in a systematic and coherent way, which necessarily includes the analysis of
argumentative and non-argumentative genres (especially representations), with the latter
seen as embodied within the first. In short, so the main claim, such an implicit concern
25
present in CPE and HMPA alike should be made explicit and a CDA focusing on practical
argumentation is regarded as an ideal candidate to increase the analytical strength of CPE
and HMPA in this respect.
As for the applicability of this framework, the above arguments are illustrated with
reference to the empirical investigation of the struggles for hegemony in Italy’s political
economy during the “technical” government led by Mario Monti in 2011/12.
Skilling the nation, empowering the citizen: The semiotics of neoliberalism in
Singapore's SkillsFuture initiative
Carl Jon Way Ng
Prognostications of the demise of neoliberal capitalism following the 2008 global financial
crisis and subsequent economic woes in the Eurozone and elsewhere haven proven to be
illusory, with neoliberal-oriented political governance continuing to hold significant sway
in many societies. Adopting a critical discourse-analytic approach, this paper focuses on
the SkillsFuture policy initiative announced by the Singapore government in 2015, and the
discourse surrounding it. While in some sense a continuation of the city-state’s existing
policy programme aimed at encouraging lifelong learning in adult workers and learners,
the initiative is simultaneously new in terms of its enlarged scope, reach and ambition –
targeting an expanded group of Singaporeans that now includes schoolchildren, with
stronger support from and coordination with industry and employers, a more
comprehensive suite of programmes, and more government resources invested. Framed
within a context of present and future economic challenges which the government deems
to be global and unavoidable, such a policy and its communication represent sites of
discursive construction of the ideal neoliberal subject and inculcation of neoliberal
subjectivity.
Examining a range of SkillsFuture-related documents and communication platforms
produced by the government such as speeches, press releases, the SkillsFuture official
website, and Youtube video clips, I show how values like competition, empowerment,
choice and flexibility are semiotized in these texts to form the central themes of the
government’s communications. The multimodal analysis will look at linguistic choices as
well as visual design, involving semiotic features like modality, pronouns and metaphor,
among others. In doing so, the paper discusses how key elements of neoliberal logic, such
as self-regulating competitive markets and actors, the individualization of collective
challenges, vocationalization of education, and the configuration of citizens as consumers,
run through the government discourse and form the foundations of a policy initiative that
is an important part of Singapore’s neoliberal governance.
Paper7
An analysis of the roles and relationships of GPs in the development of
integrated care in East London
Laura Eyre
The integration of health and social care is widely accepted as the answer to fragmentation,
financial concerns and system inefficiencies in the English National Health Service, in the
26
context of growing and ageing populations with increasingly complex needs. Despite an
expanding body of literature, there is little evidence yet to suggest that integrated care can
achieve the benefits that its advocates claim for it. In light of this, the East London
integrated care pioneer programme is working with a Researcher-in-Residence (Marshall
et al. 2014, Eyre et al. 2015) to use both established evidence and evidence generated by a
formative, qualitative and process-oriented evaluation to optimise delivery of the
programme objectives.
The evaluation is underpinned by a critical ontology, an interpretive epistemology and uses
concepts from critical discourse analysis. Data is being generated via documentary
gathering, observations, and semi-structured interviews. Three phases of interviews enable
a longitudinal exploration of the implementation and delivery of integrated care across
East London.
The evaluation is ongoing. Interim findings indicate that, whilst front line staff are unified
in their belief that integrated care is ‘the right thing to do’, there is a significant disconnect
between the strategic intent of the programme and the operational delivery of integrated
care. The role of GPs is contested and GPs seem disengaged with the development and
implementation of integrated care. Relationships between GPs and other parts of the
health and social care system are variable and dependent largely on individuals and
personalities.
Given the importance of primary care to the success of integration, this paper focuses on
the representations of GPs’ roles and relationships within integrated care in East London.
This work will enable differences across the various stakeholders in the programme to be
recognised and, where necessary, reconciled in order to facilitate progress towards the
successful delivery of integrated care.
Discursive shifts in the transition from an “active” to an “activating” labour
market policy
Markus Griesser; Stephan Pühringer
In the course of the last decades a transition from an “active” to an “activating” approach in
the field of labour market policies (LMP) took place. As guiding principles both models
have been promoted by international organizations like, amongst others, the OECD. But
whereas the former was developed in the context of economic prosperity and full
employment during the 1960s, the later emerged in the context of economic crisis and
mass-unemployment during the 1990s.
The proposed paper will investigate this policy change in a comparative perspective
focusing on four LMP-reforms in Germany and Austria in the late 1960s and in the early
2000s, closely related with the two models of LMP mentioned above. Hence, they can be
conceived as landmark reforms regarding the implementation of an active LMP as well as
of an activating LMP in the two countries.
From the perspective of an Interpretive Policy Analysis we conceive this policy-change as
being based on or guided by discursive changes. Hence, in our paper we will investigate
27
these reforms by analyzing the discursive patterns of problem construction and problem
solution in the different contexts. Our methodological framework is based on a CDA
approach in two steps. First, we will analyze the interconnections of dominant economic
thought with processes of policy making, thereby especially focusing on actors like expert
commissions, advisory boards or think tanks in order to examine their relevance for the
different policy processes. Second, we will combine analyses of the politico-economic
media discourse, political debates during the process of agenda-setting as well as academic
expert discourses about labour market and social policies. This twofold approach allows us
to develop a better understanding of the discursive changes accompanying the transition
from an “active” to an “activating” LMP.
Invisible labour: the constraints and affordances of student engagement
policy
Sarah Hayes
The ‘academic orthodoxy’ (Brookfield, 1986) of student engagement is questioned by
Zepke, who suggests this concept supports a neoliberal ideology, emphasising
‘performativity and accountability’ (Zepke, 2014: 698). In reply, Trowler argues Zepke fails
to explain the mechanisms between neoliberalism and student engagement (Trowler,
2015: 336). A gap in Zepke’s thesis means content is missing and ‘the nature of the
relationship between ideologies and the social world is simply assumed, not theorised’.
(Trowler, 2015: 337).
In this paper I introduce one way to interpret constraints and affordances of student
engagement, by providing textual ‘content’ that might be theorised. Through a corpusbased Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Mulderrig, 2011), I argue that a close analysis of
Higher Education (HE) policy enables a more productive dialogue. Student engagement,
like the concept of technology enhanced learning (TEL), is said to be having impact. Staff
are exhorted to enable and embed student engagement, yet the human labour required to
do this is invisible:
‘student engagement is a prominent aspect of all learning and teaching activities and is
enabled by the University's principles for programme design’
Firstly, I apply arguments previously discussed in the context of TEL policy to student
engagement to reveal how the ‘omission of humans from HE policy discourse’ (Hayes &
Bartholomew, 2015) fails to acknowledge the academic labour of staff and students.
Instead an assemblage of words acts on our behalf to yield an ‘exchange value’ (Marx,
1867) for neo-liberal universities:
‘The SU and the University acknowledge and welcome the essential role that student
engagement plays in enhancing the quality of learning and teaching and more broadly the
student experience’
Secondly, when staff engagement, as ‘academic citizenship’ is increasingly hidden from
view (Havergal, 2015), I question how policy reinforces oversimplified models of academia
and consider ways we might write our labour back in!
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6 Critical Discourse Analysis, Discourse Theory and
Hegemony
Nicolina Montesano Montessori; Jane Mulderrig
Putting CDA and DT to work together: Orders of Discourse and the Logics of
Critical Explanation
Nicolina Montesano Montessori; Tom Bartlett
In relation to methodology Glynos and Howarth (2007) open up the perspective of
articulation. The authors develop three different kinds of logics: social logics which are to
do with rules, political logics which are to do with practices or regimes and the ways in
which these are transformed or contested and fantasmatic logics which explains why
specific practices and regimes control subjects. Logics are understood as capturing the
point, ontological preconditions and rules of a practice, as opposed to causal powers. The
authors furthermore suggest the practice of articulation as a means to bring together
theoretical categories and empirical analysis. We believe that this approach creates a rich
and dynamic back- ground which is different from, but compatible to the theories used in
CDA (Fairclough, 2003) and therefore could serve as a solid basis to perform the analysis
of empirical data. Making use of the concept of ‘hegemony’ and ‘articulation’, we will both
problematize the suggested relation between DT (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985) and CDA and
also argue that taking on board the challenge to combine these two discourse oriented
approaches in order to make them work together, offers a solid but yet dynamic basis to
bring together theory and empirical data in the political context in which they emerge. We
will present examples in this direction from performed research on the discourse of the
Zapatista Movement (Montesano Montessori, 2009) we will work out, especially for this
conference, the relation between the explanatory logics, orders of discourse and underlying
principles of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Bartlett, 2012).
Bartlett, T. (2012). Hybrid voices and collaborative change: Positive Discourse Analysis in
Context. London: Routledge.
Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing Discourse. Textual analysis for social research. London:
Routledge.
Glynos, J. and Howarth, D., (2007). Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political
Theory. London, New York: Routledge.
Laclau, E., Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical
Democratic Politics, London: Verso.
Montesano Montessori, N. (2009). An analysis of a struggle for hegemony in Mexico: the
Zapatista Movement versus President Salinas de Gortari. Saarbrücken: VDM.
Toward re-appropriating radical empiricism: a proposal for a Latourian lens
for doing in discourse analysis
Pepijn van Eeden
29
This article starts from a concern raised by Michael Billig (2008; 2013) over the
codification or ‘nominalization’ of terminology in critical discourse analysis (CDA).
Acclaimed critical discourse analysts meanwhile contend with Billig that nominalised
jargon tends to give CDA a western-centric twist (Chilton, 2007) or is endangering its
emancipatory and demystifying purposes (Wodak, 2008).
This paper agrees with this and shows how the said problem is closely connected to the
preservation of foundational ‘historical materialist’ panorama’s within CDA, as opposed to
post-structuralist discourse theory (DT). CDA theorists Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999)
pressed for preserving such panorama’s as the only way to explain constancy on ‘which
social forces have greater capacity to effect articulatory changes and why’. In their view, DT
cannot sufficiently account for this as it emphasizes the continuous ‘dislocation’ of
discursive meaning (Rear & Jones, 2013, pp 12-13).
Fairclough and Chouliaraki are correct in identifying a ‘problem with stability’ in DT.
However, from our research practice on Eastern European environmental movements –
focused on politicisation and depoliticisation processes before and after 1989 – we show
how their defence of ‘economic structure’ as the invisible coordinator behind stable
‘articulatory inequality’ does not convince. Indeed, their ‘materialism’ appears not
materialistic at all, but more closely resembles an apriori imagined phantom, birthing
others in turn, which altogether work to compromise CDAs (and DTs) radical democratic
aims.
We show how Latourian ‘fluid objectivism’ or ‘new materialism’ solves the problem of
stagnation more democratically: as resulting from the relative constancy of objects
assembled within a given actor-network. Latour's proposal liberates CDA from its need for
pre-conceived terminology, effectively putting ‘social explanation back on its feet (…) as
Marx did with Hegel’s dialectics’ (Latour 2005, p. 64). This argument further adds to the
work of Sjolarnder (2011), who has already identified Bakhtin as a possible bridge between
DT and CDA: there is no place anymore for a priori definitions on ‘ideology’, ‘structure’,
‘context’, ‘power’, ‘critique’ or even ‘discourse’ itself – not by dismissing these terms, but by
‘dialogizing’ them. Discourse analysis, then, emerges afresh and well prepared for its 21st
century challenges.
Does It Work? Discourse Theory in Policy Analysis Process
Puthsodary Tat
This article presents the policy analysis process and casts light on the hegemonic aid
conditionality on public policy in transitional post-conflict settings. For theoretical
underpinnings, the author draws on the theoretical framework of discourse theory (DT),
using Foucauldian concepts of discourse and power/knowledge to establish a platform for
discussing the social construction and discursive formations of policy analysis. Discourse
analysis (DA) is employed as a method to analyze texts, make choices about data
collection, sampling strategy, and interpret computer-assisted data. Finally, he describes
ethics-related issues of both applications. The article reveals that the body of knowledge of
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DT and DA helps policymakers, donors, experts and other policy actors create shared
consensus of values, interests, norms, and sustainable indicators in post-war nations.
Note: This article is one of chapters of the book titled “Policy and Governance in PostConflict Settings: Theory and Practice”, written by Puthsodary Tat. The pending
publication is in Spring 2016 with Routledge.
Hegemonic and Contra-hegemonic discourses on Neoliberalism, the NationState and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Chile: Critical discourse
analysis of three public forums
Jeanne Simon; Elizabeth Parra; Claudio Gonzalez´Parra
The present paper uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) to identify the arguments used by
the principal actors in Chile (South America) with respect to citizenship and the rights of
indigenous peoples in a neoliberal economy. These arguments are used in diverse forums,
including the parliament, the media, and public-private commissions organized to find
solutions to the conflicts that have emerged in response to capitalist development and
indigenous demands for the protection of their rights. Indeed, in Chile over the last 15
years, each democratic government has been forced to continuously modify its position
due to both internal and international pressure.
This complex issue presents a multi-faceted challenge for political science as well as for
politicians in multicultural states and developing economies, requiring a rethinking of
citizenship. Prior to the publication of Will Kymlicka’s Liberalism, Community and Culture
(1989), political science / theory did not differentiate indigenous peoples from other
national minorities and assumed that indigenous peoples were part of a traditional past.
More than 20 years later, the conceptual evolution of indigenous (collective) rights in
academia and in the United Nations system increasingly influences public policy decisions,
especially in developing countries, such as Chile.
This paper will present the 4 policy frames (National Unity, Cultural Pluralism, Indigenous
Self-determination, and Post-colonialism) used in debates in three forums: parliamentary
discussion to ratify an international convention on indigenous rights (International Labor
Organization Convention 169), media coverage of an intercultural conflict, and indigenous
academics’ positions with respect to these events. We conclude with an analysis of the
hegemonic and contra-hegemonic within the context of Chilean-Indigenous policies.
The art of propaganda: policy making in Afghanistan and the sequing of
failure into success
Adam Pain; Ashley Jackson
The politics of problem framing is central to narrative construction. By framing we refer to
the particular contextual assumptions, forms of interpretation and values that are brought
to bear on a problem shaping how it is is bounded and understood. Framing determines to
a significant degree how much attention the problem receives, the approach taken to
address it and the eventual solutions are proposed and adopted. Framing sets the stage for
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narratives or storylines about a given problem, how it has arisen, why it matters and what
can be done about it.
Afghanistan, we are told, is now in its ‘transformational’ decade. That trope reflects the
labour that has been expended by Afghanistan’s reconstruction community to render
legible and coherent the outcomes of the billions of dollars that have been spent and the
policy tomes that have been crafted into an account of progress since since 2001. As with
the political and economic market place that characterises Afghanistan, policy construction
has however been a deeply entrepreneurial activity where contesting parties in policy
debates – primarily the donors – have veiled their competition in the language of
coordination and the labour of assemblage (Li, 2007). Thus alignments have been forged,
problems rendered technical, forms of knowledge approved and discounted, failures (and
there have been many) managed, politics denied and old discourses recrafted for new
purposes to meet the moment.
The paper will examine policy making and practice in three contrasting policy stories that
have featured strongly over the last 15 yeas: sub-national governance, managing the opium
poppy economy and agricultural policy development. It will explore the ways in which the
policy narratives have been framed and elaborated to justify the actions taken and
reworked to engage with the awkward truth of disappointment at results.
The Fashioning of Self in Everyday Life of Higher Education
Molly Bellamy
The paper considers the ways in which the language of Education sector policy trades on a
Lockean liberal tradition of the autonomous, rights- bearing subject, to inscribe a postliberal policy of human agency as the capacity to fashion the self as a resilient and
governable ‘reflexive citizen’. It draws on empirical research to contextualise the ways
contradictions inherent in the design of the policy get played out at the level of conflicting
‘subject effects’ in the student writing .The paper considers the extent to which the subject
positions adopted and selves fashioned by the undergraduate writers in their reflective
writing, are policy derived.
Simultaneously, the paper considers the way in which the language of the recently
radicalising discourse of reflexivity in social science research, which sought to democratise
Higher Education through the validation of experiential or personalised learning, has been
appropriated by the human agency policy regime, in ways that leave academics feeling
‘strangers to themselves’ and without ‘the words to say it’ to their students.
In this sense the paper considers the case of the reflexive learner- worker -citizen in Higher
Education today and raises the question of whether the ‘transformative subject’ of the
enlightenment project is any longer retrievable or desirable as a rights-bearing subject in
a post liberal international regime of human agency policy . It raises the question also of
the loss of a vocabulary so recently struggled over in the University, that has been taken
out of the intellectual commons by stealth, in the wheelbarrows of the policy makers to
signify now, something very different.
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Discursive recontextualisation processes in International Development
Cooperation in Higher Education
Maria João Brandão; Sílvia Azevedo; António Magalhães
This paper explores the potential of combining the articulation construct from Laclau &
Mouffe (1985) Discourse Theory and the topics of grammar and vocabulary from
Fairclough (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis in order to look to the political discourse and
global political flows on International Development Cooperation (IDC). This paper
proposes that IDC in the field of Higher Education (HE) is a discursive mechanism of the
globalisation imaginary (Castoriadis, 1998; Fairclough, 2010). Articulations, thru
discursive markers, are significant semantic connections between concepts and categories
that allow to pinpointing the presence of dominant discourses in the processes of meaning
fixation.It is considered that discursive details visible at the textual level are intertwined
with the ideological investments that structure social practices.
Conducting a close analysis of a corpus of thirteen interviews texts from Higher Education
Institutions political makers in Portugal and Cape Verde, it is possible to identify a
dominant discourse on the way to establish cooperation between universities in a NorthSouth axis, fostered by the epistemology of the North (Santos, 2007), that gives no
prominence to the recontextualisation processes (Ball, 1998) of the global/local nexus.
This discursive political process establishes from the outset the development strategy
proclaimed by the international/transnational agencies and prompts the developing
countries to the acceptance of a hegemonic Western epistemology.
The recontextualisation seems to be assumed as a negotiation process in which local actors
have less intervention capacity that is opening the way for resistance to IDC hegemonic
discourses. In the analysis is possible to identify a discursive struggle between fixation of
the meaning of cooperation by reference to the hegemonic discourses and fixation of
meaning of cooperation by reference to national identities. This discursive struggle, visible
in recontextualisation processes, points out to two different discourses: (a) a discourse of
resistance and (b) a discourse of accommodation.
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7 Health Policy Research: theory and method
Eleanor Mackillop; Jane Mulderrig; Laura Eyre
Session 1 - Wednesday 6th July, 08.30-10.00
‘Surfers waiting for the right wave’: Explaining the emergence of health
economics in the British health polity with Multiple Streams Analysis
Eleanor MacKillop
Health economics practices such as cost-benefit analyses, priority-setting and National
Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommendations on the cost effectiveness of drugs
are today well embedded in the British health debate. This paper aims understanding how
and why we got to this point where health economics appears to influence large swathes of
health policy in Britain.
These questions are important in order to draw a more complex history of the birth of
health economics and provide historical reflections on current debates on cost, priorities,
health inequalities and the future of the National Health Service (NHS). The
historiography of British health economics is here built upon, highlighting its limited size
and often autobiographic dimension - i.e. the history of health economics being written by
health economists (Blaug 1998; Croxson 1998; Forget 2004; Hurst 1998; Williams 1998).
The question of emergence of health economics is analysed via the medium of a policy
framework named Multiple Streams Analysis (MSA) (Kingdon 1984; 1993), which allows
building a complex and dynamic picture of health economics, bringing together actors,
ideas and structures alongside key events. This paper builds on data collected from
archives, literature reviews and oral history bringing protagonists at the time into
reflecting on historical events such as the 1991 reform of the NHS internal markets.
In this paper, I examine some key paradoxes in this emergence. For instance, why, despite
established health economics academic centres in Britain developing policy solutions since
the 1960s were the ideas of an American health economist, Alain Enthoven, chosen by the
Conservative Government to reform the NHS in the late 1980s (Enthoven 1985)?
Understanding these paradoxes, I argue, requires critical theoretical frameworks and indepth qualitative research tools.
The Public Policy Impacts of Determining the Value of Life: Cost-Benefit
Analysis and Buying Drugs
David Carter; Fanny Thornton; Harun Harun
National funding of pharmaceutical drug purchasing schemes is politically complex,
especially as pharmaceutical companies actively lobby governments and invest big money
in the development of treatments. Political issues emerge around ‘cost’, because
governments cannot fund all drugs needed by citizens (Arnold et al., 1994; Arrington &
Francis, 1993). In the Australian context, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS)
suggests that it is an effective and efficient regulator, given its funding constraint of A$6.5
billion. Many funding decisions were rejected “on the basis of unacceptably high and
uncertain cost-effectiveness”. For PBS, ‘cost effectiveness’ is measured by a ‘rational and
34
objective’ cost-benefit analysis [CBA]. PBS argues that this objectivity is important as they
want to make objective decisions in a similar manner and to avoid subjectivity.
However, the media regularly present stories where the PBS has determined it too
expensive to fund a certain drug (these are prohibitively expensive for the average citizen).
For individuals, their families and supporters, this is devastating. The language of
accounting as a technique of governmentality is a powerful device, but often, with respect
to regulation, this business-centric language is difficult for stakeholders to reconcile. While
the PBS focuses on employing CBA to make decisions “beyond politics”, this results in
denying stakeholders access to life-saving pharmaceutical treatments seemingly by a
costing decision. Mr De Young is one example. In 2013, Mr De Young was told that the A
$120,000 cost for a life-saving drug was ‘too expensive’. Unfortunately, in maintaining the
position of ‘objectivity’, Mr De Young was not privy to the accounting and medical
information that the regulator considered, nor does he hold any rights of access to the
regulatory body. Simply, we are presented with a conclusion that the treatment is ‘too
expensive’.
‘Objectively’, the treatment is too expensive, but can you put a value on life? This
juxtaposes the value of a drug alongside the value of life and is evidence of an emergent
politics of the value of life (Devenney, 2014; Hardt & Negri, 2005). Thus, this paper
examines the impact of where public policy makes political decisions concerning the value
of life.
What is going on in the NHS? Ideas, arguments and health policy
Ian Greener
This paper presents the case that, rather than examining ideas, as interpretive policy
analysis has increasingly done, we need to ground the exploration of health policy instead
around frameworks that consider arguments. Although ideational scholarship has made
progress in defining its terms, and more recently in incorporating power into its analysis, it
still lacks a core of theory and methods from which a body of research can be developed.
Argumentation studies, the paper argues, offers both, as well as a position from which to
critique current policy, assessing claims and counter-claims of the need for reorganization
and policy change.
Taking as its material two recent conflicts over health policy in England – the 2010-2012
reorganization and the 2015/16 debate over junior doctor contracts, the paper presents an
analysis for examining arguments within a framework that examines not only the content
of the cases made by different actors, but also who is making such cases to whom. It
considers the argument made by government in support of its changes in each case, and
finds that initial claims of the need for change were quickly refuted, leaving opposition
voices with the ability to claim the presence of other agendas. The paper also demonstrates
the potential for critical policy analysis through argumentation studies, especially
considering the way that on-line responses interrogate claims made by different policy
actors and the space this opens for greater deliberation over health policy – if government
is prepared to engage more democratically.
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Session 2 - Wednesday 6th July, 10.30-12.00
Migrant care workers as enterprising agents – the organizational life of a
political discourse
Antero Olakivi
In the face of ageing population and looming shortages of workforce, European
governments make constant efforts to re-organize their provision of social and health care.
Two lines of action are particularly well-known, at least in the Northern Europe: the
implementation of ‘enterprising’ management techniques to increase care workers’ and
professionals’ efficient agency, and the active recruitment of migrant care workers to deal
with you the shortages of domestic workforce. In this paper, these two lines of action are
examined in tandem. In short, the paper targets public policies that construct migrant care
workers as autonomous, proactive and enterprising agents who can, ideally, solve
economic and social problems in the economically constrained provision of social care.
The study takes place in the intersection of organizational studies and political sociology.
In such an intersection, the study examines organizational, discursive practices that seek to
‘translate’ large-scale societal problems into problems that are seemingly manageable in
organizational contexts. The latter problems are, namely, problems in care workers’
attitudes, mindset, proactivity and agency. Besides constructing manageable problems,
such discursive practices also re-articulate the subjectivities of both migrant care workers
and their managers and, finally, also the subjectivities of older clients, and the ethics of
care.
The empirical analysis draws on interviews conducted with migrant care workers (N=50)
and their managers (N=14) in Finland in 2011–2013. The analysis examines the
participants’ discursive practice as they make sense of the work, skills, abilities, and
responsibilities of themselves and each other. The analysis demonstrates how the political
ideal of the migrant care worker as an ‘enterprising agent’ is discursively pragmatic: it
plays down conflicts of interest between care workers and their managers. At the same
time, the enterprising ideal give rise to new interpretive struggles and organizational
disputes between care workers and their managers.
Discursive imaginaries and cultural codes in post-communist health policies
Karel Cada
The paper explores the relationship between discourses, narratives and institutional
change in the post-communist transformation of the Czech health care. In the paper, based
on discourse analysis of the Czech health care since 1990, two dominant discursive
imaginaries are identified: (1) the discursive imaginary of health hopes connected with
promises of better care, medical innovations, shifting away from an outdated and
inefficient care, and increasing life expectancy and quality of life and (2) the discursive
imaginary of fiscal fears connected with concepts such as increasing government debt,
hehhhierarchist code was often employed to express the fiscal fears imaginary. This
historical configuration marked significantly the character of post-socialist welfare,
because the positive imaginary of modernisation of health care was always associated with
36
the individualist discourses of market-driven reforms. Efforts to strengthen rules and
hierarchies, on the contrary, were much more underscored by fiscal doomsday scenarios.
Who cares (?): Neoliberalism, linguistic resources and the management of
labor in the Swiss healthcare industry
Beatriz Lorente; Sebastian Muth; Stefanie Meier
Using the healthcare industry in Switzerland as our terrain, we aim to uncover the
conditions in which particular configurations of language proficiency and speakers become
desired commodities, as the demands of globally mobile patients are managed, the needs
of migrant patients are accommodated and the linguistic, symbolic and cultural capitals of
healthcare workers are regulated and exchanged. This is based on the assumption that the
transnational movement of patients and workers may change the role and value of
languages in healthcare and may raise new questions about the management of language
in the current neoliberal political economy while at the same time reproducing prevailing
ideologies of on languages and speakers. Our research examines the conditions in which
language skills are used to characterize the desirable personal qualities, job scopes and
specific tasks of healthcare workers, making linguistic resources serve as gatekeepers of
labor as well as instrumental tools necessary in the care for diverse patients. By tracing the
trajectories of healthcare workers who rely and capitalize on their linguistic resources, our
research intends to highlight the role of language in the reproduction of social inequalities
in 1) international offices that serve medical tourists, 2) migrant-friendly care units that
cater to immigrant patients and 3) human resources departments responsible for sourcing
multilingual workers. In doing so, we aim to contribute to our understanding of fine-grain
processes that define the organization of linguistic resources, regulate the demand and
supply of workers, and determine the value of certain languages and forms of language
practice.
Lacking in Social Health Insurance Reforms in Switzerland: Understanding
the Role Played by Parliamentary Debates
Benoit Renevey
Since more than five decades, in depth reforming of the swiss social health insurance
system (SHIS) has been impossible. Solely superficial adjustments could be implemented,
but these could not stop the widely shared feeling that the company SHIS does not work
properly. Neither could they limit the out of proportion increase of the costs of SHIS and
the emerging of people loosing access to this protection device.
The usual explanation of this phenomenon is that the Swiss political system - a so called
consociationalist democracy - allows minorities to block any unconsensual reform. And
this is exactly what happens when the Swiss Parliament attempts to adopt essential
changes regarding the structure of SHIS. In most cases, reform attempts fail before the
closing of the parliamentary procedure. However, even if the Parliament can manage
adopting a reform, citizens almost always tend to refuse it by refendum.
37
Nevertheless, SHIS remains the most discussed issue in the Swiss Parliament. Swiss MP
spend a lot of time in plenay debates about this issue. But most of the scholars assume that
the public debates do not play any role in constructing vote preferences of MP.
What then are MP doing by talking about SHIS during plenary sessions of the Parliament?
Once again, usual political sciences paradigmas propose explanation related to the
function of political communication and representation. However, one cannot exclude that
MP make another use of their plenary discursive activities.
Refering to foucauldian theories and sociological pragmatism, we analysed MP's discourse
during plenary sessions about SHIS from 2003 to 2015. We could demonstrate that
speakers discourses play an essential role in the the blocking of in depth reforms of the
SHIS, but that they do not do this intentionnaly. Their blocking role is rather a pernicious
effect of this page the reception activities made in the background of the public political
choice process and of the reactions their discourses tend to cause.
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8 Narratives in Public Policy Making
Lina Klymenko; Johanna Vuorelma
Session 1 - Wednesday 6th July, 08.30-10.00
The importance of being Berlin. How narratively created role models mobilize
urban policies.
Thomas Honeck
Research on mobile urban policies increasingly draws attention to the narratives that
frame approaches when they get to travel. This paper refines and illustrates this argument
based on a study of the ways planners and public authorities have come to facilitate
temporary uses of abandoned buildings and sites in Berlin and Stuttgart. Berlin, for the
two decades after its reunification characterized by an abundance of vacant spaces,
represents urban circumstances under which temporary uses have initially gained
significance as innovative solutions for urban renewal in Germany. Although Stuttgart
faces almost contrary problem statements such as a high pressure real estate market, the
municipality embraces temporary use since recent years and actively fosters it as part of
local business promotion. The paper identifies framing discourses and narratives as
essential for this, on the first sight, discrepant motion of urban policy. While most
literature points out how policies are brought to “land” by powerful actors and rather topdown driven, the paper identifies grassroots activists and small civic enterprises as
“traveling agents” for temporary uses in Germany. Finally, the paper shows, how Berlin in
the German planning context, became emblematic for the practice of temporary uses as
part of a creative city strategy. It reveals the policy image created in discourses as a “myth”,
which does not in all points display the de facto policies. Nonetheless, it influences the way
urban spaces are constituted, as planners in other cities orient at narratives on the model.
Understanding the role of narratives in planning policy making – the case of
Jerusalem
Ann-Catrin Kristianssen
Jerusalem is one of the main components of the Israel-Palestine conflict and as such part
of a narrative battle. There is no common and accepted truth about the history, the
everyday life, the administration, or the future of the city. The identity politics of
Jerusalem contains a number of narratives and one main characteristic is that they are
based on so called commemorations that play a large role in the construction of Jerusalem.
The commemorative narratives (Zerubavel, 1995) are used and produced in order to state a
claim. This paper focuses on narratives regarding territory and more specifically how these
narratives affect planning policy-making regarding a contested city, particularly inspired
by Margaret Somers idea on public narratives (2000). These collective memories, closely
incorporated in national identity, are created and reproduced in schools, in the military
system, by politicians, by authors, by civil servants, etc., through acts of commemoration.
Commemorative narratives could be connected to a larger framework – a so-called master
commemorative narrative. This master narrative is a wider statement of the collective
memory. Narratives are rarely undisputed. Where we find narratives we also find counternarratives causing a narrative battle and in the case of Jerusalem, narratives have the
39
capacity to ignite the conflict. It is therefore necessary to better understand the role of
these narratives within conflict contexts and within policy processes. The aim of this paper
is twofold; (1.) to distinguish the narratives of Jerusalem in political speeches, statements
and similar, and (2.) to examine the role they play in city planning policies and processes.
The paper is based on the analysis of a selection of texts within the time frame 1967-2015,
as well as an extensive interview material from 2007 and 2009. In addition, a follow-up
survey was performed in 2015.
References
Somers, Margaret, R. (1994) “The narrative constitution of identity: A relational and
network approach”. Theory and Society. Vol. 23:605-649.
Zerubavel, Yael (1995) Recovered roots. Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli
National Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Disseminating Narratives of “Threatened Traditional Culture” in Chinese
Policy-Making
ChristinaMaags
Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) discourses in the international and national realm have
played a major role in disseminating narratives on the need to protect “threatened” and
“disappearing” traditional culture. Originating from within the United Nations Educations,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), narratives on “the need for ICH
protection” tell the story of how and why traditional cultural practices are disappearing,
why they constitute a valuable and integral part of society and how they can be protected
from “destruction”. The UNESCO as well as national governmental actors and scholars
appropriate these narratives to “problematize” the protection of ICH in their conventions,
laws and policies (i.e. 2003 UNESCO Convention of Safeguarding Intangible Cultural
Heritage). These official narratives subsequently, have an impact on local actors as they
create a source of local meaning-making and identity formation. In addition, local actors
frequently adopt and potentially reframe these narratives in an attempt to enhance their
agency and pursue their interests. Focusing on the empirical case of PR China, this paper
employs the method of framing analysis to identify narratives on “the need for ICH
protection” as employed by various international and domestic actors: (1) the UNESCO,
(2) the Chinese party-state, (3) academics as well as (4) local cultural practitioners and
associations. It argues that policy-related narratives are used as a political tool to legitimize
policy choices, evoke public emotions (i.e. pride, patriotism, sense of identity) and trigger
action among a particular audience. In the construction of narratives, actors frequently
incorporate elements of previously existing narratives which have been officially
legitimized in order to equally legitimize their own claim. Ultimately, legitimization of
some narratives in contrast to others, however, leads to a hierarchy between official and
unofficial narratives which reflect pre-existing power relations.
The Policy on Force Revisited?
Tua Sandman
40
Although Sweden has increased its participation in peace-enforcing activities considerably
ever since the 1990s, the domestic political debate still seems to portray Sweden as a nonaligned, peace-loving nation, distanced from the violent practices associated with war and
armed conflict. Given the shift in policy, it is somewhat puzzling how such a selfconception has been sustained and vitalized over the years. To understand how the shift in
the policy on force has been enabled in the Swedish case it is arguably necessary to explore
how the link between policy and identity has been adjusted and maintained over time
(Hansen, 2006). My dissertation project deals with the notion of Swedish identity and the
policy on force in the context of third party military interventions, and explores how
violence has been (in)visibilized, (de)politicized and (de)legitimized in Swedish debate
from the 1960s until today. As part of this larger study, this particular paper will delve into
and examine in close detail the debates that unfolded during the transition from peacekeeping to peace-enforcement when the UN-led UNPROFOR was replaced by the NATOled IFOR in late 1995. This transition could be considered the starting point for Sweden’s
official engagement in peace-enforcing operations, and hence signifies a key moment for
the evolving tendency to accept involvement in violent interventions. By arguing that the
engagement in Bosnia represents a dislocation in the Swedish discourse and policy on
force, the paper will examine the debates and representations in public service
broadcasting (SVT) during this period to explore, what Glynos and Howarth (2007) have
called, ideological and ethical responses to the shifting character of the military
intervention. Is the dislocatory experience denied and concealed or acknowledged and
coped with? What sort of meaning-making processes are (re)activated? Above all, the
paper will draw attention to narratives on identity and violence, problematize whether
such narratives are reinterpreted and renegotiated, and whether violent practices are
recognized and legitimized in new ways.
Session 2 - Wednesday 6th July, 10.30-12.00
Narratives of change: How Social Innovation Initiatives engage with their
transformative ambitions
Julia Wittmayer; Julia Backhaus; Flor Avelino; Bonno Pel
Numerous initiatives worldwide aspire to contribute to social change towards more
sustainable, resilient and inclusive societies. In this paper, we approach their underlying
theories about transformative change as ‘narratives of change’, broadly defined as sets of
ideas, concepts, metaphors, discourses or story-lines about change and innovation. Such
narratives of change reveal, amongst other, why the world has to change, who has the
power to do so and how this can be done. A literature review supports this notion and
helps assembling a method to reconstruct and analyse narratives of change concerning
context, actors, plot, the production of narratives and their perceived role in social change
processes. Following this method, and using interviews, participant observation and
relevant documents as input, the narratives of change of three social innovation initiatives
are constructed, namely Ashoka, the Global Ecovillage Network and RIPESS.
41
Having been selected for their transformative ambitions, these three narratives
acknowledge that social change is necessary. Their comparison led to three main insights,
namely the great variety that exists in terms of the framing of the world, the driving actors
and the actual change process. It also revealed the great importance that social innovation
initiatives accord to narratives and stories and the different ways they engage in shaping
societal discourses. Lastly, narratives of change are not just ‘stories out there’, rather they
recount the theories of change which are practiced and acted upon by the very social
innovation initiatives which propagate them.
Gender and Climate Change Policy Making in Uganda: an analysis of
competing narratives
Mariola Acosta Francés;
Margit
van Wessel; Severine van Bommel; Peter Feindt
The integration of gender issues into climate change adaptation and mitigation policies has
progressed steadily in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. However, the way gender and
climate change is understood and communicated in policy-making circles will influence
the way and degree to which gender is incorporated into development plans. Ultimately, it
will also determine the extent to which these gender considerations will be effectively
implemented. The study aimed to identify the different narratives that exist on gender and
local climate change adaptation in policy-making spheres in Uganda and to examine their
political effects at the level of national policy making. For this, we followed an
interpretative approach to narrative policy analysis (Fisher 2003, Roe 1994, Van Eeten
2007, Wagenaar 2011), where the stories that technocrats and policy-makers relate to, and
make use of, to explain and rationalize policies are considered as significant drivers for the
policy formulation and implementation processes.
We attended several climate change thematic meetings, conducted thirty in-depth
interviews and systematically analyzed them. Interviewees included representatives of the
Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Water and Environment, the Climate Change
Department, NGO´s and national farmers associations. The multi-step narrative analysis
first identified over seven hundred story episodes, which were then inductively reconstructed to five overarching narratives. We then identified seventeen different stories
generated by these narratives. A critical engagement with the embedded arguments found
in these stories reveal a complex co-existence of competing narratives in policy-making
circles in Uganda. The “counter-narrative” of male supremacy directly confronted
“feminist narratives”, with the “reconciliatory narrative” acting as a bridge between the
two. These were complemented by the “structural inertia” and “gender nescience”
narratives. The five narratives showed different patterns of distribution in different stages
of the policy-cycle, with male supremacy narratives being clearly absent from gender
mainstreaming policy formulation processes. The paper uses the re-constructed narratives
to explain the difficulties faced by current climate change gendered programs and to
suggest conditions for, and elements of, an alternative gender narrative for more successful
future policy implementation. The paper also contributes to current discussions about
empirical methods for the analysis of competing policy narratives.
42
‘The New Ukrainian Woman’ and the narrative of transition
Oleksandra Tarkhanova
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, ‘the new Ukrainian woman’ was finally given
a chance to realize herself. She could become ‘a real woman’ and ‘a new citizen’, somehow
combining traditional, even archaic gender qualities, deeply embedded into the Soviet
gender regime and into the project of transition itself, with quasi-neoliberal expectations.
