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Hickey and Mohan, 2004). Kesby (2005) calls for greater attention to the spatial
dimensions of participation, arguing that closer exploration of participatory praxis
can inform post-structural theorisation. Indeed, a focus on space and scale is an area
where geographers can make a unique contribution to the environmental partici-
pation fi eld. Other understudied aspects of participatory practice in need of critical
scrutiny include: backstage negotiations, evaluative practices, offi cial policy dis-
courses, the role of social science/scientists, media representations, the publicity of
participatory processes/outcomes and how they are viewed in society and so on. As
participation becomes a thing, an object of study in itself, and deliberately more
hybrid, there is a need to move beyond simplistic dichotomies such as technocratic/
democratic, disempowerment/empowerment, consensual/agonistic and political/
anti-political. Participation can exhibit a mixing of both, or foreground one or the
other, in different time-spaces. Such complexity demands more nuanced, careful,
situated studies of the openings and closings that occur through relations between
actors, knowledge and power within and outside of participatory spaces.
Conclusions
In this chapter, I have mapped out three ongoing streams of research in environ-
mental geography on the practice, evaluation and critical study of participation and
deliberation. Their continued development requires a vibrant 'theory-praxis dialec-
tic' (Webler, 1998) that forges innovative participatory practices in the light of cri-
tiques and develops empirically informed theories of participation grounded in the
plural, complex, hybrid, uncertain and unequal realities of environmental research
and policy. Such a constructive and cooperative project must overcome disconnects
in certain quarters between naïvely optimistic practice and overly negative critiques.
Fragmentation poses further impediments, not only in the wider epistemic commu-
nity of researchers, practitioners, policymakers and activists shaping environmental
participation, but also within geography. Such compartmentalisation can be seen,
for example, between participatory work in environmental geography and in other
sub-disciplinary areas such as GIS, social geography and development geography,
which share common antecedents, principles, practices and challenges but do not
engage with each other as much as they could or should.
The quest for science-policy legitimacy brought new waves of participation in
the late 1960s and 1970s that did little to displace the dominance of rationalist
natural science and economic approaches to environmental decision-making through
the 1980s and early 1990s. Rather than posing an alternative to science, the recent
upturn in environmental participation has levelled out and moved on, conceptually
at least, towards hybrid forms of appraisal and policymaking where the question
becomes: what is the desired nature, extent and interaction of science and participa-
tion, where and when? Only time will tell whether the current upturn is sustainable.
Deliberative and participatory approaches have become a core method in environ-
mental geography, and also, for some at least, a geographical way of being and
acting. What happens in the wider world of environmental policy will ultimately
depend on how institutions perform participation. To date there is little to suggest
that participation will avoid being co-opted for managerialist and justifi cationlist
ends. In this climate it is crucial that environmental geographers negotiate and take
seriously their own participatory ethics, but, at the same time, do not downplay
their own agency to effect change.
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