Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
'front stage' performances of public deliberation mask 'back stage' power structures
and concerns within local communities (Kothari, 2001). Back staging can also take
the form of strategic behaviour where the more resourceful actors go 'round the
back', as Hillier (2000) illustrates, or practice 'scale jumping' to effect change at
higher orders of governance (Swyngedouw, 2005).
Critical studies are also focusing on (dis)connections between participants and
decision-making institutions and on how framings and pre-commitments of the
latter constrain deliberative spaces and construct notions of citizenship and expertise
in powerful ways. Irwin's (2001) analysis of the UK Public Consultation on Devel-
opments in the Biosciences (PCDB) reveals how the process was instrumentally
managed to allow the government's framing of the problem to defi ne the decision
situation and ensure that the organisation and outputs of the PCDB justifi ed existing
institutional arrangements. This resonates with Mosse's (2001) account of participa-
tory farming system development in India which shows that, far from infl uencing
development organisations, 'local knowledge' is a construct of the planning context
itself through direct manipulation by external project agents (facilitators) and wider
institutional contexts that require formal bureaucratic goals to be met.
It is increasingly realised that participation is becoming a policy 'bolt on' all too
easily ignored by policymakers (Hajer and Kesselring, 1999). In this climate an
uncritical focus on procedures is likely to raise expectations unrealistically, under-
mine institutional trust, and almost certainly fail in the long term (Owens, 2000).
There is a pressing need for critical studies to focus more closely on institutional
dimensions of participation, including the careful tracking of changes in their under-
lying epistemic and cultural pre-commitments in the longer term (Irwin, 2006).
Despite increasing recognition that participation is 'constructed by a cadre
of . . . professionals' (Cooke and Kothari, 2001, p. 15) these actors remain under-
studied (Chilvers, 2005; 2008). Research in the UK environmental risk domain
shows that public engagement experts are adopting increasingly powerful roles at
the science-policy interface. However, intense fragmentation is limiting learning and
refl exivity among them (Chilvers, 2007). Participation is becoming a lucrative indus-
try with a wide variety of approaches competing in a market place of 'tools' - such
as 'citizens' jury
®
', 'PRA', 'Stakeholder Dialogue', etc. - in which the resulting
environmental knowledges are often commodifi ed (see also Ellis and Waterton,
2005). This is a far cry from the idealistic origins of participation. Claims of 'democ-
ratisation' can begin to sound rather hollow given the irony that those committed
to empowerment are contributing to the professionalisation of participation, poten-
tially creating a new layer of technocracy (Chilvers, 2007). This raises critical ques-
tions about the politics of participatory process expertise and the need for more
organic, spontaneous, citizen-led processes. In her historical review of international
development Uma Kothari (2005) goes further in arguing that through profession-
alisation and 'technicalisation' participatory development has been captured by, and
sustains, the neoliberal development agenda, thus depoliticising potentially critical
discourses. She asks: what space is there for critical voices in the current climate?
While critical studies must resist participation where it becomes tyrannical, they
should also be constructive. Kesby (2005, p. 2044) has criticised the valuable post-
structural critiques in Cooke and Kothari's (2001)
Participation: The New Tyranny?
for being overly negative and upholding a binary logic of: 'power
=
bad / resistance
=
good'. As Foucault would have argued, participation as a fi eld of power can be good
as well as bad and there is a need to recognise its transformative potential (see also
