Disempowering citizen participation in decision-making
How contemporary participation is characterized by discursive mechanisms which demotivate residents to participate in decision-makingMaster Thesis, Urban Sociology 20.725 words
Darko Lagunas, 10102612 2 July 2015
Supervisor: Walter Nicholls Co-reader: Freek Janssen
Contents
Acknowledgements 4
Introduction 5
CHAPTER 1
Theoretical framework
7
1.1 Constructing ‘problems’ 7
1.2 ‘Problems’ in practice 10
1.3 Participation as a technology 13
CHAPTER 2
Case and methods
17
2.1 Case 17
2.2 Methods 20
2.2.1 Operationalization 21
2.2.2 Data sources 22
2.3 Problems and feasibility 27
CHAPTER 3
Data and analysis
29
3.1 Discursive constructions 29
3.2 Discursive techniques in participation 36
3.3 Mentalities and motives 41
Conclusion and discussion
49
Bibliography 51
Acknowledgements
Almost six months ago I started with what can best be described as search for understanding. Trying to illustrate the so-called ‘truth’ I have actually ended up further from ‘truth’ than ever before. This thesis is the report of this process. It cannot express the long days spent in the sterile libraries of the University of Amsterdam, trying to grasp an understanding of what I was doing, and the tedious person I must have been for those closest to me. It does represent a study that I will proudly call my graduation project. By showing the workings of power in the creation of the spaces we inhabit, the aim has been to unearth the politics involved in seemingly trivial representations and practices. For those few reading this work, I am grateful that you are doing so and I hope to stimulate everybody to question those elements that otherwise easily goes unnoticed.
Now, I would like to thank all my respondents, for without them this project would have been impossible. In particular, I want to thank Anne Ruijter and Henk Hospers for helping me in orientating my way through the ins and outs of the documented side of August Allebéplein. Moreover, I want to thank Mohamed Sadiki, Martijn Rutte and Ralph Janssen Daalen for helping me along the way; finding more respondents and finding my way through the neighbourhood. Additionally, I want to thank Justus Uitermark, for unknowingly having brought much inspiration through his lectures on the Political Sociology of the City at the beginning of this project. Special thanks goes, off course, to Walter Nicholls for being my thesis supervisor and giving me that extra boost when most needed, and to Freek Janssen for co-reading the end results. Last but not least, these acknowledgements would be incomplete without thanking those who have been standing next to me throughout the process, my dear mother, girlfriend, friends and family; and those who have endured a comparable process, standing side to side; my fellow students.
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Introduction
In recent decades, a development has emerged in which the state is increasingly taking the role of ‘governing at a distance’ (Bacchi, 2009). This trend is characterized by a reconfiguration of responsibilities and tasks that were first particular to the state, onto the shoulders of other bodies (Uitermark & Duyvendak 2007). This goes hand in hand with the involvement of societal actors becoming increasingly important within these governance structures (Blakeley 2010; Haus & Klausen 2011). On the contrary, this thesis will show that participation in decision-making does not empower citizens; rather, through various subtle discursive techniques, citizens are gently though relentlessly demotivated to engage in participatory repertoires. This thesis adds to understandings regarding more manifest forms of disciplining dissent and marginalizing alternatives in participation in decision-making processes (Huisman, 2014).
This is addressed by looking at the participatory decision-making process regarding urban redevelopments on August Allebéplein, a square at the centre of Overtoomse Veld in the Western Garden Cities of Amsterdam. This thesis draws on governmentality literature (Blakeley 2010; Foucault 2007; Raco 2012), and uses framing and governance theory (Bacchi 2009; Van Hulst & Yanow 2014) to examine how discourse constitutes power-infused conceptions of reality (Raco, 2012); managing the possible outcomes of participation in decision-making processes. This thesis holds the notion that the mere mobilization of citizens around local government projects conditions the nature of participation (Blakeley, 2010). Because municipalities and corporations have a predominant role in organizing participation, the process can act as a mechanism of control by imposing “specific views on matters, while subjugating other discourses” (Huisman, 2014: 164). The discussions and interactions in participatory repertoires can thereby be structured beforehand, making individuals an “effective means of social regulation and control” (Blakeley 2010: 139).
In the case of Amsterdam, urban policy is characterized by an ambitious pursuit to recompose populations where social problems have accumulated (Van Gent, 2012). The inclusion of to-be-displaced people (Huisman, 2014) in participation concerned with urban renewal then seems awkward at best. According to Uitermark & Duyvendak (2008a), these so-called social mixing policies aspire to ‘integrate’ populations of marginalized neighbourhoods by luring the middle classes into disadvantaged areas so that they will serve as role models for their worse-off neighbours (Huisman 2014; Uitermark & Duyvendak 2007; Uitermark & Duyvendak 2008a). This thesis argues the presuppositions underlying these policies are embedded in culturist discourses that relegate basically all social problems to the domain ‘outside society’ (Schinkel, 2013). That is, to those who are considered ‘uncivilized’, yet have to be integrated. Therefore, integration discourse not only
refers to immigrant integration, but also incorporates the management of all ‘incivilities’ that pose a threat to urban habitats (Uitermark, 2014).
Hence, at the global level there are discourses about what the ‘problems’ are that necessitate urban redevelopments, while at the level of participation meetings there are rhetorical tools that discursively maintain those conceptions (Blakeley, 2010). As these meetings are characterized by severe power imbalances (Huisman, 2014), this thesis is concerned with the effects of dominating discourses on the motivations of residents to participate in decision-making processes regarding urban redevelopments. For instance, if an individual is framed as ‘uncivilized’, what is then his or her potential contribution, and in how far can this individual exercise freedom and agency in participation meetings? Hence, this brings the following research question: to what extent does urban policy discourse affect motives to participate in decision-making processes regarding urban redevelopments? This will be answered by three sub-questions. The first is about what discursive constructions constitute the urban redevelopments on August Allebéplein, looking at the implied problematisations and frames used (Bacchi, 2009). The second asks which discursive techniques are at work throughout the participation process, structuring the mentalities of participants; and the third looks at the extent to which mentalities and motivations of participants are effected, participating in decision-making processes.
Applying governmentality’s conceptualization of power serves a dual purpose throughout this thesis. On the one hand, it reveals the invented and strategic character of participatory repertoires, while on the other hand, exposing the spaces in which individuals can resist and even challenge power (Blakeley, 2010). Considering increasing governance structures in which citizenship is increasingly becoming something to be earned through actively contributing to society (Raco, 2007), the suggestion that citizens are disempowered by participatory repertoires requires attention. Therefore, this thesis starts by revealing how underlying mechanisms of assumption-building play a pivotal role in manifest outcomes at the urban scale.