‘The new woman’ was expected to be ‘strong’, as she always was, and carry the
responsibility for children’s wellbeing through the harsh initial years of transition. She was
expected to be ‘caring’, as she always was, and have more children, take care of the young,
the sick and the old, when the state withdrew from the social sphere. She was expected to
be ‘pure’, to be the carrier of the new national identity. In my paper I address how
Ukrainian parliamentarians use the narrative of transition to frame, legitimize and enable
creation of this ‘new’ woman’s subjectivity. Putting the narrative of modernizing transition
into the core of the analysis, I am able to see how nationalistic, neo-liberal, and explicitly
gender traditionalist arguments are mobilized to put policies forward and consequently to
assemble the new subjectivity. The narrative of transition in this case is characterized by a
meaningful imaginary of the Soviet break down, subsequent economic, political and
welfare reforms, and accounts of the ‘actual’ hard situation of the common people. To show
how the woman’s subjectivity is conceptualized through the narrative of transition, I
analyse family policies, gender equality and employment regulations from 1989 till 2013.
Specifically, I refer to the policy documents (law proposals, laws, explanatory notes, and
ministerial directions) and to the parliamentary discussions of these legislative proposals.
Science narratives: the construction, mobilisation and validation of Hydro
Tasmania’s case for Basslink
Ronlyn Duncan
This paper examines how narratives have been used in policy settings to ‘manage’
uncertainty and the limitations of predictive modelling. The research follows the
assessment of a major energy infrastructure project that now links Australia’s southern
island state of Tasmania to the mainland, the Basslink under-sea electricity cable. The
analysis identifies within arguments presented by the project proponents, their scientists
and consultants key narratives that served to overcome data gaps, explain inconsistancies,
erase unexpected model outputs, contextalise findings and mobilise ontological claims.
The stories were found to be so compelling they were adopted by the regulatory body that
approved the project. It is concluded from the narrative analysis that the disclosure of
uncertainty can obscure as much as it reveals about the impacts of a development project.
Session 3 - Wednesday 6th July, 12.45-14.15
Gender Variance and the Indian State
Chitranshu Mathur; Navdeep Mathur
Narratives of gender variance, or the existence of identities, bodies, roles and expressions
which fall outside the binary stereotypes of gender, have long been a part of the history and
mythology of various societies including in India. The nature of gender variance and its
acceptance among society has changed over time, especially in the last century due to
43
advancements in medical technology and various forms of identity politics. However,
modern states have had an uneasy history of accepting gender variance, and the modern
Indian state, i.e. the colonial as well as the post-colonial state, is no exception, despite the
aforementioned narratives of gender variance in India. This might finally be changing with
the recent pronouncements on transgender rights by various arms – judicial, legislative
and executive – of the Indian state. However, concerns remain about the extent to which
these state actions will affect the lives of gender variant people in India. In this paper, I
employ Scott’s perspective of the “high modernist” state to examine the various narratives
of gender variance that have informed state policies about gender variance in India,
starting from the colonial state in the mid-nineteenth century followed by the post-colonial
state to the present-day policies on transgender rights. I shall also employ Butler’s theory
of ‘gender performativity’ and Young’s work on the meaning of justice for social groups and
the ‘politics of difference’ to examine the narratives employed by gender variant people in
India themselves to undermine the constraints placed on them by Indian society and the
state. In this process, I hope to illuminate the mechanisms by which complex lived realities
of people may be affected and even re-shaped by state action, which is important not just
in the context of gender variance but many other domains of state policy as well.
Climate compatible development for triple wins: Power, knowledge and
norms in an emergent policy discourse for environment and development
Laureen Elgert
‘Climate compatible development’ (CCD) has recently emerged as a platform for the
integration of climate change adaptation, mitigation and development (Davidson et al.,
2003; Ellis, Cambray, & Lemma, 2013; Mitchell & Maxwell, 2010a, 2010b). The 2010
World Bank Report argued that ‘climate change threatens to reverse development gains’
and that low-carbon, high resilience investments in developed and developing countries
can support poverty reductions goals (The World Bank, 2010: 39). In the same year, the
Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) declared that CCD “heralds a new
generation of development processes that safeguard development from climate impacts
(climate resilient development) and reduce or keep emissions low without compromising
development goals (low emissions development)” (http://cdkn.org). As a policy approach,
CCD has been largely treated as instrumental to achieving triple wins, a means of ‘getting
the policies right’ to optimize environment and development outcomes. A more politicized
approach to CCD as a policy discourse underpinned by narrative (Adger, Benjaminsen,
Brown, & Svarstad, 2001), and infused with power, politics, (M. Hajer, 2003; M. A. Hajer,
1995; Litfin, 1994), norms and values (Timothy Forsyth, 2003; Jasanoff & Martello, 2004)
is lacking. By analyzing references to CCD in academic and policy literatures and debates,
this paper will critically assess how and why this policy discourse has emerged and how it
represents both continuity and departures from its discursive forbearers such as
sustainable development and ecological modernization. I will assess the potential ways in
which this emergent environment/development discourse is imbued with:
44
Power (which agencies, entities and networks are promoting CCD and how does this
related to varied interests? What kinds of distributional patterns in terms of costs and
benefits might we expect to find in CCD interventions?);
Knowledge (how is the CCD agenda supported and advanced by research, science and local
knowledge? What is considered relevant knowledge?); and,
Norms (what outcomes are valued and prioritized by CCD?)
The challenge of urban infill: missing a trusted partner, Case Tampere, Finland
Markus Laine; Helena Leino; Minna Santaoja
For many cities, this development creates a challenge for city planning processes, which
are traditionally geared to zone new areas. Zoning in old urban neighborhoods faces
challenges that are absent in fringe. Densification and redevelopment of urban areas set
new challenges for public participation in urban planning, as public attitudes towards
compact development are best described as complex (Lewis & Baldassare 2010).
The usual setting for public participation where the city organizes a public hearing or two
and perhaps a participatory workshop does not work in the case of infill, as most of the
suitable infill sites are owned by housing companies. Thus, successful infill requires the
reconfiguration of city planning, participation and changing the ”script” and a narrative for
construction. Housing companies are not only (passive) citizen participants but active
decision makers in urban densification (Laine & Leino 2013).
In this article, we examine how infill construction reconfigures the understanding about
public participation, when the counterparts in interaction consist of the residents of the
housing companies owning the land. We apply the concept on trust in analysing the
different forms of trust and situations where trust surfaces one way or another in the
planning process of the Tammela district. The political and ideological values and the idea
of common good are still often not publicly addressed in the planning processes. This has
led researchers to discuss the crisis of trust in planning (Swain & Tait 2007, Tait 2011). The
practices are not being questioned only in urban planning, but new informal practices in
governance and planning are bringing up the question of legitimacy in many sectors of
public services (Häikiö & Leino 2014). Our analysis reveals how the new kind of ambiguous
planning situation may on the one hand lead to the loss of trust, and on the other hand
create opportunities for reinforcing trust, if the history of the place is taken seriously.
45
9 Expertise and the Moral Economies of Austerity
Panel Convenors: Paul Stubbs; Mislav Žitko
Session 1 - Tuesday. 5th July, 14.45-16.15
Between the Great Depression and the Great Recession: similarities and
divergences in the political domain of the crises
Alja Gudzevic
In this paper I will compare the two crisis, the political and economic domain dealing with
them and the social repercussions; the first one started in 1929 and the second one in
2008, both triggered by the Wall Street crash. Hereinafter I’ll focus on the Great
Depression in Germany, France and United Kingdom, limiting the analyzed period to the
outcome of World War II. Furthermore, including French and British dealing with the
economic circumstances and their political approach regarding the introduction of
Roosevelt’s New Deal, the comparison will be elaborated with a particular focus on
National Socialist’s economic policies with the New Deal. Regarding the crisis of 2008, the
central point will be the examination of the political and economic consequences of the
crisis in Greece in a European Union context of dealing with the crisis and austerity
measures. The main question is what are the consequences of this crisis in Greece, how the
political authorities replied, which policies were applied from its outcome till 2016. The
European Union’s politics regarding the Greek crisis will also be taken into analysis in
order to encapsulate the economic and political approaches on both levels, the
supranational and the state level one. Keynes ideas on the economical system as “the
fragile machine of which we don’t understand the functioning” will raise a comparison in
dealing and applying the possible governmental interventions in the economy to
manipulate the factors of economic production, producing desirable outcomes as answers
to the crisis and market failures. The analysis made by Joseph Stiglitz and Eric Toussaint
regarding the reconfiguration of globalisation, the resolution of economic crisis and debts
will be used as main sources in an analysis of possible modifications and changes to be
applied in a domain of a contemporary political economy. As a conclusion, I want to point
out the similarities and divergences in a different historical context in which I want to
consider the differences and resemblances in international politics, regarding the chosen
states and main actors representing them in a political arena, dealing with global economic
crises.
The Logic of Indebtedness: Advanced Capitalism and the Emerging World
Rebecca Warren; David Carter
Lazzarato (2012; 2015) advances a thesis based around a neo-liberal social relationship
and an organising logic concerning debt and subjection. Debt, in this instance, is basis of
social life. However, Eagleton, Slothus and others have criticised Lazzarato for being
Eurocentric. For example, the debt condition of credit and indebtedness, endemic in
Lazzarato’s work, is argued to be of value in the analysis of the working class in advanced
capital economies (such as in Europe), but is arguably less relevant in the poor of the
emerging economies of the world.
46
We argue that this is too simplistic as a form of analysis. What is crucial in this analysis is
that the State and international financial organisations (The World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, Development Banks and International Accounting Standards) play a
central role in supporting the debt economies of advanced capital economies. That is, the
lessons of the financial crisis, the Eurozone debt crises and continued financial instabilities
is the very lack of financial regulation, the continued liberalisation of financial/debt
markets and the re-institution of the status quo post-crisis through debt-funded bailouts.
This is also evident in the non-democratic nature of international financial institutions.
This is central to the neo-liberal agenda of austerity, privatisation and liberalisation:
Lazzarato (2012: 29) argues that the ‘power bloc of the debt economy has seized on the
latest financial crisis as the perfect occasion to extend and deepen the logic of neoliberal
politics’ (28).
However, the impact of the neo-liberal agenda is to construct the emerging economic
world as an opportunity for profiteering for financial capital. As the hegemony of advanced
financial capital is spread through economic imperialism, market liberalisation and
structural adjustment, emerging economies are treated as indirect extensions of
indebtedness (in the case of cheap labour, commodities and micro-credit) but also as a
space for the extension of indebtedness, such as through public-private partnerships and
export processing zones. We argue that the impact of this is that emerging economies are
being recreated as debt economies.
Financial expertise and the moral economy of debt
MislavŽitko
The onset of the Great recession marks a new period in which the discourse on debt went
through considerable change. Before the crisis, the age-old activities of saving and
borrowing were in the process of being redefined according to the prerogatives of
financialized capitalism. The so-called new economy has remarkably transformed these
activities, making them a part of the financial world in which every actor is free to choose
in what assets to invest, and what liabilities to take on board. The years of “boring” retail
banking were behind us, thus mortgagors, credit-card holders and other borrowers were
seen as entrepreneurs who manage theirs risks, rather than social actors with
unsustainable financial habits. The realm of public finance, notwithstanding the
Maastricht, was also largely seen as a discretionary tool of government to be used in
appropriate situations without any fear of oversight or penalties. In this paper, we will
examine the transformation of the moral economy of debt that took place immediately
after the first wave of crisis in 2008 with a particular accent on the role of economics. We
wish to describe the economic and political consequences of this shift, first at the state
level and then at the level of household. The theoretical framework for this task is given by
the work of Marion Fourcade and Paul Langley inasmuch as we will examine the interplay
of moral judgement and “objective” benchmarks within expert discourse.
Session 2 - Tuesday. 5th July, 16.30-18.00
The virtues of Austerity: imagining moral economies after the crisis.
47
John Clarke; Janet Newman
In this paper, we argue that imagined and projected moral economies have played a central
part in the re-establishment of economic, social and political disciplines after the crash of
2008. We examine the dramatis personae who populate these moral economies – the
indebted and the responsible; the indigent and the credit-worthy; the borrowers and the
lenders; the ideologues or populists and the technocrats. We consider how these figures
are enacted in a moral landscape structured by a topography of Virtue. These virtues are
understood as both eternal and as urgently needed in the (long) moment of crisis. They
include responsibility, independence, hard work, the payment of taxes, and submission to
authority. Each is the focus of difficult political-cultural work to fix their meaning and to
resist instabilities and contradictions (e.g., around forms of irresponsibility that challenge
the dominant account).
We will show that this landscape of virtues is imagined as connecting the individual, the
family, the nation and the international system. Submission to the moral economies that
circulate these virtues is, we conclude, partial and uneven – in part because of the
instabilities and contradictions discussed; and in part because of the circulation of
alternative moral economies.
Operationalizing Austerity: Exploring the Role of Transnational Professional
Service Firms in Local Government Restructuring
Chris Hurl
Since the 2008 economic crisis, the ‘Big Four’ professional service firms (KPMG, Deloitte,
PwC, Ernst and Young) have aggressively targeted the public sector with the aim of
expanding their market in management consulting. As a part of these efforts, they have
packaged and promoted service delivery reviews to local governments, offering
consultations with the aim of identifying areas where savings can be accrued and services
streamlined. Taking up Toronto’s Core Service Delivery Review (2011) as a case study, this
paper examines the efforts of KPMG consultants to operationalize austerity through
generating a metric that determines the ‘necessity’ of public services. Drawing from the
recent literature on neoliberal governmentality, critical policy mobilities, and the sociology
of expertise, I examine the conditions of possibility for the production of this metric.
Specifically, what kinds of schema were deployed in determining whether a service was a
‘must-have’ or merely a ‘nice-to-have’? What forms of expertise were relied upon? And to
what extent were these experts able to position themselves as authorities in speaking to the
'proper' levels of service delivery? Finally, exploring the public response to KPMG’s final
report, I trace the various ways in which local actors have contested the logic of austerity,
advancing alternative understandings of public service standards rooted in moral
economies of community well-being and accountability.
Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick, Slow: expertise and the temporalities of austerity
Paul Stubbs
Austerity discourses attempt to both ‘tell the time’ and construct ‘temporal imperatives’.
They classify ‘policy worlds’ into pasts, presents and futures and, above all, argue that
48
‘there is no alternative’ to the ‘rapid’ adoption of policy prescriptions often originating
outside the policy space being targeted. Transnational expertised institutions (St Clair,
2006) and their agents are proponents of ‘fast policy’ (Peck and Tickell, 2015), an acute
example of the acceleration of policy and its translation across space and time, marked by
‘shortened policy development cycles’, ‘intensity of cross-jurisdictional exchanges’,
‘compressed reform horizons’, and ‘prescriptively coded front-loaded advice and
evaluation science’ (ibid). Expertise in the transition from socialism to capitalism,
advocating ‘shock therapy’, frequently invoked this ‘rapdity’. A cartoon depicting a (male)
consultant telephoning home from Poland in the early 1990s expressed this somewhat
clearly: “I am here to privatise the economy; I should be back by Friday” (cited in Wedel,
2001). However, when we remember that consultants’ time is measured in days,
politicians’ time in four- or five year electoral cycles and permanent civil servants in
working life until retirement, it should be obvious that the movement of policy becomes a
‘contact zone’ (Pratt, 1992) of different rhythms and senses of time, and different
constructions of temporality (Clarke, Bainton, Lendvai and Stubbs, 2015). This paper
offers an initial theoretical and empirical exploration of the role of temporalities in the
moral economies of austerity, examining the similarities and differences between 1990s
‘shock therapy’, the ‘Greek crisis’ and continued resistance to the mantras of reform in
parts of the post-Yugoslav space.
Enforcing austerity through a discrete calculative infrastructure: the evolving
definition of “public-private partnerships” (PPPs) in the European System of
Accounts (ESA)
Damien
Piron
Setting up the basis of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), European leaders
among others decided to increase budgetary coordination among member states by
limiting public debt and deficit to respectively 60% and 3% of their GDP. They also decided
to define those concepts according to a harmonized metrology, the European System of
National and Regional Accounts (ESA). Due to its long experience in national accounting,
the Statistical Office of the European Union, Eurostat, was then given the responsibility of
interpreting the ESA’s grey areas. Because of the initial lack of precision of this statistical
standard, opportunities to do so soon appeared. Consequently, Eurostat’s rulings have
gradually built a genuine “statistical case law” (Savage 2005). The case of public-private
partnerships (PPPs) offers excellent insights on the political dimensions at stake in this
law-making process. In the last decade, the use of PPPs as financing mode of public
infrastructure has dramatically increased throughout Europe, thereby forcing Eurostat to
edict various guidelines about the proper classification of those financial schemes. While
the statistical office’s opinion on PPPs used to be regarded as liberal in the 2000s, it
nowadays seems far less conciliatory.
Based on documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with key European and
Belgian senior civil servants, this study tackles the following questions: according to which
criteria are PPPs recorded as either governmental or private expenditures? How have these
requirements evolved over the last decade? Finally, how have these changes affected the
49
policies led by EMU member states? Combining insights from sociology of quantification
and public policy analysis, this paper aims at showing the hidden political aspects of such
definitional choices, hence the importance of re-politicising this kind of a priori technical
issues. The empirical analysis indeed shows significant changes in the statistical definition
of “PPPs” provided by Eurostat since the outbreak of the Euro area crisis, leading to the
reclassification of countless projects in the governmental sector’s balance sheet. As a
consequence, the deficit position of several member states, such as Belgium, has been
dramatically worsened, leading to a new wave of austerity measures.
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11 Bringing linguistic ethnography to interpretive
policy analysis and interpretive policy analysis to
linguistic ethnography
Panel Convenors: Sara Shaw; Laura Eyre; Sarah Hayes; Jill Russell
Session 1 - Wednesday, 6th July, 12.45-14.15
Could linguistic ethnography extend our understanding of underrepresentation of women in leadership positions?: The case of women GPs
on Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) in England
ImeldaMcDermott
A key rationale underpinning the formation of new Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs)
is that general medical practitioners (GPs) are best placed to commission services on
behalf of their patients. Clinical leadership is to be the “defining feature” of the system, and
underpins how CCGs will be “successful” (Department of Health, 2010). During the
legislative process that culminated in the Health and Social Care Act 2012, the importance
of clinical leadership at all levels was stressed again and again. However, despite women
constituting 60% of medical school entrants and 60% of GP Registrars (senior trainees) in
England (Iacobacci, 2013; Future Forum, 2011), women GP leaders are significantly underrepresented in CCG leadership positions. Moreover, a survey of all developing CCGs found
that only 146 out of 721 (20.2%) GP Governing Body members are women (Checkland et
al., 2012). Most of the ‘solutions’ offered focused on structural factors such as coaching and
mentoring, having role models to aspire to, childcare and family support, and having
flexible posts (Newman 2011, Newman 2015).
This paper is part of a longitudinal study following the development of CCGs since their
inception in 2011 (McDermott et al., 2015; Checkland et al., 2012). Data collection for this
paper took place between September 2011 and June 2012. It involved in-depth qualitative
case studies in 8 emerging CCGs and two national web-based surveys. We observed a wide
variety of different types of meetings (approx. 439 hours), conducted semi-structured
interviews with GPs and managers (n=96), and analysed available documents such as
meeting minutes, strategy plans and draft constitutions. This paper analysed the language
used by women GPs on CCG Governing Bodies (n=11), focusing on their ‘styles of
discourse’ (Fairclough, 2004). It attempts to explore how detailed linguistic analysis could
extend our understanding of the under-representation of women GPs in leadership
positions. Hence it grapples with the question of how and in what ways linguistic
ethnography can benefit interpretive policy analysis.
Researching health care policy and planning: what can a dialogue between
linguistic ethnography and interpretive policy analysis add?
Sara Shaw; Jill Russell
We locate ourselves in a growing community of researchers who are bringing interpretive
approaches to bear on issues of health policy and health service delivery. Interpretive
Policy Analysis offers a valuable lens through which we have been able to think about (and
analyse) policymaking as involving dialogue, argument and interaction. However, as we
51
have pursued lines of enquiry in health policy and planning (for instance, on the use of
technology in healthcare consultations) so this focus has necessitated our searching out
and adopting more linguistically sensitive approaches. What has followed is a dialogue
between Interpretive Policy Analysis and Linguistic Ethnography (concerned with the
study of language-in-use) that, we argue, has enabled us to productively employ an eclectic
mix of methodological strategies in our research.
In this paper, we draw on two research projects that explicitly engage with this dialogue:
one focused on the role of think tanks in shaping health policy and planning, and the other
on the place of ‘rationality’ in health care rationing. Rather than focus on the overall
research design and methodology, we use worked analyses of extended data extracts from
each of these projects to examine what this dialogue means in practice and hone in on the
ways in which this dialogue has: increased our appreciation of text and context, extended
our understanding of how and why different linguistic resources are employed in health
policy and planning, encouraged us to undertake close analysis of dispersed micro-level
policy practices (in ways that are unusual for linguistic ethnography) and pushed us to
evidence our analysis (in ways not traditionally undertaken within interpretive policy
analysis). We conclude by asking participants to reflect on the potential challenges and
benefits of engaging with, and potentially extending, this dialogue.
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12 RETHINKING 'RESEARCHER' AND
'POLICYMAKER' INTERACTIONS Panel Convenors: Laura Eyre; Sara Shaw; Jay Shaw
Thursday, 7th July 12.45-14.15
Re-making 'Researcher' and 'Policymaker' Interactions?
Peter Matthews
This paper reports from a project co-produced with policymakers at a UK Government
department. The project used the metaphor of “translation” to interrogate the process by
which evidence from the world of academia might get into policymaking processes. It
emerged from a mutual frustration between the academics and policymakers that this
process did not go well and it did seem as though the two groups were speaking from
different worlds. In co-producing the research, the team sought to specifically entangle
themselves to make interactions between the researchers and policymakers different and
more productive – trying to create one world, instead of translating between two.
However, the process of co-production, and particularly the reflections of the co-researcher
(a government policy researcher), revealed that academic practices and culture were quite
different, with academics having particular local knowledge (Yanow 2004) that was in a
quite different cultural context to that of civil servants.
The project sought to use the findings of the research to create “tools” to better facilitate
working between academics and policy-makers. To this end the paper will mainly consist
of a practical demonstration of a tool developed out of the project to facilitate a better
understanding of the local knowledge of academic practice – a set of “Academic Archetype
Cards”. The session will allow participants to consider how the cards might help them in
interactions with policy-makers as either used by academics to reflect on their own
behaviour, or to help policymakers understand the different motivations and behaviours
academics might exhibit. The session will be fed-back to project members as we further
develop the tools.
Yanow, D. (2004). "Translating local knowledge at organizational peripheries." British
Journal of Management 15(Special Issue): 9 - 25.
Meeting on the Bridge: A Meta-Analysis
Neta Sher-Hadar
Throughout history, the relationship between academics and practitioners has been widely
recognized as highly complex. This complexity is usually explained as the product of
struggles over the hierarchy of knowledge or its different purposes. However, even when
these explanations are put aside, the two groups still encounter difficulties: the relevance
of academic writing for the practitioners and vice versa; the quality of the discourse; the
terms of engagement; the respective roles of each group; and more.
This presentation suggests another explanation for the complexity involved in bridging
between academics and practitioners. This explanation relates to the layers of
epistemological differences between the two groups, and particularly to differences in
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contextual epistemology—that is, in the different influence of a given context (the setting
within which discourse takes place, and/or its subject) on the epistemological approaches
of each group.
The presentation’s argument is based on a four-year action research conducted while coteaching public policy to practitioners with a practitioner, and while engaging in real-life
policy issues with practitioners who sought our assistance. Our co-teaching was founded
on a belief in the importance and potential of dialogue between practice and academia.
However, we quickly discovered that this dialogue resembled an intense sparring session,
which asked searching questions about our stated and tacit assumptions and knowledge,
our teaching and learning methods, and the respective roles of teachers and learners.
Having survived these repeated intense interactions, we believe that our reflection on the
process holds value for other collaborations between practitioners and academics.
Who is Who? When policymakers become researchers and vice versa
David Laws; Martien Kuitenbrouwer
This paper explores the research-policymaker interaction on the basis of a multi-year
partnership with frontline practitioners working on urban governance. This parternship
developed in the context of the Public Mediation Programme at the University of
Amsterdam. This program seeks to develop interaction between researchers and
policymakers around public conflicts.
Research in the case has a double character. It involves an effort to engage with frontline
practitioners in a shared analysis of core practices in order to better understand how the
conflicts—that continue to be surprising to those involved - can be linked to features of the
institutional settings in which they work, to the sequencing of (inter)action with citizens,
and to the language and repertoire that they employ. The interactions were also a shared
effort to examine the factors that shapes the policymakers’ capacity to reflect on their
experience and rethink the practical designs through which they work light of this
reflection.
The case is organized as a multi-method approach. The projects to be included were
identified jointly. In each project, both the policy practitioners and citizens were
interviewed about the relevant background of the case. This allowed a preliminary analysis
of the commonalities and differences in the framing of this history. Meetings with citizens
and other stakeholders were observed and extended written summaries were prepared
made based on these observations. On the basis of these summaries, critical moments in
these meetings were identified and analysed in terms of organizational settings and
behavior, together with policymakers. Additional reflections sessions engaged themes that
were common across meetings and critical moments within meetings. Over time, the
sequencing of meetings and work between meetings was added. The practitioners were
also interviewed about their experience. Together this set of shared activities produced a
case and the reflection on the case that became the basis for practitioners’ efforts to
address themes in the organization of their work and in their behavior.
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In the context of this partnership, we will analyze how the relationship between
researchers and policymakers was defined and then renegotiated in the effort to make
sense of the changing demands on practice.
The production of knowledge across policy-focused research institutions
Kate Williams
This paper examines the production of knowledge across policy-focused research
institutions. In particular, it is concerned with how institutional features such as funding
and evaluation shape research conducted in different institutional contexts, namely:
universities, think tanks and government research agencies. Based on comparative case
studies with 12 research organisations in the UK, Australia and the US in the field of
international development, I use three types of analyses: (i) document analysis (policy and
institutional) (ii) quantitative analysis of research outputs and (iii) discursive analysis of
semi-structured interviews. There is currently a great deal of interdisciplinary work on
knowledge production being conducted globally, particularly in the UK and the US. My
research intervenes in this context by demonstrating how policy/practice-focused research
organisations in the interstitial field of international development negotiate institutional
alliances, economic constraints and intellectual resources in order to establish the
reputation and symbolic capital necessary for policy impact and intellectual change.
Specifically, my research intervenes by providing (i) a new sociological approach to
conceptualising the role of researchers and policymakers in creating intellectual change,
drawing on positioning theory and sociology of intellectual interventions, and (ii)
providing evidence for the power of funding and evaluation processes and practices in
shaping policy research strategies and outcomes in a highly contested applied field. These
contributions open a new direction for empirical study of research across different
intellectual fields, institutional contexts and countries.
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13 De-/Re-politicizing communities as spaces of
power
Mandy de Wilde; Gerald Taylor Aiken
Session 1 - Thursday, 7th July 08.30-10.00
Silencing voices through “politicization”? how political parties de-politicize
and how emergent communities re-politicize
Eva Wolf
Various scholars plead for the re-politicization of Western societies (Burnham, 2001;
Bauman, 2002; Hay, 2007). They discern a trend of policy-making that relies on expertise
unconnected to ideology, and organized away from political debate and democratically
elected decision-makers. Such scholars argue that this trend of removing the political from
public policy-making, called “de-politicization”, hampers the expression of political
identities and alienates people from their democratic governments. They often express a
desire for relocating decision-making to the realm of political parties, as to re-engage the
public with the democratic representatives that govern them. While I sympathize with the
general thrust of this argument, I wish to add to it by demonstrating that strong political
parties offer by themselves no guarantee for opening up the public space for multiple
voices. More so, when strong political parties are the primary decision makers on
contested policy issues, they can smother alternative voices by silencing, neglecting or
marginalizing them.
My argument is based on a case-study of policy conflict surrounding the construction of
the so called “Oosterweelconnection” in Antwerp (Belgium), for which I conducted 34 indepth narrative interviews with political, administrative and civic stakeholders. The
analysis of the Oosterweel policy conflict demonstrates that, for a long time, voices that
were critical of Oosterweel were denied legitimacy in at least three ways. Within political
parties, dissenting voices were silenced. Outside of political parties, dissenting voices, civic
as well as administrative, were neglected. And, when neglect was no longer possible due to
the growth of civic protest, critique of Oosterweel was marginalized.
The paper demonstrates that strong party-politics can have the effect of suppressing rather
than acknowledging dissenting voices. It also demonstrates how conflict can produce
emergent communities that recapture politics, resist attempts at being smothered, and
reintroduce a multiplicity of perspectives into the public debate. I conclude with a plea for
a more nuanced thinking about how to re-politicize the public domain in a way which
opens up, rather than closes down, the space for multiple voices.
Constructing and Deconstructing the Transition Signifier: from apolitical
consensus to re-politicising difference
Rowan Jackson
While the Transition Town’s have spread rapidly across the UK (and worldwide) over the
last decade, a peculiarity of the movement is that its strength is simultaneously its
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weakness. That is, Transition’s inclusive and non-confrontational apolitical ethos has
enabled worldwide uptake but limited its ability to grow at the community scale.
This paper presents 3 years (2013-2015) of qualitative research from 3 separate Transition
initiatives in the North of England. Analysing the articulation of Transition’s collective
identity, using Laclauian discourse analysis, this paper examines the articulation of the
‘nodal point’ of the Transition Movement and the avoidance of political confrontation.
Firstly, examination of interview data revealed that the naming of projects and initiatives
as ‘Transition’ forms the ‘nodal point’ (master signifier), quilting discursive difference
between members, the result of which is an articulation of the chain of signification under
the assumption of consensus and/or obfuscation of transition goals. While negating
‘political' difference the Transition movement advocates a form of material politics;
achieving change with ‘the hands’ not political confrontation.
Transition’s material politics is problematic as it regards community spaces as without
political affect; the reality is materials interventions, too, have political affects. This second
section examines a discursive disjunction between the success of gardening initiatives and
failure of community energy projects. Analysis of interviewee discourses associated the act
of gardening with performative acts of fraternity and morality, and a visible materialisation
of action; these spaces were characterised by consensus and mutuality. Community energy
projects, conversely, operated in public spaces not characterised by simple consensus, as in
the garden, but different affected interests of heterogeneous interest groups and
community-wide actors. Interviews reflected this disjunction between activities conducted
within the safe spaces of the group (i.e. gardening) and the community space (i.e. energy
projects). Addressing this disjunction required a ‘scale-jump’ to confront the purview of
community with their obscure ‘political’ position. Central to Transition projects achieving
momentum, as this paper will argue, is recognition that their goals are inherently political.
Forming a strong identity requires recognition of political difference between both
Transition participants and other community actors; necessitating a (re-)politicisation of
difference.
Are sustainable development and community-led carbon reduction
incompatible? Two case studies from remote rural Scotland
Emily Creamer
It is often assumed that the ‘turn to governance’, and the shift towards self-governing
communities, represents a more equitable and effective form of decision-making, and is
therefore more likely to deliver ambitions of sustainable development. To date, however,
there is little evidence that this is necessarily the case. Drawing on participant observation
within two community-led organisations in remote rural Scotland, this paper explores how
the ‘community’ of policymakers is translated at the local level through the lens of the
Scottish Government’s ‘Climate Challenge Fund’ (CCF). Findings reveal that, whilst both
the organisations embodied the core characteristics of ‘community’, the assumption,
inherent within the CCF, that they represented the wider geographic communities in which
they operated, was unfounded; only a very small proportion of the population of these two
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places were actively involved in the projects. Instead, through the process of forming and
developing an action group, the (local and extra-local) individuals involved had created
new ‘communities-within-communities’. That is, rather than a pre-existing, geographic
‘community’ coming together to take action on climate change and drawing on the
resources of the CCF for support, the CCF was acting as a condensation nucleus around
which a new community had formed. Assuming that the overarching aim of employing
communities in a climate change initiative, such as the CCF, is to widen the uptake of more
sustainable lifestyles beyond those who are already engaged, this suggests that the current
strategy may not be a particularly effective approach. Further to this, the CCF resources
intended to strengthen and empower ‘the community’ were being channeled exclusively
into a specific sub-community, generating isolated pockets of social capital within the
groups themselves. As argued previously (e.g. Putnam, 2000; Bridger and Luloff, 2011),
instead of strengthening geographic communities, pockets of social capital have the
potential to be socially divisive. Consequently, the CCF may not only be an ineffective way
to increase the uptake of more sustainable lifestyles, but may even serve to weaken local
social sustainability.
Towards a neo-communitarian eco-city: An ethnography of two Transition
Towns
S.S. Jhagroe
Cities symbolise progress but also the dark side of modernity. In the context of economic
and environmental deprivation, we can observe numerous alliances between governments,
businesses and civil society actors to create more healthy, sustainable and resilient cities.
The transition towards sustainable cities is often considered to be process of technical
management, inclusive governing and effective cooperation between actors. This dominant
tendency can be considered as post-political management that downplays radical
antagonisms and fundamental disagreements regarding urban futures (Swyngedouw,
2009).
This paper examines how bottom-up networks politicise and radically transform modern
urban economics and culture. It presents an ethnographic account of two Dutch Transition
Towns (TT Rotterdam and The Hague). In the late 2000s, TT emerged as a transnational
network pursuing a carbon-neutral and sustainable societies ‘themselves’. Since their
emergence, TT in Rotterdam and The Hague have been struggling against dominant
capitalist and individualistic culture, and experimenting with alternatives in various
domains: renewable energy sources, sharing and gift-based economy, growing your own
food, a new sense community and alternative models on health and medicine. These TT
networks seek to reconfigure urban economic and ecological life by social and institutional
experimentation. This political eco-rationality mixes of old and new urban challenges and
reintroduces traditional knowledge and practices (farming, sharing, artisan bread baking,
etc.) in high-modern cities. I call this imaginary that is also enacted materially by TT
networks a neo-communitarian eco-city.
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These ethnographic accounts are informed by dozens of in-depth interviews with TT
participants and stakeholders, and a couple of months of participatory observations in
these networks. Coding methods and discourse analysis were used to map, cluster and
reflect on the empirical materials. Even though TT networks do cooperate with many
stakeholders, I argue that they do re-politicise contemporary economy-nature and statesociety relations and experiment with post-capitalist economics and transnational politics.
It can be argued that urban neo-communitarianism, in the TT case, radicalises and
rearticulates the modern eco-political imaginary.
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14 The global energy transition as an interpretive
problem: issues, incidents and interpretations
Tamara Metze; Jennifer Dodge
Session 1 - Tuesday 5th July, 12.45-14.15
The public media discourse on biofuels in Germany: Actors, Argumentation
and Advocacy Coalitions
JudithPuttkammer
The initial point of this study is the determination of a discrepancy in German biofuel
policy: The German government continues to support biofuels although especially first
generation biofuels have been rejected as inefficient by scientific experts for many years.
To investigate the underlying interests and policy core beliefs that drive the persistent
support for biofuels, the paper analyzes the public discourse on biofuels in Germany for
the period from 1995 to 2012. It is argued that such an analysis is highly relevant in the
context of interest group research as media discourses influence public opinion as well as
political decision-making. In a first step, the actors involved are identified as well as their
argumentation by means of a discourse analysis. Based on this, a cluster analysis is
conducted that investigates which actors share similar policy core beliefs and thus are
likely to act as an advocacy coalition. Central findings of the study are that i) political and
economic actors have a higher standing in the debate than scientific and civil-societal
actors, ii) the most important Federal Ministries involved showed themselves opposed to
the positioning of their own scientific advisory councils, iii) some actors showed a highly
consistent structure of argumentation through the entire sample period, while others
adopt much more to policy events and changing public perceptions by modifying their
arguments and iv) the actors involved can be classified into four clusters; Whereas the
German Petroleum Industry is argumentatively widely isolated, environmental NGOs as
well as the German Farmers’ Association have good chances to find advocates in the
discourse.
Societal conflict on energy technology: the interplay between formal and
informal assessment
Eefje Cuppen & Aad Correlje
The implementation of new energy technologies frequently leads to societal conflict. Think
for instance of wind parks, carbon capture and storage, biofuel, and hydrogen. Both
expert-analytic and participatory approaches to inform decision-making on technology
tend to avoid conflict with citizens, either by including a predetermined set of public values
to be assessed by experts, or by consensus-building with citizens. Whilst both approaches
have their merits, they under-utilize the value of conflicting rather than shared viewpoints
for learning. In this paper we therefore take the position that controversies can be regarded
as an informal assessment of the energy project. Societal conflicts articulate public values
that are related to the new energy technology and they give insight into potential societal
and ethical impacts and risks. This informal trajectory of public value articulation takes
place in interaction with a formal trajectory of public value articulation, in which a fixed
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repertoire of procedures, standards, tools, and policy arrangements is used for establishing
a collective appraisal of the new technology.
Hydraulic fracturing as an interpretive problem: lessons on energy
controversies in Europe and the US
Jennifer Dodge & Tamara Metze
This paper addresses hydraulic fracturing for shale gas extraction as an interpretive
problem. Bringing together empirical cases from Germany, Poland, The Netherlands, The
United Kingdom, and the United States, we identify three approaches to interpretation of
hydraulic fracturing: understanding its meaning, contextual explanation of the
institutionalization of its meaning, and policy design as intervention to alter its meaning.
Two central tensions in the meaning of shale gas are present in all cases: 1) economic
opportunity or environmental threat; and, 2) transition toward a more carbon free energy
future or perpetuation of a fossil fuel system. We found that when actors shift the meaning
of hydraulic fracturing to consider it predominantly an issue of threat this explains the
dominance of risk governance as an approach to managing the controversy. Alternately,
when the meaning of fracking shifts from consideration as an economic opportunity or a
bridge fuel to consideration of it as a barrier to an energy transition, this explains the
decision to ban fracking.
Session 2 - Tuesday, 5th July, 14.45-16.15
Heideggerian approaches to community transitions
GeraldTaylor Aiken
This paper takes up the challenge in the call for papers to analyse the ways in which energy
transitions and grassroots initiatives are subject to varying interpretations, from either the
inside and outside. It situates itself in the field of community low carbon transitions, the
ways in which community has emerged as a favoured response to energy challenges.
Community here is both a bottom-up movement for change, and a top-down delegation of
responsibility and agency. The paper is based on in-depth ethnographic work with
community transition initiatives employing new energy technologies, in both use and
production. It then takes this empirical data and addresses the various ways in which this
community was understood. Broadly these understandings fall into two camps: the
‘outside’ funders, sponsors, regulators and policy makers; and the ‘inside’ volunteers, staff
workers, residents and neighbours who comprised the community initiative directly.
Theoretically, this paper introduces the Heideggerian terms Zuhanden and Vorhanden to
studies of community transitions. It sets apart Zuhandenheit community as involvement:
the doing, enacting and belonging aspects of community movements and activism.
Vorhandenheit community contrastingly is observed, community as an object at arms
length, to be studied, deployed or used. The paper introduces this new theoretical
understanding, before addressing the grassroots initiatives, where both Vorhanden and
Zuhanden subjectivities can be found. The article further builds on authors who have
utilised these concepts in spatial theory by adopting their associated spatialisation of
involvement and containment. By focusing on specific transition projects the paper can
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more clearly grasp both the tensions emerging from state-funded community transitions
and the limits and possibilities that appreciating community action phenomenologically
can open up.
New subjectivities in energy politics: The German controversy on fracking
Stefanie Wodrig
The German energy transition has unsettled sedimented power structures in the energy
sector, traditionally being almost exclusively dominated by huge, semi-private companies.
