Participation as assemblage

Abstract

The article presents a yet unexplored framework for analysing the multidimensionality and dis/connections of participatory processes and their outcomes by using the concept of the ‘assemblage’ (DeLanda, 2006). The case is an eight-month collaboration between a task force initiated by Central Denmark Region, the socio-economic company Sager der Samler, and citizens. The collaboration is aimed at bringing together and working across various institutional and user perspectives to act on a societal challenge. The analysis is theoretically based on a review of existing theories of participation and typologies for analysing and evaluating participation. In particu- lar, the analysis focuses on the assemblage approach as a way of acknowledging the institutional, affective, mate- rial and power-related complexity of participatory processes. The assemblage approach helps to analytically stress that the process under investigation should be evaluated both with a more traditional focus on decision-making or power allocation, as well as taking into account the social, personal-affective and material benefits produced, and the potential for change in the relationship between public administration and citizens.

The participatory researcher: developing the concept of ‘accompanying research’

“…observation, interviews). As these are not the primary focus of this paper, however, we will not describe them in detail (for further descriptions of the data-gathering strategies see Stage and Ingerslev 2015;Krøgholt 2015;Hansen 2015).…”

“…The conceptualisation of 'participation' used in this article draws on the work of power-and democracy-oriented scholars such as Carole Pateman (1970), Sherry Arnstein (1969) and Nico Carpentier (2011). This is not because they necessarily represent the only way to conceptualise participation and its impacts (Stage & Ingerslev 2015;Reestorff et al 2014), but rather because their focus on participation as power redistribution helps to pinpoint the changes in research practices that we wish to investigate here. Although working within different disciplines -Pateman in political science, Arnstein in development studies, and Carpentier in media studies -all three scholars agree that participation as used in academic research has had the problematic tendency of being too loose, so that it has often ended up creating more confusion than clarity in a range of activities involving some element of collaboration and collective communication.…”

“…The final case investigates a specific study of citizen participation between a community-based organisation called Sager der Samler (Causes that gather, or SDS), a Central Denmark Region task force, and one of the authors (CS). CS wrote a research article about this case with one of the SDS co-founders (Karen Ingerslev, KI, see Stage & Ingerslev 2015), and that article provides a resource for the present paper to reflect on the particular strategy of co-writing as a way of creating a research outcome of accompanying research. In retrospect, what characterised the research process was that researcher and researched chose each other rather than one of them being chosen by the other; that the contract established was centred on the researcher following the organisation for a while without knowing how the process would necessarily end; that CS, KI and SDS along the way negotiated the goal and established a partnership around writing up the research; and that the research process in itself helped to develop or to add self-reflection to both the process under investigation and the research itself.…”

ParticiPat: Exploring the Impact of Participatory Governance in the Heritage Field

“…Starting with the seminal work of Arnstein (), participation expanded in the 1970s as discourse and practice pervaded most disciplines and policy fields, from environmental (Bulkeley and Mol ), to urban planning (Hillier ), to architecture (Blundell‐Jones, Petrescu, and Till ), and to sustainable development (Botchway ; Michener ). The participatory assemblage networks a number of closely related concepts such as empowerment, ownership, engagement, cooperation, collaboration, involvement, or democratization (Stage and Ingerslev ). All them are vague notions stemming from imagined or desired results of administration and governance (Hertz , 25–26).…”

“…Despite concentrating in bounded geographical areas, ParticiPat's ethnographic approach to policy and power allows for a reconceptualization of the field, understood as a transversal sociopolitical space articulated by participation as a system of governance. Following earlier methodological approaches (Hickey and Mohan ; Stage and Ingerslev ), participation is explored through a number of qualitative research strategies. Participant observation allows a fine‐grained analysis of situated meanings of heritage in different contexts, including parliaments, protected areas, celebrations, association meetings, and so on.…”