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CHAPTER 1 | Theoretical framework
In reading this thesis it is relevant to perceive the city in Sassen’s terms (2013), which describes it as a complex and incomplete system. On similar grounds Robert Park defines the city as follows:
“man’s most consistent and on the whole, his most successful attempt to remake the world he lives in more after his heart’s desire. But, if the city is the world which man created, it is the world in which he is henceforth condemned to live. Thus, indirectly, and without any clear sense of the nature of his task, in making the city man has remade himself” (1967: 3).
The city can therefore be seen in terms of the so-called concretization of social space (Savage, 2011). It is a social product in which space is continually problematized and reconstructed through negotiations, characterized by power relations (Aalbers, 2014). Moreover, the city entails a reciprocal process with its inhabitants as the built environment discursively formulates, expresses and even shapes collective identities (Jones, 2006). The city should not be seen as a natural and neutral object; rather it is subjective, unnatural and not neutral. For this reason, it is relevant not to become alienated from the politics governing this continual reconstruction of the city.
Furthermore, the objective of this chapter is to focus on one feature of this process, that is; the discursive mechanisms through which individuals are subjugated under the ‘reality’ of the problematisations they are governed by (Bacchi, 2009). Finally, the theoretical framework will offer an overall understanding of how policies and redevelopments become institutionalized spatial arrangements (Dikeç, 2007) on which new negotiations about space are exercised, constituting power-infused conceptions of ‘reality’ (Raco, 2012). By using governmentality’s conception of power it will become clear where – within the scope of this study – the spaces lie to resist and challenge these power-infused ‘realities’ (Blakeley, 2010).
1.1 -
Constructing ‘problems’
As stated in the introduction, this thesis examines the discursive practices, affecting residents participating in decision-making processes regarding urban redevelopments. Due to the governmentality approach, an understanding is necessary, firstly about the discursive mechanisms through which mentalities are structured, and secondly about the concrete techniques that can be used – by actors and the government in specific – to structure these mentalities in desirable ways. In this section, this thesis will first show how framing processes substantiate discourses in which ‘problems’ can be constructed. Through these discursive mechanisms, people’s mentalities become structured so that their participation in decision-making becomes increasingly uncritical. They are subject to a process of governmentalization; they become subjugated “in the reality of a social practice through mechanisms of power that adhere to a truth” (Foucault 2007: 47).
In short, frames can be seen as “implicit theories of situations” (Van Hulst & Yanow 2014: 7) that people possess in their heads, and develop for specific purposes. They guide the ways in which individuals perceive their social realities (Van Hulst & Yanow, 2014). In effect, frames guide the ways in which individuals represent social reality to “themselves and to others; a frame reflects actors’ organizing principles that structure those perceptions; and the frame’s ‘basic’ components are capable of being itemized” (Van Hulst & Yanow 2014: 3 [emphasis added]). This implies a process of framing, an “interactive, inter-subjective processes through which frames are constructed” (Van Hulst & Yanow 2014: 2). This distinction is essential here; as frames can be seen as relatively static in nature, framing provides a more dynamic approach , which unveils the potentially political character of framing practices (Van Hulst & Yanow, 2014). As frames constitute individuals’ perceptions on social reality, framing can be seen as the act of constituting a framework from which individuals tend to define what social reality is about. In Van Hulst & Yanow’s words (2014); framing lays the conceptual groundwork for possible future courses of action, and actors inter-subjectively, interactively construct the socio-political world in and on which they act” (8).
Hence, there is an active work that framing accomplishes. It highlights certain features of a situation; it ignores or selects out other features while it binds the highlighted features together into a comprehensible and coherent pattern (Van Hulst & Yanow, 2014). According to Van Hulst & Yanow (2014), framing pertains to at least three mechanisms: sense making, storytelling, and selecting, naming and categorizing. They present that in “order to convert a problematic situation into a problem, actors must do a certain kind of work: They must make sense of an uncertain situation that initially makes no sense” (6 [emphasis added]). Additionally, in order to bind together different elements or frames into coherent and graspable patterns (narratives), actors engage in storytelling. This is especially relevant in the constitution of urban redevelopment plans, as ‘planning’ in itself is “constitutive and persuasive storytelling about the future […] planners try to shape the ‘flow of future action’ [by telling] stories about ‘interesting and believable’ characters who act in specific settings” (Van Hulst 2012: 301). Furthermore, framing involves a process of selecting, naming and categorizing. Important here is that how something is categorized determines, to a large extent, what is possible to think about the categorization (Van Hulst & Yanow, 2014). As planning and policy-making, generally speaking, entail collective action, actors often have to engage in convincing other actors over what policy should look like; or, as will be explained later, actors have to agree over what represents to be the problem (Bacchi, 2009). From convincing a friend about how phenomenal a book was, to convincing other policy-relevant actors about what the ‘problem’ is in a specific situation, an essential element in framing is persuasion (Van Hulst 2012; Van Hulst & Yanow 2014). It
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is the art of providing “plot lines that tie elements together in logical, even motivational or causal ways” (Van Hulst & Yanow 2014: 10), convincing an audience of one’s perceived social reality.
In Raco’s words (2012) these framing practices involve a ‘politics of assumption building’, presenting “power-infused descriptions of reality and simultaneously [setting] out the only ‘true’ alternatives and actions open to governments, communities, and individuals” (155 [emphasis added]). As frames are resulting from this persuasive process of assumption building they can be perceived as prevailing power structures (Payne, 2001). This thesis argues it is relevant to see these structures as discursive systems that constitute discourse. That is; they construct “socially produced forms of knowledge that set limits upon what is possible to think, write or speak about a ‘given social object or practice’” (Bacchi 2009: 35). According to Bacchi (2009), discourse can be seen as truth claims, making things happen, most often through already established truth claims (Bacchi, 2009). Hence, whereas framing constitutes discourse it is also embedded within discourse, building on pre-framed social realities and silencing alternative social realities by constituting boundaries on what is possible to think. It is within this context that problematisations – and the problem representations they contain – should be understood.
As Bacchi presents (2009), policies (including urban redevelopment plans) are problematizing activities. In order for the government to get to work, it first needs to problematize its territory. Problems should therefore not be seen as exogenous – existing outside –but as endogenous – created within – the policy-making process. “Policies give shape to ‘problems’; they do not address them” (Bacchi 2009: x). They take shape within certain historical and national or international discourses and can be thought of as a cultural product. Now, it is not the suggestion that governments are manipulating the policy process, rather, it is suggested that the construction of problems is a necessary part of policy making because “all policies make proposals for change, by their very nature they contain implicit representations of ‘problems’” (Bacchi 2009: 1). Thus, as Bacchi’s main concern is that ‘we’ are not governed through policies but through problematisations, she suggests that it is these problematisations that need to be analysed in order to understand how ‘we’ are governed (2009). The place to start in doing this is at the implied ‘problem’, which can be described as a problem representation (Bacchi, 2009). To be clear, problem representations are not equal to frames. Rather, this thesis argues they are specifically drawn compositions of frames that serve to legitimize the problematisations – policy and planning – they constitute.