Whereas fossil energy has been processed in huge, centrally administered plants,
renewables promise to decentralize power generation, thereby enabling the emergence of a
more heterogeneous energy sector. Yet, instead of being a linear process away from those
former structures of domination, fossil energy industries try to uphold their position by,
for instance, planning to expand national oil and gas extraction with help of the technology
hydraulic fracturing (in short, fracking). The paradox between energy transition and
expanded oil and gas extraction, however, seems to open new forms of politicisation of
fossil energy. In previous decades, apart from environmental organizations, the Northern
German public was not paying much attention to the oil and gas production in their
neighbourhood. Yet, the reassembling of the production with fracking opened up ‘new
points of vulnerability, where experts and professional politicians might become liable,
once again, to the claims of those through whose lives new arrangements must be
built’ (Mitchell 2013, 241). In other words, the German Energiewende did not only
empowered former ‘users’ of energy to become ‘producers.’ The transition is also
accompanied by new frictions and conflicts that enable the wider politicisation of the field.
In this paper, I explore how these diverse Northern German forces shape and *are shaped*
by the controversy on fracking.
Context making in energy transitions: analyzing governance and societal
innovation
Jesse Hoffman
Current energy transitions witness the emergence of myriad coalitions of societal actors
that experiment with novel energy innovations. Where classical state institutions
experience difficulties in addressing sustainability problems, such coalitions form a
promising basis for a governance of transformative change. Yet, these coalitions of firms,
citizens, scientists, designers, and others come with their own perils and politics: their
temporary, impromptus and ‘in-between’ character eludes formal regulation. Moreover, as
they span boundaries between disparate regimes they are bound to run into the resistances
of dominant discourses and the inertia of existing (infra)structures. This paper explores
how the dynamics in these coalitions help to understand the politics of energy transitions
and the governance of transformation in general. Drawing on the findings in my PhD
research, it develops a conceptual framework for the creative work of actors in such
networks and discusses its insights into a governance perspective on (energy) transitions
beyond the classical political arena’s of the state.
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In order to do so, this paper is set up as follows. First, it will develop a heuristic framework
for analyzing the social practices through which such coalitions emerge, and through which
they come to transform their environment. Theoretically, I will draw on recent work on
practices, including the work of Elizabeth Shove, the Key Note speaker for this conference,
and recent discussions in the power literature on synergies between theories of domination
and empowerment. Empirically, I will draw on my research in a longitudinal case study of
wind energy development in Denmark, and two ethnographic studies of recycling in the
port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands and greenhouse innovation in the Dutch agriculture.
Secondly, it will discuss how the relational framework thus developed contributes to the
study of the governance of structural change. In this discussion I will argue that that the
framework helps to grasp how specific innovative practices become interpretive vehicles
for structural change as actors involved recognize, renegotiate, and reach out to
opportunities resident in existing structures. In doing so, it also contributes to an
understanding of the diversity of societal domains (potentially) involved in energy
transitions.
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15 Policies, practice and critique: exploring the
practice perspective in critical policy studies
Kathrin Braun; Anne Loeber
Session 1 Wednesday 6th July 08.30-10.00
Non-invasive prenatal testing in Germany and the challenges for public
participation, policy-making and public reflexivity. A revolution through
routine?
Sabine Könnender & Kathrin Braun
Prenatal diagnosis (PND) certainly is the most important area of genetic testing. In many
countries testing the unborn for genetic or chromosomal aberrations has become standard
practice in prenatal care. The routinization of PND has been characterized as an “invisible
revolution” (Löwy) that has profoundly transformed prenatal care but rarely been subject
to public controversy or debate; a revolution through routine. Currently, non-invasive
prenatal genetic testing (NIPT) is about to transform prenatal testing again: from an
invasive, risky procedure to a simple blood draw. Is it another revolution through routine?
While its transformative potential could be dramatic, policy debate - so far - seems
fragmented and sparse.
The paper will present preliminary findings from our research project on the introduction
and contextualization of NIPT in Germany. Our focus is on processes and spaces of public
participation within the governance of NIPT.
Starting from a broad concept of public participation that goes beyond formal participatory
arrangements and includes civic participation in public debate, such as protest events,
ethics committees or arms lengths bodies, we will map out the spaces where participatory
governance of NIPT takes place.
Drawing on the sociology of critique (Boltanski, Thevenot, Chiapello), we are interested in
the practices of justification and critique of civic participation actors: How do they account
for the innovation process of NIPT and their own intervention or non-intervention
therein? Do they interpret their involvement in terms of disruption and critique or in terms
of routine? What types of critique do we see and what reactions to it? Which regimes of
justification are being evoked? Are there any spaces for more fundamental questions such
as questions about the meaning, desirability and direction of the innovation process or
possible alternatives to it? Where, how and under what conditions can civic participation
open up a space for public reflexivity and critique?
Doing laundry 2.0: Transforming energy practices in the home and society
S.S. Jhagroe
This paper examines how the introduction of smart energy technologies transforms
domestic energy practices and a wider assemblage of practices. Electricity providers and
grid operators explore new energy management systems due to recent challenges in
residential electricity systems (e.g. peak electricity demand, distribution loss) (Darby,
2010). Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS), for example, introduce ‘smartness’
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into the home and shift demands to off-peak times, storage local capacities and reduce
electricity consumption. In view of ‘smartification’ of the home, domestic energy practices
become subject to problematisation and modification.
This contribution addresses these changes by presenting a Domestic Energy Practices
Transition (DEPT) framework. Drawing on insights from Transition Studies, Social
Practice Theory and Science and Technology Studies, I argue that domestic energy
practices (e.g. cleaning) are embedded in wider assemblage of practices and rhythms (e.g.
being hygienic and clean, managing grid fluctuations, using a washing machine weekly).
HEMS connect big data (e.g. weather forecast), smart appliances (communicating white
goods) and local energy sources (PV, battery) to existing and routinised washing, cooking,
cleaning and leisure practices. Transformation of domestic energy practices and ruptures
in rhythms begin with problematising certain aspects of a practice, i.e. meaning (being ecofriendly is morally good), material (a ‘dumb’ washing machine) and skill (planning to wash
takes much effort) (Shove, Pantzar & Watson, 2012). Shifts in household practices, then,
materialise by incorporating new meanings, materials and skills into common sense
domestic practices and their wider governance and socio-technical arrangements.
The paper illustrates how domestic energy practices transform by examining smart homes
projects in different countries. A number of smart home projects are presented, using pilot
project evaluations and reports, advertisements and brochures, and participatory
observations of a smart homes project. Coding methods and discourse analysis were used
to map, cluster and reflect on the empirical materials. These smart homes projects show
how traditional household practices are being transformed and partly ‘outsourced’ to
digital tools. The paper argues that the micro-dynamics associated with the domestication
of smart energy technologies go hand in hand with changing infrastructures, market
conditions and regulatory arrangements.
A methodological exploration into unspoken embodied meanings
Eva Kunseler
How do practitioners in an assessment agency learn to do something different – i.e.
organize their assessment processes in deliberative and participatory manners rather than
as a technical exercise pur sang – without this changing their identity, without ceasing to
be the independent expert assessment agency of the Dutch government? How do they
accommodate pluralism of the various disciplinary languages and techniques within the
agency and of the values and beliefs of what ‘good’ assessments are in encounters with
their users/ clients and stakeholders?
An interpretive perspective offers a meaning-centred focus on the work people in the
assessment agency do together. Meanings are both the substantive focus of my research
and function as my methodological device. My interpretive analysis centers on sense
making processes of innovative practices within the agency. How do practitioners adapt
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innovations to their routines? In this methodological contribution I will seek to explore
two critical, related issues I encounter in my research of the epistemic culture in a Dutch
policy assessment agency: (i) the issue of a duality of roles: my embeddedness as
researcher ánd practitioner within the agency and (ii) the issue of ‘silent’ data reflecting
that which goes without saying in an organisation.
Re. the first issue I relate to concepts of bricolage (i.e. working together bits and pieces of
local knowledge, which in the researchers’ case means also own practical judgements
based on familiarity with and insight into context-specific local knowledge, e.g. Kincheloe
2004) and sobjectivism (i.e. bringing about a dialogue between insider and outside
perspectives, e.g. Pouliot 2007). Re. the second issue I look into ways to comprehend the
continuum between habit and reflection (e.g. Knorr-Cetina 2001).
This methodological exploration may yield discussion on what researchers with a cultural
approach to interpretive analysis (Yanow 1996;2000) may take from practice theory to
derive insight into unspoken embodied meanings.
Bringing a practice perspective to Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI)
Heidrun Åm
“Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI) is a vaguely defined science policy that has
gained momentum in European science governance in the last years. A central element
within RRI policies is that RRI shall be integrated in all R&D activities. An overarching
goal is to make scientists aware about their role for society at large. While there are
abundant projects developing RRI tools, frameworks and curricula, the question which
practice RRI concretely wants to change, on what grounds and in which direction seems to
be blinded out in all the visionary policy formulations and project descriptions. Therefore,
problematizing RRI from a practice perspective is a useful endeavor. In this presentation, I
will in particular draw on experiences of doing RRI by integrating social sciences and
humanities (SSH) into research projects within bio- and nanotechnology.
I will argue that a practice perspective elicits blind spots in RRI policies. Similar to the
critique Critical Sociology faces, when interpreting everything from the angle of
domination in which only the sociologist can see clearly (Boltansky 2011:20f), reflectivity
and insight into broader societal considerations seems to be exclusively accessible to social
sciences and humanities (SSH) and not to other scientists. Second, this approach to change
focuses on individual actions without asking how “changing patterns of acting on
individual level may affect the notion of how ‘things are being done’ at the collective level”.
Third, RRI neither seems to ask how we recognize practice worthy to be disrupted, nor
how it can be decided what a more societally desirable practice is. For example, Knorr
Cetina (2001) gives the example of cloning in a molecular biology laboratory that her
interviewee describes as “not very different from deciding to dig a hole in the ground and
then to dig it.” How would an integrated SSH scholar identify cloning as potentially matter
of public concern, merely out of an involvement in the laboratory?
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In sum, bringing practice theory to an analysis of RRI policies highlights “both action and
social order” (Reckwitz 2002:246) and thus overcomes the normative ethics discussions
dominating the RRI field.
Session 2 Wednesday 6th July 10.30-12.00
The dissociative dynamics of electric cars and smart meters in the transition
to low carbon futures
Marianne Ryghaug
In this paper we draw upon practice studies and the theory of ´materialized publics´ to
bring focus to the way the introduction and use of (new) material objects may influence
and contest yet unchallenged routines, and may become articulations of reflection and
critique. In the paper we critically examine the way the ongoing introduction of two
material objects that both has been sparked by national policies, the electric car and the
smart meter, provide critical articulations and disruptions of routine. In doing so we
attempt to highlight the way electric cars and smart meters can be seen as material
interventions co-constructing temporalities of new and sustainable practices. We examine
the relation between normalization, routine, dissociation, reflexivity and change, as well as
how changing properties of the technology produce different associations of routinization
and reflection. Finally, we discuss how changing patterns of acting on the individual level
may create normality and reconfigure the architecture of choice for others, and thus, how
these material artefacts and related practises may initiate public reflection more broadly.
We argue that the electric car may be seen as an object of engagement or a technology of
material participation and that smart meters may become an object of political
participation, and create the possibility for the publics to enter material form.
The paper is based on empirical studies of the introduction of electric electric cars and
smart meters in Norway.
Bio-politics and (re-)routinization: The dissociative dynamic of NIPD
technology and policies, and the calculated management of life
Anne Loeber
The birth of a child with Down’s syndrome is unsettling: it triggers a ‘dissociation’ (Knorr
Cetina, 2001) among parent(s) and important others that disrupts the ‘normalcy’ of the
usual practices surrounding birth and baby showers, and makes life itself an object of
reflection. But once the child is there, once it is ‘engaged with’ and it is encountered as a
person, it is (often) embraced as ‘one of us.’ There is a resettling of the normal on the level
of the individual. However, this process of re-routinization is critically disturbed by the
development of medical technologies for non-invasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD) and
associated policies in some countries to offer pregnant women an opportunity to test for
Down’s syndrome as part of 'normal' pregnancy health care. The test and the policies to
suggest its use as a routine procedure imply a transformative change on the level of the
population in regard to what is considered ‘normal’. With NIPD and related tests, life is at
once conceived in purely biological terms, and simultaneously made an object of control,
subjected to politics (cf. Foucault 1979). They serve, this paper argues, as technologies of
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governance, in a way that Schinkel and Van Houdt (2013) have called ‘neo-liberal
communitarianism.’ The control is exercised through the exploitation of the discrepancy
between what is – or could be – ‘normal’ on individual level, and the changes in what may
be dubbed (in art technique terms) the ‘negative space’ or ‘rest shape’ around individual
choices. This paper explores how practice theory may be of use in understanding the biopolitical regulation of life through pre-natal diagnostics beyond a critical policy analysis
perspective. It is argued that a practice perspective enables the researcher to empirically
scrutinize the mechanisms at play in processes of re-defining what is considered ‘normal’
on the level of society writ large, in relation to what is (un)problematic in the habitual on
individual level.
When the design of digital infrastructure becomes a matter for contest and
conflict
Allen Higgins, Andrea Berger & Simeon Vidolov
This case tells the story of the development of a new digital postcode for Ireland, with a 20
year history of design discussions through an intricate public, political, governmental and
industry entanglement. The Irish postcode belongs to a new class of digital initiatives, the
development of public information infrastructures codifying spatial, social, demographic
relations. Our goal was to discover and theorise how the design, or outer presentation of a
technological object, was arrived at through contestation occurring in different settings.
We focus on the narratives and practices involved in designing new technology intended to
be used for broad social applications.
Normal innovation involves periods of breaching in which routine ways of knowing the
world are challenged or extended. Reconfiguring a social knowledge of things involves a
generative happening where a centre of knowledge production configures a view of the
wider world and reproduces the local version that it has engineered (Knorr Cetina, 1999).
Reconfiguring occurs through discourse, through establishing practices in preliminary
designing, by using designed objects and attendant practices of use involving their new
ways of knowing the world.
We scrutinised intermittent design breaching into public discourse throughout a long
conceptual stage while the design was little more than a story about the technology, before
the technology existed. Breaching is evident in agreements, breakdowns, fighting,
contestation, arguments, disagreements etc. that surround practices of designing of new
public systems. Discourse is employed in various ways; overtly, covertly, implicitly etc. to
maintain or challenge, undermine, transform social relations through the idea of the
technology.
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The outcome may be understood in terms of power and agency in the interplay of
articulations constructing the idea of “problems” and design concepts addressing them.
Different design narratives overlap and shift within the planning process, depicting its
instability and evolution. Our approach highlights the politicised view of technical design
of public infrastructure and processes at play in the emergence of a new sociotechnological system.
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16 Social Innovation; contemporary challenges of
counterhegemonic knowings and doings
Bonno Pel, Julia Backhaus, Tom Bauler & Julia Wittmayer
Session 1 Wednesday 6th July 14.15-16.15
Just do it; Shifting dimensions of social innovation in Basic Income
experiments
Bonno Pel & Julia Backhaus
Social innovation, understood as change in social relations, is gaining currency as an
answer to contemporary societal challenges. On the account of transformative SI, it can
challenge, alter and replace the knowings and doings of existing social structures. There is
a duality in SI however, as it unavoidably also draws on and reproduces those. This duality
does not warrant skepticism, but calls for critical interpretive analysis. Approached
critically, social innovation is neither reduced to a magic panacea nor to an ideological
ploy. It is just a set of practices in which structure-agency dialectics are particularly
intricate and dynamic.
This paper elucidates the aforementioned SI duality through a closer examination of its
multiple dimensions. SI can be seen to involve new ways of doing, organizing, framing and
knowing. Insights from Science and Technology Studies remind us that these dimensions
are co-constitutive: new doing presupposes a degree of new knowing, for example.
Nevertheless, these four dimensions are sufficiently distinct from each other to help
untangle empirical cases of innovation-reproduction duality.
The paper presents a case study on the Basic Income, as a social innovation with strong
transformative ambitions towards a re-constituted social security. As the principled
advocacy for it has evoked somewhat intractable controversies about expected effects,
however, there is the recent trend towards more pragmatic approaches. Whether through
crowdfunding or through local-level governmental experimentation, these initiatives seem
to bypass the principled debates and aim for concrete demonstrations instead. ‘Just do it’,
seems to be the motto. Mistrusted as watering down by principled Basic Income advocates,
eagerly followed by media and attractive for local governments, the involved protagonists
clearly struggle to untangle the innovative and reproductive ramifications. This debate is
clarified and deepened by highlighting how the experiments entail shifting dimensions of
social innovation.
The Governance Landscape of Social Innovation in Australia: is it helping in
the bush?
Diana MacCallum, Nicolette Larder & Amanda Davies
In recent years social innovation has become an important discourse in the governance of
community and economic development. In Australia, for example, governments have
invested over $10 billion in ‘social innovation’ projects since 2010, and a large number of
companies – both social and traditional for-profit enterprises – have been established to
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offer ‘social innovation’ services. With such a level of investment, it is timely to examine
what this new discourse is delivering.
In this paper, we provide an overall picture of the landscape of social innovation in
Australia, identifying the main policies, institutions and actors involved and analysing the
key rationalities behind its adoption as a policy goal. We then look more closely at the take
up of social innovation ‘services’ within the context of rural development. We ask, first,
whether they have helped to shape new responses to the problem rural decline and,
second, whether these responses can be said to meet a key principle of social innovation –
linking the meeting of needs with innovation in the social realm, and in particular the
empowerment of actors.
The analysis suggests some interesting parallels between the institutionalisation of ‘social
innovation’ in the 2010s and that of ‘leadership’ in the 1990s-2000s. In becoming realised
as a matter of government concern and specialist expertise, stark dichotomies have
developed between ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ realisations of the concept – in clear
contradiction to its normative intent.
Corresponding author: [email protected]
Smart biopower as social innovation: Algorithms, washing machines and
data-subjectivity
S.S. Jhagroe
This contribution explores how ‘digitalisation’ and ‘smartification’ of domestic life
innovates contemporary regimes of biopower. Biopower, a concept that was introduced by
Michel Foucault, refers to the “numerous and diverse techniques [utilised] for achieving
the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations” (Foucault, 1976: 140). This
paper particularly analyses how new energy management technologies and smart homes
projects incorporate ‘smartness’ into what I call smart biopower.
Smart homes are domestic networks that link household applications to new energy
technologies, aggregated patterns and algorithms. They are presented as socio-technical
innovations that tackle concerns such as overloaded electricity grids, reducing energy costs
and eco-unfriendly energy consumption. Using insights from Actor-Network-Theory
(ANT) in combination with new Foucaultian approaches on (smart) energy regimes
(Vanolo, 2013; Boyer, 2014), the emergence of smart biopower as social innovation is
discussed. Smart biopower is defined as an innovative set of regimes and practices that
seeks to manage the vitality of individuals and collectives, particularly employing smart
appliances, ‘big data’ and digital self-evaluations.
The paper empirically explores smart biopower ‘in-the-making’ by examining smart homes
projects and Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS) in different countries. A number
of smart home projects and HEMS are presented, using pilot project evaluations and
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reports, advertisements and brochures, and participatory observations of a smart homes
project. Coding methods and discourse analysis were used to map, cluster and reflect on
the empirical materials. Empirical explorations show how domestic smart biopower
combines smart household appliances, new energy technologies (solar panels, electric
vehicles), self-evaluation of energy consumption and semi-automated electricity grid
management. These projects signify how domestic energy flows are visualised and
managed thereby reducing energy consumption and cultivating comfortable eco-lifestyles.
Smart biopower in the home is enabled by participating residential grid operators and
‘data-subjects’ that reorganise their washing and leisure practices. The popularisation of
smart biopower suggests that innovative data-led power regimes significantly rearrange
links between digital technologies, new markets and private life.
Session 2 Thursday 7th July 08.30-10.00
Social Innovation in local development. What about its socio-political impact?
Frank MOULAERT, Constanza Parra & Diana MacCallum
Social innovation has gained significance in the analysis, conception and implementation
of local development, i.e. development in small localities and neighbourhoods in bigger
settlements. This paper gives an overview of the progression of the scientific debate on the
role of social innovation in local community development and the impact it has had on
actual local development strategies. The original definition of social innovation in local
development stresses the importance of the connection between the satisfaction of human
needs, innovation in social relations and socio-political transformation. For social
innovation to be robust and hold a potential of regime change, this connection seems to be
a condition sine qua non. Has this insight been taken seriously in social innovation
research over the last fifteen years?
To answer this question, the paper first examines how the role of social innovation has
been conceptualized and theorised in local development studies. Have the socio-political
dynamics been taken seriously and in which way? How has the relationship between
socially innovative governance in local development and community initiatives on the one
hand, and socio-political change, on the other hand, been addressed? Section two of the
paper examines how social innovation has been implemented in actual local and
community development initiatives in three localities, namely Antwerp, Montemor and
Jakarta. The final section summarizes which lessons have been learned about the role and
forms of social innovation in both scientific analysis and practice of local community
development, if analysis and action have learned from each other and which theoretical
and empirical questions are in strong need of deeper examination. It especially focuses on
the insights gained on the role of social innovation in social-political change
(democratization process, connecting state levels, reshuffling of socio-political arenas,
mutual reinforcement of social and political movements, …).
Collective Leadership Practices in Social Innovation initiatives: communities
and social change from below
Marc Parés
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Since the 2008 economic recession brought about an austerity paradigm, Social
Innovation became a popular term in the US and Europe, as a policy tool to cover
unsatisfied social needs. In this context, many social practices are being labelled as socially
innovative. However, the goals, meaning-making, and impacts of all these practices could
be really variegated. In this paper collective leadership practices are analysed in order to
better understand this variegation.
More specifically, we focus on socially innovative initiatives emerging from below at
community level. In this vein, we explore how do communities face the effects of the Great
Recession and how can they develop alternative approaches to solve them from below. We
analyse disadvantaged communities responding to the economic crisis effects through
different socially innovative initiatives. Social initiatives, though, devised and enacted
through different discourses and performances.
Drawing upon 4 case studies at neighbourhood level in Barcelona (Spain) and New York
City (USA) and analysing 8 initiatives of social innovation embedded in these
neighbourhoods, we illustrate how these processes coming from below could contribute to
neighbourhood resilience in different ways.
The paper proposes new theoretical developments on the nature of social change by
bringing together systemic approaches on social innovation and relational theories of
collective leadership. Concretely, three specific leadership practices are identified and indepth analysed: reframing discourse, bridging difference and unleashing human energies.
We conclude that both contextual neighbourhood features (structure) and collective
leadership practices (agency) dialectically explain not only how and why social innovation
initiatives emerge but also their social impact in terms of effectiveness and scalability.
A small transformation-Grassroots innovation and behavior change as an
emerging practice bundle in Beckerich (Luxembourg)
Jan-Tobias Doerr
Transition studies’ concepts addressing social change are criticized as vague, with overly
linear modeling of transitions. The management perspective serves as a constructive
concept informing political and economic actors, but widely neglects the role of civic
society and everyday practices in sustainability transitions. Further, in order to make for
an understanding of local transformations beyond changes within socio-technical sectors,
social practice theorists call for research on the reciprocal relations between transition
practices. The commune of Beckerich offers a constructive research case to address these
discussions in transition research. During the past 30 years, it has been site of numerous
grassroots innovations, highly progressive for their national context. Initially centering on
energy politics, the transformative local spirit can be seen to now ‘spill over’ into the wider
region, as well as into other fields of community action as the development of a regional
currency and a transition town indicate. Meanwhile, substantial reduction of domestic
energy and water consumption indicate a change in everyday practices. An exploratory
study in Beckerich has discovered contingencies and conflict playing a significant role in
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the local development. In parallel to critique on transition management, these findings
dissent with the local narrative and national perception suggesting a lock-in towards
progressiveness. The presentation will discuss potentials and limitations that a social
practice perspective might offer to unravel the local transformation. It will argue that a
retroductive methodology would allow demarcating innovations and domains of behavior
change, determine their respective meanings for participants, and put each into dialogue
with related theory. The overall local transformation could be described as an emerging
practice bundle.
Session 3 Thursday 7th July 12.45-14.15
New governmentalities in Transformative Social Innovation; a comparative
case study into the formation processes of ‘social niches’
Bonno Pel, Iris Kunze, Saskia Ruijsink & AdrianSmith
Amongst actors seeking to bring about transformations in society, there is an
unmistakeable search for alternatives to the governmentalities dominating public life. Next
to and in conjunction with the new knowings, framings and doings that social innovation
initiatives try to promote, they can also be seen to bring forth new ways of organizing.
Beyond the relatively known organizational alternatives such as cooperatives and
associations, we also see practices of ‘holocracy’, ‘adhocracy’, direct democratic decisionmaking and various other modes of coordination that SI initiatives develop to empower
their members. Their pursuit of organizational novelty also speaks from their deliberate
organizational constitutions as ‘Hubs’, ‘Spaces’ and ‘Labs’. Finally, we see how local social
innovation initiatives are often closely aligned with other local, regional and national
actors, and often form part of transnational networks of like-minded initiatives. Also this
active striving for co-produced change and embedded agency is indicative of new
organizational forms and newly emerging governmentalities.
An emerging literature on these ‘social niches’ has usefully brought forward how the new
organisational forms can serve internal and external functions. They may serve the
formalization and sustenance of innovative values and practices, and provide empowering
environments for their members for example. The new organisational forms may also
serve functions like knowledge exchange, development of international recognition,
construction of political voice, and joint branding of the initiatives.
This paper develops a dynamic view on these newly emerging governmentalities. As they
are typically developed out of socially innovative ambitions, they are likely to evolve along
with the societal contexts that they are meant to challenge, alter or replace. Taking a
processual, co-productive view, the focus is shifted from organizational form towards
formation processes. Which new organizational forms can be distinguished, and how have
they changed? Which societal dynamics and framework conditions have motivated these
changes in organizational forms? The paper explores these formation processes by
comparing evidence from eight social niches in various European and Latin American
countries. These initiatives differ in their transformative ambitions, and develop in
different social-political contexts.
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Analyzing the transformative power of a new governance approach that
combines incrementalism and adaptive governance
Jasper Eshuis
Following the economic and financial crisis, national and local governments throughout
Europe have taken austerity measures. This has been combined with policy programs to
reduce the role of governments, and increase the roles of societal parties in tackling public
problems (for example the British Big Society). In the field urban development and spatial
planning, on which this paper focuses, large regeneration projects have been replaced with
new forms of governance sometimes called slow urbanism or organic urban development.
Characteristic for these governance approaches is the high number of small initiatives
developed adaptively in reaction to opportunities. Although the approaches are commonly
positioned as effective innovations, there is limited empirical research on how they work
and on their effects. This paper contributes to filling that gap. The study analyses a case of
slow urbanism in Rotterdam as a set of embedded governance innovations. It analyses the
governance innovations and their transformative power by studying their effects in the
community and governmental institutions. The research strategy is a case study through a
combination of participant observation, interviews and document analyses. The
preliminary results indicate that the governance approach combines elements of
incrementalism and adaptive governance. Temporary initiatives and small experiments
play an important role, but regularly conflict with existing policies and regulations. Actors
handle this by trying to transform the initiatives or the policies and regulations. Crucial is
the strategic use of temporariness, informality, and flexible use of regulations. Most
initiatives do not upscale, and have limited transformative effect. However because new
initiatives keep emerging, the area has transformed slowly. Partial changes in the
governance system have stealthily developed.
Social innovation initiatives filling ‘institutional voids’: a multidimensional
perspective in a Mexican case study
Manuela Rosing Agostini, Luciana Marques Vieira, Yeda Swirski de Souza & Marilia
Bossle
In an international setting characterized by social inequalities, increased poverty rates and
lack of harmony between markets, the concepts of ‘social innovation’ and ‘institutional
voids’ arise as important subjects for developing and emerging countries. Social
innovation, commonly understood as the introduction of new practices and ideas to meet
social challenges, is often considered to be a response to institutions perceived to be
failing. Especially in the context of developing or emergent countries, it has been
considered as a response to ‘institutional voids’. The concept of ‘institutional voids’, and
the associated idea that social innovation initiatives should be ‘filling’ them, merits critical
empirical investigation. What does it mean? What do involved actors consider to be
absent? And how can it be empirically studied?
The objective of this paper is to develop a multidimensional theoretical framework to
explore how social innovation emerges as a response to institutional voids. The framework
comprises a set of theoretical propositions that were developed from theoretical gaps
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identified in a systematic literature review, which includes, among others authors, Taylor
(1970); Cloutier (2003); Mulgan et al. (2007); BEPA (2011); Mair and Martí (2009); and,
Mair, Martí and Ventresca (2012). Relevant dimensions include institutional contexts (the
interference of political, financial, education/work and cultural systems), diversity of
actors ambitions, types of institutions (cognitive, normative and regulative) and types of
social innovation. This framework has been used to explore the meaning of ‘institutional
void’ for a social innovation initiative in Mexico. The analysed initiative is a collective of
social enterprises that coordinate the chain of organic coffee in southern Mexico. The
particular region is marked by a difficult political and economic context with extreme
poverty affecting 75% of the population.
In different ways, both insiders as well as outside commentators attribute this predicament
to ‘institutional void’, i.e. to different kinds of perceived failures of the traditional
institutions. The case study involved semi-structured interviews with key actors and direct
observation in situ, complemented with secondary data on the institutional context. This
empirical investigation has allowed to critically reflect on what ‘institutional voids’ are, and
what they mean to people.
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17 Teaching Interpretively Richard Holtzman, Merlijn van Hulst, Dvora Yanow & Jennifer Dodge
Session 1 Tuesday 5th July 14.45-16.15
Rope-a-Dope and Co-Teaching Public Policy
Neta Sher-Hadar & Danny Bar Giora
The “Rumble in the Jungle” was possibly Muhammad Ali’s most famous victory, won by
knocking out George Foreman in the eighth after seven rounds of what became known as
“rope-a-dope”: backing up against the ropes, seemingly trapped, he allowed Foreman to
wear himself out punching without ever landing a decisive blow. Ali’s victory established
him as one of the all-time greats, but it also gave the world a superb metaphor for
overcoming struggles.
This proposed presentation is a summary of a four-year journey the writers have taken
together while co-teaching public policy to practitioners with a practitioner, and while
engaging in real-life policy issues with practitioners who sought our assistance Our coteaching began with the belief that preparing the program’s fellows for action in the world
demanded a candid dialogue between practice and academia. But we quickly discovered
that this dialogue resembled an intense sparring session, which asked searching questions
about our stated and tacit assumptions and knowledge, our teaching and learning
methods, and the respective roles of teachers and learners. We often felt on the ropes,
bobbing and weaving, battered and clinging on, but always thinking about how to swivel
and regain the centre of the ring. The bout goes on, but in the meantime it has helped us
learn much about practitioner-academic intersections.
We would like to offer an authentic presentation of our co-teaching over the years: the
theoretical and practical rationale which informed it; the macro-analysis of our experience,
based on the action research that we conducted throughout; the evidence we accumulated;
and, of course, the dialogue between us.
Having repeatedly survived several rounds of rope-a-dope teaching, we believe that our
reflection on the process can have value for other collaborations between practitioners and
academics.
What Can You Do?: Teaching the Practice of Learning
Richard Holtzman
Why do we continue to prioritize the teaching of disciplinary content when we know that
many of our students don’t remember most of it? This lack of retention is frustrating to us
as instructors, as our professional lives are spent navigating a world of content. It’s how we
think, not only because of our orientation toward research, but because as students we
were inspired by the teaching of content. This paper suggests that while developing our
curriculum and crafting our syllabi, we are not doing our students any favors by habitually
defaulting to “What do they need to know?” as the fundamental question that guides our
pedagogy. Instead, this project is driven by the premise that teaching and learning would
be more impactful and relevant if we ask: “What do our students need to be able to do?”
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I argue that it is the development of skills and aptitudes—critical thinking, adaptability,
organizational skills, project management, information literacy, data analysis, written and
oral communication, metacognitive awareness, and others—that should be the heart of our
pedagogy and the aim of our teaching. Such a shift away from the prioritization of content
demands thinking in new—and perhaps for us, uncomfortable—ways about the underlying
logics of our discipline, courses, curriculum, and assessment techniques.
To do so, we need to borrow from the animating principles of interpretive research and
embrace the idea of learning as a form of practice. But how can we teach this practice?
Rather than a formal presentation, I am proposing a 15-minute exercise that will engage
attendees as participants. The purpose is not to demonstrate a one-size-fits-all approach to
teaching practice, nor to suggest that this particular exercise is a better approach than any
other. Instead it is an effort to reflect on my own approach to teaching, attempt to
articulate the logic that underlies it and, most importantly, share a conversation with
others who are pursuing similar goals in other ways.
Teaching interpretive policy analysis in post-Soviet Azerbaijan: challenges and
opportunities
Farhad Mukhtarov
Working in education in Azerbaijan presents a dilemma. On the one hand, the type of
critical education, discussion based classes, exposure to ambiguities of policy and
encouragement of students to speak out their minds in a classroom and in writing is
essential in this society where suppression is a norm. Critical thinking is scarce but
important for the future of the country. From this perspective, educating in Azerbaijan is
indeed the practice of freedom and a powerful tool for change in line with the thoughts of
Paolo Freire and bell hooks. On the other hand, students are accustomed to a different type
of learning (the banking model), and the unknown hurts and repels. The encouragement of
free thinking and speaking may put the teacher in a vulnerable position, in front of the
students and administration alike, who may see the teacher as unprofessional, and not
fitting the classical and mainstream styles of education. This paper will draw from
experiences of the author in teaching interpretively in the Master of Public Policy
programme at ADA University in Azerbaijan, and will provide some illustrations of
dilemmas, challenges and opportunities in this work.
Session 2 Tuesday 5th July 16.30-18.00
Incorporating students: integrating knowledge from the texts to themselves.
Jeremy Hunsinger
This paper is about the struggle of students and professors of integrating knowledge into
ones own subjectivity. Classrooms are very alienating environments, oriented toward a
formalized mode of learning based on the industrial model, with a foreman a the front of
the classroom telling the workers what to believe. While that model has its variants such
as the lancastrian method and the Thayer's method, most classrooms really struggle with
getting students to go beyond the understanding that beyond learning the material for this
course, or for the curriculum, they should be constructing the knowledge into sensible
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parts of their life. Telling stories about their knowledge and the relations of the course
materials to their lives allows them to retain it and to share it amongst themselves. This
mode of co-construction of learning breaks down the traditional resistances of both the
transmission model of classroom, the flipped classroom, and the co-instructional
classroom into a place where students can tell both the stories of the knowledge they have,
but also the stories of the knowledge will have for them in the future. They can move
beyond mere reflection and critique into planning and using, which for many students in
higher education is a difficult move to perform, precisely because, as above, they've not
integrated or incorporated the knowledge, but instead have been taught to alienate
themselves from the knowledge as part of the current societal curriculum, and to some
extent also in the phantom and hidden curriculum.
Telling stories about what they learn is different from most testing and practicum regimes
also, and it is different from what many students experience in the classroom (and they are
more and more less encouraged to talk in classrooms because of class size and other
matters). But telling stories is the basis for one form of interpretive curriculum, and it can
be a fruitful way to overcome some of students issues in incorporating knowledge in the
classroom.
Interpretative Puzzle: an educational game for public policy undergraduate
courses
Rosana de Freitas Boullosa, Roberto Wagner da Silva Rodrigues & Edgilson Tavares de
Araújo
In this paper, we’d like to present one of the educational games, the Interpretative Puzzle,
that have been tested and applied in public policy and social management classes,
particularly in public administration undergraduate courses, by the Federal University of
Bahia and Federal University of Recôncavo Baiano, both in Brazil. The Interpretative
Puzzle is a education game designed to be played on the first class courses, with the dual
aim of sensitizing students to the complexity of the argumentative dimension in policy
processes, as well as to put forward some of the theoretical topics to be addressed in during
the courses. The game attempts to create a learning context that assists the recognition of
multiple discourses that shape policy processes, through the speeches of the students
themselves on a given controversial issue of public policy. Formally, it works as a board
game to be played by from 15 to 30 students in three to four hours. Teachers are also
players, but they can take the opportunity to introduce some theoretical elements during
the game. The game material is formed by thirty pieces of puzzle that can be fitted in
different directions, to be used in accordance with the number of players. Each participant
receives only one piece and each piece has two sides: front and back. In front, the
participants must to write down what they think about the chosen issue; on the back, the
values that underlie their ideas. The game begins with someone presenting his piece and
placing it on the table. Subsequently, the other participants will presenting their pieces,
fitting them with those that are already on the table, according to their content (close to
that has more to do). Participants may disagree with the position proposed for the puzzle
pieces. At the end we have produced one or more figure, depending on how controversial
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the issue is. To finish, we turn upside all pieces to see the result of the composition in
terms of values, deepening the discussion on the relationship between actors, ideas and
values. We'd like to simulate this game during our presentation (20 minutes).
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19 Public action languages and the performance of
public affairs
Peter Spink & Gabriela Toledo Silva
Tuesday 5th July 16.30-18.00
Public affairs at the crossroad of meanings
Mary Jane SPINK
In July 2009 the World Bank approved a loan of 100 million for the development of the
Integrated Water Management in Metropolitan São Paulo with the overall objective to
protect and maintain the quality of water resources; improve the quality of life of the poor
population residing in the targeted area and strengthen institutional capacity for water
management. The loan is directly linked to the Mananciais Project which has now entered
its third and last phase. Both the World Bank analysis and the Mananciais project are full
of good intentions seen from the bird’s eye view of paperwork. From the ground, things
look very different. The project lies at the crossroad of a variety of governmental and nongovernmental problem-solvers. Its focus is the vast watershed systems that are vital for
providing water for the more than 20 million people that live in the municipality and its
adjacent areas. But the area is quite densely populated, occupied in a disorderly manner
specially since the middle of the 20th century. Disorderly occupation for housing purposes
provides a very different perspective on the problem. Removing people for environmental
protection reasons is not viable as alternative housing solutions are hard to come by.
Solutions, therefore, inevitably have to be negotiated around rights and this issue takes us
to yet a different sort of problematic. Residents that have been longer in the area have
bought their land under doubly misguided assumptions: that buying was legally binding
and that there were no restrictions regarding environmental protection. The purpose of
this presentation is double. On one hand, it traces how environmental protection has
become a governmental issue; on the other hand, based on interviews and ethnographic
approaches, it aims to discuss how environmental protection issues are dealt with on a
day-today basis.
Towards a public action languages framework
Peter Spink
Public policy is showing signs of outgrowing its usefulness as a central analytic term and is
rapidly turning itself into a synonym for any type of government action. Various scholars
have commented critically on the implications of this centrality and there is indeed much
that can be discussed, for example, in relation to governamentality (Miller and Rose 1990).
However, equally important, is to note that this centrality is relatively recent in the field of
public affairs, dating perhaps to the mid 1970s in Anglo-Saxon countries and later in other
parts of the democratic west.
It therefore follows that public policy was not the language that politicians, technical
professions and advisors used in formatting some of the major democratic and public
sector changes in the first two thirds of the twentieth century. Nor was it the language that
framed democratic transitions and new constitutions in countries like Brazil. (For
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example, Roosevelt’s pre-war welfare and public sector organizational reforms, including
the idea regional planning; the British post-war labour government which architected the
welfare state in the five years before 1950; Johnson’s “Great Society” programs in the mid
1960s; Brazil’s peoples’ constitution of 1988). These were enacted through other social
languages (Bakhtin, 1986).
