Learning Civil Societies: Shifting Contexts for Democratic Planning and Governance 9781442684508

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LEARNING CIVIL SOCIETIES: SHIFTING CONTEXTS FOR DEMOCRATIC PLANNING AND GOVERNANCE

Green College Thematic Lecture Series The Green College Thematic Lecture Series provides leading-edge theory and research in new fields of interdisciplinary scholarship. Based on a lecture program and conferences held at Green College, University of British Columbia, each book brings together scholars from several disciplines to achieve a new synthesis in knowledge around an important theme. The series provides a unique opportunity for collaboration between outstanding Canadian scholars and their counterparts internationally, as they grapple with the most important issues facing the world today.

previously published titles Governing Modern Societies, edited by Richard V. Ericson and Nico Stehr (2000) Risk and Morality, edited by Richard Ericson and Aaron Doyle (2003) Re-alignments of Belonging: The Shifting Foundations of Modern Nation States, edited by Sima Godfrey and Frank Unger (2004) Love, Hate, and Fear in Canada’s Cold War, edited by Richard Cavell (2004) Multiple Lenses, Multiple Images: Perspectives on the Child Across Time, Space, and Disciplines, edited by Hillel Goelman, Sheila K. Marshall, and Sally Ross (2004) The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility, edited by Kevin D. Haggerty and Richard Ericson (2006)

Learning Civil Societies Shifting Contexts for Democratic Planning and Governance

Edited by Penny Gurstein and Leonora Angeles

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2007 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 978-0-8020-9119-2

Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Learning civil societies : shifting contexts for democratic planning and governance / edited by Penny Gurstein and Leonora Angeles. (Green College thematic lecture series) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8020-9119-2 1. Political participation. 2. Community development. 3. Politics, Practical. 4. Civil society. 5. Democracy. I. Gurstein, Penelope Cheryl II. Angeles, Leonora C. III. Series. JC337.L43 2007

323’.042

C2006-905992-6

This book has been published with the help of grants from Green College, University of British Columbia, and the School of Community and Regional Planning, University of British Columbia. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Contents

Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Learning Civil Societies for Democratic Planning and Governance 3 leonora angeles and penny gurstein Part 1. Planning, Citizenship, and Civic Engagement in a Postmodern World 23 1 Postcolonialism and Planning: Where Has It Been? Where Is It Going? 31 anthony d. king 2 Localities and Cultural Citizenship: Narratives of Racialized Girls Living In, Through, and Against Whiteness 59 jo-anne jee 3 Creating Digital Public Space: Implications for Deliberative Engagement 89 penny gurstein 4 Rationality and Surprise: The Drama of Mediation in Rebuilding Civil Society 118 john forester

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Part 2. Civil Society Learning for Democratic Governance 141 5 Social Movements, Civil Society, and Learning in a World at Risk 143 budd l. hall 6 Learning and Teaching for Transformation: Insights from a Collaborative Learning Initiative 172 peter taylor, jethro pettit, and lucy stackpool-moore 7 The Myth of Community? Implications for Civil Society Organizations and Democratic Governance 196 irene guijt 8 Renegotiating Decentralization and State–Civil Society Relations: A Reinterpretation of Naga City’s Experiment in Participatory Governance 226 leonora angeles Contributors 263

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Bert Monterona, whose painting Reconciliation appears on the cover of this book. This painting won an award at the 2006 Inter-faith Calendar Competition in Canada, and is a fitting visual representation of the aim of this book in its depiction of people in dialogue for peace and collaborative endeavours. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this volume, and Green College and the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia for their support in its publication. Leonora Angeles thanks Mayor Jesse Robredo, and long-time Naga residents, Soliman and Doods Santos, for introducing her to Naga’s city staff and government officials. Penny Gurstein would like to thank the graduate students in PLAN 548L – Engaging Civil Societies in Democratic Planning and Governance, who grappled with the issues raised by the contributors to this volume. We would like to thank our families, Murray, Nathan, and Seneca Forster, and Howard Rotberg and Natasha Gurstein, for their love, patience, and support while we worked on this book.

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LEARNING CIVIL SOCIETIES: SHIFTING CONTEXTS FOR DEMOCRATIC PLANNING AND GOVERNANCE

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Introduction: Learning Civil Societies for Democratic Planning and Governance leonora angeles and penny gurstein

Planning, Governance, and Civil Societies The domains of planning and governance politics have until recently been thought of as separate spheres, each signified and represented by linked yet distinct set of actors – that is, professional career practitioners and elected politicians – and by different yet intersecting values and inclinations, especially with regards to public opinion and participation. Community planning in the 1950s in particular had often associated with the social work field, where the scope of planners’ work was restricted, their methods rudimentary, and where they ‘typically engaged in rather parochial and low-keyed kind of operations’ (Rothman 1999, 15). Whereas community planning was seen as narrow, the politics of governance, associated with public administration as an applied field, was thought of as more complex in nature, holistic in scope, comprehensive and systems-oriented in approach. While planning, as an intellectual discipline, is seen as having no endogenous theoretical bases and as pollinated by an ‘eclectic’ range of theories (Allmendinger 2002, 78) borrowed from more established fields in the social sciences, governance and public administration are firmly rooted in political science, the roots of which date back to pre-Socratic thought in classical Greece. Through time, these two spheres have become increasingly connected, not by chance or fortunate circumstance, but by necessity and pragmatic realization of their common interests and normative goals, and the connected spheres of institutions, organizations, and networks in which they act. The modern planning field, long chastised for its strong technical-rationalistic impulses, especially in crafting master plans