This distinction is important here because it relates to the distinctive perceptions of how ‘we’ are governed between this thesis and Bacchi’s views (2009). Bacchi dismisses framing theory by perceiving “framing processes as either innate cognitive functioning or as the conscious shaping of
arguments to win supporters” (2009: xii). She then turns to a focus on how ‘we’ are governed through problematisations taking a governance perspective, that is, the targeting of problems “in which governmental actors play a crucial role, but for the success of which societal actors are also increasingly relevant” (Haus & Klausen 2011: 258). However, this thesis suggests that this perspective implies a zero-sum conception of power (Blakeley, 2010) in which the focus lies too much on a unilateral form of governing. Instead, this thesis adopts a governmentality conceptualization of power (Blakeley, 2010) in which framing theory reveals how arguments can be shaped consciously in order to win arguments, and affect the inner cognitive functioning of individuals. Hence, ‘we’ are governed through these discursive mechanisms that, according to Raco (2012) “represent ways of thinking that are ‘at once both descriptive and prescriptive’” (155). This is identified here as the process of governmentalization, affecting perceptions on ‘reality’ and henceforth affecting the participation of the governmentalized in decision-making processes.
1.2 -
‘Problems’ in practice
Following Raco (2012), especially in neoliberalism the power of frames is expressed through ‘consensus-building’, political arrangements and the exclusion of alternative modes of thinking. As this thesis argues, participatory repertoires are typically designed to create consensus around these neoliberal norms. However, in this particular case it is relevant to include another discourse in the analysis: that of the relatively awkward immigration policies that characterize the Netherlands and contradict the country’s widely celebrated image of multiculturalism and tolerance (Rath, 2009). This section presents how the aforementioned frames, discourses and problematisations translate into measurements, instruments and ‘problems’ on the ground. The specific discourses relevant to the case at hand will be discussed, moving towards an understanding of how frames can be attributed as soft tools of power, affecting both the outcomes of participatory repertoires, and the motives to participate.
As will become clear, the awkward immigration policy described by Rath (2009) has particular relevance for the case at hand (De Jong 2007; Metaal et al. 2006; Tijl & Van Diggelen 2000). As Schinkel argues (2013), the social imagination1 of ‘Dutch society’ is characterized by a
culturist discourse that has many similarities to racism, but instead of focussing on racial differences, it focusses on cultural differences, that is, the cultivation of individuals or groups. The discourse “demarcates the boundaries of society by rendering objectively observable the non-integrated who are considered to reside ‘outside society’” (Schinkel 2013: 1142 [emphasis added]). Equally
1 ‘Social imagination’ refers to “the routinized and professionalized visualization of social life” (Schinkel 2013:
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important, Schinkel observes (2013), Dutch integration discourse has gone through particular phases so that all contemporary social problems have been relegated to the realm ’outside society’. Second generation migrants in the Netherlands, for instance, have never migrated, but are nonetheless referred to as non-integrated in case of causing ‘problems’. As Schinkel shows (2013), integration discourse has cleansed the realm of Dutch society from all social problems by attributing them to persons remaining ‘outside society’, the non-integrated. A typical example is that this integration discourse also includes the unemployed, who receive welfare money, and disabled, who perhaps cannot participate in regular labour. For these groups, there are so-called re-integration tracks into the labour market2. The policies are based on ‘participation legislation’, which aims at “including as
many people as possible (to participate) in society” (authors translation [see website3]). The notion
is that if one does not participate in society, one is not part of society. To sum it up, cultural factors are now seen as the cause of structural inequalities, and economic differences have become reframed as cultural differences (Schinkel, 2013). This resonates to the idea that citizenship increasingly becomes something to be earned (Raco, 2007), or learned by getting re-integrated into society.
Following Uitermark (2014), it would be these discourses that motivate the social mixing and gentrification policies in Dutch cities. Therefore, the ultimate goal of gentrification in the Netherlands is not a means to serve the middle-class, but it serves as “a means through which governmental organizations and their partners lure the middle classes into disadvantaged areas with the purpose of civilising and controlling these neighbourhoods” (Uitermark & Duyvendak’s 2007: 127)4. As Uitermark has indicated (2014), there is some level of ‘strategic coherence’ between
different policy discourses regarding urban marginality. Social problems like deprived neighbourhoods, segregation and the development of no-go areas threaten the cleansed image of Dutch society. These are not only regarded as major threats for the residents of areas of relegation, but to the entire society. “In response, local and national administrators, in conjunction with their partners, have developed a range of governmentalities to frame and curb these threats” (Uitermark 2014: 1422). Those who embody the social problems have to be ‘brought in’. They have to integrate, participate, and respect the norms and values embodied in the state (Uitermark, 2014). As goals are clear, measures to reach these goals are necessary. This is where, once again, framing, problem-setting and the process of governmentalization play a pivotal role as these contain “techniques of
2 Source: http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/re-integratie/stimuleren-van-re-integratie (20 June 2015). 3 http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/re-integratie/stimuleren-van-re-integratie
4 This definition of gentrification is different from revanchist gentrification theories that mostly see
normalization and consensus” (Blakeley 2010: 131) by creating new institutionalized (spatial) arrangements (Dikeç, 2007) on previously constructed ‘social realities’.
As stated before, frames can be understood as prevailing power structures (Payne, 2001). This thesis will conceptualize frames as soft power tools, emphasizing the fact that they often serve a specific purpose (Raco, 2012). Although frames are relatively abstract tools, in conjunction with other frames, or – even more effective – in conjunction with measurements, they can become more tangible as Noordegraaf (2008) and Aalbers (2014) show. Aalbers explains how maps made by state institutions are tools of abstract space because they actively construct knowledge (2014). By framing a neighbourhood as bad, a self-fulfilling prophecy emerges; “perceived neighbourhood decline brings public and private actors to label and map these neighbourhoods in a way that furthers neighbourhood decline (Aalbers 2014: 2). According to Noordegraaf (2008), measurements are like mapping. They “play a pivotal role in translating local rationalities and problems on the ground into codes that are mobile, stable and combinable” (Uitermark 2014: 1428). Noordegraaf (2008) refers to this practice as ‘management by measurement’. Therefore, measurements should not be seen as independent from social action; conversely they are part of social action of stakeholders that, by means of measurement often succeed in persuading their audiences of specific ‘realities’ (Noordegraaf, 2008). An example is the so-called Rotterdam ‘safety index’5, that became an
important tool of power for urban policy in Rotterdam by measuring in specific ways, legitimizing the problem representations and policy proposals of the political parties that where involved (Noordegraaf, 2008). Together, these tools of power provide tangible opportunities “to govern from a distance and on the spot” (Uitermark 2014: 1428).