In addition, the notion of public affairs goes beyond the sphere of actions and intentions of
government. There are many other voices involved in the dispute over what is “public” and
they do so in many other social languages. Indeed, over the years, many have lost their
lives or suffered in other ways the consequences of arguing that something was public.
Others, more present in the third world and in the absence of an effective state, have gone
ahead to create their own public arena of local services. Rethinking public affairs from the
broader framework of public action and accepting its multiple and disjointed languages,
could be key to understanding emerging patterns of “public” and developing alternative
approaches to democratic action.
Public action and the construction of new urban territoriality in Belo
Horizonte, Brazil
Zilma Borges, Ana Luiza Nabuco & João Silva Filho
This article explores Brazilian public policies, from the perspective of the articulations
between Government, private sector and civil society related to innovative mechanisms of
democratic participation. It discusses rearrangements of public spaces and the capacity, of
the quoted process, to create new participatory instruments and politics (Halpern,
Lascoumes e Le Galès (2014) ; Spink, Hossain & Best (2009). In this background, the new
apparatus of public action that arise fosters dissemination of politics and consensus, as
discussed by Chateauraynaud (2014), Fourniau (2013), Zittoun (2014), Zittoun &
Demongeot (2010) and Vanier (2015), all reference for this paper. The regionalisation
process of Belo Horizonte’s city (Brazil), led by Local Government in 2011, called «
Territories of Shared Management » is the case study. The main motivations for this new
territorial spatialization are described and so are the guidelines adopted. The two
methodological steps of this process are detailed: the technical stage, which encompasses
the definition of the spatial homogeneous clusters, taken into account similar economic,
social and infrastructure conditions - with the use of « Skater » program - and the political
stage, that comprehends a consensus based elaboration process, between Government and
civil society, around the definition of the geographical limits of these Territories. As a
result of this collective process, the city was divided into 40 areas, called “Shared
Management Territories” (Territórios de Gestão Compartilhada). This process involves
disputes, conflicts and forums, which were analyzed for understanding the effects of
territorial logic and how the various actors seek to appropriate and make adjustments that
suit their demands.
UNESCO monographs and the language of cultural policy
Gabriela Toledo Silva
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From 1969 until 1987, UNESCO published a series entitled “Studies and Documents on
Cultural Policies”. It consisted of more than 70 monographs on aspects related to the
cultural policies of individual countries. These studies were commissioned by UNESCO to
authors chosen by each country´s National Commission, who followed some guidelines to
produce a qualitative overview of actions they judged relevant to the theme.
The monographs ended up having multiple formats, with different emphasis, lengths and
types of information, reflecting not only the geographical distribution of the work but also
particular moments in its duration, of almost twenty years. The collection as a whole was
not as comparable and instrumental as it was expected to be, but it created awareness and
communication about things that were not used to be brought together consistently: in
those days it was uncommon to name actions related to arts, folklore, music, ways of life –
and other things that became grouped under the label of culture – as cultural policies.
When UNESCO asked people in those countries to write about cultural policies, the
convened authors and the actors associated to them were provoked to take positions about
the validity of the idea of cultural policy. Each of them mobilized cultural policy in a
particular way; they related it to local issues and publics and invested the expression with
new meanings and contexts.
Based on the monographs and the letters, memos and other documents in which the
making of those was negotiated, I show that the process of commissioning, requesting,
guiding, revising – on the side of UNESCO – and answering, writing, positioning, revising
– on the side of the countries´ authors and institutions - was an active and performative
process involving the articulation of networks, ideas, speeches and publics that contributed
for the language of cultural policy to become a frequent way to talk and perform public
actions related to culture in different places around the globe.
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21 Constructing Policy, Crafting Spaces: critical
perspectives on policy and space.
Dr. Natalie Papanastasiou & Andreas Öjehag Pettersson
Session 1 Wednesday 6th July 08.30-10.00
Policy Innovations for Self-Made Places: How Urban Planning Embraced
Temporary Spatial Uses in Germany.
Thomas Honeck
This contribution identifies the reinterpretation of those practices that have their origins
outside the traditional constraints of planning a source of innovation in urban planning
and urban policy making. The contributions’s empirical section focuses on the policy
development of temporary uses of vacant buildings and sites, which in Germany have
shifted from elements of alternative lifestyles to strategically embedded procedures of
planning. While planners’ appreciations of temporary uses initially grew in shrinking
cities, they have come to relevance in multiple spatial and functional contexts and they are
institutionalised on different administrative levels. The contribution raises questions on
the conditions and driving forces of such drastic breaks with former routines and identifies
patterns when a planning approach is developed with a high degree of bottom-up
influence. While conceptions on the emergence of novel urban policies and their mobility
are often discussed separately, the contribution suggests an interlinked approach. It
conceives the policy’s development as one socially constructed process of innovation in the
field of planning. Based on results of long term document analyses and interviews, the
contribution presents a phase model that divides this innovation process into five
interlinked stages. It finds that Berlin provided an innovative niche to a new generation of
urbanists that significantly shaped discourses on temporary use thus promoting and
mobilising related policies. Furthermore, it emphasises the importance of unusual
constellations of actors and prominent – partly provoking – projects that inspire peer
discussions.
Exploring the implementation of contested megaprojects through urban
regime theory
AlfredBurballa Noria
An emerging trend of conflicts associated with large-scale transport project developments
across the global north has been observed. Such trend can be associated to some extent
with an on-going global urbanisation process resulting in the traditionally established
boundaries between the rural and the urban progressively becoming blurred. Such process
is not exempt of contestation. In the resulting contentious dynamics that unfold organised
opposition movements mobilize resources and organise campaigns to stop these
megaprojects. However, despite these campaigns and mounting evidence suggesting the
need to consider alternatives the opposition views are pushed aside. The purpose of this
article is to explore some of the factors that mediate such outcome and the mechanisms
that are operationalized by determinate actors in order to prevent any attempt to stop the
contested developments. To do so, the paper draws on the urban regime theory on the
basis that insofar urban boundaries expand, the regime that functions tends to scale up
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accordingly. The analysis is conducted using the case study of the new high speed railway
project for the Basque Country using interviews conducted with individuals involved in the
issue and also a wide range of documentary sources issued by the multiple actors involved
in the dispute. The article concludes by assessing the suitability of applying the urban
regime theory into conflicts over mega-infrastructure development.
Constructing a new regional authority - local expectations on regional
development organizations
JohanWänström & Josefina Syssner
The question of how local and regional development should be managed and governed has
been discussed all over Europe for more than two decades (Mitander et al 2013). In these
discussions, issues such as multi-level governance relations (Peters & Pierre 2004) and
territorial governance (Lidström 2007, Stead 2013) has been thoroughly conferred. This
includes the relationship between the national to the regional authority (Keating 1998,
Hanssen et al 2011) as well as the relationship between the municipal and regional
authority (Johansson et al 2015).
In this paper, we seek to discuss the governance of local and regional development
processes, with specific regard to the relation between local and regional governments.
More precisely, we analyze the expectations that local government leaders express in
relation to the regional government organization that carries the formal responsibility for
regional development. The expectations of local government representatives are of great
interest, since the new regional organization implies that the regional level of government
has gain a greater influence over regional development issues.
The paper is based on interview with 15 local government representatives from 13
municipalities, all if which form part of a region in east Sweden that has a newly
established regional government organization. In the interviews, we have asked what they
perceive as the main functions of the newly reformed regional organization. What kind of
expectations do they have on the new regional organization? Are the municipalities willing
to transform any of their power and authority to the regional organization in relation to
these expectations?
Our interviews show that local government actors host a wide range of different ideas of
what responsibilities local, regional or national actors should have in governing local and
regional development issues, but also in relation to the definition of regional development
issues. The size of the municipalities appears to be one important factor behind those
differences. Our conclusion is that even if the new regional organization has been formally
established, local government representatives understand the role of this organization very
differently. That is, the relation between polity and space is conceptualized in different and
even contradicting ways.
The weight of discourse on scales and spaces: the case of transport policy in
the Metropolis of Lyon and Marseille
Maïmouna Ndong-Etroit
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In 2010 and 2014, two decentralization legislations were voted in France in order to
redefine scales and spaces of implementation of the urban areas’ public policies. These
legislations introduce new institutions as the Metropolis in charge of public policies such
as transportation. At the same time, the role of regional and departmental scale in the
transport policy production is reinforced. Thus regions organize rail transport in the
regional scale, the departments are in charge of rural and peri-urban transportation by bus
and the metropolis deal with the urban mobility. In the purpose to promote a
rationalization of services and intermodality system, legislations emphasize on multilevel
cooperation in metropolitan areas. So new transport organizations between local
authorities are created since 2012. Despite the will to cooperate, policymakers are involved
in definitional struggles to construct scale of action, territories, boundaries and the
appropriate policy.
The result of this multilevel collaboration shows that each local authority, try to defend and
justify its meaning given to what they call “coherent territory” of transport policy. This
category has no institutional existent but is invested by different actors to define scale of
responsibility and mostly who must pay. If legislations clarify the competence of each
institution in transport organization, it does not solve the gap discursively constructed
between the “real space” of citizens, without boundaries, and “administrative scale”.
Reducing this gap is the main argument used by policymakers from different local
authority but they don’t share the same meaning. Instead of producing transport policy,
these spaces are political arenas where stakeholders struggle. Our problem settles in these
terms: how definitional struggles around scales and spaces destabilize transport policies.
This communication aims to analyze the role of discourses in the failure of institutional
organization supposed to produce public policy of transport as introduced by legislations.
To measure the impact of the categories of scales and spaces in the construction of
transport policies, we propose to observe the cases of the metropolitan area of Marseille
and Lyon.
Session 2 Wednesday 6th July 10.30-12.00
Scalecraft as a key feature of social, political and fantasmatic logics in
England’s academy schools policy
Natalie Papanastasiou
Paper abstract for Panel 21: Constructing Policy, Crafting Spaces
This paper argues that in order for policy studies to become more sensitive to the spatial
nature of politics, a focus on the scalar practices of policy should be incorporated into the
study of policy. Theoretically, the paper integrates poststructuralist discourse analysis with
poststructuralist human geography. The paper is empirically grounded in the example of
the implementation of the ‘academy schools’ policy in England. By examining the
responses to the academies policy of local authority and school actors in two local authority
case studies the paper identifies what I will call ‘communities of scale’. The latter are
formed by actors rallying around a particular scaled construction of a social collective
when giving meaning to the academy schools policy. The article reveals the importance of
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understanding scale as an epistemology and of examining the politics of scale in policy
contexts. It suggests that actors interpret and strategically shape policy through
communities of scale, where a social collective is performed by mobilising scaled
understandings of the world. The article also demonstrates that when a sense of
community intersects with or complements a particular discourse at a critical moment of
dislocation, this helps the discourse achieve a hegemonic status.
Negotiating ‘place’ and ‘scale’ in the English NHS: challenging boundaries
and collaborative workarounds
Jonathan Hammond, KathCheckland, Anna Coleman & Colin Lorne
For many years, an ideological commitment to plurality of provision has underpinned
health policy in England. Competition between providers has been understood as the
means by which service quality and responsiveness to local needs can be assured. The
Health and Social Care Act 2012 (HSCA12) enshrined this in statute, making explicit the
extent to which competition law applies to the NHS, establishing a system architecture
built upon the notion of locally responsive commissioners using competition to leverage
the best services for their population. Since its implementation, however, a de facto shift in
policy direction has taken place towards a focus upon ‘local’ organisations working
collaboratively and, consequently, ‘place’ has assumed renewed significance (Monitor,
2015).
Engaging with geographical perspectives that examine how ‘place’ and ‘scale’ are
constructed and negotiated – contesting assumptions that understand ‘place’ as coherent
or bounded (Massey, 2005) and ‘scale’ as fixed or pre-given (Smith, 1992; Swyngedouw,
1997) – this paper draws upon initial research findings to explore ways in which the ‘local’
is being enacted in the NHS following the HSCA12 and the challenges this presents. We
found actors working creatively together to make sense of the demands upon them,
improvising and using a variety of personal and organisational resources to ‘workaround’
the complexities of the new system in a struggle to fulfil their responsibilities across
multiple scales. These processes were shaped through interpretations of policy ‘rules’,
historical allegiances, and pre-existing patterns of resource distribution.
These practices and policy initiatives are investing greater legitimacy in ‘place’ as a focus of
activity. Through understanding place as relational, we outline the implications that this
has upon current NHS policy that requires self-selecting groups of organisations to
collaboratively ascribe the boundaries of their ‘place.’ We argue that producing boundaries
may have an effect of creating winners and losers, and consider how the apparently simple
notion of providing services for a ‘local’ population is profoundly shaped by socio-historical
context and an enduring legacy of neo-liberal national health care reform.
The intersection of identity and space in the construction of policy
Suzanne O'Neill
My research explores the role of the Pacific Island Forum, the ‘premier political
organisation in the Pacific’, in the movement of ideas, knowledge and practices between
the global ‘centres’, such as Paris, Washington or New York, and the ‘peripheral’ small
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island states of the Pacific, through the policy frame of the Forum Compact on
Development Cooperation. Forum Leaders agreed on the Compact as a strategy to deflect
the feared effects of the 2008 Global Finance Crisis on Pacific countries. The Compact
endorsed the principles underpinning the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, which
put the idea of “Country Ownership” at the heart of aid and development effectiveness.
Drawing from my broader doctoral research, this paper reflects on themes emerging from
analysis of text and interview data collected from five inter-related ‘interpretive
communities’ engaged in the policymaking process in Kiribati, a ‘small’ island state in the
Pacific. For Kiribati, aid and development effectiveness are intrinsically linked to the
experience of climate change. Through the global leadership of Kiribati’s President Tong ,
the island state has been recognised as amongst the first to experience the ‘disturbing
reality’ of climate change. Prominently, President Tong has called on the global
community to dismantle the ‘red tape’ associated with requests for financial aid and
technical expertise to ameliorate the effects of climate change. Yet, on the ground, there
are concerns that the attention to climate change effects ‘in the future’ ignores the
comparatively mundane but critical demands of living in the present.
The paper illustrates how aid and development policymaking is grounded in shifting
tensions across national identity, regional aspirations, and global advocacy. It shows how
the conceptualisation of ‘country-owned’ policy under the Forum Compact reflects the
multiple and contextually-embedded meanings of the ‘local’, ‘regional’ and ‘global’ – and is
also shaped by perceptions of identity and relationship, as individuals, family or ‘village’
community, across space and over time. The paper aims to clarify how these multiple and
sometimes conflicting perceptions of identity, and entailing obligations, influence and
construct the space, scale and place of aid and development policy in the Pacific.
Crafting the local through policymaking: debating knowledge making
practices in a neighborhood transportation initiative
Victoria Lowerson Bredow & Connie McGuire
Policy often takes the category of space for granted which is seen in the resurgence of
neighborhood-level and place-based policy in the U.S. These scale-oriented policies often
focus on resident involvement in order to be more democratic and to lead to more
sustainable and effective policies. Resident involvement provides ground level data that
allow policymakers and implementers to more intimately understand – and thus address –
public problems. Resident expertise is usually coupled with hyper-local spaces like the
block, the neighborhood, or the school. These scales are often treated as pre-existing
entities rather than as socially constructed processes created in and through policymaking
practices.
In this paper, we analyze ethnographic material gathered in a place-based policy initiative
in California from 2012-2015 in which city planners diagnosed a neighborhood’s
transportation issues using data from Google earth while a group of politically engaged
youth assessed the street conditions using observation and systematic documentation. We
describe and analyze how residents and city planners work together to co-create the streets
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as the space of intervention through socio-political and technical practices entailed in
devising policy. These practices within participatory democratic processes are sites of
knowledge production contested by community members, practitioners, and academics
alike and have the potential to transform power dynamics.
In this paper we argue that the “local” is produced through debates in policymaking
processes about the validity of data collected at different scales. Local knowledge is
important. It is through productive debates and practices that produce knowledge about
the problems of transportation in an urban setting that the local is constructed. In order to
describe local street conditions that might create effective policy we must also ask how
these conditions are themselves produced and made knowable through collaborative
policymaking practices.
Key Words: local, scale, space, policy, knowledge, technology, planning, youth
Session 3 Wednesday 6th July 12.45-14.15
Measuring Innovation Space: The Calculus of Transforming Regional
Development in Europe
Andreas Öjehag-Pettersson
Throughout Europe, sub-national regions are restructured in line with the EU2020 policy
program which dictates a clear focus on growth through the fostering of innovation and
entrepreneurship. While this process is articulated differently in separate contexts it has a
range of common features. One of these is the wide spread adoption of calculative devices
and measurement tools that are used as transparent means for governing and monitoring
the ongoing strive for growth and innovation throughout the regions. In this paper it is
therefore argued that by focusing on the calculative practices associated with the vast array
of different indices and rankings in regional development throughout Europe, it is possible
to critically examine what is described here as the transformation of regions into
innovation spaces.
This examination is carried out by analyzing a case in Sweden using the growing literature
on the sociological functions of numbers as well as the emerging scholarship on the politics
of calculative practices in governance as points of departure. More specifically, by
following the manufacturing and dissemination of an index designed to measure the
innovative capacity of Swedish regions, the paper shows how such governmental
technologies helps define, and turn the elusive concept of innovation into a transferable
and mobile unity, possible to install into a range of different calculative practices.
The index, which has the explicit purpose to serve as a policy learning device, has been
released in three iterations so far since the beginning in 2011 and it now encompasses and
utilizes data from 2004 to 2014 for all Swedish regions. It is produced by the organization
RegLab, which is a collaboration platform where 21 Swedish regions and important
government agencies can meet and exchange knowledge. By focusing on the detailed
reports issues by RegLab in connection to each new iteration of the index, as well as
selected Regional Development Strategies (RDS) published by the regions, the
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construction, deployment and influence of the index is traced empirically. Taken together,
it is argued here that the index helps legitimize and depoliticize the production of regions
into innovation spaces.
Crafting of spaces through the “place-based approach”? The example of the
EU cohesion policy
Estelle Evrard
Following the movement initiated in the late 2000’s by the World Bank and the OECD, the
EU defined the “place-based approach” as one of the cornerstones of the current Cohesion
policy (2014-2020). It is foreseen that practitioners implementing this policy at (sub)national level develop tailor-made strategies to revitalise territorial identity and assets.
They are encouraged to go beyond sectoral boundaries and to develop an open governance
drawing upon their own leading capacity and commitment (EC, 2015). This approach takes
the opposite stance to other EU “spatially blind” policies (e.g. research, competition) that
take few account of their spatial impacts and that are implemented mainly at national
level.
Beyond policy documents, this contribution draws upon the academic literature to
question whether the place-based approach contributes to reshape the categories ‘local’,
‘regional’ and ‘national’. This shall help investigating how this policy approach contributes
to the construction of spaces. This contribution will use two angles to shed some light on
the significance of this policy approach in the current debate on scales and space.
First, the place-based approach has deep implications for practitioners at all levels of
governance. Institutionalised at the EU level through regulations, instruments and funds,
this approach is meant to be appropriated by practitioners of the Cohesion policy
surpassing the “traditional” established scales of governance in this field. Second, this
approach implies transcending horizontally sectoral approach and administrative
boundaries. It therefore questions the process of space construction against the
background of ‘territory’ (container space). These two angles will help concluding on the
practical and conceptual significance of this concept to the current debate on crafting
spaces and scales.
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22 Advocacy as negotiated practice in policy and
politics
Margit van Wessel, Tamara Metze & Jennifer Dodge
Session 1 Wednesday 6th July 16.30-18.00
Advocacy in international development: how to assess and communicate
‘effectiveness’when your achievements can’t show ‘impact’.
Margitvan Wessel
From 2012 to 2015, Wageningen University and Research Centre evaluated the advocacy
activities funded by the Dutch MoFA’s € 1.9 billion grant framework for Co-Financing
Agencies (CFA) in the field of international; development. The team evaluated the
advocacy programmes of eight alliances operating worldwide. To engage with the
complexities of advocacy, the team employed a theory-based approach, reconstructing the
programmes’ Theories of Change, and seeking to identify outcomes and assess outcomes’
relevance in the light of these Theories of Change. This paper argues how, for international
development advocacy programmes, theory-based evaluation has an unforeseen
significance, rooted in the finding that the advocacy programmes’ results were generally at
a remove from impact. Firstly, outcomes were largely in the agenda setting and, to a lesser
degree, policy development stages of policy. Secondly, time frames in programme theory
were much longer than programmes that we were to evaluate. And thirdly, advocacy in the
evaluated programmes was often system-oriented, centering on normative and legal
frameworks, with little orientation to policy development closer to practice, or
implementation.
A key issue here is that constituency needs in by far most cases were not directly served by
alliances’ advocacy outcomes. Outcomes tend to be interim in nature, banking on further
policy process to become reality. This is problematic in the international development
context where impact ‘on the ground’, improving lives, is the ultimate yardstick for
effectiveness.
Here is where theory-based approaches can be argued to have a special significance: it will
be possible to do justice to the effectiveness of advocacy programmes through narratives
situating outcomes in programme theory. Programme theory itself can thus be seen as an
important and necessary foundation for the evaluation of advocacy in international
development, both for identification of outcomes, as also their communication internally
and externally. There is thus reason for organizations in international development
involved with advocacy to invest in programme theorizing that can form the foundation for
building narratives on effectiveness that can be compelling, even when outcomes are at a
remove from impact.
Bridging the Gap: Dalit NGOs Between Professionalism and Protest
Sandhya Fuchs
This paper analyses the efforts of selected Indian Human Rights organisations that aim to
address the persisted socio-economic disadvantage of ‘untouchables’ (Dalits) through an
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innovative combination of global advocacy, grassroots activism and active efforts to
collaborate with national-level policy makers in the ‘official language of politics’.
Occupying the ‘middle’ ground (Merry) between informal resistance, advocacy and formal
politics these organizations represent a new type of semi-institutional actor in the arena of
Dalit policy in India.
I will begin my paper by exploring the nexus of socio-economic exclusion Dalits face in
contemporary India. Then, I will show how the globally visible advocacy strategies of Dalit
human rights organizations have started to transform the realm of collective political
action by Dalits on the grassroots and begun to penetrate the hitherto exclusive political
authority of Indian policy makers. By adopting a ‘professional’ image and distancing
themselves from performance-based methods of activism these NGOs have successfully
advanced on a path of ‘beating the government with its own weapons’ and have globally
promoted the problem of untouchability as a human rights violation.
In the final part of my paper I will discuss how the advocacy strategies of Dalit human
rights organisations might fail to capture the complexity and nature of local grievances and
demands. Drawing on the theories of Michel de Certeau, I will ask if emulating the
strategies of the powerful, while often momentarily successful in increasing the audibility
of socially marginalised groups, might, ultimately, further delegitimize the latter’s own
understandings and conceptual language. On the one hand, these organisations replicate
the very power structures they aim to counteract, by excluding ordinary Dalits from their
professional work. On the other hand they remain outsiders to the actual policy-making
process, forever knocking on the door of formal politics, a game they cannot fully
participate in.
A Critical Evaluation of Performance Measurement in Grassroots Nonprofit
Advocacy: The Promise of Qualitative and Participatory Approaches
Jennifer Dodge & Margaret Post
Grassroots advocacy organizations often do complicated work that aims to achieve broad
societal changes beyond narrow organizational goals. This work raises questions about
how best to measure advocacy performance. In this paper, we identify and provide critical
analysis of performance measurement theories and practices. Our goal is to illuminate the
epistemological tensions inherent in the literature on assessing impact in nonprofit
organizations. Using a case example that includes insights from over 20 grassroots’
organizers about how to effectively measure impact and account for success, we also
provide frameworks that advance the practices of co-constructed and collaborative
knowledge creation as a means of measuring advocacy performance, and improving the
achievement of advocacy goals.
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23 Morality, politics, discourse
Rosa Escanes Sierra & Jane Mulderrig
Tuesday 5th July 16.30-18.00
Economic Re-colonisation: The Role of Treaty Settlements as a Denial of
Indigeneity
David Carter
The 1998 Ngāi Tahu-Crown Treaty of Waitangi settlement was the culmination of a battle
for recognition for New Zealand’s indigenous Māori of the South Island (Te Wai
Pounamu). This paper illustrates that economic harm was overdetermined in articulating
the historic grievance in a moral debate. Furthermore, as a public policy exercise in seeking
to resolve historic grievance, certain techniques of governance and governmentality were
employed in the attempt at resolution. For example, advanced capitalist technologies
including accounting, economics, and law dominate the articulation of resolution. The
paper examines three issues. First, the paper interrogates the logic of ‘resolution’. It
examines critically the impact of attempts at resolution and whether resolution is
‘possible’. In particular, this examines how the construction of ‘nodal points’ of the historic
harm (primarily in economic terms) operate to constrain and exclude likely outcomes.
Second, it challenges the dominance of economic harm as a policy discourse. In particular,
this examines the impact of the dichotomy between the Waitangi Tribunal process which
adopts an inquisitorial rather than adversarial process and accepts notions of historic
harm in any form and the formal Office of Treaty Settlements’ process which examines
issues through an economic harm lens. In this, economics is a limited and limiting frame of
reference. Third, the paper challenges the post-colonial imposition of economic control:
Ngāi Tahu were required to establish a corporate structure in order to be eligible for
settlement. The paper argues that this is a form of ‘post-colonial imperialism’ or ‘economic
re-colonisation’ - to have your historic grievance resolved (indigeneity), you must be like us
(not indigenous). This constitutes a form of economic, political, and legal ‘epistemic
violence’ cleverly constructed through the rhetoric of resolution (Spivak, 1988). The paper
argues that this denies indigeneity and demonstrates the dominance of advanced capitalist
technocracy and democracy. In short, this fundamentally questions the morality of
economic resolution and the moral impacts of denying indigeneity.
Morality, ethics, and democracy: Some conceptual reflections
Ingrid Metzler
This paper wishes to engage with what the recent reemergence of morality talk might mean
on a conceptual level as well as how we might deal with this on a methodological level.
Conceptually, the paper draws on post-structuralist political theory, suggesting, that a
difference should be made between „morality“ and „ethics“. Following Chantal Mouffe, the
paper argues that morality talk tends to mark moments in which routines are interrupted
for a while, the basic rules of democratic life are renegotiated, and the Political is opened
up. „Ethics“ on the other hand, denotes a specialized language that can be legitimately
used once a common ground has been made. In light of this conceptual distinction, the
paper argues that the recent reemergence of morality talk should not come as a surprise as
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morality tends to mark moments of rupture and crisis in democratic political life.
Moreover, it argues that this is why morality politics is so interesting: it allows us to study
the reinvention of politics and democracy in practice, by following actors around
empirically. The paper seeks to solidify this point by drawing upon examples from crosscountry comparative work on debates on genetic testing in European countries.
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24 Everyday Moral Judgements of Street-Level
Bureaucrats
Josien Arts & Nora Ratzmann
Session 1 Tuesday 5th July 16.30-18.00
Aesthetic Judgements of Street-Level Bureaucrats. Dress, Hygiene and
Moral-Evaluations-in-Action
Marguerite Van den Berg & Josien Arts
Why does a person wearing flip-flops to a job interview for the position of desk-clerk
receive a welfare-benefit sanction? Is a facial tattoo grounds for welfare penalties? Is
wearing a burqa? These types of judgements are made by welfare case-managers in their
everyday interactions with welfare recipients. Especially since the implementation of the
Participation Act in January 2015, an ‘appropriate’ appearance is considered an obligation
for welfare-recipients. Local welfare offices now give benefit-sanctions to welfarerecipients that obstruct employment by dress, appearance and personal hygiene. Such
evaluation practices are mostly implicit and underexposed, but produce very tangible
effects for those under scrutiny.
Since there is much uncertainty about what an appropriate appearance entails, aesthetic
judgments are a specific type of moral-evaluations-in-action, in which aesthetic value is
established through intersubjective agreement among case-managers. It is a relational
process of collectively comparing, negotiating and defining standards of deservingness. In
this process, symbolic boundaries are created: conceptual distinctions which categorize
welfare recipients on the basis of aesthetic standards (Lamont, 2012).
In this paper, we ask how case-managers in welfare offices evaluate aesthetic performances
of welfare recipients. Based on participant observation and a series of qualitative
interviews in three Dutch municipalities, we analyse how aesthetic value is established in
negotiation between case-managers and how they actually assess whether a person meets
these standards.
The micro-politics of worry. The govermentality of affective citizenship in
interaction between front-line workers and their clients
Thomas Kampen, Femmianne Bredewold, Loes Verplanke & Evelien Tonkens
Welfare state reform in the Netherlands can be understood as a govermentality geared
towards creating ‘affective citizens’. Budget cuts on care and welfare are to be absorbed by
family, friends, or neighbors taking on care responsibilities. This paper focuses on how
affective citizenship is debated and enacted in interaction between front-line workers,
summoning citizens to care for each other, and the target group of their interventions. The
central question of this paper is how do front-line workers evaluate whether citizens are
deserving or undeserving of care arrangements? And what role do emotions play in daily
moral practices that constitute their evaluative decisions? By focusing on the emotions in
this interaction we illuminate ways in which affects are mobilised at the micro-level in
order to comply with or contest the governmentality of affective citizenship. Our findings
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show that front-line workers and citizens find ways to resist each other’s intentions as well
as policy goals. We describe three lines along which they do, all concerned with a ‘micropolitics of worry’. First of all, front-line workers persuade their clients to accept help from
family members by provoking worries about the future potential of welfare provision.
Second, citizens resist front-line workers pursued of policy goals by provoking worries
about a possible lack of affective resources in the future. Third, together they find ways to
resist policy by expressing worries about policy guidelines obstructing affective citizenship.
This article builds on an ethnographic approach to the governmentality of citizenship and
expands Arlie Hochschild’s theory on emotion management with the concept of
‘hypothetical framing rules’; managing emotions by comparing current situations with a
glance into the future.
Everyday responsibilisation: the discretionary nature of flexibilised
management
Paul White & Jocelyn Finniear
This paper reports on a small component of a research project examining the accounts of
women seeking flexible working following a period of maternity leave and those line
managers responsible for granting flexible working arrangements. Whilst the research
examines the accounts of those from across a number of public and private sectors, our
focus here is upon those organisations that provided public services, notably in health and
welfare. In so doing, we draw upon the accounts of those professionals charged with the
delivery of public services. At first glance such an approach appears to run counter to
Lipsky’s (1980) assertion that management is quite different to that of the street-level
bureaucrat. However, the move from principles of office (du Gay, 1996) to principles of
entrepreneurship (Shore & Wright, 2000) has enabled greater managerial discretion,
enabling a particular reproduction of public and organisational policy.
Instead of assuming a policy is a rule (and we focus here on law and organizational policy)
we may find an alternate route through the discretionary activity by way of rules
necessarily being a social accomplishment (Garfinkel, 1967). Indeed within a discretionary
frame there is much ambiguity as to the correct course of action, all of which are countable
and accountable in order to show a desirable level of performance where managers as
street-level bureaucrats come to navigate and fulfil often vague institutional demands (cf.
Munro, 1995). So whilst institutionally all employees were eligible to access flexible
working arrangements, for consideration employees were required to present a business
case that showed the added value to the service. In this way an institutional right was
reformulated as an organizational privilege that challenged the nature of commitment
from that of providing a service to a commitment to the individual manager (Legge, 1995).
This paper traces the ways in which broader economic assumptions filter through into the
ways in which demonstrable responsibilisation (Shamir, 2008) is required of all,
subverting institutional demands in favour of personal ones. Here health and welfare
managers and practitioners necessarily become entrepreneurially minded, but perhaps at
the expense of the organization (cf. Kornberger et al, 2001).
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Session 2 Thursday 08.30-10.00
A theoretical critique and refinement of co-production theory: the role of
conflicting interests between clients and caseworkers in co-producing social
services
Laurens Vos
The idea of ´co-production’-designing public services to use clients as co-producers of their
service—as a policy strategy is not new, but the extent to which the idea has influenced
practice has been marginal until now. However, the recent redesign of Dutch welfare state
policies adds urgency to explore the idea: the devolution and budget cuts in childcare
policies, welfare policies and disability policies are coupled with a redesign of each their
goals towards co-production. Through responsibilization of the receiver of care for the
coproduction of his or her own public goods, the state seeks to redescribe the citizen-state
relationship as that of co-producer and facilitator.
Coproduction literature, while offering a neat analytical lens for the co-producing
relationship between state and citizen as producer and co-producer, it neglects the role of
conflicting interests between the two parties, reducing it to an issue of technical design.
This article offers a theoretical critique and refinement of coproduction theory by
confronting its assumptions with two literatures that do explicitly take into account the
role of conflicting interests between service providers and clients: the street-level literature
and the governmentality literature.
From these works tensions emerge that undermine the promise of coproduction theory.
Street-level scholars have convincingly argued how scarcity of resources in the delivery of
social services can lead to organizational procedures that incentivize behaviors from case
workers towards rationing, categorizing and other ‘coping’ behaviors. Recent work using
governmentality theory add to this that a policy focus on producing compliance from
clients disciplines the behavior of case workers, incentivizing them to discipline clients
towards compliance or exclusion from services via sanctions and procedures. Perhaps most
worryingly-both bodies of work highlight that these practices easily remain hidden from
formal performance measures to track policy efficiency and effectiveness. The article ends
with a theoretical model for empirically exploring the issue.
“You Have a Moral Obligation to Try”: Cloaking Organizational Goals as
Ethical Practice
Patricia Ehrensal
On September 25, 2012, PBS Frontline aired “Dropout Nation,” as part of its yearlong
exploration of the dropout crisis in the U.S. The program followed the stories of 4 students
in “dropout factory” Sharpstown High School (SHS) in Houston Texas. In this paper
however, I will focus on Rob Gasparello, the principal of SHS. By appearance and
reputation, Gasparello is a “caring” and ethical principal. However, as the documentary
unfolds the appearance shifts.
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The film follows four students in their last year of high school and Gasparello and the
staff’s efforts to keep them attending school so that they can graduate. Their efforts
however, do not take into consideration the precarious lives of the students.
Drawing from Foucault’s work on discourse, discipline, and power/knowledge, as well as
the work of Hannah Arendt and the literature on ethical educational leadership, in the
paper I do a critical discourse analysis of the interviews of Gasparello, as well as his
interactions with the students and administrative staff. While under pressure from the
State to decrease its dropout rates, I question if the Gasparello is acting in the best
interests of the student, or (unwittingly?) in the interest of himself and the school
organization. Gasparello and his leadership team focus on the organization and how the
students’ academic performance and attendance serves to meet the goals of the
organization. In doing so, Gasparello and his staff merely followed the policy directive to
increase graduation rates, ignoring the social and structural issues that precipitated the
precarious lives of these students. They implemented the policy as directed and weren’t
responsible for anything beyond it. In doing so, Gasparello claimed moral leadership yet
perpetuated social injustice.
I conclude that, ethical educational leaders must not only acknowledge the lived
experiences of children outside of school, but also vociferously question the ethics and
values that allow children to have precarious lives. Thus, by unshackling themselves from
prescribed measures of “student success” and addressing the needs of the students,
principals can unlock ethical leadership potential and place schools in a context of social
justice.
Tweet Level Bureaucrats: coping and discretion in an era of system-level
bureaucracy, example of m-community policing.
Stephen Jeffares
On the 25th November 2015 @Davep78 tweeted his local police department saying “looks
like @GMPCityCEntre don’t want to reply”. A few hours later Inspector S replied
“@daveP78 - working through replies after being on my feet since 10am…bear with us”.
This kind of exchange between citizen and police officer takes place on Twitter and
Facebook every day within police departments across the developed world. It began
around 5 years ago with police forces setting up force-wide accounts to broadcast
information, news and advice. More recently individual police departments and officers
are maintaining accounts, that allow for a more personalised, interactive experience. This
is m-community policing in action, and may be vital when information is sought, when
rumours abound or complaints are to be managed. This m-community policing has
emerged amid encroaching system-level bureaucracy (Bovens and Zouridis), where
discretion has been squeezed and the need for face-to-face connection minimised, where
visits to a local office are replaced by an online form and an automated reply. This paper
asks how does the interface afforded by social media open up new spaces for police officers
to exercise coping strategies of moving towards, away or against local citizens? The paper
revisits the theses of street, screen and system-level bureaucracy. The paper describes how
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social media is being adopted in public service and how this is resulting in practices at the
interface of a digital frontline. The paper applies an analytical framework for classifying
observable social media practices of street-level bureaucrats based on Tummers et al’s
(2015) triptych of moving towards-away-against. The paper applies this framework to a
case of police use of Twitter in the UK. The paper finds that local police accounts
frequently engage in discretionary practice and is an extension of their community policing
role, whereas accounts led by community mangers are more likely to “move away” in their
replies.
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26 Transformative Perspectives and Practices:
Toward a Policy Analysis for Environmental,
Economic, and Social Sustainability
Koen Bartels & Jelle Behagel
Thursday 7th July 08.30-10.00
The knowledge repertoire perspective: a theoretical framework to address
meso-level agency, detailing its linkages to institutions, boundaries and
practice.
Alejandro Balanzo
This paper presents results of an abductive inquiry. Research about strategies of farmers’
organizations as change agents brought about the construction of a theoretical approach
addressing meso-level agency, highlighting its knowledge related flows: the knowledge
repertoire perspective.
The perspective follows stances of intertwinement amongst institutions, boundaries and
practice. Institutional work, innovation intermediation and sociology of practice streams
lay its foundations distilling them into a single body.
Agency is seen as a combination of knowledge repertoires in the pursuit of creating fields
of practice. Rather than corresponding to each other linearly, institutions, boundaries and
practice complement its various facets. Agency is rendered as an act of positioning,
describing strategies as adaptive forms of practical coping occurring on various fields.
Knowledge contents feeding these repertoires are context specific and express its related
cognitive settings, but also its embeddedness in wider institutional, politic and calculative
patterns.
The paper recurs to results on the empirical realm as its grounding means. It is a multisited case, about forty-four Colombian cocoa smallholder producer’s organizations. Data
relates to historical and present accounts of organizations’ relations in four fields: markets,
grassroot identity, rural development, productive sector affairs and local public affairs.
Conclusions are relevant to policy analysis in a twofold way: first, it shows the repertoire as
a possible interpretive approach to policy. Second, it expands the understanding and scale
of forms of auto-organization and its multiple possible linkages to policy endeavours.
Assessing the uptake of a third generation transformative innovation policy
by the EU
Gijs Diercks
In the 20th century, innovation became directly linked to competitiveness and seen as a
major source behind economic growth. However, this paradigm is being challenged as
transformative changes are needed to keep society within its planetary boundaries
(Rockström, 2009). In response, the last decade has seen a shift in innovation policy of
which the sources are twofold. In the first place, a normative turn is advocated, where
innovation is explicitly addressing a set of wider societal targets sometimes called ‘grand
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challenges’ (Kallerud, 2013). Secondly, it embraces a much broader model of innovation
than before, emphasising among others its interactive nature (Jensen et al, 2007), the role
of users and citizens (von Hippel, 2005) and the notion of openness (Chesbrough, 2003).
Little research has been done on identifying these discursive shifts and how associated new
ideas are adopted and structured by policy documents and institutionalised in policy
practices.
