Placing the Stakes: The Enactment of Territorial Stakeholders in Planning Processes

Abstract

Abstract:This paper is an investigation into processes of becoming-stakeholder. It specifically focuses on strategic spatial planning where the stakeholder concept has become one of the linchpins of much contemporary theory and practice. Through drawing upon the sociology of attachments and scholarship on subjectification it is argued that the enactment of stakeholders in strategic planning processes can be gainfully understood as the production of stakeholder subjectivities by way of practices of ontological choreography which can generate territorial attachments and re-articulate existing attachments into a specifically territorial format. From this perspective, stakeholderness is never an ontologically pre-given property that is to be uncovered by diligent analysis. Rather, we might come to see that stakeholder subjectification is a process through which actors learn to be affected, and where these affections further come to be articulated as territorial attachments engendering or at least prompting a 'caring for place'. Still, as relational effects, subjectivities are always potentially precarious achievements and it is important not to take for granted that the subjectivities enacted in a specific situation or setting will be easily transposable to other contexts.

‘Power’ is that which remains to be explained: Dispelling the ominous dark matter of critical planning studies

“…Metzger, 2014), recognizing the importance of always analysing processes of subject formation, social group formation and environmental transformation in the wider sense as irrevocably entangled and co-constitutive processes (Guattari, 2000). Such a new interest in communication in planning would, based on the above, to some extent focus on how power is generated through the formation and enactment of subjectivity, the question that occupied Foucault towards the later years of his life and which has been preliminarily discussed by, for example, Metzger (2013) in relation to the planning process. But a deeper investigation of these aspects of power will, alas, demand another paper at another time -a challenge we hope someone else will pick up the mantle to tackle.…”

Omställning – Tillväxt – Effektivisering : Energifrågor vid renovering av flerbostadshus

“…Farías (2010:14) ger exempel på detta genom att visa att en stad kan få flera betydelser på en och samma gång genom olika 20 Även om ANT-verktyg använts sparsamt på studier av urbana företeelser och processer finns ändå några exempel (se exempelvis Aibar & Bijker 1997;Czarniawska 2002;Hommels 2005;Bylund 2006;Coutard & Guy 2007;Forsemalm 2007;Rutland & Aylett 2008;Metzger 2013). 21 Med begreppet multipla vill jag visa hur flera energisammansättningar verkar inom samma område, kan innehålla samma element och gå in i varandra.…”

“…Detta gäller hur samarbete genomförs och vilka ting som människor mobiliserar för detta, och som i sin tur kan mobilisera andra människor. Det gäller även vem som tillskrivs betydelsen av att vara föremål för samarbete (Metzger 2013), vilka som organiserar samarbetet (Munthe-Kaas 2015) och vilka frågor som anses motivera allmänheten, det vill säga vad som är i fokus för deltagande eftersom formuleringen av dessa frågor i sig är föremål för demokratiska processer. Vem, och vad, som formulerar frågor för deltagande och rum för att diskutera detta, säger inte bara vad människor lägger anspråk på.…”

Spatial Planning and/as Caring for More-Than-Human Place

“…Drawing upon the sociology of attachments I explore this at some length elsewhere (Metzger, 2013), where I further argue that caring for place constitutes the enactment of a quite specific type of attachment-territorial attachment. Territorial attachments build upon not just an analytical but also normative association of things and issues that are framed as geographically proximate and related: "if you care about issue x you should also care about issues y and z."…”

“…Silvia Gherardi et al (2007, page 323) further argue that the maintenance and transmission of "passion" (attachment/engagement/care) is "a societal practice within work practices". I have previously argued that spatial planning can function exactly as such a 'passion-enacting' work practice that generates territorial attachments through generating a learning to be (co)affected (Metzger, 2013;cf Latour, 2004). Bringing in the more-thanhuman perspective, it also resonates with Jonathan Murdoch's claim that spatial planning could have the potential to, and also indeed should be reconceptualized as a form of "green governmentality", a crucial technology for organizing a more ecological human sensibility and society by way of paying attention to spatial patterns and entanglements across the human-nonhuman divide (2006, page 155).…”