This chapter argues that the tools of power discussed here can be seen as symbolic constructions, and, as Bourdieu stated, “it is the very latency of symbolic constructions that disguise the operation of power and imbues them with legitimacy” (Bourdieu cited by Jones 2006: 551). They serve to buttress the position of those doing the framing, by imposing symbolic constructions “of those in power on the rest of the population […] getting the dominated to accept as legitimate their own conditions of domination” (Ritzer 2011: 533-534). In other words, frames and the discursive systems and techniques that they entail serve as the mechanisms through which discourse is
5 The Rotterdam safety index is composed of two main types of ‘facts and figures’. 1) Direct safety features,
like theft, violence, cleanness and wholeness, and traffic incidents. 2) Indirect safety features, like the number of social security claimants, ethnic backgrounds and mobility. On the basis of these indicators, neighbourhoods become measured/mapped/framed as more, or less problematic (Noordegraaf, 2008).
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(re)produced by imposing its meaning in sometimes symbolically violent6 ways with the goal of
buttressing the positions of those in power, and getting the dominated to accept the discourse as legitimate. This is exemplified in the case of gentrification by Uitermark & Duyvendak (2007). They show that working-class residents as well as more-affluent residents by and large accepted the discourses that equated gentrification with neighbourhood improvement. Both groups “favoured housing policies that dispersed groups associated with social disorder [and saw gentrification] as the only conceivable way to improve conditions in the neighbourhood” (Uitermark & Duyvendak 2007: 138). This thesis argues that this illustrates how ‘the dominated’ (that is the people whose risk to be displaced increases as a result of gentrification) accept as legitimate certain conceptions of ‘truth’, that form the conditions of their domination. The ways in which problems are put to practice are crucial in understanding how mentalities are structured, especially in participation in decision-making processes. Why that is the case will be elaborated in the following section.
1.3 -
Participation as a technology
Before explaining how the aforementioned mechanisms can be enacted to make participation into a technology, it is relevant to provide an understanding about what participation is in the first place. Analytically speaking, it should be considered that there is a distinction between latent (conceptualized as civic engagement and social
involvement), and manifest (formal political behaviour as well as protest) forms of participation (Ekman & Amnå, 2012). Latent participation is based on the idea that citizens do a lot of things that may not be directly classified as ‘political participation’, but at the same time could have great significance on (the future or others’) political activities (Ekman & Amnå, 2012). This thesis, however, focusses on manifest forms of participation, defined here as politically motivated and voluntary activities by citizens, either in the locus of, or targeted at, governmental actors and their partners (see Van Deth, 2014). The
6Symbolic violence; “the ways in which people may be harmed by the ways they are labelled or categorized
presupposition is that if an individual is completely unmotivated, they will not act voluntarily which means that all participants in the scope of this study are politically motivated, although this can be to a minor extent.
For the practical conceptualization of what participation often looks like, this thesis turns to the ladder of participation (see figure 1) of Arnstein (1969). Following Arnstein (1969), the first two steps in the ladder of participation are actually not enabling people in participation; rather they enable power holders to ‘cure’ or ‘educate’ the participants. The third, fourth and fifth step are degrees that tend to tokenism, which allow participants to ‘hear’, express ‘voice’ and advice in the case of placation. If participation is limited to these levels, there is no necessary follow-through because power holders contain the power to decide. Hence there is “no assurance of changing the status-quo” (Arnstein 1969: 217). Higher up the ladder, participants increasingly obtain decision-making power with the eight step including full managerial power. Although this is a simplification of how power is distributed – think of interdependencies (see Uitermark, 2014) – it does illustrate that there are significant gradations of participation (Arnstein, 1969).
Now, turning to how participation can be formulated as a technology, Blakeley (2010) points out that the conceptualization of power within governmentality “illustrates how public participation can enable individuals to exercise freedom and agency while simultaneously being an effective means of social regulation and control” (139). Concerning the exercise of freedom and agency it is argued here that participation in decision-making processes, gives individual the potential to express what Foucault defines as critique; “the movement by which the subject gives himself the right to question truth on its effects of power and question power on its discourses of truth. [It is] the art of voluntary insubordination, that of reflected intractability” (Foucault 2007: 47). While this is considered to be an essential element in understanding participation, this section is primarily concerned with providing insights in how the discursive mechanisms discussed in the first section of this chapter, in conjunction with the tools of power discussed in the second section, cause participation in decision-making processes most often to be a technique – be it intentional or unwittingly – of regulating and controlling social bodies (Blakeley 2010; Huisman 2014; Uitermark & Duyvendak 2007).
As explained in the section on ‘framing problems’, proposals for urban redevelopments give shape to ‘problems’ that only make sense in specifically framed social realities (Bacchi 2009; Van Hulst 2012; Van Hulst & Yanow 2014). That is, the instigators of redevelopment plans determine that something has to happen and thereby silence the alternative that nothing has to happen. Blakeley (2010) and Huisman (2014) both show that participation, by its very necessity, is a “process of
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narrowing the scope of issues and reducing alternatives available to actors” (Huisman 2014: 164). By organizing participation in decision-making regarding urban redevelopment, municipalities and their partners already impose certain representations concerning the nature of the ‘problem’, its causes, the scope, and possible tools to address it (Huisman, 2014). As shown in the first section, this constitutes what can be described as a mechanism of silencing alternatives by the nature of what is framed and problematized. This thesis however argues that these discursive systems are continually reproduced throughout the participation process in order to manage the outcomes of participation. This coincides with much of what Huisman (2014) described as the marginalization of alternative views and ideas, and the disciplining of dissent among participants. Nonetheless, the difference is that Huisman focused on the ad-hoc and (more) manifest disciplinary techniques in which residents were literarily asked to act reasonably and exhibit common sense when they proposed alternatives (2014). Whereas this thesis looks at the discursive mechanisms that structure the mentalities of participants. As framing lays the conceptual frameworks for possible future courses of action, but also makes actors inter-subjectively, interactively construct the socio-political world in and on which they act (Van Hulst & Yanow, 2014); it is a continual process. It legitimates not only the proposed courses of action, but also legitimates ad-hoc disciplining by constituting the ‘common-sense’ to which is referred. Throughout this thesis, this is referred to as silencing.