This paper looks at current developments of 21th century innovation policy of the EU. It
observes changes in innovation discourses, their structuration in policy documents and
their institutionalisation in daily practices that move beyond a narrow science-based and
competitiveness-driven agenda. The main research question is: how is EU innovation
policy and practice responding to ‘grand challenges’.
This research challenges the rational model of policy change in which new information
leads to policy adaptation, since it does not provide a satisfactory explanation for observed
policy change and divergence. Instead, it takes an approach in which ideas matters and
together with institutions and interests shape policy outcomes (Kern, 2011). Policy
outcomes are seen as the result of a constant underlying power struggle between different
discourse coalitions competing for influence. Identifying different discourses will tell you
something about their respective dominance and their transformative potential. It argues
that ideas influence policy making through the consecutive phases of discourse creation,
structuration and institutionalisation (Hajer, 2005). The research assess the different
phases through a literature review (discourse creation), analysis of strategic policy
documents (discourse institutionalisation) and field work done within the European
Commission in Brussels (discourse institutionalisation).
What does studying the ‘Ecosystem Approach’ tell us about attempts to be
transformative?
Kerry Waylen, Kirsty Blackstock & Kirsty Holstead
We reflect on how we can study and encourage transformative approaches to managing the
environment, by using our exploratory study of recent attempts to implement the
‘Ecosystem Approach’. The Ecosystem Approach is an ambitious concept for
environmental management that advocates an adaptive, systemic and inclusive approach,
often referred to its 12 Malawi Principles for implementation (Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD), 2000). We studied the experiences of project managers, who are tasked
with the responsibility for delivering this potentially transformative approach to
management.
Our focus on projects and project managers thus reflected the sector’s own preoccupation
with delivering transformative approaches via the unit of the project, whose emic relevance
thus aided engagement and data collection. Our analysis of the projects and experiences
clearly indicates that the progress of projects is nevertheless shaped by factors across
levels, and does not depend solely on the initiative of an individual project manager. All
projects made progress in introducing more systemic or participatory ways of working, but
never achieved all their aims, nor fully implemented all 12 principles.
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We identified three types of ‘sticking point’ arose from the legacy of previous ways of
managing the environment: cognitive sticking points, arising from previous ways of
thinking about and understanding environmental management; institutional sticking
points, arising from previous ways of organising and incentivising environmental
management; and political sticking points, arising from pre-existing power relations in
organisations shaping management. These sticking points interact to ‘close down’
attempts to introduce new ways of working.
It is early days, but so far the sticking point concept is proving an evocative and intuitive
means to open conversations with stakeholders, e.g. in policy groups, to broach the idea
that if we wish to see transformative change, we will need change more than individual
project-goals. However, it also true that this framing can be accused of critiquing a
dominant hegemony whilst providing relatively little guidance about how to go about
identifying and making the systematic alterations needed to achieve transformative
change. We are therefore keen to learn and connect with other studies and framings that
have studied attempts for transformative change for sustainability.
Understanding sustainable transformations through practice: the example of
the water crisis in São Paulo, Brazil
Jelle Behagel
Crises and/or disasters are often viewed as the starting point of societal transformations.
The North Sea flood of 1953 in the Netherlands led to new thinking about water safety; the
oil crisis in the late 70s led to the development of biofuels for cars; the Chernobyl disaster
of 1986 led to a reconsideration of the potential of nuclear energy, the list goes on. But how
such crises lead to societal change remains poorly understood. Why did the financial crisis
of 2008 leave the global financial system mostly intact whereas the Fukushima disaster in
2011 led to rapid policy on nuclear energy in Germany? Understanding the social
dynamics underlying such societal change can inform our understanding of the potential
for sustainable transformations.
This paper focuses on the ongoing water crisis of São Paulo (Brazil) as an opportunity for
sustainable transformation and builds on the personal experiences of the author as a parttime inhabitant of the city, interviews with stakeholders, and gathering of relevant data
from official publications, news sites, and social media. Studying this crisis as it has been
unfolding allowed for a type of in-depth analysis that signals daily political, water
management, policy, and local water use practices. These practices entail the use of new
types of knowledges side-by-side old solutions, the emergence of new actors as well as the
maintaining of old positions, and the search for new daily routines as well as holding on to
old ones.
The example of the water crisis of São Paulo shows that sustainable transformations are
precarious, and cannot be explained by for example political dynamics alone. Rather,
societal transformations require a broad reshaping of the practices of various levels and
domains of society, reflecting both the ‘stickiness’ of practice and the complexity of society.
Interpretive analysis brings that process to light.
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27 Using STS to disrupt and recast environmental
policy problem-solution trajectories
Ronlyn Duncan & Sarah Edwards
Session 1 Wednesday 6th July 12.45-14.15
From Cultural Theory to Co-production: assessing the power of STS to
disrupt environmental cause-and-effect relationships in international
development
Tim Forsyth
This paper seeks to summarise the contribution of debates connected to Science and
Technology Studies (STS) in the field of environment and development since the 1980s,
and provides an example from current research in Myanmar.
For decades, empirical research in environment and development has highlighted the
problem that much environmental policy in developing countries is dominated by scientific
beliefs about environmental cause-and-effect about problems such as desertification and
deforestation are highly flawed, and socially exclusive. Theoretical work in the 1980s used
the Cultural Theory of Mary Douglas and Michael Thompson to propose links between
expertise and worldviews. In the 1990s, attention shifted to Foucaultian analysis of
environmental narratives or storylines. STS has since emerged more strongly as a field,
although differences exist between actor-network theory (with its emphasis on human/
non-human links) and co-productionist analyses of scientific expertise within public
policy. All of these approaches, however, have had limited impact on environmental
policymaking, and there are stereotypical criticisms that STS is equivalent only to
deconstruction.
This paper argues that the lessons of STS for environmental science and policymaking
need to be made more explicit and linked to new forms of deliberative and reflexive
institutions within science and policy. To illustrate one potential form, the paper argues
that the concept of Theories of Change (as used by NGOs and policy actors) represents a
current application of environmental narratives and worldviews, and consequently STS
can gain influence by engaging with this concept. The paper draws on an example of
governing Theories of Change concerning adaptation to climate change in Myanmar as a
way to institutionalise reflexive and deliberative approaches to policymaking—and by so
doing, also draws lessons for applying STS concepts more usefully within environmental
policymaking.
Rescaling knowledge and embracing uncertainty: a co-production critique of
New Zealand’s water quality policy reforms
Ronlyn Duncan
This paper uses the STS-inspired co-production analytical framework articulated in States
of Knowledge: the co-production of science and social order (Jasanoff, 2004). It presents
a critique of water policy reforms in New Zealand’s South Island region of Canterbury
where collaborative water quality limit-setting is taking place. The research identifies that
the roles of the state, science and the community have changed significantly through a
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discourse of limits, predictive representations of catchment-scale cumulative effects, a
politically-expedient institutional pathway, and recast identities that constitute ‘the
community’ as decision-maker with the state and science as ‘knowledge brokers’. The
analysis reveals the enactment of ‘predictable nature’ that is essential for state decisionmaking in tension with ‘uncertain nature’ which allows scientists to retain their epistemic
authority. The analysis highlights the extent of the reordering of nature and society that is
necessary to conduct collaboration and regulate diffuse pollution to address water quality.
Mussels between care, choice and control: Local practices in an
environmental conservation policy
Karel Cada
This paper explores how an environmental conservation policy is implemented and
negotiated at the local level. The paper describes a controversy about the causes for the
decline in the population of the freshwater pearl mussel in the Czech Republic and the
attempts to implement a conservation strategy for that population. The freshwater pearl
mussel was historically abundant in many streams and rivers in the Czech Republic,
however, by the 21st century, the mussels had become almost extinct, and current
populations is estimated to be only 1% of the historical abundance (Simon et al 2015). The
population decline has been related to the negative impacts of pollution from agriculture,
forestry, and sewage water. Therefore, this species was considered critically endangered,
and an action plan was developed to conserve the population. However, conservation
biologists argue, that the action plan is unlikely to be successful without changes in
existing routines in local agriculture and forestry. The paper makes use interviews with
local stakeholders, analysis of policy documents and the researcher's own observation in
order to examine interactions that take place between experts from different backgrounds,
agriculturists, foresters, policymakers, local stakeholders, different material objects and
freshwater pearl mussels. I focus on two aspects of the described controversy: (1) how
actors in a situation of uncertainty interpret of what happened, establish qualifications and
submit them to test (Boltanski 2011) and (2) how actors deploy different logics of dealing
with their environment – logic of care, logic of choice and logic of control (Mol 2008).
This research intends to sensitize policy and practices to the specificities of location and
local semio-material practices and to the recognition of the pluralist expectations and
grammars of worth as an inevitable condition for co-productive relations in a conservation
policy. Through lenses of Science and Technological Studies (STS), the freshwater pearl
mussel conservation policy is seen as a historically, culturally and politically specific form
of care and control which excludes and neglects different forms of care such as complex
relations between farmers and foresters with their environment.
Session 2 Wednesday 6th July 14.45-16.15
Lost in Translation? A Framework for Studying Care for Marginalized
Concerns in Climate Adapted Planning Assemblages
David Olsson
Much environmental research have stressed the need to transform social-ecological
relations into more sustainable arrangements (e.g. Berkes and Folke 1998; Folke et al.
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2005; Lockie et al 2014; Death 2014); the field of climate change adaptation (CCA) is by no
means an exception (e.g. Pelling 2011; Paschen and Ison’s 2014; Westling’s et al 2014;
Vogel and Henstra 2015; Satterthwaite et al 2009; Hunt and Watkiss 2011; Mimura et al
2014; IPCC 2014). However, transformations are repeatedly fraught by difficulty.
Moreover, CCA enactments have been criticized for tendencies toward ‘technical fixes’ and
for neglecting key challenges and root causes found in e.g. social, cultural and institutional
structures (e.g. Adger et al [eds.] 2009; Pelling 2011; Wamsler och Brink 2014).
Primarily drawing on actor-network theory (ANT), this paper contributes to this discussion
by outlining a conceptual framework that explicitly focuses on unraveling how, and to
some extent why, cares for ‘structurally’ marginalized concerns are translated into or
excluded from urban CCA plans. Moreover, in the spirit of ANT it will be attentive to both
human and non-human actors’ importance in a way that is quite uncommon in other CCA
research. In addition, the framework is explicitly designed to avoid what Latour has
termed ‘ready-made’ explanations (e.g. Latour 2005; de la Bellacasa 2011).
The paper is structured as follows. First, I outline a conceptual framework inspired by
Callon’s (1986) translation concepts, Greimas’s actant-model, and the notion ‘matters of
care’ (de la Bellacasa 2011). Second, I present an analysis of previous research based on the
conceptual framework. The analysis is summed up in a few key themes that capture the
concerns these studies found to be marginalized. In a subsequent study (not presented in
this paper), the conceptual framework, accompanied with these themes, will function as a
point of departure for examining how and why marginalized concerns are incorporated
and/or excluded in Swedish urban plans.
Debating Bio(in)security: The containment of Genetically Modified Organisms
in New Zealand
Sarah Edwards, Roy Montgomery & Suzanne Vallance
As a small island nation dependant primarily on agricultural exports and nature tourism
for its income, New Zealand biosecurity policy and legislation is predicated on a need to
protect its physical borders from incursion by unwanted disease or alien species. There is a
sharply defined distinction between “inside” and “outside”, and there is an ever-present
effort to control pathways for “escape” or “invasion”. Genetically Modified Organisms
(GMOs) pose one such biosecurity risk, and any research involving GMOs is therefore
regulated by biosecurity legislation. Accordingly, risk management strategies are used to
control pathways for the escape of genetic material from designated areas for research,
known as containment facilities. Although these risk management strategies are often
controversial, there is nevertheless some consensus over what constitutes an acceptable
venue for research. Field-based research is widely regarded as carrying a high level of risk,
whereas research conducted in a laboratory is generally viewed as safe.
In this paper we will argue that the contrast between laboratories and fields is not simply
due to inherent characteristics of these two places of research. Using the analytical tools of
Actor-Network Theory (ANT), we will demonstrate that risk management practices
involving actors on both sides of the debate over GMO research are themselves enacting a
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separation between laboratories and fields. This in turn is serving to shape the direction of
GMO research in New Zealand; as yet, however, this research trajectory has not been
explicitly recognised or debated. We hope that by initiating this debate we will not only
redefine the risks associated with GMO research, but also envision alternative ways of
doing GMO research.
Vanishing of expertise in the implementation of environmental policy: from
chains of inscriptions to multiple modes of ordering
Michal Sedlacko & Martina Maczalova
This paper follows the chain of documents produced and used throughout a 22-month
process of reaching an administrative decision in the context of an implementation of
environmental policy. We trace the approval procedure within the frame of Environmental
Impact Assessment (EIA) in the Slovak Republic, the subject being a large infrastructure
project to be built in a vulnerable natural area and having significant social and
environmental implications. Our research relies on in-depth interviews with policy
workers and extensive access to written documentation, analysed through ‘socio-semiotic
methods’ (Latour and Bastide 1992). We look at ‘careers’ or biographies of documents but
instead of single documents we study the chain of inscriptions, defined in the study of
scientific practices as a “cascade of ever simplified descriptions that allow harder facts to
be produced at greater cost” (Latour 1986, p. 16), looking at the translations employed to
reduce several hundreds of pages of written documentation into several lines of final
decision, and also at the material properties of technologies of documentation.
Initial documents in the chain follow patterns of mobilisation common for scientific
practices (including reliance on ‘inscription devices’ for translating things into words) and
which attempt to “muster on the spot the largest number of well aligned and faithful allies”
(Latour 1986, p. 5). Nevertheless these operations are not a good predictor of the outcome
of the decision – in this sense mediators (Latour 2005) are involved. Although documents
should be understood as “translation operators which enrol their readers by moving them
along a specified channel” (Law 1992, p. 80), the translation of words into words
throughout the later points in the process takes place with the use of different techniques
and operations. Texts are written with the expectation of trials (Latour and Bastide 1992,
Rip 1992), yet the nature of the expected trials changes throughout the process. The notion
of multiple modes of ordering (Law 1994) helps explain this change: throughout the
process of reaching a decision a different ‘style of mattering’ (Law 2009) comes to the fore,
replacing scientific logics with bureaucratic ones – and even producing specific forms of
ignorance.
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28 Epistemology and Ontology Panel
Hugh Miller
Tuesday 5th July 12.45-14.15
Strategies for differential ontological research design in hostile environments:
a proposing a Schmittian-Latourian lens for doing discourse analysis
Pepijnvan Eeden
This paper describes a procedure or ‘lens’ for usage in contemporary discourse analysis
developed during a research project on politicisiation and depoliticisation of Central
European ecology movements before and after 1989. The initial research proposed on
Mouffean discourse theory (DT) and social constructivism in general. However, this turned
out to be an approach rather difficult to defend in an academic research environment
dominated by Cartesian ontological materialism.
A successful strategy was finally found, reliant on the recent Latourian ‘empirical
ontological turn’, which in turn relies on a Deleuzian inspired ‘differential
ontology’ (Latour, 2014; Kelly, 2014). With further reference to the work of Carl Schmitt
(1932/1963), as complemented by Jacques Derrida (1997), this paper elaborates how a
differential ontological or post-foundational research design faced with ‘the empirical
requirement’ may methodically proceed when politicization and depoliticisation are
concerned.
Crucial is the realisation that it is incorrect to infer from any of the above mentioned
authors that ‘foundations’ in discourse – grounds, essences, universals, ‘common-sense’
truths – should be dismissed altogether. Rather the very opposite: what emerges as our
Schmittian-Latourian lens implies that careful scrutiny to the relative stability of
foundational notions is essential to establish the degree of politicisation of discourse.
It then becomes imperative to utilise a purely negative analytical grid: refraining from
'explaining' (words of) actors by shifting them to the always idiosyncratic ‘framework’ of
the analyst on what socio-political reality consists of, but by simply describing or
assembling them wherever ‘matters of concern’ appear (i.e. where they are controversial,
conflictious, incoherent, etc.). The question to what ‘real knowledge’ is, asked and then
answered by what Latour refers to as the ‘epistemology-police’, should be ignored.
Interestingly, depoliticisation of discourse then appears as inextricably linked to the degree
to which foundational ontological frameworks such as the Cartesian are accepted a priori.
Even more interestingly, we can capture such depoliticisation processes through the
‘negative recording’ of experiences, personal ontologies and worldviews; thus we
simultaneously reappropriate the rigorous empiricism traditionally claimed by
epistemologically policed ontologies (cf. Latour 2005, p. 109-115) – which is not only of
scientific, but also enormous strategic importance.
Ontologies of Deltas and policy implications
Anna Wesselink, MichelleKooy & Jeroen Warner
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Deltas are special places, where the relationships between humans and nature is often
strongly, and increasingly, mediated by technology. Traditions of ‘living with water’, with
modest interventions, are in many places superseded by modernity’s aim to control: dikes
prevent flooding, groins and embankments fix the river channels’ position, polders enable
micro-water level management for the benefit of agriculture. In many countries the
rationale for these interventions is provided by far-reaching ‘integrated’ delta policies, one
recent example of which is the adaptive delta management promoted by Dutch water
experts in e.g. Bangladesh and Vietnam. In this paper we examine on which
conceptualisations of delta systems these policies are based, to find that they look for
universalist assumptions based on quantifiable characteristics. We look for the origin of
these policy understandings of deltas in academic research, where we observe two distinct
paradigms for human-water system research. The first one talks of ‘socio-hydrological’
systems and is based on earth systems science to which a selection of knowledge from
social science research is added which is compatible with quantitative modelling. The
second is an interpretivist/critical one that postulates that two elements ‘socio’ and
‘natural’ cannot be separated or even distinguished in ‘hydrosocial’ systems since they coconstitute each other. Both paradigms share an ontological understanding of the world as
complex, but otherwise are opposites in their treatment of human agency and a reflexive
attitude; they are also opposites in their epistemology (objectivist resp. subjectivist). The
strength of hydrosocial research lies in developing a rich understanding, or narrative, of a
delta system, focussing on the role of power. Socio-hydrology’s strength lies in formalising
a conceptual understanding and quantitative testing of derived hypotheses. The latter is
clearly preferred in policy making, which can be understood as subscription to the
positivist myth of rational policy cycles that hides the political power mongering which is
exposed by critical hydrosocial research; a choice that clearly serves policy makers and
politicians to justify their positions and actions.
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29 Making the green city: Questioning urban
sustainability initiatives
Julia Affolderbach & Kirstie O’Neill
Session 1 Tuesday 5th July 12.45-14.15
Reconfiguring green spaces in “green cities” in light of climate change
Nicole Mahlkow & Tobias Kalt
Major cities increasingly initiate urban sustainability and climate change policies with a
view towards claiming the label 'green city' and positioning themselves as 'green'
frontrunners in global city-rankings. As one of the policy areas effected, the governance of
urban green is increasingly revalued and remodeled according to the objective of gaining a
more favorable position in inter-city competitions. In addition, with the issue of climate
change entering urban governance, urban green has been revalued with a focus on
transformations of urban green to serve climate adaptation goals. While climate
adaptation has had difficulties in gaining a foothold in urban politics, it has recently been
linked to the concept of green cities, potentially facilitating its implementation. However,
while urban green has been revalued for urban competitiveness and climate adaptation
reasons, strong urban growth and concentration pressures lead to conflictive demands on
urban spaces. An interesting case to study reconfigurations of urban green in the context of
intermeshing discourses on green cities, climate change and urban concentration is the city
of Berlin. It is subject to strong population growth and housing pressures, positions itself
as a sustainable and green city internationally, and has recently focused on climate
adaptation issues. This paper investigates how the discursive strands of climate adaptation
and green cities are brought together to facilitate both climate adaptation and the greening
of the city under the paradigms of economic competitiveness. Moreover, it is examined
how these discursive strands interact with the discourse on urban growth and
concentration. One of the focuses of this paper is on how global discourses are filtered into
local discourses and interact with dominant issues on the local agenda. Lastly, the paper
sheds light on the material consequences of the reconfiguration of urban green in Berlin
and presents a critical evaluation from an environmental justice perspective. Critical
discourse analysis is applied in order to trace out how global and local discourses are
constructed, intertwined and transformed to shape the governance of urban green spaces.
UrbanSustainabilityGovernanceThroughIndicators:ThePoliticsand
PracticalitiesofSTARCommunities
Laureen Elgert
Indicators are increasingly used by US cities and towns to provide citizens and policy
makers with a ‘snapshot’ of sustainability, to diagnose policy performance and guide
improved decision-making. While this rather neutral, instrumental view of indicators
persists, critical policy analysis ncreasingly points to the ways in which indicator programs
drive policy in unexpected ways, and reproduce inter-urban inequalities. This research
examines STAR Communities, a relatively new indicator system for US municipalities, and
finds that the program has been engaged differently in different urban localities, with
surprising outcomes.
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Discursive interplay in Frome’s neighbourhood planning process - the limits
and opportunities for progressive and green agendas
Amy Burnett
Understanding the key influences upon the policy-making process reveals a complex
process of negotiation and the limits, and potential, to dream alternatives. The paper
draws on empirical findings from the town of Frome, Somerset, where the progressive
Independent for Frome (IfF) party controls all 17 seats in the town council. IfF is actively
constructing an identity independent from traditional politics and offering a new form of
political action. With strong ties to the local Transition Initiative, sustainable development
is core to IfF’s modus operandus. Frome’s draft neighbourhood plan has a strong narrative
on environmental action, with One Planet Living principles at the centre of the plan. The
paper explores the origins of the ideas in the plan, who, what, and why certain ideas
become validated, or not, in the neighbourhood plan process. In particular the paper
explores what affect governance has on the types of identities that ensue through the planmaking process. What roles were assumed by those engaged in the negotiation of the
neighbourhood plan and how does the performance of these roles affect which discourses
‘travelled’ through the plan. It also explores how the discourse of political independence
affects the diffusion of strong, locally-led environmental action: what discourse is used to
enlist those supportive of a progressive agenda, and what are the limits to diffusion of
more radical ideas through the planning process?
Session 2 Tuesday 5th July 14.45-16.15
Institutionalworkfortransitionfromgraytoblue-greenurbanstormwater
infrastructure
Matthias Wörlen
Traditional urban stormwater infrastructure design follows the idea that stormwater is
waste a city should get rid of as fast as possible. Consequently city-wide networks of
concrete canals are installed to guarantee quick run-off. This gray approach has
tremendous, disturbing effects on the ecological balance of the urban environment as
covering of big areas with impervious surfaces reduces a number of hydrological, climatic
and biological functionalities. Blue-green infrastructure – i.e. vegetation based
infrastructure for stormwater management – helps to mitigate some of the disturbing
impacts of infrastructure. In the context of climate change BGI is used effectively to fight
urban flooding and urban heat island effect.
But transition to another path of infrastructural development for stormwater management
is demanding: New ideas and expertise need to be established (the potentials of urban
water bodies; the feasibility of vegetation based infrastructure) and new criteria and
standards for planning practice need to be set (integration different public and private
stakeholders; design following urban water catchment approach; multi-purpose-design).
The paper introduces the transition from gray to blue-green as a discursive political
intervention in urban modernization and asks for the capabilities for transition with
special emphasize on the epistemic and strategic qualities of the relevant institutional
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actors. Taking a co-evolutionary perspective institutional learning is understood as
reciprocal structuration of the capabilities for innovation of an institutional setting and the
competences of personal institutional entrepreneurs to invest in institutional work for
transition.
The paper refers on two cases: Hannover-Kronsberg, a German pilot project for
sustainable urban development in the 1990ies, and the ABC Waters program, a policy
program to support ecological redesign of gray water infrastructure in Singapore. In both
cases distinct strategic governmental decisions were the starting points and single personal
drivers – combing professional qualification, skillful management and institutional power
– were irreducible for the later transition.
Reconstructing episodes of institutional work we gain insight in practices (labeling, sensemaking, and alliance-building) and tools (long-term budgeting, education, and political
capitalization) for strategic path-breaking and –creation. Furthermore we realize
institutional levers different systems of governance may use to create opportunities for
personal drivers of innovation.
Bringing Down the Viaducts: From Sustainability to Adaptation in the World's
'Greenest' City?
Cristina Temenos
Vancouver British Columbia is often listed among the world's top ten most livable cities. Its
'green', its 'walkable', and despite its alternative moniker 'RainCouver', it boasts a mild
climate, and strong economy. Vancouver is a global model of urban planning and
policymaking. And its known for being a green city. In fact, its current policy framework,
adopted in 2012 is called The Greenest City 2020 Action Plan. In it, this framework sets
the tone of policy making in all planning areas, including transportation and
environmental policies. Drawing on a social history of environmental planning initiatives
in Vancouver, this paper charts the policy decisions begun during a period of post-war
growth though to the present day decision by city council to dismantle two viaducts,
remnants of a failed highway project of the 1960s. This paper asks three questions: Where
did ‘Greenest City’ aspirations come from? What are the implications for meaningful urban
policy initiatives for urban communities? How is the concept of policy failure mobilized in
order to change municipal policy making? In Vancouver, questions of environment have
been prioritized at the expense of heritage, community, and affordability, which bring into
question how sustainability frameworks can be effective, and the degree to which this is
possible.
Climate change as an opportunity for the 'greening' of structurally
disadvantaged European maritime port cities? The case of Bremerhaven and
Hull
Rüdiger Wurzel & Andrew Jonas
Climate change poses both a threat and an opportunity for coastal cities. Much of the
existing policy analysis on climate change as a potential opportunity (e.g. in terms of
creating ‘green jobs’ in the renewable energy sector) has focused on cities as climate
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change leaders and their pioneering activities. In comparison, relatively little is known
about corresponding activities in structurally disadvantaged maritime port cities which
suffer, for example, from long term decline of maritime-related industries (e.g. fishing and
shipbuilding), a poor external image and geographical remoteness. Bremerhaven
(Germany) and Hull (UK) were both once thriving maritime port cities. They are used as
case study cities to assess whether and, if so, how structurally disadvantaged cities may be
able to improve their underperforming local economies, transform their poor external
image and turn into an advantage their geographical remoteness by taking advantage of
the potential opportunities which climate change can provide to such cities.
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30 Critical perspectives on conflict: designing for
critique and improvisation
David Laws, Tamara Metze, Imrat Verhoeven & Nanke Verloo
Session 1 Thursday 7th July 08.30-10.00
Societal conflict on energy technology: the interplay between formal and
informal assessment
Eefje Cuppen, Aad Correlje, Elisabeth van de Grift & Udo Pesch
The implementation of new energy technologies frequently leads to societal conflict. Think
for instance of wind parks, carbon capture and storage, biofuel, and hydrogen. Both
expert-analytic and participatory approaches to inform decision-making on technology
tend to avoid conflict with citizens, either by including a predetermined set of public values
to be assessed by experts, or by consensus-building with citizens. Whilst both approaches
have their merits, they under-utilize the value of conflicting rather than shared viewpoints
for learning. In this paper we therefore take the position that controversies can be regarded
as an informal assessment of the energy project. Societal conflicts articulate public values
that are related to the new energy technology and they give insight into potential societal
and ethical impacts and risks. This informal trajectory of public value articulation takes
place in interaction with a formal trajectory of public value articulation, in which a fixed
repertoire of procedures, standards, tools, and policy arrangements is used for establishing
a collective appraisal of the new technology. In this paper we analyze how the interplay of
formal and informal assessment of new technologies influences processes of technology
implementation and how decision-making structures can be aligned with the needs of a
changing energy system. We draw upon analysis of formal and informal assessment in two
Dutch energy projects: a CCS project and a shale gas exploration project. For both cases,
we analyze the actors, discourses and values that have come to play a role in them. After
discussing these cases, we will make an analysis of the dynamic interplay between formal
and informal trajectories of assessment. This analysis will give rise to reflections on the
conditions for linking formal and informal assessment in order to foster responsible
governance of energy projects.
Ignoring the politics of small things: a critical perspective on the tension
between government strategies and citizen tactics.
NankeVerloo
This paper tells the story of social conflict in a Dutch suburban new town of The Hague,
Ypenburg. As a result of Dutch policies that sought to mix people form diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, the neighborhood was partly inhabited by young urban
professionals and partly by people who were invited to move to the area from the infamous
working class inner city neighborhood the ‘Schilderswijk’. Soon after the move, people
from the Schilderswijk, who had a long-standing tradition of community organizing,
started to organize a local neighborhood center in a container that they called the Cockpit.
In the Cockpit they would organize bingo, card clubs, and other activities. When the
construction period of the neighborhood finished, the city government decided that the
Cockpit had to close. Their policy scheme did not allow for an informal community center,
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instead, every neighborhood had to have an institutionalized and professional center. The
closing of the Cockpit caused a ten yearlong controversy between the local government and
the community. The organizers of the Cockpit were forced to become ‘volunteers’ in the
new center. In response, the group developed everyday forms of resistance. But their
tactics – ranging from putting up the old Cockpit sign to fully occupying the center –
remained in the fringes between the public and the private. Their contestation was not
understood as political action by the local government or the welfare organization. The
ethnographic case study provides a detailed analysis of the informal and everyday
interactions between policy makers, welfare workers, and citizens. These everyday
controversies provide a lens into the paradox between state strategies and community
tactics. Following Arendt’s notion of the political sphere, I unravel how the meaning of
democracy becomes tangible in the politics of small things. The case rethinks the design to
foster citizenship and reveals how ignoring improvised, informal, and everyday
performances undermines the attempts of local governments to engage diverse citizens in
public and political participation.
"GPs don't want to deal with people with complex brain problems" Conflicting Narratives in Policy Research
Dave Vanderhoven
Several research studies show an unexpectedly high co-incidence between Traumatic Brain
Injury (TBI) and homelessness (50% being survivors of TBI). This paper presents findings
from on going co-produced research led by a TBI survivor and involving clinicians,
academics and NGOs. The focus is on the experiences of homeless TBI survivors and shows
an absence of recognition of or treatment for head injury, and what appears to be an overemphasis on alcoholism, drug use or criminality.
In this way, some homeless people perceive service providers’ narratives that construct
them as being ‘to blame’ for their problems and as refusing to engage with services. By
focusing on the presentation issues of alcoholism, drug use and/or criminality, ‘the
problem’ is simplified but more complex and more difficult to issues are potentially
missed.
What is also missed, therefore, are the cognitive difficulties associated with TBI, which
may lead to someone not engaging with services, for example problems with memory,
concentration, organisation and emotional distraction.
This lack of engagement can lead people to be constructed as chaotic or as unwilling to
engage, because service providers aren’t aware of those difficulties. One outcome of this
perception of a narrative of blame for homeless people can be a sense of fatalism and
resentment towards services. An inherent mistrust can lead to yet more disengagement
with offers of support, which can potentially lead to these offers being withdrawn
altogether.
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Exposing these dimensions of service design to service providers can be an unsettling and
unwelcomed intrusion, which begs questions of how other exclusions and omissions are
made possible through tightly weaved narratives of service design.
Our research provides insights into the substantive issues of TBI and homelessness while
at the same time revealing the conflict that arises when existing ways of knowing are
confronted with research findings. This paper articulates the complexities of knowledge
use in life-changing circumstances and offers a model of research design that mitigates
against some of the potential conflicts that arise when insights present a ‘surprise critique’.
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31 The politics of animal welfare: contestation,
deliberation, and power
Peter H. Feindt, Mara Miele & Margit van Wessel
Session 1 - Thursday 7th July 08.30-10.00
The big brand takeover of sustainability: the case of farm animal welfare
John Lever & Mara Miele
Over recent decades trust in food has declined significantly as consumers have become
increasingly concerned about the origins of their food. During this period – in line with
persistence of animal farming epidemics – farm animal welfare (FAW) has risen as a
prominent consumer issue and concern. More recently the business case for farm animal
welfare has grown considerably and many global food companies now address FAW in
their corporate responsibility strategies, as evidenced by the development of the Business
Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare (BBFAW). In this article we examine these
developments. We argue that this latter trend is part of the big brand takeover of
sustainability and that many of the companies involved have no idea why they engage with
FAW. While there is increasing evidence linking industrial animal agriculture to a range of
sustainability issues, global food companies rarely make links between FAW and more
entrenched sustainability issues such as climate change and food sustainability. Although
many global companies work in ways that enhance sustainability if the business case for so
doing is strong, in conclusion we argue that their approach to FAW illustrates the fragile
foundations of their approach to sustainability.
Depolicization through ‘stakeholder dialogue’ on livestock farming in the
Netherlands. Turning citizen concerns into consumer responsibilities.
Margitvan Wessel
The Dutch government organised what it called a ‘stakeholder dialogue’ on the future of
livestock farming in the Netherlands, in response to a perceived need to engage with
citizens’ concerns including e.g. animal welfare, public health and environment.
This paper focuses on the ways in which participants in the dialogue, often connected with
the sector, engaged with publics. It identifies a form of politics that thereby emerges, and
its implications for democratic resolution of issues like animal welfare.
Much of the dialogue evolved around the notion that consumers, while critical as citizens,
make price-driven choices in the supermarket, thereby holding back change: a ‘citizenconsumer paradox’ (Aerts 2013). Shifts to more sustainable livestock farming are to be
realized through market interventions by which this paradox is to be overcome: restricting
consumer choice, rebuilding relations between farmers and consumers, rebuilding
relations between farmers and consumers, and educating/persuading consumers.
The public that is engaged with through this discourse, is a consumer public. Public
concerns are imagined to be solvable through market relations and interventions. This
defines and delimits imaginable forms of interaction with society and types of solutions.
The sector is put into a position of control of selection of pathways of change, with a viable
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business model for the sector as a precondition for change. Resolution of problems is to
happen through private everyday consumption decisions, rather than public, political
process. And the views of ‘the citizen’ while fundamental to the whole matter, are not to be
addressed directly. In this way, citizen voice is constricted in terms of its acknowledgment.
Following Clarke (2011): this ‘stakeholder dialogue’ depoliticizes livestock farming. First, it
disconnects relationships between the public and livestock farming that includes political
dimensions. Relationships are re-imagined as both individualized (contained in the
interaction of consumer and provider) and particularized (located in meat consumption).
This shift turns collective—potentially political—decisions about livestock farming into
questions of consumer responsibility, displacing the possibility of collective deliberation
around issues associated with livestock farming, like animal welfare.
Frames, Emotions and the Politics of Animal Welfare in Japan
Ioan Trifu
From the ethics of animal farming and laboratory experiments to the fight against cruelty
to companion animals, the question of the wellbeing of animals has emerged in a series of
substantial public problems throughout the world. Against the backdrop of growing
awareness among the general population, a large body of research, particularly on animal
protection movements in North America and Europe, has demonstrated the decisive role
played by moral sentiments and emotions in the mobilization over these issues (Jasper and
Nelkin, 1992; Goodwin, Jasper and Polletta, 2001; Traini, 2011).
Such concerns should not however be seen as exclusive to Western countries. In Japan
notably, the place of animals within society has also been radically transformed in the
post-world war 2 period, following the development of intensive farming and the
normalization of meat consumption, the rise in pet ownership since the 1980s and the
international controversies regarding whaling and dolphin hunting. Yet, few researches are
dealing with animal protection movements and animal welfare policy in a non-Western
context.
This paper investigates the framing of animal welfare in Japanese public sphere, focusing
especially on how emotions are integrated in the process and how they have been central in
the transformation of public policies regarding human-animal relationships in Japan. In
order to do so, I selected several case-studies involving the issue of animal wellbeing and
which have gained widespread attention in recent years: Japan’s food policy, the revision
of the Act on Welfare and Management of Animals, and the situation of animals in
disaster. By exploring these Japanese examples, I aim to highlight the significance of
studying emotions and non-Western societies for expanding our understanding of the
modern politics of animal welfare.
Animal Welfare in Brazil: Between Public Deliberation and Market-driven
Incentives
Fausto Makishi, Joao Paulo Veiga & Murilo Zacareli
When in October 2013 a group with hundreds of activists invaded a lab facility in a small
city nearby São Paulo to set all the two hundred dogs (Beagles) free, welfare animal had the
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peak at the public opinion and the government approved a public regulation on the issue to
guarantee animal welfare in tests conducted by the pharmaceutical industry. Since then,
advocacy groups of animal welfare proliferated. Actually, animal welfare is a multiple net
of issues from research integrity to ‘animal publics’ (Blue and Rock, 2014), from ‘new
geographies’ (Butler and Henry, 2013) and from technological drive (Miele and Lever,
2013) to value chain management (Bos, Block and van Tulder, 2013).
Our proposal here is to overlap the efforts of advocacy and public deliberation of animal
welfare in Brazil with the new market certification and label initiatives for meat (chicken,
meat and pork) supposedly based on animal welfare criteria such as ‘free-range’ (Miele,
2011; Dias, 2014) (also including quality, religious, animal protection, social and
environmental criteria). Brazil is one of the largest suppliers of food, particularly meat (1st
producer and 1st exporter), chicken (2nd producer and 1st exporter) and pork (4th
producer and 3rd exporter).
Do the political and market movements converge? Or do they stress the linkage between
the ‘animal publics’ and consumer behavior? To answer this core question we 1. use
comparative politics to evaluate the deliberative political process (Hadley, 2015) and
multistakeholder engagement in the management of the supply chain; 2. compare the
public (the Federal Code of Animal Welfare, 2007) and the private regulation
(certification) in Brazil (based on Principles and Criteria) (Bonamigo and Molento, 2012;
Honorato et. al., 2012; Silva, 2012); and 3. we try to draft an indicator of ‘animal
happiness’ (Miele, 2011) in order to merge (or add)with ‘cruelty free’, ‘certified vegan’, ‘non
tested in animals’ types of symbols and labels that would improve citizenship awareness
and consumer perception on animal welfare (World Animal Welfare Organization).
Session 2 - Thursday 7th July 12.45-14.15
Farm official animal welfare inspections in France: a synthesis of the situation
in the cattle sector between 2010 and 2013
Anne-Claire Lomellini-Dereclenne, Isabelle Veissier, Luc Mounier & Mara Miele
Animal welfare inspections might have an important role in providing useful information
to farmers about the welfare of their animals and might help identifying or prioritizing
interventions for welfare improvement. However in some cases the results of the
inspections are not taken sufficiently on board by the farmers for specific reasons. In this
paper we present an overview of the results of animal welfare inspections of cattle carried
out by the French Ministry of agriculture official control services between 2010 and 2013.
Each inspection was carried out using a grid allowing the assessment of the requirements
of the COUNCIL DIRECTIVE 98/58/EC of 20 July 1998 concerning the protection of
animals kept for farming purposes. The points of vigilance pointed by the regulation
correspond to items / sub-items that are evaluated individually as compliant or not. An
overall score is then awarded to the farm to situate it on a severity scale in relation to the
welfare of animals. This influences the decision to carry out a new inspection for cases
considered most unfavorable.
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We analyzed inspections carried out between 2010 and 2013 to have an overview of the
French situation regarding the compliance with the regulation and of its enforcement
difficulties. A specific attention will be given to farms with a low score at the first
inspection and that have been subjected to additional inspections. The aim of our research
is to identify the various factors vs. barriers that can influence improvements of farm
scores and to propose ways to improve the communication between farmers and animal
welfare farm inspectors.
