A talking matter: Discursive enactments of norms and tensions in a public participation process

Abstract

This thesis is about public participation as a social practice and its discursive construction. Generally, previous research has depicted public participation as a tensional practice that is both praised and criticized. Participatory events such as public meetings are tensional in their own right as they have ideals of dialogic and open-ended communication, while they often seek to accomplish certain institutional outcomes. Further, as these events are novel and often occur as single occasions, the norms for participating in them remain unclear. Departing from these puzzling points, the thesis aims to gain a deeper understanding of public participation as a practice by analysing how norms and tensions de facto are enacted in everyday interactions. The material consists of a two-year-long ethnographic study in which I have followed civil servants initiating a participatory process aimed at reducing violence that affects children in a suburb of a metropolitan area of Sweden. In three central communicative events of this process (planning meetings, interviews with citizen-parents and public meetings), I have analysed how the discursive actions of the civil servants bring the practice into being. Taken together, the studies suggest a multifaceted role of the civil servants as they work to balance contrasting ideals both within the municipal organization and within the communicative events. The studies also highlight that a protruding tension in these interactions is related to a task- and goal-oriented focus in the civil servants’ actions. The discursive patterns depicted can serve as reflection for practitioners as well as for future studies. However, the thesis ends with a reflection about discourse practices of longing. Without disregarding the tensions outlined, a perspective of longing also encompasses the flourishing praise of participatory processes, which are present in this study as well as in the empirical and theoretical literature.