Hence, this thesis sees the disciplinary techniques as discussed by Huisman (2014) as being substantiated by, and referring to the underlying discourse. When a resident is asked to act reasonably and exhibit common sense, the actual question is if he or she can act within the boundaries of the discourse – in other words to ‘stick to the plan’. Now it is not to rob individuals from their agency within participation processes (Blakeley, 2010). Rather, this is a testament to the coercive power of the discourse (Bacchi, 2009; also see Hacking 1999), both on the organizers as the residents within participation. Van Hulst (2012) exemplifies this idea in her study on the significant effect of (re)framing during participatory repertoires in the planning process. She focuses on the mechanism of storytelling, and found that by telling the story in logical, motivational or even causal ways, the attention of audiences and other decision-makers is most often drawn away from alternatives (Van Hulst, 2012). This is an example of persuasively reproducing the original story, or reproducing the discourse in persuasive ways – substantiating the urban redevelopment plans. According to Fainstein (2009), this is also the case, as she shows that participant preferences will be shaped in participation rather than discovered throughout the process if participants are not provided with developed conceptions of alternative forms of development (Faintein, 2009). In summary, it is through the production, and the continual reconstruction of discursive systems that
the only ‘true’ courses of action are illustrated – excluding the alternatives that do not correspond to that discourse.
Governmentalization is the process that subjugates individuals “in the reality of a social practice through mechanisms of power that adhere to a truth” (Foucault 2007: 47). Participation can be seen as such a mechanism. Participation is therefore seen here as a vehicle through which mentalities are transmitted and subjectivities of involved people are produced. Whereas frames can be seen as soft tools of power, participation can be seen as a technology of power through which discourses and frames are translated into ‘realities’, thereby, producing realities ‘on the ground’. As critique involves the voluntary insubordination of this process, it is the question to what extent people are allowed to be insubordinate to dominant discourse within participation. Because the meetings are most often characterized by severe power imbalances (Huisman, 2014), this thesis argues that participation in decision-making does not empower citizens. Rather, through the reproduction of the aforementioned discursive mechanisms, citizens are gently (and sometimes roughly), though relentlessly, demotivated to engage in participatory repertoires. Participation in decision-making processes therefore makes a relevant case to study the effects of what Foucault (2007) calls, the ‘politics of truth’.
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CHAPTER 2| Case and methods
This chapter provides an elaboration on the case study, providing the methodological approach taken and discussing the limitations and feasibility of this research. The case where the study is conducted will be introduced with the key concepts that have been of main importance in this research. In order to offer a thorough understanding of the methodology this chapter will discuss the operationalization that is used to connect the empirical data to the theory. Furthermore, this chapter presents the limitations and feasibility of the study. Thus, this chapter presents the qualitative method that has led to the answer of the research question presented in the introduction of this thesis.
2.1 -
Case
Before presenting the case study, it is important to contextualize the neighbourhood within the city of Amsterdam. The municipality of Amsterdam has undergone relatively substantial reorganizations in recent years, which are typical to new governance structures. Whereas before March 2014, every city-district had its own decision-making organ in the form of a council, nowadays these are restructured into city-district commissions responsible for a set of executive tasks (see figure 2). General decision-making power has been centralized to the ‘central city’. Additionally, all these changes have gone hand in hand with a growing attention for civic participation (see municipality website)7.
The research is done on August Allebéplein, the central-square of Overtoomse Veld in the New West district of Amsterdam. Overtoomse Veld is situated just outside of inner city Amsterdam, and is encapsulated between elevated infrastructures of a belt highway in the east, a main artery road in the south, a railway and metro-line in the west, and a sort of industrial area in the north consisting of a large hospital and a massive depot of the local public transport company. In other words, the neighbourhood is somewhat isolated from the urban tissue, but is nonetheless relatively central to Amsterdam. The area is part of the General Expansion Plan (AUP) of Amsterdam that was presented in 1935 by Cornelis van Eesteren. The plans included an expansion of the city into the Western Garden Cities and were characterized by “light, air and open space or – expressed
Figure 2 | Governance structure of the Municipality of Amsterdam8.
differently – independence, openness and lots of single family dwellings” (Tijl & Van Diggelen 2000: 81)9. Nonetheless, it was only after the Second World War that the plans were realized in the
context of the post-war reconstruction. Following Uitermark (2014), this meant that there was a sense of “ambition to achieve order by design. Any remaining deprivation or deviation [was] seen as the residue of a bygone era, soon to be swept away” (1418).
By the 2000s, however, the Western Garden Cities area had lost most of its allure of upward mobility (De Jong, 2007). They were increasingly absorbed by the inner city and lost their form as an intermediate area between city and rural. This was especially the case for neighbourhoods bordering the inner city, like Overtoomse Veld (Metaal et al., 2006). The rapidly built, affordable housing was mainly built to counter the housing shortage among young families in the 1960s (De Jong, 2007), and attracted a relatively homogeneous group of autochthones. This changed fast when, from the end of the 1980s, an increasing amount of migrants entered the neighbourhood as part of the influx of
8 Source: ibid.
9 D.J. Tijl was project manager for urban renewal at the Municipality of Amsterdam and responsible for the
urban regeneration in the Western Garden Cities. M. van Diggelen was alderman in the district Geuzenveld/Slotermeer (Tijl & Van Diggelen, 2000).
19
people that had to move as older city districts where undergoing redevelopments10 (De Jong, 2007;
Metaal et al. 2006). In Overtoomse Veld, this change involved a relatively rapid change from a homogeneous autochthone neighbourhood to a homogeneous allochthone11 neighbourhood,
consisting of mainly low-income and low-educated Moroccan family households. From roughly 1995 youngsters (mainly Moroccan) became dominant in public space, some of who became involved in criminal activities (Metaal et al., 2006). According to Metaal et al. (2006), this is where negative framing of the area started, especially in the media. The neighbourhood’s increasingly notorious reputation grew after the 1998 anti-police riots which raised political concerns, especially on ‘how to deal with Moroccan youth’12 in Amsterdam.
Especially from the 2000s onwards, a discourse started that promoted ‘huge urban restructurings’ in whole New West (Tijl & Van Diggelen, 2000), largely based on assumptions that immigrants were an increasing threat to the ‘socially imagined’ Dutch society, especially if they were thought to cluster together in residential “environments or inhabit parallel life worlds” (Uitermark 2014: 1422). This was the period, and to some extent the incentive, in which the culturist discourse, as discussed in the theoretical framework, has its ‘roots’ (Schinkel, 2013). This is the beginning stage in which the municipality of Amsterdam and housing corporations teamed up and developed plans for major interventions throughout the whole Western Garden Cities, resulting in Europe’s biggest urban renewal project at the time13. According to Tijl & Van Diggelen (2000) the regeneration was
crucial in order to ‘solve’ the growing social problems of segregation and poverty, and to address the trends adequately. These authors were two key municipal actors that played a significant role in creating the redevelopment plans, which functioned as the framework for urban redevelopments in Overtoomse Veld. Their core assumption is that if better-off residents depart from the
10 Around the 1970s many of the so-called guest-workers (gastarbeiders) where allowed to reunite their
families in the Netherlands because of returning difficulties. This resulted in many Moroccan and Turkish families, seeking for affordable housing and resulted, which was increasingly made available in the Western Garden Cities during the end of the 1980s (De Jong, ).