From animal-policy formulation to implementation: 13 municipal cases in
Mexico
Norma Contreras & Hans Bressers
This study aims at understanding success and failure of creating and implementing animal
protection policies in a hierarchical developing country such as Mexico. The study focuses
on 13 municipal regulations (cases) in two central neighboring states in Mexico. The cases
selected include seven common municipal regulations (codifying existing social norms of
good behavior) in the state of Puebla, and six progressive municipal regulations
(forbidding ongoing practices and events) located in the sate of Veracruz.
It analyses the main actors and their (inter)actions in both the policy formulation and the
implementation processes on the basis of the three main actor characteristics identified by
the Contextual Interaction Theory (CIT) by Bressers (2004, 2009) and Bressers et al.
(2016). The assessment allows to understand which combination of factors increase the
likelihood of success of the regulations in the policy process.
The actors and their roles are classified under the theoretical framework for case study
analysis (TCA) by Dente, et.al (1998) while the analysis of their characteristics and their
contexts is done using CIT.
The study answers the questions 1) What motivations, cognitions and resources do the
different kinds of actors involved exhibit? and 2) How does the blend of these actorcharacteristics enable or hinder the success of the regulations?
The methodology followed includes in depth interviews and talks with the stakeholders
involved (guided by the CIT framework), combined with an assessment of relevant
websites and news media for further corroboration and obtaining additional information.
The study found that the presence of actors with the role of “promoters” is most essential
in the formulation phase to lead to the enactment of the regulation. During
implementation the role of “leaders” as change agents is essential to continue in the line of
what the program was intending. These types of actors score particularly high on the actorcharacteristic of motivation. This occurs despite frequently scarce resources and
insufficient cognitions. The implementation of animal welfare policies is most strongly
enabled by this type of highly motivated collaborative actors that build coalitions and
human capital.
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Deliberative policy-making on farm animal welfare: The Round Table on
Animal Welfare in Hessen, Germany
Peter H. Feindt
The welfare of farm animals has become a topic of intensifying attention in public debates
and the media in affluent Western societies. Against a background of increasing issue
salience and issue polarization, in 2014 the incoming government of the German state of
Hessen established a “Round Table Animal Welfare/Sustainable Animal Production” to
address animal welfare issues in the farm sector. The purpose of this arrangement was to
assemble the key representatives from the various animal production sectors, farm
organisations, veterinarians, policy-making, state control and law enforcement agencies to
discuss current issues in the welfare of farm animals and to develop practical solutions that
can be implemented. The government also explicitly wanted to develop an integrative
network and contribute to trust-building.
In early 2015, after public tender, the presenter was selected by the Government of Hessen
to facilitate the Round Table. Based on interviews with representatives from more than 20
participating organisations, potential topics and issues were identified and a working
structure developed. Operating rules were agreed and a differentiated working structure
established. During the first six months, the participating organisations started to build a
shared conceptual framework and identified priority issues. First policy measures were
developed and various self-commitments and voluntary agreements have been emerging.
The presentation provides the first public academic reflection of the methods and the
experience of this ongoing dialogue. The presentation uses the perspective of frame
reflection (Bosomworth, 2015; Fischer, 2003; Schön & Rein, 1994) and reframing in multiactor settings (Sol, Beers, & Wals, 2013) to discuss how different and often conflicting
understandings of the issues were articulated and how these differences were processed. It
discusses the Round Table as an example of dialogical and deliberative policy-making
(Hajer, 2005; Hoppe, 2011) and reflects on the possibilities and limitations of such an
approach in the context of continuing scandalisation of mass animal production in the
media and long-established conflict lines. The experiences are compared to similar
attempts to induce frame reflection on contemporary animal production (Benard & de
Cock Buning, 2013; Metze & Van Zuydam, 2013).
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32 Reflection: a crucial aspect of interpretive
approaches?
Steve Connelly, Peter Matthews, Tamara Metze & Dave Vanderhoven
Session 1 - Wednesday 6th July 08.30-10.00
Steve Connelly
Dave Vanderhoven
Tamara Metze
Session 2 - Wednesday 6th July 10.30-12.00
Reflection in action. About the long and windy path toward the elaboration of
conceptual categories from ethnographic observations
ChiaraMaritato
This contribution aims at pointing out the key role played by reasoning and heuristics
(Wagenaar 2011: 249-250) in the elaboration of conceptual and systematic understanding
of a research topic. The point is to suggest possible ways out from the confusions and
anxieties deriving from balancing the practical immersion in the research’s fieldwork and
the continuous reflection on the topic. In this sense, the attention is particularly paid on
the uncertainties deriving from the multiple conceptual possibilities emerging while
conducting an ethnographic research. Concretely how are the fieldwork’s observation and
categories’ formulation mutually shaped? Moreover, how could the reasoning be fruitfully
and productively organized once the fieldwork is over?
What I propose here is a critical conversation on the process of categories’ formulation and
reflection on the research topic I experienced both during and after the fieldwork I
conducted in Turkey for my PhD dissertation. This mainly consisted in attending sermons
and religious seminars of female preachers (vaizeler) employed by the Turkish Presidency
of Religious Affairs (Diyanet). In the last decade, the number and competences of state
sponsored female religious officers has increased a lot: new institutions have been
established for providing women and families with religious services and moral support.
To investigate the forms and meanings of this decision, I practically opted for ethnographic
observation of the vaizeler’s everyday work in Istanbul’s mosques and cultural centers.
However, to conceptualize the meanings of this policy required being prone to a process of
continuous questioning that from the very beginning led to reconsider assumptions and
received categories. The researcher is thus an interpreter and not a translator in between
social science that is empowered by its capacity to label and classify, and the socio-political
context that is being scrutinized.
The Double Bind of Expertise
David Laws & Martien Kuitenbrouwer
The dilemma we which to explore in this panel is something we might call ‘the paradox of
expertise’ .
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The Public Mediation Programme at the University of Amsterdam seeks to develop
interaction between researchers and policymakers around public conflicts. In this context,
we work together with policymakers and other stakeholders trying to make sense of the
situations they may find themselves in. These situations often have the character of a joint
conflict assessment; leading to a situation where stakeholders themselves can see the
influence of past incidents and behaviour as well as create new opportunities for the future.
We offer a role of reflective researchers in these situations, trying to assist in unraffling the
situation and assisting policymakers involved in conflicts to develop a repertoire of
informed improvisation. Yet, since we are researchers, we often get confronted in
situations with the traditional role research plays in these settings; the role of judgemental
experts ('Tell us what to do, you are the expert'). Not only does this create a dilemma since
we do not think of ourselves in that way, we may also get interesting requests from
polictmakers to write 'blueprints for improvisation'. We hole to explore this dilemma in the
panel
Peter Matthews
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33 Between sustainability, governance and
democracy: interpreting the politics of food
Basil Bornemann & Esther Seha
Session 1 - Tuesday 5th July 16.30-18.00
Interpreting the politics of food: conceptual and analytical considerations
Basil Bornemann & Esther Seha
World hunger, obesity, animal welfare, urban gardening, and food waste: No matter where
one looks today, food is at the center of attention and is currently undergoing a
pronounced process of politicization. Despite multiple inter-linkages between different
food-related problems, the issues tend to be analyzed separately and in isolation from each
other. This yields a rich and differentiated, yet rather fragmented landscape of knowledge
about food politics.
How can we get a grip on the diversity and complexity of contemporary food-related issues
from a political science perspective? How can we make sense of and relate the multitude of
inter-linked food issues that have been popping up on various levels and within various
domains of policy-making? What does the politicization of food say about the current state
and dynamics of contemporary policy-making?
The paper explores the prospects and challenges that arise in the course of interpreting
contemporary food politics. Given that food-related problems cannot be neatly assigned to
just one policy field but range across a multitude of policy areas, the paper proposes an
alternative conceptual framework for tracing, relating and comparing the politicization of
food issues.
Starting from the observation that food issues have become important vehicles for bringing
up fundamental debates about the sustainability, democracy, and governance of modern
societies, the contribution sets out by recapping each of these three meta-discourses. It
then proceeds by staking out the theoretical and analytical potential each of these metadiscourses implies for interpreting current food-related concerns. The paper concludes by
mapping out common reference points that can serve as cornerstones for systematizing
and discussing the findings from the individual analyses presented during the panel.
Conflicts over sustainability within the food regime
Timmo Krüger
Sustainability problems are not caused by exceptional excess or misuse but by daily and
widely accepted practices of producing and consuming food (primarily in the Global
North). Based on this assumption, I want to pursue the following question: By which
means and on the background of which values do the daily practices get normalized and
hence stabilized or politicized and challenged?
The practices of producing and consuming food are embedded in a regime that
encompasses an industrial agriculture, a productivist paradigm in agricultural policy and a
resource-intensive diet. This food regime is contested due to missing success (e. g.
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regarding the combat against hunger and malnutrition), new challenges (e. g. climate
change) and the growing recognition of the sustainability principle. Thus we are facing a
fractured food regime and acute conflicts about its future development.
Tracing these struggles requires an analytical framework that captures both the processes
of (re-)producing the hegemonic order and the cracks, ambiguities and contradictions
within that order. In this regard approaches based on the assumption of methodological
individualism have proved unsuitable (cf. Shove, Elisabeth/ Pantzar, Mika/ Watson, Matt
2012). These studies often depict a “surprising cleavage” between environmental
awareness and action. On this basis, influential drivers and obstacles of sustainable
behavior are identified. Absent, however, remain supra-individual processes of
normalization or politicization. Therefore, in order to explore the potential scope of
political transformation, I propose an interpretative perspective based on discourse theory.
In an explorative analysis of Monsanto's sustainability strategy I want to gain first insights
into the struggles within the food regime. This is a promising starting point as Monsanto is
an influential player that is heavily involved in these conflicts. The specific research
questions are: What is stated as urgent challenges and how is the food regime supposed to
cope with them? What counts as sustainable food (production and consumption) and how
is it to be achieved? How do critical claims get integrated into the hegemonic discourse
formation? In what way can one observe the closing or opening of the discourse? To what
extent does the food regime get stabilized, modified or fundamentally questioned?
Speaking about animal based products: Political, economic and behavioral
barriers to sustainable diet patters
Susanne Stoll-Kleemann & Uta Schmidt
Until now, in European and worldwide politics the necessity of reducing the production
and consumption of animal based products (meat, milk and eggs) is strongly neglected, in
spite of the massive negative consequences of the intensive husbandry on e.g. climate,
groundwater and soil (e.g. due to nitrate contamination), health (due to resistance to
antibiotics and pesticide residues) and food security (e.g. due to subsidies and cheap
exports). Thus, the high consumption of animal products (about 80 kg meat/capita in
countries of the global north) demands for an immediate response and action by
governments. Additionally, facing the growing world population a sustainable and efficient
use of resources is essential regarding an intergenerational justice. However, during the
transformation of fodder into animal products huge losses of nutritional energy occur.
Thus, the reduction of animal products in human nutrition has to be discussed on every
political level, breaking the taboo of speaking about a more sustainable and sufficient diet.
However, a holistic approach contains more than just the examination of possible
measures by politics. Companies as well as consumers need to be willing to reflect and
change their economic and dietary behavior.
At this point our research starts including an analysis of possible avenues to reduce the
production and consumption of animal products predominately in industrialized
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countries. We present the outcomes of a systematic meta-analysis of 154 studies about
economic and psychological mechanisms, which could become suitable leverage points for
this change in production and diets.
Results indicate that the deep cultural integration of animal products in the majority of
human diets, low prices for animal products, and cognitive dissonance - the unconscious
denying of uncomfortable facts in order not to change habits or to admit grievances - are
factors retarding the reduction of animal-product consumption.
We suggest that political and economic measures (by internalizing environmental and
social costs or by abolishing existing subsidies) are of paramount importance to give
animal-based food its true production price. Furthermore, expanding the infrastructure for
a plant-based diet as well as educational measures are an essential tool to increase people’s
awareness for this issue of concern.
Session 2 Wednesday 6th July 08.30-10.00
Democracy for Sustainable Food Transitions: Assessing the Potential of
Social Innovations in Generating Agency
Paula Fernandez-Wulff
Social innovations, particularly in the food system, are transforming and creating new
social relations, addressing unsatisfied human needs in the transition towards more
sustainable and resilient systems. The democratizing effects of social innovations are being
progressively identified, as they become key contributors in expanding our democratic
imaginaries through the generation of agency in their participants. Democracy in these
cases is non-traditionally understood as the exercise of collective rights to selfdetermination.
These innovations stand out against a hegemonic food system that perpetuates a state of
suppressed agency: citizens are turned into passive consumers, while in parallel the idea is
spread that, in democracy, consumer sovereignty and dollar voting are people’s best, and
often only, voice. In contrast, a more holistic view of democracy in the food system means
a multiplicity of subject-positions appear, beyond that of a voter and that of a consumer,
even that of a participant or a critic. It becomes a system that requires the redefinition of
solutions by the communities and the citizens that are involved in them.
This paper argues that these social innovations, agents of change of the food system, are
pushing beyond a model based on consumer sovereignty, expanding our democratic
common sense. It proposes an agency framework aimed at identifying the organizational
mechanisms leading to the generation of agency in the participants of social innovations.
This framework will be tested using a series of interviews with local food-related initiatives
across six countries.
Towards sustainable governance of inedible food waste: composting for
growing food
Vivienne Waller
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Despite being the dominant method for managing food waste in industrialised countries,
sending food waste to landfill is environmentally and politically unsustainable. Not only
does it produce greenhouse gases, contribute to toxic leachate and tie up land that could be
used for housing or growing food, it seems no one wants to live near a landfill. There is
much evidence that the most environmentally beneficial use of inedible food waste is to
produce compost from it for use in growing food. However, policy makers are presented
with a range of alternatives to landfilling food waste, including burning food waste for
energy, dehydration and converting food waste to plastic. This paper draws from work
conducted as part of a three year action research project that combines sociology,
microbiology and carbon accounting to evaluate the most appropriate way of composting
food waste for growing food in different urban forms and communities. In particular, the
research project compares locally managed on-site small and medium-scale composting
with kerbside collection and large-scale offsite composting. As an action research project,
the research is an actual intervention into the management of food waste and, in order to
be policy relevant, it needs the engagement of various State and Local government
authorities, businesses, housing bodies and households. This paper outlines the attempts
to enrol various relevant stakeholders through a process of meaning-making that presents
the production of compost from food waste for use in growing food as aligning with the
different particular interests of these stakeholders. In doing this, it pays attention to the
politics around the competing definitions of compost, including the role of the composting
technologies and the identity of the microbes themselves, as, for example, some have the
ability to store carbon, some to make nutrients available to growing plants, while some can
make people sick and could perhaps bring down a government.
Sowing seeds – fragile sustainability of urban food growing projects working
in deprived areas of the UK
Sam Ramsden
This research explores issues of sustainability, governance, participation and local
democracy through a case study of an urban food growing project in a deprived area of
Hull . The project was managed by a local civil society organisation (CSO) who developed a
community garden, helped local families grow food in their homes, worked with refugees,
and supported a citywide free cooked food event. The project successfully engaged
vulnerable and marginalised people and built a strong team of volunteers who wanted to
give back to their community.
Research has been conducted for the final 2 years of the project through an embedded
researcher. Participants have strongly voiced that the project brought benefits including
improving mental health, enjoying nature, reducing isolation, providing nutritious food to
people in food poverty, and providing education to children – providing foundations for
transformative agency. Participants also really enjoyed growing food and voiced a strong
sense of improving self-reliance and links to the ‘dig for victory’ food growing campaign in
WW2. These activities were not described as political activism – but as being an ‘antidote
to austerity’.
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Despite the many benefits of the project, organisations involved are finding it difficult to
find funding to continue activities. However, different groups, connected in fluid ways, are
trying to continue aspects of the work, including the CSO that managed the project,
(former) project staff developing their own new CSO as volunteers, and a group of
volunteers who are carrying on work at the community garden. These efforts are in their
early stages and are very fragile without support: the CSOs need funding to pay staff, the
volunteers need support from staff to navigate systems to become established, and each
group needs to secure land for food growing activities.
The research is continuing to explore whether the organisations will be able to sustain
themselves or can access support from donors, the local council, and national government.
This raises questions of whether donors and government will find ways to support
vulnerable local residents who have benefitted from these activities but would not
normally participate in the public sphere or voice their demands.
Session 3 Wednesday 6th July 10.30-12.00
Fat and Happy? Food and Security in the Arabian Gulf
Deborah Wheeler
The wealthy countries of the Arabian Gulf, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi
Arabia are enviable. From hosting the World Cup 2022 (Qatar) to possessing large oil
reserves (Saudi Arabia), to housing the world’s fastest indoor roller coaster (Ferrari World
Abu Dhabi), and having one of the Middle East’s best food security ratings (Kuwait), Gulf
countries have used their oil wealth to produce showy spectacles of "the good life," and to
distribute subsidized food, water and energy resources to achieve high levels of regime
loyalty among citizens. But are Gulf consumptive lifestyles and state security sustainable,
especially in the context of rapidly falling oil prices? Factors like food, water and energy
waste, obesity, foreign labor dependence, rapidly growing populations, and increased
reliance on global food markets, all call into question the sustainability of Gulf states. Yet
in the face of these vulnerabilities, these four Gulf states continue to thrive. Are their
vulnerabilities overstated or do spectacles of prosperity just carefully conceal security
weaknesses? This paper argues that the “good life” Gulf citizens have come to expect will
be increasingly difficult for their governments to sustain. This argument is based upon a
comparative case study approach, informed by ethnographic data of sustainability and
lived experience in the Gulf, collected by the author since 1996, in Kuwait, Qatar, United
Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
In vitro meat: an innovation in search of users and in search of contestation?
Arianna Ferrari & Inge Böhm
In vitro meat (IVM) has recently gained media and some public attention, especially after
the launch of the first burger made entirely of bovine stem cells in August 2013, the
presentation of cultured “steak chips” in March 2014 and the announcement of cultured
meat balls in January 2016. The basic idea of IVM is to produce meat from muscle cells
grown in cell culture to form a tissue. Avoiding the need for having entire animals in order
to consume meat, IVM is presented as one of the most important solutions for shaping a
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sustainable food policy agenda: According to innovators, IVM is good for the environment,
for the animal and for the health. Following some (few) life-cycle analyses, IVM seems to
require smaller quantities of agricultural land than animals in order to produce an
equivalent amount of food, but could require more industrial energy than pork and poultry
(Mattick C. et al. 2015).
The case of IVM-innovation presents some peculiarities: Despite the fact that a significant
body of scientific literature has been pointing out the ecological impacts of meat
consumption and production over a decade, there is a lack of public and political
awareness of the negative impact of meat production and consumption (cf. Wellesley et al.
2015). While the IVM ‘problem/solution’ definition appears to be clear for the innovators,
this is not the case for potential users (public) and for potential funders (the government).
Furthermore, first public engagement exercises show that there is a broad resistance to
this type of innovation: however, once confronted with the negative impacts of data
regarding meat consumption and production, some people are ready to change their mind
supporting this innovation (cf. Verbeke et al. 2015). In this paper we would like to explore
these peculiarities and indicate challenges for interpreting technological innovations which
are projected in the future and therefore present themselves as visions. This presentation
is based on the work for a project financed by the German Ministry of Research and
Education called “Visions of in vitro meat”.
Framing and mapping food sustainability : an analysis of 3 food-related
public debates in France
Lola Guillot & Cécile Blatrix
The Four Axes of the French Public Food Policy are Social Justice, Youth Education, the
Fight against Food Waste, and Reconnecting producers and consumers. The fourth and
final axis aims to breach the gap between the agricultural industry and its consumers, with
the overarching goal of supporting the French system of agriculture. Local communities
and all stakeholders of the agrifood industry have a pivotal role to play in this effort and
are called to assist by utilizing and promoting local products with cultural and economic
ties to their community.
How and by what means are food issues framed and politicized in France?
We hypothesize that the politicization of food issues must be seen as the result of various
competing framing attempts. In our communication, these competing framing attempts
will be analyzed through three king of debates :
Parliamentary debates during the legislative process leading to the adoption of the
recent future agriculture Law (Loi d’avenir sur l’agriculture, 2014).
-
A public consultation organized by the National Food Industry Association
- Local experiments of territorial debates aiming to involve all the actors of local food
systems, especially in the north France Nord Pas-de-Calais Region (a Regional Public
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Debate on Food organized in 2014) and in the southern France Midi-Pyrénées Region
(Etats Généraux de l'Alimentation, organized in 2000)
Our purpose is to emphasize the commonalities and differences between this various food
debates, and to map the key understandings supported by stakeholders in their discourse.
What are the existing conception of sustainable food and sustainable food systems? To
what extent do they challenge and transform current understandings and practices of food
governance?
Freedom, Autonomy and Sustainable Lifestyles: Governing Food Waste
Through Designing Consumer Choice
TobiasGumbert
Consumer choice in the marketplace is today increasingly seen as one of THE
contemporary forms of environmental politics. In Western industrialized societies, strong
liberal norms, such as the freedom of exchange and individual choice, prevent direct
intervention into the sphere of consumption and ultimately constitute barriers for policy to
address growing resource scarcities and environmental limits. In this context, an emerging
form of governance attributed to Libertarian Paternalism, widely termed ‘nudging’,
informs policy practice: while embracing freedom of choice, a non-coercive, soft force of
paternalism is desirable to incentivize people to behave rationally (and in this regard
environmentally responsibly) and adopt specific behavioral patterns that are beneficial
from a policy makers viewpoint (realizing cost saving potentials etc.). This practice is,
however, increasingly contested: alleged political effects include the individualization of
sustainable consumption (and thus the mystification of structural constraints), the loss of
autonomy and the redefinition of the status of citizen as ‘consumer-citizen’ who is
governed-at-a-distance through marketized activation policies. Through these policy
practices, the manner in which sustainable consumption is politically addressed is
changing in distinct ways.
Adopting a Foucaultian governmentality lens to analyze the governance and regulation of
sustainable consumption in the context of reducing food waste in OECD countries, this
paper seeks to critically conceptualize the political effects of choice architecture more
comprehensively. It argues that choice editing is not just about rationalizing consumer
conduct and thereby leading to more sustainable societies, but that this practice works
through values and beliefs to motivate individual self-government and create moral
obligations that may ultimately lead to the depoliticization of citizens, obscuring
alternative pathways towards socio-ecological transformation. Therefore, apart from a
theoretical contribution on nudging as an environmental policy tool, the paper delineates
how and to what end various stakeholders are involved in regulating consumer food waste
through choice editing.
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35 What counts as evidence? Quantification in policy
practices Thomas Franssen & Francisca Grommé
Session 1 Tuesday 5th July 12.45-14.15
The life of PI-score; dilemmas in measuring scientific quality
Jessika Van Kammen
Public research organizations need to be able to answer the question: where do we excel?
Yet scientific quality is a complex and eminently context-dependent concept, and no
golden standard exists. Aware of the pitfalls of simplification that quantification might
entail, researchers and policy makers in the AMC, a major university medical centre in the
Netherlands, took the initiative to develop and implement a Principal Investigator (PI-)
score. This multidimensional score combined quantitative and qualitative elements. The
PI-score was meant to allow for comparison between the quality of the output and the
viability of senior researchers. Although not uncontested, when the score was first applied
in 2008, the effect was refreshing and even emancipatory in that it brought some
objectivity and transparency vis-à-vis what everybody thought to know about the quality of
the Principal Investigators. Formerly unnoticed researchers gained visibility whereas the
output and viability of some other researchers was not in line with how they were generally
viewed by their colleagues and the management. However, the relative success of the PI
score had some unwanted side effects. Very soon the PI score reified: instead of an
additional perspective on scientific quality as had happened in 2008, scientific quality
became equated by score. Next, a high PI score started to serve as evidence for scientific
excellence and as a means for e.g. talent policy and budgeting. Needless to say, senior
scientists and department heads then focused their efforts on enhancing their scores,
possibly at the expense of their less visible contributions to scientific quality.
Is quantification the Richard Parker of the PI score's life? How can we handle the dilemma
between, on the one hand, the impossibility to develop indicators that – despite of all
involved actors’ best intentions and extensive knowledge of the field - are lastingly free of
unwanted side effects and, on the other hand, the impossibility to do without such
indicators?
Beyond national accounting figures: how quantification practices reshape the
state
Damien Piron
In the sphere of public economics, a significant part of the figures daily manipulated by
policy-makers, markets and citizens with a view to assessing the economic situation of a
given country (e.g. GDP, employment rate, public deficit and public debt) are defined in
systems of national accounting such as the European System of National and Regional
Accounts (ESA). Since 1992, this genuine “calculative infrastructure” (Kurunmäki & Miller,
2013) has been integrated to the most ambitious European policy so far: the Economic and
Monetary Union (EMU). In this context, ESA’s figures have been used as evidence in order
to assess whether member states conform to the so-called “convergence criteria” set in the
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Treaty of Maastricht, namely the limitation of public debt and deficit to respectively 60%
and 3% of their GDP.
Even though such budgetary figures might at first sight appear as mere objective, hence
undisputable, facts, they are nonetheless the fragile outcome of countless socially
constructed “equivalence conventions” (Desrosières, 1998). Combining insights from
sociology of quantification and public policy analysis, this paper analyses the conventions
underlying the delineation of one of those categories: the “general government sector”.
This issue is of fundamental importance since European budgetary requirements only
concern institutions belonging to this precise category. Based on extended documentary
analysis and semi-structured interviews with key European and Belgian senior civil
servants, this empirical study tackles the following questions: how is the general
government sector defined in the ESA? How has this category evolved over the last quarter
of a century? Finally, how have these changes affected the policies led by EMU member
states?
The paper shows that the boundaries of the general government sector provided by the
ESA have faced several changes in the context of the EMU, leading to a continuous
extension of its scope. As a consequence, budgetary constraints weighing on non-market
driven public organisations have been strengthened. This process has therefore created a
strong incentive structure towards a marketization of public service delivery, emphasising
the role performed by a discrete body of knowledge, i.e. national accounting, in the spread
of neoliberalism.
From political mess to technical fix and back again: post-conflict
reconstruction of primary education in the DRC
Tom De Herdt, WimMarivoet & Lluis Vinyals
Fischer (2013) describes policy problems as “messy” or “wicked”: in contrast to technical
problems, they lack clear solutions and they even lack rigorous conceptualisation –
different agents may entertain different ideas about what the problem is. He also pleads to
rethink the connection between policy making and expert knowledge in view of this. Yet,
policy makers necessarily have to render a problem technical, i.e. conceive of the field in
which they are active as “as an intelligible field with specifiable limits and particular
characteristics …defining boundaries, rendering that within them visible, assembling
information about that which is included and devising techniques to mobilise the forces
and entities thus revealed” (Rose 1999: 10). Such a policy framework “should be seen as a
project, not a secure accomplishment” (Li 2007a, 2007b) however, and hence there is
always a risk of switching back, from a “practice of government” into a “practice of
politics”. First, as a particular policy builds on a configuration of actors whose interests
only partly overlap, it is always vulnerable to challenging diagnoses and prescriptions.
Second, policies are implemented in a particular “territory with all its specific qualities”,
they draw on pre-existing processes and interactions, but even things are non-human
actants (Latour 2000), they are “dynamic forces that constantly surprise those who would
harness and surprise them” (Li 2007a, 17). And third, policies draw on what is known at a
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particular point in time, but the domain of the knowable is essentially limited. Li’s list
risks of reversal from government into politics will be used as a framework to analyse the
configuration of international aid workers, government and experts in the DRC since the
early 2000s, and more specifically to what extent it makes do with a limited knowledge
base to make decisions with potentially important impact on the process of post-conflict
reconstruction, governance and public service delivery in the country. We focus our
research on the re-engagement of the state in the field of primary education. The authors
will draw on a recent experience with writing / managing consultancy work for UNICEF
DRC (De Herdt et. al. 2015). Fischer (2013) “the argumentative turn in public policy
revisited: twenty years later” Critical policy studies 7(4), pp. 425-33. Li, T.M. (2007a)
The will to improve Duke University Press Latour, B. (2000) “when things strike back: a
possible contribution of ‘science studies’ to the social sciences” British journal of Sociology
5(1), pp. 107-23. Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom: reframing political thought
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Herdt, T. Marivoet, W. Muhigirwa, F.
(2015) Vers la réalisation du droit à une éducation de qualité pour tous UNICEF - DRC
“Give me a guesstimate, how many refugees are there?” The Politics of
Counting Refugees in Turkey and the EU
FundaUstek-Spilda
The 1951 Geneva Convention and 2013 Dublin Regulation are two important agreements
binding the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), which is a policy area responsible
for the allocation and protection of refugees in the EU. The EU produces and provides a
large amount of information on its member states’ asylum systems, capacities for
providing protection and number of refugees settled in each country. Organisations such
as Frontex, EASO, Europol, Eurojust, Eurostat and member states produce refugee
statistics for the CEAS, as well as international bodies such as the UNHCR and
International Organisation for Migration. Despite the numbers produced by these different
organisations rarely, if ever, match one another, and there are important concerns about
the counting methods used by these organisations; in political debate, numbers occupy a
privileged status and exert a strong influence in member states’ stance towards refugees.
Numbers also play a key role on how asylum decisions are taken, and how EU countries
negotiate the distribution of refugees in the EU and beyond (i.e. Turkey). In this paper, I
contest the refugee numbers that are announced as “evidence” for policy-making in the
CEAS. I argue that to understand the current refugee crisis in Europe, we need to look
beyond the numbers, to how those numbers are “made” in the international refugee
protection system. The empirical material for this paper comes from ethnographical
fieldwork carried out in Turkey and at international meetings on refugee statistics. EUlevel and international organisation reports on the current refugee crisis are utilised to
shed light on the politics of refugee statistics.
Session 2 Tuesday 5th July 14.45-16.15
Measuring effectiveness of income support policy. Strong rhetoric and weak
practices in the Italian Case
Sandro Busso
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The concept of effectiveness have become central in the debate on Social Policy, as a
consequence of the success of the social investment paradigm and of the interest around
evidence based practices. The need to determine “what works” provoked a process of
restructuring of the informational basis of social policies, in which the use of quantitative
techniques gained great momentum.
Within this scenario, the paper presents a case study on a practice of evidence making
established within the process of evaluation of an experimental income support policy in
Italy. The policy became operational in 2013 with a pilot project of one year, and provided
a mix of cash benefits and active measures.
As a part of the pilot project, an evaluation plan was designed in order to decide whether to
extend the experimentation or not. Such a plan aspired to measure policy outcomes, and
its “net impact” on recipients’ standard of living, through a questionnaire completed by
beneficiaries at the beginning and at the end of the benefit. In order to estimate impact, a
counter-factual design was established, and a control group of non-beneficiaries was
created.
The analysis of the experience will focus on the following aspects:
1 - The methodological assumptions underlying the evaluation and the instruments
projected. The weakness of the design, indeed, shows the limits of the attempt to quantify
policy effectiveness, and reveals the contradiction between political rhetoric and practices.
2 - The effect of evaluation on policy design and recipients. The counter-factual evaluation
design has a strong influence on the selection of the beneficiaries (those who have more
chance to succeed will be preferred) and on the benefits provided (beneficiaries belonging
to control group will receive a worse treatment). Moreover, it will be highlighted how the
practice of evaluation can be strongly stigmatizing for the poor.
3 - The actors involved in the evaluation process and their relation with policy makers. It
will be argued that a new model of legitimacy through expert knowledge has been
established, which excludes academics, experts or technocrats by relying on “impersonal”
and “de-localized” knowledge
The legitimacy of evaluative practices: translating anecdotes into the
language of bean counters
Steve Connelly & Dave Vanderhoven
Practitioners developing and managing complex programmes to integrate health and social
care face problems with evaluation – they need evidence to support such programmes, yet
the kinds of quantitative, outcome evaluation which yield the kind of evidence thought
necessary to convince funders are blunt and ineffective in demonstrating the effectiveness
(or otherwise) of such programmes, and even weaker at uncovering useful information for
programme managers about what is actually working and why. Other approaches which
might show promise in addressing complexity have relatively little purchase in the policy
world. Conceptualising evaluation as producing putatively authoritative evidence, this
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article uses the lens of the ‘legitimacy’ to explore how different evaluation methodologies
were taken up in rhetoric and practice within a complex service integration programme in
an urban neighbourhood. We show how the most quantitative approaches had the least
effective legitimacy, and how ‘anecdotal’ evidence was in practice the most legitimate, as
judged by its power to promote policy change. We conclude that the unexpectedly fragile
and contestable legitimacy of established evaluation methodologies opens up strategic
possibilities for advancing the use of more effective and sophisticated, qualitative and
theory-based evaluations into a sceptical policy environment.
Deconstructing the EU-wide banking stress test
ShirleyKempeneer
Systemic banking stress tests are becoming a very influential indicator in contemporary
European financial policies. The first European system-wide stress tests were conducted in
the aftermath of the financial crisis. Over time they have transformed from unbinding (and
highly criticized) exercises set out to increase the level of aggregate information among
policy makers (in 2009), to more substantial and influential policy tools. The results of the
most recent, 2016, systemic stress test will be used to inform banks’ Supervisory Review
and Evaluation Process (SREP), under which banks’ capital plans are reviewed.
The question addressed in this paper is how and why the EU-wide stress test became an
objective fact. The facticity upon which the strength of the indicator depends is an
achievement that involves the mobilisation of a huge network. I trace the way in which
constraints were addressed, interests translated, categories defined, classifications
negotiated, etc. as the indicator moved from being widely criticized to becoming a widely
accepted fact, and thus evidence for policy.
To do so I deconstruct the ‘hard fact’ of the stress test, by showing how it emerged in a
network. I claim that what enables the stress test to persist as fact, is a network that holds
all the entities together. This network can also be understood as a narrative, although this
is not how networks are presented by Latour initially. The linking of Latour’s actornetwork approach and a narrative one is fruitful to understand how numbers are made
into facts through a network of actants that is held together by an overarching narrative.
To trace these narratives and networks I conducted a number of interviews with actors in
all four of the Belgian banks included in the 2014 stress test. I complemented this with
interviews in the consulting firms assisting the banks throughout the process. I started the
interviews in 2015 and followed banks throughout the 2016 stress testing procedure.
The qualities of imperfection: Experimental practices in official statistics
Francisca Grommé
National statistical institutes (NSIs) are tasked with the production of rigorous and reliable
data about the state of a population. Yet they are also pressured to cut costs and produce
more timely statistics. Some NSIs (for instance, in England and Wales, the Netherlands,
Sweden) have started to experiment with new methods and data sources to answer these
challenges. In this paper I examine experimental forms used by NSIs to test data sources
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such as Twitter and traffic sensors. I explore and theorise a fieldwork finding: in an
environment of rigorousness, new experimental forms seem to encourage acceptance of
‘imperfections’ and results that are ‘just good enough’. This is of course typical of
innovation and work-in-progress. Yet, it is also controversial in official statistics.
Moreover, using big data in official statistics will require different quality standards than
traditional statistical rigour.
In STS the quality of evidence is generally considered to be a social achievement. Yet, ‘just
good enough’ has received little attention as an explicit and conscious valuation. So how is
‘just good enough’ accomplished? And what exactly is it? I draw on observations of
experimental practices at Statistics Netherlands, among which a bootcamp and an
innovation lab where actors such as internet companies and universities are invited to
cooperate. Based on imaginaries of the creative and tech sectors, these formats promote
‘creativity’, ‘agility’ and ‘quick results’. I contend that these experimental practices produce
evidence, but also future standards of evidence and professional identities (cf. Shapin and
Shaffer 1989; Haraway 1997). They do not introduce radical change, however, as they also
incorporate existing standards, and are intertwined with ongoing cost cutting measures
and disciplining managerial techniques.
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36 Doing interpretive frame- and framing analysis Maartje van Lieshout, Kasja Weenink, Art Dewulf & Noelle Aarts
Session 1 Wednesday 6th July 08.30-10.00
Shivering with fear and boiling with anger. The framing of emotional appeals
and rational arguments by regional and local politicians in the gascontroversy in Groningen the Netherlands
Imrat Verhoeven & Tamara Metze
Many policy controversies such as the ones over shale gas, windmills, the Transatlantic
Trade and Investment Partnership, or the refugee crisis are perceived as a clash between
rational politicians and emotional citizens. However, a closer look indicates a more
complex and dynamic mixture of emotions and arguments among all sorts of actors.
First of all, citizens and action groups frame their contentious claims not exclusively
emotionally but also with use of knowledge based arguments. Second – and this is what we
will focus on in this paper – politicians do not only frame rational arguments but also
emotional appeals, especially when they act as advocates for interests at the local or
regional level and when they make contentious claims against the policies made at the
national or European level.
In this paper we conceptually contribute to framing literature by developing a framework
that analytically distinguishes emotional appeals and rational argumentation in policy
practice. In this approach we combine framing literature with the concept of discursive
boundary work, and it operationalizes a framing approach that integrates these appeals
and argumentations. Empirically, we focus on the framing of contentious claims by
regional and local politicians in the controversy over earthquakes induced by natural gas
extraction in the province of Groningen in the north of the Netherlands. Our main question
is: how do regional and local politicians frame rational arguments and emotional appeals
in their claims against the national government in the Groningen controversy?
We will answer this question based on a media analysis in five national newspapers and
one regional newspaper. Initial analysis indicates that the opposing politicians frame
emotional appeals to fear and anger in relational to risk argumentations and arguments
that critique the decision making process by the national government.
(Re)Constructing Framing by Metaphor Analysis
Milan Hrubes
In 2003, there were lively and heated debates concerning the question about joining the
EU in the Czech Republic. Several months before the referenda took place, politicians had
decided to let people to choose themselves if they want Czech Republic to be a part of the
EU or not. These debates thus served as means of influence for politicians and others
involved who wanted to instruct voters how to vote in the upcoming referendum on the EU
accession. As these debates mainly represented conflicting positions, Czech accession to
the EU could be analysed as an intractable policy problem.
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Schön and Rein (1994) refer to intractable policy problem, stating that such problems are
unsolvable because of different framing applied. To find out what the problem is and why
it is intractable the researcher must analyse the framing. Framing (notably in Schön and
Rein´s conceptualization) has been a useful concept for studying various phenomena
concerning meaning making and social interactions concerning it, nevertheless there are
still ongoing debates on how to analyse frames and more important how to reconstruct the
dynamics of framing.
In this paper I focus on metaphors that appeared in the debates mentioned above. Taking
into account Schön and Rein´s (1994) as well as Yanow´s (1996) suggestion that
metaphors are significant means of framing, I combine linguistic, cognitive and pragmatic
criteria of metaphors (Charteris-Black 2004) to build stories that underline conflicting
perspectives held in the dispute about EU accession. This conceptualization of metaphors
implicates instructions referring to metaphor analysis and construction of the stories while
respecting the character of the framing concept drawing on constructivist–interpretivist
presuppositions.
Charteris-Black, J. 2004. Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Schön, D. & Rein, M. 1994. Frame Reflection: Toward the Resolution of Intractable Policy
Controversies. New York: Basic Books.
Yanow, D. 1996. How does a policy mean?: Interpreting Policy and Organizational Actions.
Washington, D.C.: Georgtown University Press.
Adapting a value-critical frame analysis method of food policy
Ruth Kharis & Sharon Friel
Although there is a plethora of research using frame analysis, often there is little detail on
the method and epistemological perspective used for the frame analysis of public policy.