11 In the Netherlands, allochthone refers to individuals of who at least one parent is born outside of the
Netherlands. Autochthone refers to native-Dutch citizens (Source:
http://www.cbs.nl/nl-NL/menu/methoden/begrippen/default.htm?ConceptID=37 [2 July 2015]). This distinction implies that even when someone is born and raised in the Netherlands, he or she is still categorized as non-Dutch.
12 Source:
http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/5009/Archief/article/detail/2724745/1998/12/23/Amsterdam-is-rellen-zat-Niemand-weet-raad-met-Marokkaanse-jongeren.dhtml (4 March 2015).
13 Source:
neighbourhood, worse-off – greying, coloured, low-educated and low-income groups – stay behind, which threatens social cohesion and increases the chance of ghettoization (Tijl & Van Diggelen, 2000)14. Their argument is not only embedded within a neoliberal discourse as they literally propose
to “combat poverty and segregation” (87) (see Peck & Tickell, 2002), but moreover based on many culturist and even racist assumptions, like the idea that being coloured threatens social cohesion and increases the chance of ghettoization.
As Amsterdam legislation commits civic participation in decision-making processes15,
residents of August Allebéplein have been involved through framework of legislative participation. However, although residents are involved through participation this does not mean that they have had any influence on the plans16. There is the potential to influence plans, however, this fully
depends on what municipal actors decide to do with the input from the participatory process. Participation will nonetheless always be incorporated as a part of the constitution of plans and policy as this is obligatory17. At August Allebéplein, a group of residents called ‘Plein Allebé Ja!’ have staged
protests against the redevelopments. However, their input has been denied by municipal actors by not responding to proposed alternatives by this initiative, and the municipality has even been accused of not providing the protest group a fair bargaining position by an independent integrity commission18. Today, especially high income and high-educated groups are targeted to take
residence at August Allebéplein, and as a local newspaper states; “soon everything will be different on August Allebéplein” (Het Parool, 11-02-2014). Together, these aspects make this a particularly relevant case to study the motives of residents to participate in the decision-making process.
2.2 -
Methods
The theoretical framework already betrays the constructionist approach of this thesis. The study entails qualitative measurements taken from an interpretavist perspective, based on the idea that “[e]vents that seem to be measurable in fact acquire meaning only when it is assigned to them in
14 Main ‘problems’ that Tijl & Van Diggelen (2000) discuss relate to; housing; amenities; employment and
education; and living environment. They expressly promote ‘huge urban renewal operations, pointing out to older gentrified neighbourhoods, and the – economic and social – benefits that such areas provide (Tijl & Van Diggelen, 2000).
15 Source: http://www.regelgeving.amsterdam.nl/nieuwwest/inspraak-_en_participatieverordening
_stadsdeel_nieuw-west_2012 (21 June 2015).
16 Source: http://www.nieuwwest.amsterdam.nl/bestuur-en/burgerparticipatie/vijf-niveau/ (12 June 2015). 17 Source: http://www.regelgeving.amsterdam.nl/nieuwwest/inspraak-_en_participatieverordening
_stadsdeel_nieuw-west_2012 (12 June 2015).
21
interaction” (Abbott 2004: 43). This means that not only do measurements have to be continually contextualized, but also that the interaction of the researcher with their subjects and the gathered data also reproduce new meanings and social phenomena in it. The bias of the researcher should therefore not be underestimated; this will be discussed in the limitations and feasibility section. Whereas the theoretical framework has provided the information about how the mechanisms work, the following section explains the methods that are used to connect the above framework to empirical data ‘on the ground’. To start off, following the theoretical framework, framing is the act through which frames are constructed through discursive mechanisms building on pre-framed discourse, with the potential of constituting new discourse. In order for problematisations (and the problem representations they contain) to make sense, they are embedded within those constructed social realities. By setting the boundaries on what is possible to think about a certain issue, these constructions silence alternative discourse. So by reframing the pre-set discourses, alternatives can be silenced throughout the process of participation in decision-making. These key concepts are operationalized as follows.
2.2.1 -
Operationalization
As stated in the introduction, the goal of this thesis is to examine the extent to which urban policy discourse affects the motives to participate in decision-making processes regarding urban redevelopments. Firstly, this is done through examining the production of discourse. That is, deconstructing the discourses that propose the urban redevelopments, by analysing the documents, looking at the, frames and implied problems (problem representations) that constitute the redevelopment plans. Furthermore, talks with municipal actors will provide the necessary updates concerning what the contemporary discourse looks like.
Secondly, by examining the meeting minutes, specifically looking to the discursive roles in the meeting, this research will focus on the techniques that are used to structure the mentalities of participants. This analysis of discursive structuring will address the ways in which ‘problems’ are presented and how people become silenced through different framing practices.Throughout the interviews with municipal actors and their ‘partners’, focus will be on the ways in which they perceive their own ‘realities’, and what techniques, instruments or other tools of power they use to defend, maintain or reproduces these perceptions. Furthermore, some of the interviews with these actors served to contextualize the study, capturing a broad understanding about urban redevelopments from their perspectives, the level of participation allowed, related to Arnstein’s (1969) ladder, and additional techniques to manage the outcomes of decision-making processes that otherwise would have easily gone unnoticed.
Thirdly, the mentalities and motivations of residents to participate will be examined. This entails an examination of the interviews, looking at the reasons as to why people participated in the first place, how this has changed over time, and examining the aspects that had their influence on this. The mentalities of participants will be examined in order to explore the extent to which residents accept as legitimate their own conditions of domination. This examination will be accomplished by looking at the potential effects that discursive constructions have (looking at the redevelopment plans) and to what extent they elaborate dominant discourses themselves. During interviews, residents will be asked about their experiences participating in these meetings, the extent to which they felt limited in their expression of critique, and the extent to which they think they had influence on the process. By relating these strands to potential changes in their reasons to participate, answers to the research question are expected to be found.
2.2.2 -
Data sources
Now that the key concepts are defined and operationalized, this thesis will elaborate which different sources of data are examined, and how this is done. Three sources are used; urban redevelopment plans (documents); minutes of participation meetings; and interviews.
Document analysis
The first step of analysis in this study starts with deconstructing the redevelopment plans. It is important to consider that the documents are a snapshot of the discourse that constituted them. The process that follows from the documents is analysed through the other methods. However, as the plans shape the frameworks in which following decisions are made, this snapshot should be analysed thoroughly. By examining the frames that constitute the plans, the implicit problems, or problem representations that constitute the proposals for change, and examining how this pertains to discourse as elaborated in the theoretical framework, these documents will be analysed.
There are three documents included in this research. These are related to each other in an hierarchical way. The first document concerns the ‘Revision Towards Park City 2015’ (Municipality of Amsterdam, 2007). This is a revision of an earlier developed plan (‘Towards Park City 2015’ [Municipality of Amsterdam, 2001]) and forms the framework for all underlying redevelopments in the whole Western Garden Cities of Amsterdam New West, including Overtoomse Veld. The second document concerns the ‘Renewal plan Overtoomse Veld’ (Project group Overtoomse Veld, 2004). This redevelopment plan was made in cooperation between city-district Slotervaart and housing corporations that were involved in the neighbourhood. The housing corporations teamed up under
23
the name of Far West19, and formed a project group together with the city-district. In turn, these plans formed the frameworks for redevelopments on August Allebéplein. This brings us to the last document, the ‘Definitive development plan August Allebéplein’ (Municipality of Amsterdam, 2010). This plan provides mostly a technical elaboration of physical interventions on the square. Therefore, it is relevant to include all three of the plans in the analysis.
The documents are analysed using a ‘what’s the problem represented to be?’ (WPR) approach (Bacchi, 2009). This approach “rests on three key propositions: 1) we are governed through problematisations; 2) we need to study problematisations (through analysing the problem representations they contain), rather than ‘problems’; 3) we need to problematize (interrogate) the problematisations on offer through scrutinizing the premises and effects of the problem representations they contain” (Bacchi 2009: xxi). This thesis largely adopts these notions, but moves away from the proposition that we are governed through problematisations. Although this might be the case to some extent, the theoretical framework has shown that this thesis pertains to a governmentality approach suggesting that ‘we’ are governed through discursive mechanisms that represent ways of thinking that are both descriptive and prescriptive at the same time (Raco, 2012). Nonetheless, this method is useful and is applied through analysing the documents by continually asking six questions:
1. What’s the problem represented to be in a specific policy?
2. What presuppositions or assumptions underlie this representation of the problem? 3. How has this representation of the problem come about?
4. What is left unproblematic in this problem representation? Where are the silences? Can the problem be thought about differently?
5. What effects are produced by this representation of the problem?
6. How/where has this representation of the problem been produced, disseminated and defended? How could it be questioned, disrupted and replaced? (Bacchi, 2009)
These questions help reveal the implicit ‘problems’ and problematisations in these seemingly neutral documents. Moreover, they show what underlying assumptions and presuppositions are involved in the construction of these ‘problems’. In doing so, they help to identify the broader discourses and frames in which the documents are embedded. Through analysis, the documents are coded by
19 By 2010 Far West announced its closure. The main reason for this was the collapsed housing market due to
looking at how people are problematized, what culturist or perhaps racist assumptions underlie the problematisations, what discursive-, subjectification-, and lived effects are produced by these problematisations, and how and which people are excluded or included by the proposed redevelopments.
Minutes (secondary data analysis)
There is an abundance of documents concerned with municipal decision-making in the planning process of August Allebéplein. Among these documents are the minutes of participation meetings. These minutes are recorded by independent minutes secretaries and serve as the product that results from participation meetings. The minutes have to be incorporated by municipal actors and their ‘partners’ into the decision-making process20. As stated before, this does not mean there is any
necessary ‘follow-up’ on the basis of these minutes.
A total of six minutes will be analysed from the period between April 2004 and August 2005. The minutes often include attendance lists. These will only be analysed in terms of the average amount of people attending the meetings. Other aspects will be excluded because it is considered problematic to determine personal characteristics – like age, ethnicity or education level – solely on the basis of someone’s name. On the contrary, the minutes give relatively detailed reports about the discursive architecture of the meetings. They elaborate who speaks when, and provide brief descriptions of what is said. Therefore, they are used to analyse how discourse is reproduced throughout the meetings. As explained in the theoretical framework, it is necessary to analyse the maintenance or reproduction of the dominant discourse by looking at how the ‘story’ is presented, and how many times this is repeated. This is a silencing mechanism in itself, which can stifle potential criticism. Attention will also go to additional silencing techniques like overruling, redirecting or non-response to questions and comments, how proposed alternative ideas are treated, and how criticism in general is handled. Moreover, the ways in which the general story is framed will be analysed examining the underlying discourses and the ways problematisations are presented or even constructed throughout the meetings. By triangulating the data from the minutes with the interviews, this study expects to find how mentalities are discursively structured through the participation process, and to what extent participants accept as legitimate their own conditions of domination.
20 Source: http://www.regelgeving.amsterdam.nl/nieuwwest/inspraak-_en_participatieverordening
25
The methodological approach taken here is based on the fact that this concerns data that is collected by somebody else than the researcher himself. The minutes are treated as interpretations of the minutes secretary. Although the minutes secretaries are supposedly independent actors in the meetings, they are often municipal actors nonetheless. Therefore, a secondary data analysis is appropriate (Bryman, 2008). Importantly, this has at least two relatively large disadvantages. The first is that there is no control over the quality of the data. Analysing the minutes means to rely completely on potential biases in the data and of the data collector. Especially considering that these minutes are brief summaries of events and statements, this results in relatively low reliability (Bryman, 2008). The second limitation is that there is the potential absence of key variables. By nature, minutes are recorded in a fashion that requires quick decisions by the minutes secretary, determining what is relevant or not. This increases a bias, and could exclude important elements – like rapid arguments or fierce critiques – that could provide insights that help answering the research question. Additional to focussing on the interactions between residents and municipal actors, interaction in between residents is also considered important. This is due to the assumption that governed mentalities will govern themselves and others around them. By triangulating the minutes with the interviews, it is expected that these potential pitfalls will be overcome.
Interviews
The interviews done for this research are semi-structured, providing flexibility during conversations so that significant issues that emerge can be elaborated upon. In order to maximize reliability and validity, an interview guide is applied that is as structured as possible, and conversations are recorded and transcribed (Bryman, 2008)21. The interview guides are prepared based on the
theoretical framework, and are minimally adjusted after piloting the guides during the first interviews. The interview guides are designed to include questions that can be asked depending on the tone of the conversation. This is done for two reasons. Firstly, because previous research has shown that the relationship between researchers and residents has often been problematic in this neighbourhood (De Jong 2007; Metaal et al. 2006). Secondly, because in practice it has been relatively difficult to, what Weiss (1995) calls, match the interviewer with respondents. Particularly the ethnic background of the researcher and the suspicion for police informants in the neighbourhood has proved to be problematic for building up rapport. These issues will be discussed in the limitations and feasibility section.