This paper describes the processes for adapting a value-critical policy analysis method and
applying it, to identify frames in food policy. Moving from the work of Schön and Rein
(1994), the method combines three of Schmidt’s (2104) ‘value-critical analysis’ steps,
Gamson and Lasch’s (1983) ‘signature elements’ of ‘framing and reasoning devices’ and
Dunn’s (1993) concept of an ‘ethical’ warrant and its associated ‘truth test’. The method’s
final stage, applies Yanow’s (2000) Step 4 from their ‘steps in interpretive policy analysis’.
These methods were chosen as they use an interpretive paradigm. This adapted valuecritical policy analysis method was used to assess Issues, Green and White papers for the
Australian National Food Plan (AFNP), 150 stakeholder submissions as a sample of
submissions during the development of the ANFP; and the Issues, Green and White papers
for the 2014 Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper. This paper describes in detail the
steps for conducting the frame analysis of food policy, by using document analysis to
identify the different food policy actors’ perspectives for, food security definitions, food
security goals and their proposed solutions for food security.
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The large number of documents were too cumbersome for using Schmidt’s (2014) third
step of identifying the policy arguments’ core values. Hence, Dunn’s (1993) concept of an
‘ethical’ warrant was used to identify ‘appeals to principle’ in the documents. However, it
appears only a few submissions used ‘appeals to principle’ in relation to food security. This
finding is being explored in the documents whose policy arguments did not use ‘appeals to
principle’. Firstly, by using the work of Lang and Barling (2012) to identify key food
security discourse terms used in the policy arguments. Secondly, the work of Kilby (1993),
Rokeach (1968), and Van Wart (1998) to identify values in the policy arguments.
Finally, this paper proposes ideas for evaluating this critical-value frame analysis method
within the context of the research project.
Session 2 Wednesday 6th July 10.30-12.00
(un)taming the framing; improving planning bureau engagement with an
‘energetic’ society through frame-sensitive practices
Martinus Vink, Eva Kunseler, Matthijs Kouw & Peter Janssen
Traditionally Dutch governmental planning bureaus operate in a typical neo-corporatist
institutional context. Planning bureaus pose policy options to the government that take
into account the stakes represented by traditionally determined organized interest groups
(Halffman, 2009). Societal fragmentation, privatization and decentralization however,
pose new challenges to these planning bureaus to effectively function in what is often
referred to as a participatory society or energetic society (Dijstelbloem et al., 2010; Hajer,
2011). In engaging with energetic societies, governmental organizations encounter a
multitude of frames that go beyond the limited number of traditionally determined frames
represented by organized interest groups. In this changing context planning bureaus’
traditional practices of ‘measuring the stakes’ (Halffman, 2009) might therefore no longer
guarantee the impact of an authoritative advise.
In this paper we theoretically show how engaging with an energetic society might require:
1) frame analysis of the ‘context’ to make sense of the array of societal understandings to
the issues at stake, and 2) frame reflection among planning bureau staff to illuminate
ambiguity and entrenchment in the ‘processes’ of sense making at the bureau. We
empirically illustrate our theoretical notions by frame analysis conducted by PBL,
Netherlands Environmental Assessment agency, and data derived from actual frame
reflection sessions held among PBL staff. We aim to discuss methods and implications of
frame sensitive approaches for improving the ‘impact’ of policy advice in a more ‘energetic’
policy context.
Dijstelbloem H., den Hoed P., Holtslag J.W., Schouten S. (2010) Het gezicht van de
publieke zaak: Openbaar bestuur onder ogen Amsterdam University Press.
Hajer M. (2011) De energieke samenleving. Op zoek naar een sturingsfilosofie voor een
schone economie, Den Haag: Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving.
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Halffman W. (2009) Measuring the stakes: the Dutch planning bureaus, in: P. Weingart
and J. Lentsch (Eds.), Scientific Advice to Policy Making: International Comparison,
Barbara Budrich, Opladen. pp. 41-65.
The politics of scale framing in the governance of Lima’s water resources
Sam Grainger, Timothy Karpouzoglou & Art Dewulf
Increasing demand for urban water resources has enhanced the importance of hydrological
information (such as precipitation and discharge data from rain and river gauges) across
multiple levels of governance. At the same time, new demands for evidence also generates
new ways of framing what counts as relevant information. Using Lima, Peru as a case
study, we explore how these issues are played out in a particularly challenging water
resources governance context. As part of a trans-Andean monitoring initiative (iMHEA), a
regional NGO (CONDESAN) are currently collecting hydro-meteorological data, in two
sub-catchments upstream of Lima, with the primary purpose of advancing regional
hydrological understanding and local livelihood conditions. However, what was originally
conceived by this actor as a participatory programme to address scientific and local needs,
has now escalated into a politicised multi-scalar intervention, picking up governmental
and international media, NGO and donor attention, acquiring different problem frames
along the way. Peru’s central authority for water regulation (SUNASS) and high profile
international NGOs, such as Forest Trends, currently see hydrological monitoring
information as a way to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of so called ‘green’ watershed
investments, aligned with broader frameworks such as Payments for Ecosystem Services
(PES), which both institutions are promoting.
The way problems are framed has implications for what constitutes credible hydrological
knowledge, and what are the relevant scales to address these problems. Using frame
analysis as our methodological approach, we rely on a combination of semi-structured
interviews and policy documents to analyse both the frames of key actors driving this
policy process, and the governance scales at which they operate. We therefore aim to
contribute to debates about policy and scale framing, a topic that is rarely studied within
such a challenging urban context and is especially timely given the momentum of recent
Peruvian water policy reforms.
Reflections on the politics of data and dilemmas for humanitarian practice
Talita Cetinoglu
The main argument this presentation aims to bring under the scrutiny of interpretive
reflection is to explore: how the examination of the politics of data can offer a unique
perspective to understand the impact of competing priorites in humanitarian
programming and the dilemmas it exposes for survivors of violence and for practitioners.
As a background, this paper will present the implications of global policies (of the UN and
key donors) and explore how the framing of “sexual violence in conflict” shape actions of
care, protection and justice in practice. This paper draws from an on-going study on the
dynamics of humanitarian programming investigating the production and management of
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ethical dilemmas and its specific workings in cases like the Democratic Republic of Congo
and the Syrian conflict.
The presentation will showcase the generation of truths and dilemmas by elaborating how
they are reflected in the application of multiple and disparate “systems” of collection,
storage, analysis and reporting of sexual and gender-based violence related data and
information in the same humanitarian geography. Overly investigative systems that aim to
identify the survivors and the perpetrators versus survivor centred data collection systems
lay at the two ends of this spectrum articulating dilemmas regarding health, safety and
protection of the concerned people. The different policy rationales behind these systems
render the reporting and the documentation of violence a contested, political space.
Thus the politics of and around data enables a multiplicity of narratives about the
phenomenon of gendered violence and conflict. At the same time, data and information
constitute the very source of knowledge for formulating statements about facts or
situations that constitute humanitarian reality. The analysis and interpretation of data is
what gives substance to programming statements either as expressions of truths or as
constructions of myths. These interpretations are in turn actionable propositions; they
enable different and at times antagonistic threads of action with respect to care provision,
protection and justice, as such they display a menu of difficult choices for survivors and
populations affected by violence as well as for humanitarian practitioners.
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37 Producing knowledge and promoting interests:
think-tanks and their role in crisis situations
Pautz, Hartwig & Plehwe, Dieter
ChineseandJapanesepolicyreactionstotheGlobalFinancialCrisisand
beyond:Whatroleforthinktanks?
Patrick Köllner, Pascal Abb & Sebastian Maslow
While a number of OECD member states resorted to austerity drives after the Global
Financial Crisis, policy responses in the world’s second and third largest economies, China
and Japan, differed. China avoided a recession through swift implementation of fiscal and
monetary stimulus. Massive government-led investment into housing and infrastructure
projects significantly increased domestic demand in the short run. However, this did not
resolve the fundamental challenge of gradually shifting the economy from low-cost, export
orientation to middle-class powered domestic demand-orientation, and growth has
significantly slowed in recent years. As a result, China has embarked on a set of new
demand-oriented initiatives to endow its economy with fresh momentum, most notably its
ambitious ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR) program in which Beijing has committed itself to
finance and build transport infrastructure across Eurasia.
Pursuing well-timed narratives: A comparative case study analysis of British
think tanks after the 2008 crisis
Marcos Gonzalez Hernando
This paper traces and compares economic policy initiatives by the Chinese and Japanese
government since the Global Financial Crisis, with a particular focus on the OBOR
Initiative and Abenomics. It asks what role think tanks and policy advisors have played in
developing, legitimating or popularizing these policy initiatives. Our guiding assumption,
in tune with research on other policy areas, is that think tanks in both countries did not
play an important role in terms of informing and influencing crisis-related economic
policymaking but have responded to subsequent government initiatives by supporting and
promoting them in national and international discourse and exchanges.
Time for the F-Word? The Response of a spate of New Europe think tanks to
the crisis
Dieter Plehwe
The European financial and economic crisis has shaken traditional beliefs in the onedirectional move towards ever closer union. Talk about “Grexit” and “Brexit” signal erosion
beyond the previous instances of dissatisfaction expressed by citizens in core countries
who opposed the European constitution in popular vote (in France, the Netherlands).
Integration scholars have started to seriously address disintegration theory, once a
preserve of Marxist critiques of mainstream integration scholarship (Eppler and Scheller
2013, Vollaard 2014). European right wing parties, foundations and think tanks openly
advocate (partial) disintegration and aim to interrupt Social Democratic and Conservative
Cooperation in the European Parliament. What has been the response to these challenges
from the progressive wing of European politics? In the shadow of Syriza’s anti-austerity
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campaign a range of new pro-European think tanks have been founded after the crisis. The
paper will examine the publications and network of organizations like Alternatives for
Europe, Project for a democratic Europe, EuropaNova and Democracy Lab in order to
observe if and how a new cross-cutting network of pro-European think tanks address the
present crisis, and if and in which ways we can speak of new approaches to European
integration that promise innovation and progressive learning. I will also examine if an how
they differ from other, possibly more centrist efforts like those of the Spinelli-Group or the
Glienecke Group.
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38 De-Centralisation and Power: Partaking Between
Acceptance and Deliberation
Antonia Graf & Marco Sonnberger
Wednesday 6th July 16.30-18.00
Energy decentralisation. A comparison of 4 European cities
François Bafoil & Rachel Guyet
By focusing on the way 4 European cities implement climate obligations at municipal level
this work analyses different aspects of the energy transition related to the different
European polities within which they take place. By comparing Aberdeen (UK), Brest (F),
Katowice (PL) and Malmö (S), the main objective is to understand the causal links between
the municipal energy policies and the different types of governance (regionalized for
Sweden; centralized for France and great Britain; partly decentralized for Poland). Four
research topics are addressed:
The first one is about the way these municipalities use their historical industrial
legacies to promote innovations in the field of renewable energy, technology and skills
transfer.
The second one deals with the economic aspects attached to the deployment of
renewable energies. Beyond climate obligations, renewable energies represent
opportunities of structuring new local value chains.
The third topic concerns the energy firms, how cities can create municipal energy
companies and how these companies may challenge the sectoral domination exerted by
monopolies (France) or some oligopolies (Great Britain, Germany, Poland).
The fourth one is about social inequalities and the way local actors use renewable
energies and energy efficiency and link these issues with social inclusion policy into a more
global vision of urban renewal.
Finally we question whether these local innovations are able to put the municipalities at
the forefront of the energy transition by challenging both the current sectoral balance of
power in favour of the central energy operators, and the political balance of power in
favour of central or regional actors.
Dynamic Multilevel Governance in Postnational Constellation: Reconfiguring
Governance for Socio-Political Transformations
Andreas Klinke
The decarbonization, dematerilization and renaturalization of the anthroposphere is the
uttermost challenging present and future task for societies and politics. If we succeed in
mastering a gradu-al development from a prevalently simple overuse and exploitation of
natural resources and sur-mount the undamped greed for fossil energy resources that fuels
the drive for growth in a global-ized and unleashed market economy to a more complex
resilience and sustainable development of the earth system, future generations might
retrospectively describe this era as further Prome-thean breakthrough in human
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civilization. A crucial component of this revolution is a transfor-mation of the established
orders with respect to energy, climate change and sustainability, and its cultural
embedding encompassing a range of phenomena that are conveyed through social learning in society and politics. Transformations ignite dynamics, processes and forces, which
induce new challenges and problems for traditional structures because major changes in
society and pol-itics are shifting from established manners, customs and generally
accepted modes of behavior to new norms and values. Transformations cause
epistemological uncertainness and complexity, challenge ontological fundaments and
ethical convictions; no nation-state is capable to handle alone the corresponding issues
because the capacity of domestic politics and regulations is too weak to achieve eligible
political outcomes that can guide and structure transformations. What kind of governance
shape enables an adequate authority that can steer and navigate profound
transformations? I argue for a dynamic multilevel governance approach in a postnational
constel-lation that has the capability to reform and transfigure institutions, structure and
agency, hierar-chies, cultural fabrics, and socio-technical systems towards new social and
political orders. Such dynamic multilevel governance establishes a polycentric and plural
structure of a network with relatively autonomous units and nodes of communication and
cooperation; it does not rely on the topography that represents the hierarchies of the
systems of traditional power. Therefore, I con-ceptualize and justify theoretically and
normatively three major hallmarks as explanatory varia-bles, namely inclusiveness,
adaptiveness, reflexive processes of differentiated and distributed deliberation, as
producing an new postnantional authority with transformative and structuring power to
tackle transformations. To this end, I combine theory, normative conceptualization and
institutional feasibility.
Investigating the politics of sustainable energy transitions: The need for
marrying power perspectives with norms and values
Joachim Monkelbaan
The aim of this paper is to create a clearer understanding of the power-related aspects of
transition politics, particularly in the area of sustainable energy development. The paper
starts by defining power and illustrating three of its dimensions: leadership, relations and
empowerment. Next, the paper ventures into describing trends in governance scholarship
towards participative, deliberative and decentralized approaches. The paper assesses these
tendencies and suggests that their downsides could be remedied by paying more attention
to the norms and values that are involved in the making of transition politics and the
related discourses. Examples of such discourses include ‘reshaping the science-policy
interface’ and crisis-driven discourses (e.g. on climate change, gridlocks, and peak oil). The
paper suggests that the norms and values that require more attention in transition politics
mainly cover equity, inclusiveness and trust in order to realize genuine deliberative and
participative governance.
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Thus, by drawing the dimensions of power and norms closer together, this piece expands
our understanding of the nature and dynamics of the politics that are involved in the
making of transitions. Pathway politics and democratic innovation in particular could
benefit from norms and values-based perspectives. The paper concludes by mapping out
promising avenues for future research on discourse analysis and practice of deliberative
governance.
Assessing the social impacts of community owned renewable energy
initiatives: expectations and evidence
Esthervan der Waal, EmilyCreamer & Anna Harnmeijer
Within academic and policy discourse, there is growing debate over the merits and
disadvantages of widespread civic engagement with energy, and the role of different
ownership models in the renewable energy transition. Local participation in community
owned renewable energy (CORE) projects is proclaimed to deliver a range of socioeconomic benefits, including: employment, increased knowledge and skills, greater
awareness of climate change and renewable energy, and confidence and capacity building.
However, evidence suggests that CORE projects may be highly variable in terms of their
ability to engage the wider community, both in the CORE projects themselves, and in any
community-based activity enabled by CORE revenues. If CORE projects do not uniformly
engage community members, it cannot be assumed that CORE projects will necessarily, or
uniformly, generate positive local socio-economic impacts throughout the local community
in which they occur. There is, therefore, a need to better understand the conditions
required for generation of positive social impacts, and the development of suitable
methods for impact assessment that can account for local socio-political dynamics and
change processes. Through a systematic review of the literature, we identify, and
categorise, the key social benefits most commonly expected to result from CORE, and
compare this with the empirical evidence currently available to support these expectations.
Having revealed the extent of the gap between current evidence and expectations, we seek
to develop a methodology for assessing the social impacts of CORE by bridging the
community energy literature with the field of social impact assessment. Using a
community wind energy project in Orkney as case study, we demonstrate and discuss the
potential value of this approach.
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39 Understanding Meaning Wars during the Policy
Process
Philippe Zittoun
Wednesday 6th July 16.30-18.00
Contesting violence reduction policy in El Salvador
Chris van der Borgh
This paper deals with the contestation of government policies to diminish the extremely
high levels of social violence in El Salvador. While the high homicide rates cannot be
attributed to one actor, the phenomenon demanding most attention from the national
government is that of street gangs. The main response to gangs has been to resort to
repressive measures and actions and more accommodating or socially-oriented policy
proposals are often portrayed as naïve or dangerous. When in 2012 government officials
supported the brokering of a truce between the two major street gangs that led to a
spectacular reduction of homicide rates, this was heavily criticized and resisted by large
sections of Salvadoran society. This paper looks at the definitional and argumentative
strategies and struggles around violence reduction, both at a national and neighborhood
level.
How do symbolic struggles over policy-making work?
JanneAutto & Jukka Törrönen
Our presentation examines possibilities to analyse and understand how policy-makers,
professionals and citizens take part in symbolic struggles over policy-making by
legitimating their views with a specific vision of the social world. Our aim is to outline an
approach which brings together two aspects of the struggles. Firstly, participants of the
struggles possess social positions which give them different possibilities to use power, as is
emphasised, for example, in Bourdieusian thinking. Secondly, there are also common and
shared premises, discourses or frames that condition, shape and give resources to
situational struggles, which are emphasised especially in the studies inspired by Foucault.
We argue that the symbolic struggles over policy-making cannot be fully understood from
the perspectives of the social positions or discursive structures. Consequently, we develop
an approach that helps to understand the interplay between social positions of agency and
discursive structures in specific situations and that is open to the reciprocal character of
power. In addition, we examine how lower-range concepts – which focus on spatial,
temporal and positional aspects – could be applied as tools in the empirical analysis of
symbolic struggles over policy-making. These are presented as methodological concepts
that are able to capture the interplay between social positions and discourses and make the
process analysable.
Meaning war around the Notre-Dame-Des-Landes airport project
Dounia Khallouki
In the past few years, airport expansion or creation projects led to conflicts and tensions
with the local population. The case of the Notre-Dame-Des-Landes airport project is a
relevant example of a particularly tensed situation: the conflict led to important delays,
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and the outcome of the project is still uncertain. In this case, most of the participative and
legal procedures have occurred already, but didn’t succeed in putting an end to the conflict
and could have even made the situation worth. The conflict now lays only in a war between
the different actors involved, and it comes to a form of radicalization within the
contestation. Our intention in this paper is to understand, by studying discourses,
practices and argumentative strategies of the different actors, how the situation end up to a
blockage, despites all the participative procedures that occurred before. We focus on the
meaning war in which actors fight in order to impose their definition of what the airport is
supposed to be. Going from economic necessity to ecological disaster, the definition of the
airport project is the object of a definition struggle between opponents and proponents. To
understand this fight, we focus on the actors of mobilization first. Indeed, the
mobilizations are very heterogeneous but despite important differences, the contestation
still managed to be structured well enough to impact decision makers. The existence of the
ZAD is a key element in this radicalization, and shows a form of contestation we’ve barely
seen before. The ZAD is also a great example of meaning war: it has different definitions,
and represents an important part of the argumentative strategy on both sides. We also pay
attention to the project defenders, and we try to understand which strategies they use to
fight the strong opposition they face.
What’s the place for the argumentation in policy design? Notes from the
Censo SUAS experience, in Brazil
Rosana de Freitas Boullosa & Roberto Wagner da Silva Rodrigues
Policy design is a subject being often referred to as belonging exclusively to the so-called
rational tradition of policy studies. However, several seminal works have pointed to
transformative experiences of policy design that are aligned to a post-positivist or
argumentative traditions (Fischer, 2003; Boullosa, 2013; Zittoun, 2014), beyond the mere
empiricism. In that last perspective, this paper discusses the structure of policy design by
investigating the nature of policy instruments, supported by concepts such as social
meaning, values issues, public problems and social management. We consider that policy
instruments are guided context for social meaning production, in which we can find,
despite of identifying some efforts and restrictions to produce particular outcomes, some
opened and not orchestrated processes of social modeling between conflicting discourses
and their contents. We interpret these outcomes in two levels: one, formed by its explicit
goals; other, deeper, formed by its ability to change the set of public good of a society. As
public goods cannot be produced directly because they are contingent, uncertain and
unreachable individually, we propose its nature as being that of by-product. Then, they are
assumed as metaoutcomes, that may not even be produced, even when primary policy
instrument outcomes has been. When produced, this means that initial conflicting
discourses has found a new equilibrium, making policy instruments work as learning
contexts to societies defining their own problems and promoting their own goods.
However, if a policy instrument is not able to produce directly public goods, what it should
try to produce? Our answer is that, shortly, it must be designed as meta-instrument of a
process of argumentation (the real policy instrument). That discussion will be presented
using an experience of designing and implementation of a Brazilian policy instrument, the
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Censo Suas. It was initially thought to be a monitoring computerized national system to
manage nearly 8.000 Social Assistance Reference Centres, goal initially refused by
municipal actors, but it turned into a policy meta-instrument, with consequent gains in the
production of a public good called social control of Brazilian socioassistencial policies.
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40 Analyzing Policy Knowledges and Policy
Practices: Governmentality, Problematization,
Discourse
Malin Ronnblom & Tomas Mitander
Session 1 - Wednesday 6th July 08.30-10.00
Standpoint in German Childcare Reforms: A discursive analysis of social
coordination
Nina Suesse
Germany has substantially expanded its public childcare programme to improve workfamily life reconciliation in the last decade. Debates include themes of gender,
demography, working conditions and the integration and education of children. I trace
how local networks of actors within one city construct and enact these discourses. I
explicate thereby how extra-local policy information (reforms, legitimations, etc.) traverses
within institutional networks and how actors experience and enact policy locally. The textmediated infrastructure of communication practices, from childcare placement procedures
to policy papers, is therein a component of the social process in which actors become
intelligible to each other and coordinate their action.
Therein I examine how various actors construct the phenomenon of work-family
reconciliation problems differently, to what extent reforms correspond to the needs they
perceive, and how different problem conceptions may affect their ability to form alliances.
I am interested in how systemic distributions of capabilities (inequalities of linguistic
repertoires as much as pay checks) are active in shaping unequal access to different welfare
provisions in a reform process that supposedly advocates “choice” between different family
types and modes of employment.
Theoretically, my work is informed by D. E. Smith’s approach of Institutional Ethnography
as its basic methodology, and tangentially inspired by sociolinguistic ethnography
(Blommaert, Rampton) and a Foucaultian conception of power, governmentality and
subjectivity. The primary data is based on interviews with various local actors and public
documents.
Governmentality, Practice and Transitions in Energy Demand
Catherine Butler & Karen Parkhill
A number of policy targets around the world are now directed toward achieving transitions
in energy demand commensurate with a low carbon system. Key concerns in this area
encompass reductions in energy use, re-patterning of demand, and access and affordability
of energy exacerbating problems relating to a wide range of other social issues, such as
health, social participation, and poverty. In the UK analysis pertaining to energy demand
has focused on core energy policy from within the Departments of Energy and Climate
Change, Transport, or Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. However, the turn within
energy research to examine social practices has brought about understandings of energy
demand as arising out of what we do, how we live, and, ultimately, what we use energy for.
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In this context, questions emerge about the role of policy in shaping energy demand far
beyond what might traditionally be characterised as ‘energy’ policy. The project on which
this paper is based takes an initial step toward understanding the relevance of other policy
domains for energy demand. Using welfare and employment policy as its focus, the paper
combines insights from practice theory with theories of governmentality to develop an
approach for analyzing the relations between policy, everyday practice, and energy use.
Drawing on qualitative interview data and documentary materials, we show how welfare
policy problems and solutions are discursively constructed in ways that can exacerbate or
attenuate issues of energy demand. We use a process of ‘creative reimagining’ to open
possibilities for critically engaging with policy solutions and highlighting ways that
approaches could be better attuned to multiple social concerns.
Evading risk through depoliticization
Tim ten Ham & Christian Bröer
In this paper we demonstrate how contemporary politics deals with complex risk issues
that emanate from emergent technologies based on the following case study: the
implementation of the national electronic patient record (EPR) in the Netherlands. The
Dutch Senate rejected unanimously the EPR in 2011. From then on, market players have
been at the forefront to make the EPR operative in Dutch health care, despite its lack of
political legitimacy. This study reports how the relocation of politics to market players and
professional arena’s takes place (Hajer & Wagenaar, 2005; Pierre & Peters, 2000; Rhodes,
1997; Walls et al., 2005). As we perceive this relocation of politics as a form of
governmentality (Foucault, 1991), we are able to make visible how power is exerted over
professionals and citizens (Rose & Miller, 1991) and how they deal with processes of
subjectifation (Bröer, 2006). Our analysis of semi-structured interviews with policy
makers, implementers and first-line health care professionals, observations of information
meetings and a variety of documents shed light on several governmental techniques that
aim to allay anxiety regarding the EPR: seduction, emotion management and relieving in
combination with strict surveillance of health care professionals. Even though
collaboration with the EPR is voluntary we make plausible that these techniques seriously
compromise health care professionals’ and citizens’ freedom of choice. We conclude that
the technology is strongly depoliticized in order to protect the roll-out of the EPR in Dutch
health care.
Session 2 - Wednesday 6th July 10.30-12.00
Governing through knowledge, support and expertise – gender
mainstreaming, the Swedish case
Malin Rönnblom
This paper explores how gender mainstreaming has been filled with meaning and practiced
in Swedish national politics during the last 20 years. The analysis departs from Carol
Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Represented to be? Approach” and includes an analysis of
the problem representations of gender equality and gender mainstreaming, as well as an
analysis of how gender mainstreaming has been organised in Sweden. The results of these
analyses are then discussed in terms of rationalities and technologies of governing,
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inspired by a foucaudian governmentality framework. The main results show how
temporary forms of organisation of gender mainstreaming, mainly through projects run by
private consultants merged with problem representations as a lack of support and
knowledge creates a de-politicised political field that produces gender mainstreaming as
mainly a form a bureaucracy.
Causal stories of fathers' non-compliance with child support orders: What's
the problem?
Kay Cook
Drawing on Carol Bacchi’s (1999) problem framing approach and Deb Stone’s (1989)
account of ‘causal stories’ in policy making, this paper examines how the policy problem of
fathers’ non-compliance with child support orders has been framed in research and the
possibilities for ‘evidence based’ policy made available within this discursive space.
Child support is money paid by non-resident parents (typically men) to resident parents
(typically women) for the financial support of their children post-separation. In Australia,
as elsewhere, compliance with child support orders is poor, with debts exceeding $1 billion.
However, child support policy internationally has failed to enforce compliance, instead
focusing on measures that improve payers’ perceptions of fairness and encourage parents
to negotiate and pay their child support privately.
In policy, Stone (1989) argues, there is always a choice over which causal factors to
address; different choices assign the responsibility to different actors. Similarly, the factors
that researchers choose to address in their studies locates responsibility and constructs the
problem of non-compliance of child support in different ways - the issues researchers
choose to focus on, highlights assumptions about non –compliance, fathers and mothers.
In light of this, a literature review was undertaken in order to examine the ways in which
the policy problem of non-compliance of child support payments is framed within
research. Quantitative and qualitative studies published between 2000 and 2014 that
focused on fathers and child support payments were examined to reveal that child support
research on fathers’ non-compliance as focused almost exclusively on what Stone (1989)
describes as ‘inadvertent’ causes. Such causes position non-compliance as an unforeseen
side-effect of intervening circumstances, or acts of neglect, carelessness or omission rather
than fathers’ deliberate attempts to void payments.
Analysing the dominant ways in which fathers’ compliance with child support has been
constructed in research problematizes the evidence available for policy reform. Our
findings reveal how current research and policy approaches have ignored the gendered
power dynamics that exist between mothers and fathers post-separation, and have
simultaneously failed to inform policy responses to improve compliance outcomes.
Understanding the global strategy for disaster risk reduction
Veronica De Majo & Monika Persson
Disasters are a growing international concern that intersects with several policy discourses,
most notably with climate change, humanitarian aid, international development, and
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hazard risk and safety. This paper analyzes how disasters are constructed as a policy
problem within the UN global strategy for disaster reduction. Building on a social
constructivist view of policy problems, we analyze how the problem is formulated and
framed in the two major global frameworks on disaster reduction, while paying particular
attention to what this framing excludes and deemphasizes. The analysis of the strategy has
thus been guided by three analytical questions, adapted from the methodological approach
developed by Carol Bacchi, namely: (1) What kind of problem are disasters represented to
be within these frameworks? (2) What presumptions and assumptions underlie this
representation? (3) What is excluded from the representation?
When addressing these questions we have identified five dominant themes within the
frameworks, which in different ways influence how the understanding of disasters is
constructed in the strategy. We show that the problem of disasters is made relevant in
relation to an economic discourse and that several policy problems are “nested” within the
representation of disaster risk, and more particularly, within the notion of vulnerability.
Meanwhile, the effect of global economic structures on power relations and development
as well as environmental challenges remains unproblematized. The action strategy is
mostly concerned with adjusting or adapting societies to hazards, rather than addressing
the social processes that render people vulnerable to those hazards. The predominant
concern with technological and managerial solutions eclipses the need for changes in the
social structures that create disaster risks. Hence, we see the UN global strategy for DRR as
an articulation of global norms. In identifying the dominant frames and their limits, we lay
ground for a discussion about governance processes and the distribution of power,
responsibility, and blame in relation to disasters.
Session 3 Wednesday 6th July 12.45-14.15
Alternative authorities: evidence and appealing to rules in the era of law and
big data
SusanSterett
Does the emergent claim for data-driven decisionmaking change what cities do? The
claims are large but we have seen little about particular projects. City organizations
institutionalize different logics of governing; the new data driven decisionmaking is housed
in offices of information, and they need to work with organizations committed to different
forms of knowledge. For example, law offices institutionalize commitments to using legal
rights and responsibilities as descriptors of how to govern. Law offices may prefer
enforcement priorities where the harms and legal responsibilities are clear and provable by
legal standards; data analytics offices may prioritize problems where the harm seems
greatest. This paper will describe a research project at its beginning stages, about
decisionmaking concerning adaptation to climate change, and how different cities use
information, how that information is embedded in resilience offices or data analytics
offices, and how those offices work with agencies responsible for land use planning or
other adaptation strategies. These logics can rest in tension, can reinforce each other, or
operate in parallel, and we have evidence of each in previous iterations of data-driven
decisionmaking. Both governance through appealing to rules and governance through
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appealing to evidence have increasing authority, evidenced in the widespread agreement
that courts have been increasingly important in worldwide governance (e.g., Epp, 1998;
Hirschl, 2004), including in climate change mitigation (e.g., Peel and Osofsky, 2015).
References
Epp, C. R. (1998). The rights revolution: Lawyers, activists, and supreme courts in
comparative perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hirschl, R. (2004). Towards juristocracy: The origins and consequences of the new
constitutionalism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Peel, J., & Osofsky, H. M. (2015). Climate change litigation: Regulatory pathways to
cleaner energy. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
The European Commission Impact Assessment as neoliberalisation of
environmental policy-making?
Mutombo Emilie
This paper proposes a critical analysis of the European Commission Impact Assessment
(EC-IA), an ex-ante policy appraisal meant to assess “all” significant impacts of EC
proposals through an inclusive participative process. We have analysed EC-IA through the
governmentality “reading grid” derived from Foucault’s reflexions on the successive and
parallel forms of power. In this light, EC-IA fits in the liberal promise of technicisation and
rationalisation of decision-making, of previsibility and calculability through an ex-ante call
for quantification and monetisation expressed through the guidelines and the opinions of
the re-baptised Regulatory Scrutiny Board on the quality of IA reports. It also relates to an
ambiguous frugality moto with its disregard of legal intervention in favour of “soft law”.
Beyond, EC-IA is also a technology of neoliberal government. In many ways, it is a
prototype of “good governance” and its many often cited pitfalls (promoting participation
as accountability process, stakeholders’, rather than citizen’s democracy, without
empowerment of new, usually side-lined, actors). Moreover, EC-IA addresses the question
of economic prosperity not only through focusing on economic policies, but through a
‘lateral’ glance at all policies that might impact economic growth. EC-IA tends to assess any
policy through economic utility yardstick, which is typical of neoliberal governmentality
expanding the economic grid to all society’s spheres.
Following our investigations focused on the assessment of DG Environment proposals
(through discourse analysis, combining both lexicometry applied to 2003-2012 EC-IA
reports and three case studies), we show that there is not, per se, a neo-liberalisation of
environmental policy-making led by numbers; not the least because of the lack of
materiality of the monetisation promise. However, in spite of the partial implementation of
the EC-IA guidelines, or due to this incompleteness, we observe that EC-IA
implementation contributes to the economicisation of the making of European
environmental policies through the embedding of environmental issues in an economic
utility logic, and the subordination of the assessment of “economic, social and
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environmental” impacts to the assessment of the cost of action and to the use of
comparison criteria in line with the economic dimension.
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41 Reflexivity and Governmental Capabilities in
Sustainable Change
Manfred Moldaschl, Tobias Hallensleben & Matthias Wörlen
Wednesday 6th July 16.30-18.00
Thinking and doing sustainability governance in public administration principles and practices in Swiss cantons
Basil Bornemann & MariusChristen
Sustainability governance (SG) implies fundamental changes in the way societal problems
are governed. SG is supposed to be integrative, adaptive, reflexive and participatory – just
to name a few of the principles that are currently discussed by scholars. There is a
considerable amount of scientific work on “new” sustainability-oriented governance
designs that are expected to provide the capacity for implementing SG-principles (e.g.
transition management). However, despite clear signs of a “sustainabilization” of public
administrations in the form of sustainability strategies, coordination procedures and
communication instruments, there is little scientific knowledge of how SG and related
principles become manifest in the work of public administrations. Public administrators,
who are confronted with sustainability challenges, have presumably developed their own
practical ways of “thinking” and “doing” SG. These practices and the thereby created
governance capabilities tend to be neglected by prevalent analytical perspectives that
mainly focus on “designed” institutions and instruments.
On this basis several questions arise: How is SG interpreted and concretely enacted in the
everyday practice of public administrators? What possibilities do they have to foster SG in
their given institutional contexts? How is their thinking and doing of SG related to
scientific perspectives and principles on SG? With our paper we strive to shed light on the
thinking and doing of SG in public administrations. Drawing on insights from a
transdisciplinary research project on SG-related principles and practices in Swiss cantons
we will first present a framework that juxtaposes scientific perspectives with practical
understandings of cantonal administrators (“thinking”). Therefore we conduced interviews
and workshops with practitioners employing an approach of “transdisciplinary meaning
making”. Secondly, we identify various practices (“doing”) of SG in Swiss cantons as well as
commonalities and differences among them. Finally, we reflect on how these practices are
related to capabilities for SG and identify perspectives for future research to promote
thinking and doing SG.
Exploring reflexive governance: the role of citizens
Vivian Lagesen & Lucia Liste
There is a growing awareness that governance of sustainable transitions require of a type
of governance depicted by its reflexivity, multidimensionality, relationality and
ongoingness. Previous literature on sustainable transformation argue the importance to
pay attention to efforts in relation to five aspects: visions and aims need to be shared and
become situated as part of the process; experimentation and learning are mechanisms
through which new solutions and pathways are developed; the gathering and management
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of an heterogeneous assemblage of actors and different loci; feedback needs to be
integrated in the system; as well as a long-term orientation. This type of approaches has
been named under the idiom of reflexive governance. Voss and Kemp (2005) argue that
reflexive governance is an alternative to the rational problem-solving approaches and is
characterized by the management of recursive feedback relations between different
steering loci. Similarly, cities are increasingly placed in the centre of environmental debate,
presented as a promising intervention level, as innovative ‘low-carbon laboratories’,
potentially capable of developing cohesive strategies and shape transitions towards
sustainability. Cities have been seen as the solution to overcome the slow pace of national
and global action on climate change and as capable of collaborate in forming visions and
strategies in accordance with scientific knowledge, and using local knowledge to support
decisions, tailor their responses to local needs and to initiate actions grounded in the local
environment. Our study investigates a program, “Cities of the Future”, aimed at fostering
collaboration and learning among 13 cities in Norway, the national government and
regional and industrial actors, in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapting
to climate change while improving urban development. How were learning and reflexivity
enacted? As striking finding was the lack of reflection with regard to the role that citizens
were expected to play in the program. Although the importance of involving citizenry was
recognized in documents and highlighted by every informant, the program did not really
prioritize the engagement of citizens. Thus, the reflexivity, the re-cursive feedback did not
encompass users and citizen in the programme and we discuss the implications of this.
Reflexivity approach for re-politization of socio-ecological transformation
Manfred Moldaschl, Tobias Hallensleben & Matthias Wörlen
Climate change is one of the most obvious fields of politics for global sustainability.
Despite an enormous amount of hysteresis and rebound-effects on the macro level there
are countless initiatives for sustaina-ble development on the meso- and micro-level all over
the world. Many of these initiatives bear chances for promising modernization processes.
However, they still need to be understood more deeply as they usually transcend the focus
of local ecological conditions. But who are the drivers? What are the objec-tives these
drivers pursue? Who are the stakeholders? And who has the power to instrumentalize projects for its own purpose? Moreover: How self-critical or reflexive are the political
programs and strate-gies? What does the failure to achieve political goals tell us about the
prevailing mode of thinking in poli-tics? How do these feedbacks on political failure get
transformed in institutional learning and the rede-sign of political intervention? And can
we identify different modes of institutional learning as levels of capability?
These questions are often wrongly defined as academic. As projects of modernization and
socio-ecological transformation are connected in multiple ways to the future structure of
social life we need to understand them as strategic projects that need to be discussed
politically. But on all levels – global, na-tional and regional - the way these discourses are
organized is very closely linked to their result.
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Consequently, social sciences can (and must) give tools to support this re-politization of
decision making for our common future. Thus, reflexivity analysis might not only be an
important analytical tool to under-stand these negotiations, but also an effective guide to
create promising institutional frameworks and settings. Based on our former theoretical
and empirical work we provide theory-based, suitable criteria for identifying and
evaluating levels of reflexivity in processes of socio-ecological transformation. They are
organized in a three-step analysis. The first step identifies institutions (material
manifestations, methods, explicit rules, normative mutual expectations etc.) which have a
potential to foster reflexivity in daily action and policymaking. In a second step we ask how
collectives and individuals give meaning to that. A third step analyzes the “match” between
external requirements and the individual’s or social sys-tem’s capability to cope with.
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42 “When citizens step in”. Citizen participation in
environmental topics. Conditions and obstacles
Jean-Gabriel Contamin & Martine Legris
Session 1 Wednesday 6th July 12.45-14.15
Community energy on Tyneside: an attempt to kickstart activity in 2 low
income areas
Craig Woolf
Low carbon transition efforts in Northern England are described as taking place where
“...local publics remain very difficult to hear...” (Hodson and Marvin (2013:149). Grassroot
innovation, in the form of community energy projects in the region, lag behind many parts
of the country (Seyfang 2012). Drawing on theories of social justice, socio-technical
transitions and socio-ecological urbanism, I explore the efforts of one regional
intermediary, Northern Community Power (NCP), as it links with community centres, local
authorities and business to develop energy sovereignty at the grassroots following the
publication of the UK Govt Community Energy Strategy in 2014.
Using Participatory Action Research to produce an ethnography embedded with NCP, I
report on attempts to engage 2 low income neighbourhoods of Tyneside in community
energy. Outcomes have included the formation of an energy network, community centre
energy efficiency drives and advice outreach. Many centres have closed in recent years due
to asset transfer and cuts. Energy sovereignty and social learning are understood as a
survival strategy for many of those remaining. Discussions, knowledge sharing and debate
have developed around energy and broader environmental issues. Cross sectoral
collaborations between the community sector, local authorities and business have been
encouraging but slow. I will discuss the difficulties in engaging across scales for all those
involved in the project.
My involvement comes as a director of NCP and the Tyneside project has been a case study
for my ongoing PhD.
What is the point of the fracking protests? Framing the debate on shale gas
development in the UK media.
Philip Norris
This paper investigates public responses to the controversial mining technique known as
hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the UK. Supporters argue that fracking will bring
economic benefits, ensure fuel independence, and create economical wealth. Opponents
contest these claims, on the basis of high risks of negative environmental impacts,
including the dangers of water contamination, air pollution and implications for public
health. Following various legislative initiatives by the government, intended to facilitate
shale gas exploitation, citizens of the UK have participated in numerous protests opposing
the current government’s ‘dash for gas’.
The paper attempts to investigate the various ways in which anti-fracking protests have
been framed (D’Angelo & Kuypers 2010) within the media. On the one hand, protesters
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have seen protests as the only legitimate form of action within the circumstances, due to
other democratic processes being exhausted. On the other hand, the pro-fracking side
have framed these protests as criminal action. The different framings provide an arena for
citizens to be heard or disregarded depending on the frame’s argumentative aims.
The different ways that the protests are framed enter into different arguments for action,
in favour or against fracking. Protesters define their actions in terms of ‘civil disobedience’,
‘peaceful protests’, and ‘legal direct action’, which is said to be required due to a
‘democratic deficit’. Appeals to legality are also used by opponents to argue that fracking
would contravene Britain’s binding legal commitments relating to climate change, as well
as violating basic rights. The use of the legal frame to justify or criticize the actions of both
sides is a thought-provoking argumentative strategy which this paper examines.
This paper will employ an argumentative approach to framing (Fairclough & Fairclough
2012, Fairclough 2016), according to which particular ways of framing an issue enter into
particular arguments for action and support particular conclusions and potential decisions.
Set against the background of the ‘argumentative turn’ in policy analysis (Fischer 2003,
Fischer & Gottweis 2012), the paper also attempts to demonstrate how contrasting
argumentative strategies within the debate incorporate the concept of democracy to
support and oppose both the fracking industry and the fracking protests.
Reclaiming the commons through convivial protest: The transformative
dimension of the Gezi Movement
Aysem Mert
The protests that took place across Turkey in the summer of 2013 started as a bottom-up
response to the plans of the government and Istanbul municipality to build a shopping
mall on a small yet symbolic park in the cultural heart of the city. Gezi Park protests have
quickly turned into a country-wide resistance movement against the hyperdevelopmentalist environmental and urban policies of the government, and the
authoritarian tendencies of the PM (now President) Tayyip Erdoğan, unifying opposition
from all sides of the political spectrum. The political dynamics of the protests have been
extensively researched with little attention on the transformative aspect of the Movement
in the lives and social practices of the protestors.
In this article, I argue that the Gezi Protests were a radical response to the policies of
enclosure Erdoğan governments have initiated in the name of development. This took the
form of gentrification in cities, enclosure of the common agricultural lands in the rural
areas, increasing government control over the press as well as cyber-space (particularly on
the language and the images used), increasingly patriarchal policies and regulation on the
bodies, life-styles, and living spaces of citizens, and the so-called ‘crazy projects’ of the
government across the country (wherein the ‘the biggest’, ‘the greatest’, ‘the most
expensive’, ‘the most unthinkable’ is the aim). Then, I look at the response of the Gezi
protestors to these enclosures. In the course of the protests three areas of commons were
re-/produced or accentuated: humour, language, and (cyber, urban and ‘natural’) space.
Using 25 semi-structured interviews with protestors and extensive desk-research on
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memes produced at the protests, the paper examines their production, reproduction, and
transformation.
Session 2 Wednesday 6th July 14.45-16.15
Co-creating sustainable communities in Ireland - insights from emerging
participatory practices
SimonO’Rafferty, Muireann McMahon, Adam deEyto & HuwLewis
Non-regulatory interventions for sustainable behaviour change have typically focussed on
individuals and sought to enable sustainable consumption and other micro-level
behavioural transitions. The limitations of individually focussed behaviour change
interventions in the context of environmental policy and sustainable development are
increasingly understood.
More recently, frameworks for sustainable behaviour change are beginning to focus on
collective actions at the community level. This can be observed through emerging
participatory approaches such as co-creation, co-design and co-production as well as
transition management, social innovation and digitally enabled solutions such as open
data, collective awareness networks and open democracy.
This growth in participatory approaches may be associated with a shift away from
paternalistic local governance towards models of governance that seek to create the
conditions that enable communities to take collective action. A key assumption within
these participatory approaches is that the development of social capital, agency, social
relations, collective action and improving subjective wellbeing are inherently good things
and these will in turn create the conditions that allow sustainable communities to flourish.
Conversely, some cities and regions have looked to participation and co-production as an
answer to cuts in resources that have resulted from austerity policies.
While there are limitations to individual level interventions, there are also structural and
functional barriers to collective and community level behaviour change. These include
micro-level psychological barriers such as the values, agency, social norms and habit as
well as macro-level barriers such as capacity, power relations, institutions and socioeconomic context.
This paper will explore the emerging practices of co-design and co-creation in the context
of sustainable community development. It will present three case studies of participatory
community development in Ireland in order to critically examine the scope and potential
to orientate these practices towards sustainable community development. The paper will
elaborate upon specific dilemmas and paradoxes of co-design and co-creation within this
context. This research is being undertaken as part of a research project on sustainable
behaviour change that is funded by the Irish Environmental Protection Agency.
Why do you care? Analysing citizen participation in the Mountain Days
campaign
Claire Tollis
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This talk intends to account for a survey led in 2014-15 about and among volunteers that
participated in the Mountain Days campaign. The campaign designates a hundred of daylong events that drive volunteers, professionals and sometimes officials to clean up ski
resort areas in France. A quantitative survey as well as a series of interviews and
observation sessions was conducted, in order to grasp the nature of citizens’ motivations,
satisfactions and frustrations. We analyze the relationship built between the volunteers,
between the volunteers and the waste they collect or fail to collect, between volunteers and
the place they participate in cleaning up. The scales of reference as well as the area
supposedly benefiting from the care-giving of the volunteers are surprising. People come
from a distance but generally think their action only impacts a few acres. Also, they are not
concerned by whether the site is protected or not. So, we ask, why do they bother? It seems
like social and environmental care blend in an intriguing way in this form of participation
that we theorize as “participaction”.
Dealing with depopulation, the development of alternative planning practices
compared in Sweden and The Netherlands
Marlies Meijer
Abstract: This paper compares planning initiatives performed by non-governmental
stakeholders, in two depopulating regions in Sweden and the Netherlands: Östergotland
and De Achterhoek. Making spatial plans for the future of such regions is often challenging
for local governments. While municipalities experiment with new forms of spatial
planning; other stakeholders, like citizens, entrepreneurs and non-governmental
organizations, develop their own plans for their local community. In this way they hope to
maintain and develop social, economic and environmental activities. First, this paper
explores how these non-governmental stakeholders make plans, focussing on the role of
informal decision-making and the history of the initiatives. Secondly, this study provides
insight in the interaction between planning practices performed by non-governmental and
governmental actors. While the planning practices performed by non-governmental
stakeholders show strong similarities in both case study regions: all projects have a
likewise content, history and organizational structure; governments deal in different ways
with these bottom-up initiatives. Analyzing the differences and similarities in two case
study regions enables us to achieve a more in-dept interpretation of the case study results
and the possibility to reflect on the consequences of different approaches in dealing with
bottom-up initiatives and depopulation.
Enacting the environment and contesting policy hierarchies
Eugénia Rodrigues
This paper analyses the processes, practices and resources through which a small
community group located in the northeast of England succeeded firstly in working
collaboratively with a governmental agency and, secondly, in contesting and modifying
elements of the policies and procedures in place as well as the knowledge or expertise that
underlay them. Using the material (as in funding) and support (as in expertise) resources
made initially available to the group through a trans-European funded project, the group
soon moved from a relationship based on participation and collaboration as defined by
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‘others’, to one where selective autonomy and independence were key. In this context,
selective autonomy encapsulates both the idea that the group disrupted the terms of the
initial relationship reducing the hierarchical dimension and that they developed their own
rationale for ‘when and where’ the group’s decisions and actions required validation
elsewhere, i.e., from policy-makers or accredited experts. My analysis puts forward an
explanation for the emergence of this selective autonomy that is based on the development,
within the group, of a shared ‘theory’ of the environment (their environment). This
theorisation is as much the result of the experiential and contextual knowledge of the
members of the group as of the expertise that can be gathered through new and old
technologies in assessing and monitoring the quality of the environment (such as sensorial
based information complemented by readings from electronic devices). Furthermore, this
theory is enacted and performed whilst – and whenever – community-group members are
out in their local environment or pondering the next course of action; in this way the
theory is constantly reinforced and re-legitimated. This research was based on an
ethnographic approach, where periods of time were spent among members of the group
while in the course of their routine activities. Semi-structured interviews with members of
the group, policy-makers and experts were also conducted. These two main bodies of
empirical data were complemented with an extensive document analysis, sourced mainly
from the community group, the governmental agency involved in the project, and the
scientists who acted as experts. 163
42 Governmentality and expertise: imagining
economy after crisis
Amelie Kutter & Jens Maesse
Wednesday 6th July 12.45-14.15
Power and critique in Europe. On the discursive logic of austerity discourses
within a “new Weberian universe”
Jens Maesse
Today, Europe is a manifest reality to the people within and outside the European Union.
As an economic space it was already integrated through networks of production, exchange
and distribution since the early middle ages. After the end of World War II it became an
institutional realty, especially through the constitution of a free trade area. Yet, most
people have not perceived a common European space since the political-institutional
integration was a “negative” integration through neoliberal deregulation measures. To
become a “positive” integrated socially-political space, Europe needs the constitution of a
“European” symbolic order. How does this symbolic order look like? A symbolic order is
usually constructed through different socio-discursive means and practices on the local as
well as on the global level of language use, embedded in a particular institutional
framework. Accordingly, by taking the austerity discourses during the “Euro crisis” and
especially the “Greek crisis” as an example, this contribution will show how a particular
sort of “European” discourses in the current European symbolic universe are operating.
Here, discourses of power and critique constitute each other by establishing particular
discursive actors such as “technocrats”, “rebels”, “experts”, and “leaders”. With a discourse
analysis, this presentation will show how particular discursive positions are constructed
and how these socio-discursive relations may connect to an emerging institutional order of
Europe. The idea which will be presented in this talk is that Europe is emerging as an order
that can be called a “new Weberian universe”.
European Central Banking after the Crisis
MathisHeinrich
Since the outbreak of the euro crisis, the European Central Bank (ECB) has turned into one
of the most powerful institutions in European governance. It did not only use
unconventional monetary instruments and moved towards a stronger provision of
financial stability, but extended its competencies into policy areas that go far beyond its
former duties: the ECB now acts as a lender and government of last resort in European
Monetary Union (EMU) by taking the lead in monitoring big banks and all kinds of
structural interventions in member states. This clearly marks a crisis-driven change in
European central banking, however the main driving forces behind this are still unclear in
the literature.
The proposed paper takes a cultural political economy perspective on these issues. As such,
it emphasizes the co-evolutionary dynamics of semiotic and extra-semiotic mechanism
that inform the current transformation of the ECB. First of all, a general overview of policy
reactions of the central bank since 2008 is given, which clusters responses into three main
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areas: monetary policy reactions, banking supervision, and economic policy interventions.
In addition, these areas are explored in terms of their concrete economic, political and
discursive dynamics of change. Drawing on secondary research and early results from
discursive frame analysis, we come to three main conclusions: (a) transnational expert
discourses are particular important to understand changing ECB preferences in the field of
banking supervision; (b) rationalities of EMU inform the deepening of competitiveness
reforms in the field of economic policy; and (c) monetary policy interventions cannot be
explained by either discursive dynamics, since the communication of the ECB in this area
primarily targets to perform markets and increase its accountability only. Instead,
structural issues need to be taken into account to fully understand the new pragmatism of
European central banking after the crisis.
The governmentality of the EU’s new financial architecture
Amelie Kutter
After the financial crisis hit the Eurozone and laid bare its vulnerabilities, a couple of
institutional reforms have been initiated to bolster financial stability in the larger financial
Europe. This paper looks at the recent changes from the perspective of governmentality
studies. It seeks to move beyond existing research on neoliberal governmentalities
entrenched in EU governance and explores the potential Michel Foucault’s work offers for
analyzing governmentalities of managing (financial) risks. Drawing on a range of
materials, such as declarations and agreements, new legal provisions and commentaries on
their implications and functioning, the paper investigates the rationalities implicated in
the EU’s financial policies and situates them in technologies and dispositives of macroeconomic steering adopted by the EU. The argument is made that macroprudence has
become the rationality not only informing the design of the EU’s new financial institutions,
but also instructing policies in other domains of EU economic governance.
Financial capital, multinational taxation and erosion of the State
David Carter & Marion Carter
The United Kingdom, Australia, the United States and Europe have been subject to
successive attacks by their own neo-liberal policies concerning tax incentives, corporate
taxation and the logic of transfer-pricing taxation. Scandals such as Starbucks in the UK,
the recent settlement between Google and the UK government, Apple in Australia and
other such examples, illustrate a core principle of the modern corporate governance: in the
name of financial capital, government is fair game and is subject to attack by the corporate
entity. The impact of this is that it ridicules governmental taxations systems and renders
social welfare spending as susceptible to decisions (supposedly) in the best interests of
corporate accountants and lawyers. This is a new form of neo-liberal governmentality.
In a narrative analysis of recent multinational tax crises, this research focuses on the role
of administrative and executive agencies with respect to the public debate of multinational
tax crises. In particular, we see evidence of ‘blame sharing’ or ‘blame avoidance’ (often
presented as ‘protecting’ privacy concerns). The second substantive issue concerns the
apparent disdain demonstrated by multinationals to the ‘State’ with respect to taxation. In
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this, we focus principally on how multinationals approach taxation as negotiable, optional
and an activity that they control with respect to the State. Agreements to ‘gift’ (small
amounts of) tax are rhetorically presented as a ‘resolution’, but we argue that this is a
politics of displacement.
We use this context to argue, through Lazzarato (2012; 2015), that this ‘power struggle’ is
an illusion. We argue that in a broader context of the hegemony of financial capital, this is
an impact of neo-liberalism, by which multinational organisations and the State are objects
of a shift to a capital founded on (public) debt. In this, taxation is a side issue, as the
ultimate destination of profits is financial capital holders. Thus, we argue that the current
situation with respect to multinational taxations emphasises the structural, statesponsored and systemic functions of debt as a driving force for neoliberal financial capital.
Thus, the media and other institutions function to conceal the primary identity of the
political.
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44 The Emergence of Deliberative and Interpretive
Policy Analysis in Asia Piyapong Boossabong
Thursday 7th July 08.30-10.00
A Critical Review of Deliberative and Interpretive Policy Analysis in Taiwan
Liang-Yu Chen
Following the “argumentative turn” in public policy analysis in the 1990s, and later the
development of deliberative policy analysis (DPA) and interpretive policy analysis (IPA), a
few Taiwanese scholars, mainly in public administration and public policy, have
“imported” such analytic frameworks and new focuses for studying politics and policies in
Taiwan. Since the International Conference in Interpretive Policy Analysis has been
established as a platform for DPA/IPA scholars, Taiwanese scholars have also contributed
to the enrichment of DPA/IPA with case studies in the Asian context.
In order to assess the development of IPA/DPA in Taiwan, this paper scrutinizes the
academic work on DPA/IPA that carried out by Taiwanese scholars (mainly written in
Mandarin Chinese) since the 21st century. Based on the critical review, the paper argues
that (1) whereas some scholars’ work can directly or indirectly relate to DPA/IPA, few of
the scholars identify their work as DPA/IPA. In this regard, the “IPA school” in Taiwan has
yet to be formed. (2) Since the concept of deliberative democracy and participatory
governance have been introduced widely in Taiwan, many scholars interpret the term
deliberative policy analysis as “deliberative democracy plus policy analysis.” (3) While the
role of interpretive/deliberative policy analysts is still under discussion, the Taiwanese
scholars who work on DPA/IPA are meanwhile playing a role as social activists, and are
highly involved in policy issues that are in huge controversies. (4) Speaking of teaching and
curriculum of DPA/IPA, Taiwanese scholars are facing the same challenges as western
scholars. For instance, it is often difficult to demonstrate how to put the abstract
framework and interpretive methodology into practice.
In conclusion, this paper further discusses the political environment as an opportunity
for the development of DPA/IPA in Taiwan.
Interpretive Policy Analysis in Thailand: An Emergence and Contributions
Alongkorn Akkasaeng
This paper aims to study the emergence of an interpretive policy analysis and its
contributions in Thailand context by using the analytical framework provided by Wagenaar
(2011) in which distinguishes three types of meanings as hermeneutic, discursive and
dialogical interpretation. The focus is on the academic studies in Thailand that adopted an
interpretive analysis in analysing policy issues. The study reveals that the discourse
analysis is the common tool that paves the way to understand the implications of the
interpretive approach in this country. It has been adopted by Thai political scientists in late
1990s, after that it became prevalent and has been referred in more than 150 research
works. From this study, the research works that either clearly or likely adopted the
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interpretative policy analysis, whether by an intention or not, are found in various fields by
which 22 from 43 studies are closest to the analysis of hermeneutic meaning, followed by
14 studies on the analysis of discursive meaning and 7 on dialogical meaning. Also,
interpreting policy issues related to the environment and national resources are the most
common one as there were different communities of meaning that struggled for defining
justice and their rights to manage the environment and resources throughout the history of
the public policy that aimed to commercialisation the nature and created the conflicts on
different perceptions on public interests. Apart from that, there were the studies on the
fields of development, politics, public health, economics, culture, sexuality, education and
communication. Regarding contributions of this approach in this context, it was found that
such works provide analytical insights, critical perspectives and alternative policy choices
that are more sensitive to different social norms and modes of rationality that are
embedded in each policy context. These studies also raise the voices of the marginalised
people who are powerless, excluded and struggling. Besides, the review found that those
projects are different from traditional policy studies in the way that they reflect the real
policy world which is pluralistic, complex, uncertain, and related to multi-stakeholders
who perceive policy in different ways.
„Normal country” - peace and security in contemporary Japanese political
discourse
MaciejPletnia
Year 2015 signified an important change in the legal dimensions of Japanese national
security. Despite strong protests from the parliamentary opposition, NGOs, students
groups, as well as from Japan’s most significant neighbours in the Far East Asia,
particularly China and South Korea, Japanese government managed to pass the so-called
„Peace and Security Preservation Legislation”. This package of 11 bills grants Japanese
Self-Defence Forces power to participate in foreign military operations in limited
circumstances. In my paper I would like to focus on how terms “security” and “peace” are
being discursively reconstructed in the recent Japanese political discourse in order to
create vast support not only for aforementioned package, but also for future amendments
of the constitution, especially its controversial Article 9. Furthermore, I would like to
analyse how those two crucial terms fit into a broader discourse regarding Japan becoming
a “normal country” – a concept that was first articulated in 1993 by Ichiro Ozawa, and
which since then has become one of the crucial themes in Shinzo Abe’s domestic politics.
Recent discourse regarding “peace” and “security” will be analysed as an example of a
populist project that utilizes both concepts as empty signifiers. However, there is also an
on-going hegemonic struggle around those two concepts, which can be best symbolized by
numerous protests recently organized by SEALD (Students Emergency Action for Liberal
Democracy). My analysis will mostly focus on public speeches by Prime Minister Abe and
Ministers of his Cabinet, as well as on official government documents regarding those 11
bills. Such methodological approach will allow discovering discursive practices behind
concept of “peace” and “security” in contemporary domestic Japanese politics.
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Bridging the gaps of policy discourses and practices: Analytical insights from
an interpretive analysis of local policies promoting elderly rights in Thailand
Amonrat Ariyachaipradit, Noppadon Nimnoo & Piyapong Boossabong
This paper analyses local policies promoting elderly rights in Thailand initiated after tasks
related to elderly care were decentralised to local authorities. To adopt an interpretive
approach gives us analytical insights into the existence of different policy discourses
perceived by different stakeholders. As the tasks were just introduced recently to the local
government, local policy makers initiated policies based on their interpretation of the legal
rights. They perceived right protection mainly as welfare provision including providing
healthcare services and paying monthly pension for people aged 60 and over. On the other
hands, the concepts of right and welfare were not recognised by most of the elderly people
as they were transferred from elsewhere and perceived as bureaucratic words. The study
found that most elderly people expected what they should be provided was well-being,
happiness or quality of life enhancement in general sense. Rights based on individuals did
not come along well with the social value there that elderly care was a part of family care.
The local authorities asked seniors to take pension by themselves at the meeting point as
they assumed that family members would not hand in money to the elders. The local
government also interpreted rights in equal basis and that shaped one size fit all policies in
the pluralist society. The study found that some homosexual people did not realise that
they were old at 60 and many elderly persons who had family business still worked as the
head. Some people aged less than 60 mentioned that they required support to be ready to
get old, while people aged over 80 required support to prepare to die. Another missing
consideration was to take care of the elderly mind. This instead was practiced by
community leaders that realise the elderly value. They invited the senior citizens to play a
key role in religious activities and also in engaging in local festivals. The study then
proposes that, under these gaps of policy discourses and practices, street level bureaucrats
with knocking the door approach and community leaders can play the key role in bridging
them.
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46 Participation in Public Policy
BettyEspinosa & André-Noël Roth
Session 1 Wednesday 6th July 14.45-16.15
Public participation in policy-making: a review of some devices used in Latin
America
ANDRE ROTH & BETTY ESPINOSA
From the 80s, Latin America has undergone a process of constitutional, politic and
administrative reforms in order to strengthen democracy. Almost all countries introduced
the need for citizen participation in the definition of public policy through various
regulations, discourses and practices. Participatory democracy enrolled as a necessary
complement to representative democracy in their constitutions. The paper reviews and
discusses the advances and limitations of the main devices used and institutionalized in
Latin America to generate participation in formulation and implementation of public
policy. The analysed devices are: participative budget, citizen councils and previous
consultation. Then we focus our attention to some emerging devices that could revitalize or
complement the existing processes of participation and deliberation. Some of these are:
Citizen Trials or Conferences; the use of draws in some phases of participant selection
processes; and innovative experiences related to the use of new communication
technologies. Also we discuss the interface role that social sciences and academia in
general could play to propose devices and technical tools and also to legitimize and
accompany these participatory and deliberative processes. It is concluded that the
consolidation of these devices would represent a significant step towards democratic
governance.
Contemporary social movements – the case of Poland.
Agnieszka Zietek
In the 90 French philosopher Jean Baudrillard has created the concept of "silent masses";
the society that is passive, isolated from the reality and not interested in participating in
social and political life of the community.
However, recent years show that his concept is at least inadequate and rather useful to
describe the condition of contemporary public sphere. We are becoming witnesses a kind
of "awakening" and gaining the voice of different societies, which articulate their
dissatisfaction with the direction and the effect of the activities of both national
governments and the rules establishing a framework for the functioning of modern
democratic societies more often, as well as local communities expressing disapproval of the
policies implemented by local governments. We can also observe the bottom-up emergence
of independent groups/initiatives, functioning outside the “formal” mainstream, working
for the broad sense of local development, as well as implementing a specific, current tasks
and needs of residents. Therefore, there is a question raising in the context of these
changes: how does the social participation look like nowadays? How (in what way) are the
social movements formed and how they act, what kind of values, goals and rules are
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attended, what are their relationship with the environment (especially political) in which
they operate.
The presentation will attempt to answer to these questions by using the results of
qualitative research (individual in depth interviews), which have been realized on the
selected local social movements in Poland in 2015
Transversal Public Action in Brazilian National Councils of Public Policies
Fernanda Natasha Bravo Cruz & Doriana Daroit
In Brazil, relevant formal participatory experiences have been presented since the advent
of the 1988 Constitution, and have intensified notedly since the early 2000s. Recognizing
the multi-causalities of public problems, Brazilian participatory forums have complexified,
adopting a plurality of actors to discuss and to propose new resolution alternatives.
The insurgency of hybrid arenas, both technical and participatory, is emblematic on
Brazilian national public policy councils, socio-state interfaces (Izunza-Vera,Gurza-Lavalle,
2009) composed by governmental, economic and civil society segments. Aiming at
qualifying its actions, many councils structures were reorganized to rely on technical
advisory bodies, such as technical and inter-sectoral committees. This paper shares
preliminary considerations of an ongoing study, in which we propose to observe how do
the hybrid forums (Callon,Rip,1996; Callon,Lascoumes,Barthe,2009) of advisory bodies of
national councils constitute transversal public actions.
Therefore, we mobilize questions with respect to the nodes among processes, results,
institutions, representations and actors (Lascoumes,Le Galès, 2012). To address more
specifically to the symbolic representations that give meaning to sociotechnical rules and
instruments (Lascoumes,Le Galès, 2007) produced by the forums, we bring forward the
concept of referential (Muller,1987,2013), observing its sectoral, hybrid and global
formats. To better understanding the actors relations, we discuss the ambivalence of links
between actors originating from new forms of civil society political representation
(Urbinati,2010; Young,1991; Fraser,2008) and expert representatives (Giddens,1991;
Rivasi,1996) of state bureaucracy.
For these purposes, the research consists also of ethnographies of bureaucratic practices of
arenas of the National Council for the Environment and the National Health Council. The
ongoing investigation points to the following preliminary analytical considerations: There
are profound distinctions between the processes of hybrid forums, depending on the
referentials and capabilities of actors animating the transversal dynamics; there seems to
be a distrust of some non-state actors regarding the intersectoral logic, concerning a
federal possible aim of ensuring broader representation to governmental than to other
sorts of origins; the expert knowledge on procedural rituals of conducting meetings and
drafting regulations is highly important; the global referential of efficiency stands as an
obstacle to the new hybrid referentials producing (/produced by) transversal public
actions.
Do we really want "free" services?
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Eric Patricio Díaz Mella
The defense and or requirement of free certain public services reveals the situation of
citizen participation, and the position it adopts before the state. Indeed, it is worth
considering that citizen participation in public policy decisions is constituted as a political
exercise whose objective is to decide, in this case, on the management of fiscal resources.
In this sense, a public demand for gratuity does not recognize the sovereignty of the people
in relation to their own resources, and, on the other hand, places them as beneficiary of
state favors rather than a subject entitled to participation.From this discussion, it is
intended to address the situation of citizen participation in the process of public policy,
proposing the discursive position of social movements as a means of access.Finally, some
ideas on how we can derive some measures to empower citizens in relation to the
formulation of public policies will be offered.
Session 2 Wednesday 6th July 16.30-18.00
Patterns and determinants of public participation in the cities of Central and
Eastern Europe
PawełStarosta & Kamil Brzeziński
Polish researchers D. Dlugosz and J. Wygnański (2005) define civic participation as a
process in which citizens gain the ability to influence and even to control the decisions
taking by local authorities. According to the point of view of these researchers, inhabitants
of the city should have an impact on decisions that directly or indirectly affect them.
In recent years in the cities of Central and Eastern Europe we can observe the increasing
process by which local authorities offer residents more and more opportunities to
influence the process of decision taking. For instance local governments more often
organize public consultations or participatory budget. These actions, however, do not
always have a direct bearing on the involvement of citizens and exploiting the possibilities
offered by the authorities. However, These actions not always met with considerable
interest of the residents.
In regard to the above information, the aim of this paper is to present the level of civic
participation of inhabitants of Central and Eastern Europe and to identify the main factors
determining this level. The empirical basis for our papers will be the results collected
within the research project "Resurgence of postindustrial peripheral cities", which was
funded by the National Science Centre in Poland. The study (surveys) was carried out in six
cities, including Poland (Lodz), Russia (Ivanovo), Turkey (Adapazari), Romania (Oradea),
Lithuania (Panevezys) and Hungary (Miskolc).
Governance and territory: Local democracy and decision making in 21st
century
Juan-Antonio Zornoza
The western democracies have incorporated citizen participation to link the people with
the decisions that concern directly on public policies such as social, environmental,
cultural and coexistence policies. In fact, the effective participation of citizens in public
decisions results in effective strengthening of civil society. Also, collaborative governance
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has meant a better allocation of resources for the implementation of programs to increase
the quality of life of local populations. The migration of peasants to the cities has been
promoted by multilateral agencies with the idea of modernize rural lands and protect
strategic ecosystems. Some cities have not been prepared for this migration from rural
areas. Some cities in development countries have not escaped to qualitative change in the
content and form of decision-making on social, environmental and cultural policy. Social
housing reforms have transformed some traditional institutions and conducted to a
gradual reduction of state involvement and strengthening the private sector to gradually
take on this task. This combination of instruments has resulted in a technocratic style that
apparently interacts with affected communities, but falls short in effectiveness and
legitimacy in results of a instrumentalized participation because checklists and strategic
planning processes are just formal mechanisms. In some regions, local administration has
driven intended to provide local citizens a transformation in urban affairs that lead to new
opportunities for interaction and civic activity government programs. It have modernized
the urban furniture in marginalized areas with areas for public space, health, education,
recreation and culture. However, the mechanisms for implementing these policies have
highlighted a tension between the goals and interests of the administrative and political
authorities to the needs and expectations of related communities that can cause
"undesirable" side impacts. This research explores methods of generation of citizen
participation and decision making from the comparative analysis of cases that allow
community management, inclusion of the needs and interests of stakeholders affected by
public decisions, establishing in the local agenda an adaptation of technical and
administrative mechanisms of governance.
Limping participation in the LEADER programme. A top-down or bottom-up
approach in the case of LAG FAR Maremma (Tuscany)?
Romina Zago, Thomas Block, Joost Dessein & Gianluca Brunori
With this paper we would like to contribute to the understanding of participation processes
in the EU LEADER Programme. This objective is addressed through a detailed analysis of
local actors’ participation in the Local Action Group F.A.R. Maremma (Tuscan Region,
Italy) where a participative method was applied in order to elaborate the Local
Development Strategy for the European programming period 2007-2013. The research is
aiming to focus on how top-down induced bottom-up policy arrangements reinforces
participation of local actors in the context of neo-endogenous development. Translated to
our case study, the research is aiming to focus on what extent and how the LEADER
method in the case of LAG FAR MAREMMA reinforces participation of local actors for the
elaboration of the local development strategy.
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47 Direct PublicAction and Unruly Politics: Discursive
policy amidst rising global inequality and Conflict
Navdeep Mathur
Tuesday 5th July 14.45-16.15
Play, Resistance, and Mobility: The Politics of Street Capture in Neoliberal
India
Harsh Mittal
Mobilizing Deliberation and Dissent in Urban Renewal in Ahmedabad, India:
Discursive approach to analysing social resistance as a form of policy
argumentation
Navdeep Mathur & Jonathan B. Justice
Public Accountability and Resistance: How Public Administrators Negotiate
Meaning Amidst Policy Crises
Jonathan B. Justice
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50 Open Panel
Building Deliberative Online Communities: Across Varied Course Structures
and Types
Anita Chadha
E-learning has become one of the primary ways to deliver education around the globe.
Research is keeping pace with the use of various techno-aids as educators evaluate how to
effectively use these aids in an ever-changing e-classroom. Adding to this body of work,
and in assessing the effectiveness of techno-tools, this study evaluates meaningful and
deliberative exchanges of online discussions towards building an inclusive online
classroom. Unknown to each participant were the gender, race, ethnicity, religious beliefs,
course level, and mode of instruction. These unknowns are important in determining how
civically engaged participants are in their discussions with each other. Are they creating
dialogue and being reflective irrespective of different instruction types or levels? Based on
the Interpretive Policy Analysis Conference theme of embracing research that extends
across the social sciences and applied to a vast range of policy topics, my paper would be
grounded in promoting greater understanding of innovative teaching applications online
and applying innovative methodologies across a range of class subjects such as political
science, sociology, history, economics and other comparable disciplines further extending
the ‘classroom’ domestically and internationally, Based on empirical findings, a secondary
focus of this study, is to provide suggestions in constructing robust online e-learning
communities. This project’s outcomes have important implications in the ever-demanding
need to design effective online communities globally.
The Ontological Politics of a Mundane Email
Mick Chisnall
Making it real or sustaining a fantasy? Personal budgets for older people.
Karen West & Catherine Needham
The restructuring of English social care services in the last three decades, as citizens are
asked to operate in partnerships and networks with a shifting collage of state, for-profit
and non-profit organisations, exemplifies many of the themes of governance (Bevir, 2013).
As well as institutional changes, there have been a new set of narratives about citizen
behaviours and contributions, undergirded by modernist social science insights into the
wellbeing benefits of ‘self-management’ (Mol, 2008). In this paper, we particularly focus
on the ways in which a narrative of personalisation has been deployed in older people’s
social care services, based on a universalist account of risk which suppresses the
distinctiveness of ageing. Local practices struggle to accommodate the contradictions of
this narrative, as displayed in the low take-up of personal care budgets by older people.
Here we draw upon the Lacanian notion of fantasy to explain the persistence of the
personalisation narrative, juxtaposing the notion of fantasy with the demands of care
sector leaders that the next stage in personalisation is Making it Real (Think Local, Act
Personal (TLAP), no date).
The Effect of Feed-in-Systems on the Development of Wind and Solar
Photovoltaic Energy Capacity: Evidence from the European Union
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Mutaka A Alolo, Alcino Azevedo & Yilmaz Guney
In this paper, we assess the strength of Feed-in-Systems (FIS) policies considering the
heterogeneity in the design (such as variations in tariff amount, duration of tariff, type of
tariff, digression rate of tariff) and market conditions such as (electricity price, cost of
production and interest rates) that has an impact on the strength of the policy. We develop
an indicator which captures all the components mentioned above to estimate the resulting
expected present value of revenue of the investment in wind or solar photovoltaic capacity.
Using various panel models, we gather data for 27 EU countries from 1992 to 2013 and
regress our new indicator on the annual added capacity (AC) of wind and solar
photovoltaic. Our fixed effect model specification indicates that there is no significant
relationship between the dummy variable representation of FIS policy and capacity
development of wind and solar photovoltaic. On the other hand, the stringency or the
incentive provided by the FIS policies which is captured by our new indicator (PvRev) has
significantly driven both wind and solar photovoltaic capacities in the EU. This implies
that, without accounting for policy heterogeneity and market factors, the impact of the FIS
on capacity development would not be observed, and would be overstated without
controlling for country fixed characteristics. Since we could not find robust evidence about
significant impact of the enactment of policy alone on wind and solar capacity
development, we therefore conjecture that, policy design features, and its interaction with
the prevailing market factors is more sensitive, and a driver of capacity development than
the mere existence of a policy alone.
The politics of surveillance policy: A multi-factor analysis of regulatory
dynamics after Snowden
Arne Hintz
The revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have illustrated the scale and
extent of digital surveillance carried out by different security and intelligence agencies. The
publications have led to a variety of concerns, public debate, and some diplomatic fallout
regarding the legality of the surveillance, the extent of state interference in civil life, and
the protection of civil rights in the context of security, with a host of different actors and
institutions responding in multiple ways. In the UK, a draft law (Investigatory Powers Bill)
has been proposed by the government and is currently discussed. In this paper, we will
trace the forces and dynamics that have shaped this particular policy response.
Addressing policy as a site of struggle between different social forces, we suggest 8
parameters that, often in conflicting ways, have shaped the regulatory framework of
surveillance policy since the Snowden leaks. These include, among others, national and
international norms, court rulings, civil society advocacy, private sector interventions, and
media coverage. Based on a multidimensional research project that has encompassed
interviews, focus groups, media content analysis and policy document analysis, we
investigate how state surveillance has been met with criticism by parts of the technology
industry and civil society, and that policy change was supported by legal challenges, review
commissions and normative interventions. However a combination of specific government
compositions, the strong role of security agendas and discourses, media justification and a
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muted reaction by the public have hindered a more fundamental review of surveillance
practices so far and have moved policy debate towards the expansion, rather than the
restriction, of surveillance in the aftermath of Snowden.
It’s about time! Feminist demands and debates on working-time in the EU
1974-1989.
Eleonora Stolt
This paper focuses on the debate on the reduction of working hours and part-time in the
EU during the mid 1970s and 1980s. A debate that also was connected to a more general
discussion on paid and unpaid labour as well as the role of the housewife. My interest for
this debate takes its departure from a reflection of the contemporary debates, which offers
very few possibilities to question the notion of emancipation as equivalent with economic
independence and full time employment. Attempts to question this norm or to formulate a
feminist critique of paid labour are often dismissed as morality. According to this critique
morality is associated with the antitheses of politics and designated as depoliticization.
However, in a political climate where other ways of expressing a civilisation critique seems
to be blocked, moral references might be the only available discursive resources.
The ambition of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to explore how the question of work time
reduction emerged as a gender equality policy in the EU and how this framing later on
disappeared. This is done through a genealogical reading of the policy-making process in
the supra-national EU institutions. The second aim is of more methodological concern and
discusses the problem of gender reductionism. One of the starting points of my analytical
approach has been to not apply a gender perspective in advance onto the arguments or
proposals debated, based on whether or not they problematize the distribution of power
between the sexes. I consider this important since the application of axiomatic feminist
assumptions tends to produce a forecast ‘critical’ analysis based on predetermined feminist
ideal. According to this strategy I have tried to be open to other power relationships that
operate in the field of gender equality and to see how a struggle that seems to be secondary
can suddenly be revealed as primary. In this regard, the critical analyses of the relationship
of western feminism and global neoliberalism by Wendy Brown and Nancy Fraser have
been an important source of inspiration as well as Kathi Weeks’ analysis of antiwork
politics and feminism.
Advocacy groups’ activities in China
EminaPopovic
The study is designed to examine how differences in advocacy groups’ types in China
matter in their choice of advocacy activities. The research aims to elaborate on how the
groups become insiders/outsiders and it endeavors to determine the differences in the
degree of the access to policy-makers for different types of groups.
Most of the previous studies on advocacy groups suggest that the personal connection is
the main strategy used by advocacy groups in their intentions to influence policy-making
in China. According to this theory, the groups that have personal ties to policy-makers gain
access, while the voices of less connected groups remain unheard. My research challenges
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this common wisdom and shows that the groups perceived as unprivileged do gain the
opportunity to express their views throughout the phases of the policy process. It also
indicates the citizen groups’ eagerness to engage in public political activities in order to
form public opinion as an indirect strategy to influence decision-makers. Data are collected
through the online survey that has been conducted with the citizens groups and business
associations in China, which has been complemented with the semi-structured interviews.
The research is part of the bigger project with explanatory sequential design in which
quantitative analysis guided the case selection of organizations that have privileged status
of the insider and are active in advocacy. The findings of the study enhance our knowledge
on advocacy activities in China and expand on conceptual background of interest
representation. The study also contributes to broader discussion of prospects for
development of deliberative democracy in China.