The sample has mostly been generated through snowball sampling. Although this carries the potential of providing non-representative results (Bryman, 2008), sampling from different angles has minimized this risk. The objective was to interview: municipal actors involved at August Allebéplein, professionals from housing corporations or private developers, residents living at August Allebéplein, and other professionals involved in the redevelopments. Eventually, it appeared that housing corporations were no longer active on August Allebéplein. Unfortunately this made it almost impossible to find respondents willing to contribute to the research. Nonetheless, for the most part, the sample is considered to be successful and consists of a total of fifteen interviews. For a general picture of the sample, it consists of the following actors:
• One neighbourhood coordinator, Municipality of Amsterdam;
• One neighbourhood housing-support official, Wijksteunpunt Wonen (WSW) a small non-profit organization funded by the Municipality of Amsterdam and housing corporations;
• Three project managers of August Allebéplein who have been active in the period since 2007 to the present, Municipality of Amsterdam;
• One private developer/investor on August Allebéplein, Change=22; • Nine August Allebéplein residents.
Because some residents indicated a desire for anonymity, this will be respected by giving the residents fictional names. Other actors will be attributed to their function, as they did not request anonymity.
On the side of municipal actors and their ‘partners’, attention will go to the ways in which they discursively construct ‘reality’. In other words, the ways in which they apply discursive constructions and what their reactions generally are towards residents participating in decision-making. What techniques, instruments or other tools of power do they, for example, use to defend, maintain and reconstruct their social realities towards other participants. Furthermore, these interviews are used for multiple purposes: to provide the necessary updates concerning what the contemporary discourse looks like; to contextualize the study; capturing a broad understanding about urban redevelopments from their perspectives; understanding the level of participation allowed, related to Arnstein’s (1969) ladder and additional techniques to manage the outcomes of decision-making processes that otherwise would have easily gone unnoticed.
Concerning the residents, focus will go to the discourses that they use, elaborating their opinions about the urban redevelopments in order to examine the extent to which they accept or
22 Change= is a private developer who in cooperation with corporate investors. They will realize a high-density
building for ‘working, ambitious and social youngsters’ on August Allebéplein (Source: http://www.change-is.com/change-is [2 July 2015]).
27
reject different frames, discourses or problematisations. Moreover, the motivations of residents to participate will be examined, and how and why their motives to participate have changed over time. Looking at the aspects that have led to different motives, the extent to which their participation is politically motivated, rather than purely informative for example will fuel this focus. Furthermore, the mentalities of participants will be examined in order to see how far they accept as legitimate their own conditions of domination by looking at the potential effects that discursive constructions have (looking at the redevelopment plans) and to what extent they elaborate dominant discourses themselves. The interviews will provide insights in how mentalities are discursively structured through the reproduction of frames, problematisations and discourse, what techniques can be identified in terms of silenced critiques, what the general ideas are about participation in decision-making, and what the motivations are to participate, and how and why these motivations have changed over time for different actors.
By triangulating the different data sources it will become clear to what extent participation serves as a technique to legitimize and governmentalize subjects, and the extent to which residents accept as legitimate their own conditions of domination. The ‘discursive roles of the game’ will be revealed, and, by relating these to the motivations to participate, it is expected to clarify how discourse affects motives to participate in decision-making processes regarding urban redevelopments.
2.3 -
Limitations and feasibility
As discussed, there are some limitations to the research methods and data gathered for this research. In terms of the document analysis there is one problematic aspect: the ‘Revision Towards Park City 2015’ (Municipality of Amsterdam, 2007) concerns a revision of the frameworks set for redevelopments in Overtoomse Veld. The revision was published in 2007 whereas the development plans for Overtoomse Veld were published in 2004. This can lead to some blank spots in terms of contemporary detailed information about redevelopments in Overtoomse Veld. However, as the case study is concerned with August Allebéplein, published in 2010, this is a relatively small issue. Moreover, interviews with municipal actors will tell more about the contemporary plans.
Another limitation concerns the minutes. They are very limited both in terms of elaborations of events and statements during meetings. Additionally they are potentially biased as they are written by a municipal actor, and, they are by nature written in a fashion where swift decisions are made about what is considered relevant to included or exclude. This potentially excludes some important aspects.
Perhaps most problematic has been the sampling of respondents. First of all, as other researchers (De Jong 2007; Metaal et al. 2006) have discussed, especially allochthonous residents in the neighbourhood are distrustful towards researchers and journalists. This pertains to the fear that they might be police informants (De Jong, 2007). On the other hand, native Dutch have a tendency of distrust against allochthonous people. Considering the researcher is allochtonous and has a somewhat Moroccan appearance, this created some extra pressures that had to be overcome during the interviews. As Weiss (1995) shows, this is related to the so-called ‘matching interviewer to respondents’. When these do not match, or match too much there is an increased risk of respondents giving socially desirable answers (Bryman, 2008). These problems were mostly overcome through presenting an official student-card, proving the ‘neutral’ nature of the researcher. Nonetheless, sampling for allochthonous participants continued to be problematic. This will however be discussed in the data and analysis section, for it provides some insights in participation in decision-making processes. Lastly, as the discourse changes over time, plans change with it. This means that interviews with residents who have participated in earlier years, possibly refer to differing discourses. This provides some empirical issues that are countered by talking to different project managers from different periods of the redevelopments; providing a general understanding about the discourse and how it has changed over time.
29
CHAPTER
3 | Data and analysis
The objective of this chapter is to present the principal findings of the study and their relation to the theoretical framework. The research uses three different data sources, but as these are in no way independent from each other, they will be presented in a triangulated fashion. The chapter is divided into three sub-sections, each pertaining to another part of the research. Throughout the sections, findings will be analysed and connected to the theoretical framework, hence providing answers about how urban policy discourse affects motivations of participants
3.1 -
Discursive constructions
This section will reveal the discursive constructions that constitute the frameworks in which the succeeding sections should be understood. This thesis suggests that the techniques used to manage outcomes of participation hatch from these discursive constructions, structuring the mentalities of participants according to them, and thereby affecting the possibility to exercise freedom and agency by participants. The discursive constructions discussed here not only refer to the documents but also include interviews with municipal actors and a private developer. Using a WPR-approach to analyse the documents, these are triangulated with the interview data to constitute the findings.
What has become clear, triangulating the data, is that although there have been some changes in the plans over the years, the general underlying discourse has remained relatively similar. As the current project manager (PM) of August Allebéplein stated:
“The renewal plan dates from 2004 so there is some information which is not really realistic anymore. But the general objectives based on how the situation was in the neighbourhood at that time, these still stand [and] if you look at the ambition for the square and the ambition of the square for the neighbourhood, than the plans are obviously still very relevant” (current PM).
The general discourse, or the ambitions as this respondent calls it, is found by looking at the redevelopment plans, using a WPR-approach. This approach helps to identify what the implicit problem representations are through starting the examination by looking for what is proposed as a change, and then work backwards in order to see how that constitutes the ‘problem’ (Bacchi, 2009). What is proposed as a change for August Allebéplein and Overtoomse Veld in general is clearly stated in the introduction of the redevelopment plans for Overtoomse Veld: “the goal [is to] improve the physical characteristics of the neighbourhood as well as improve the socio-economic position of