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guided by the systematic use of empirical research data and analysis, has now shifted towards a balance between technical precision and broad scope, while simultaneously being tuned to process concerns, public participation, and political sensitivities. The highly rationalistic and technical approaches to planning have long been rejected, for example by Rittel and Webber (1973), on the grounds of being unrealistic and rigid in the face of ‘wicked problems’ that require more flexible, incremental, ad hoc solutions and greater sensitivity to political conflicts. Not coincidentally, perhaps deliberately, Rittel and Webber published their piece about planning in a political science journal. Planning practitioners, now more politically savvy than ever, have appropriated – nay, adopted – the language, concepts, and practice of changeseeking political animals, who no longer have a monopoly over the terms ‘radical,’ ‘social transformation,’ ‘empowerment,’ ‘social mobilization,’ and other qualifiers that have been associated with, and appropriated as, ‘planning theories.’ Like politicians and governors, planners have also adapted and learned to perform increasingly varied roles as advocates, policy analysts, facilitators, negotiators, and problem-solvers, and in the process, have become more comfortable in dealing with power, and in acknowledging and exercising their own power. Planning and governance matters intersect at those points where public interests are at stake. Here lies the increased importance of civil societies to this interface of planning and governance. Civil societies matter to governance and planning where the articulation, communication, and mobilization of those public interests are key in bringing about deliberate and controlled changes so as to keep societies and communities on a stable, peaceful, and orderly course. The once sacrosanct monolithic role of the state in terms of both governance and planning has been increasingly challenged by combining public interventions and market-driven approaches that link three sectors of ‘state/local government, market/economy/business and civil society/ communities/households’ in ‘positive, mutually reinforcing’ partnerships (Carley 2001, 3). Yet, the manner in which these three sectors relate with each other, or within their own spheres, is not always positive and mutually reinforcing, especially when it comes to defining, interpreting, and operationalizing what public interests might be. National states and local governments may be incapable and undemocratic; markets and businesses can be greedy and unsympathetic; civil societies, communities, and households may be dysfunctional and decadent. The role

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of exogenous social factors and endogenous organizational cultures within their spheres of action and influence may also cause polarization and distrust between and among these groups. Hence, there is a clear need to understand not only the ‘institutional bases for the more active role of civil society in relation to the state and market’ (Carley, Jenkins, and Smith 2001, 16), but also the extra-institutional roles and requirements of culture, identities, and personal values informed by history, difference, and diversity. The fields of planning and governance therefore share some enduring challenges and persistently stubborn issues that often do not go away in the face of complex, stratified, and hierarchical societies and organizations that aim towards more democratic, egalitarian, robust, and just futures for our communities. Learning Civil Societies, Learning from Civil Societies Civil society is a re-emerging critical force in the construction of a new citizenship, mediating between the public and the private spheres in a pluralist democracy. The concept has been long been debated, defined in contradictory ways, associated with various political ideologies (e.g., communitarian, Marxist, nationalist, liberal, religious, feminist), and linked with various other concepts, notably democracy, community, markets, globalization, and voluntary action (Deakin 2001). The highly complex debates on the definitions and historical roots of the concept of civil society have been discussed well in other works (e.g., Deakin 2001; Keane 1998; Van Rooy 1998). In most writings, it is simply understood as groups or populations formed outside of the state and the marketplace to serve collective purposes (Van Rooy 1998, 30). For this volume, we define civil societies in terms of their contributions to democratic planning and governance – that is, the creation of dense networks of organizations and institutions that mediate between states and citizens, while challenging and transforming hegemonic state policies and market practices. The concept of civil society has multiple meanings adapted by different kinds of people, such as academics, policy-makers, development workers, and grassroots activists. To these various groups, civil society may be an ‘analytical construct’ or something ‘useful to think with’ to support analysis and explain social and political realities, or a ‘policy tool,’ something ‘useful to act with’ to help inspire concrete actions (Lewis 2002, 570). Thus, the concept of civil society is not understood in the same way, whether between cultures or within any one culture.

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Hann and Dunn (1996), for example, show how Anglo-Saxon and French perspectives on civil society differ. Several landmark works on the history, genealogy, and theories of civil society from a comparative perspective have already been written (e.g., Hall 1995; Hann and Dunn 1996; Kaviraj and Khilhani 2001; Keane 1998, 2003). Despite the many different roots of the concept, civil society as an analytical construct developed out of the European Enlightenment experience in the late eighteenth century. The commerceminded landed aristocracy, along with the emerging middle classes, needed more favourable conditions for accumulation of private capital and guarantees for liberal expression. The state, though wanting to preserve order and maintain stability, was unable to impose religious conformity and was pressed to provide more concessions to the politically astute bourgeoisie. The state became not strong enough to oppress its citizens, but did remain strong enough to maintain legal order and an atmosphere of religious and social tolerance conducive to the birth of a new civil society (Brown 2000, 8). Thus, Enlightenment thinkers John Locke and Adam Ferguson viewed civil society as a desirable alternative to either the state of nature or atomistic individualism under unbridled capitalism. The desired relationship between the state and civil society was an early element of the debate. German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel argued that the tendency of the self-organized civil society to become selfinterested must be placed in check and order by the state so that it could contribute to the common good. Writing on the nineteenth-century United States, Alexis de Tocqueville marvelled at American voluntarism, community spirit, and independent associationalism that helped keep the state accountable, effective, and restrained. Contemporary normative views of civil society echo de Tocqueville by linking high levels of associationalism with positive virtues of trust and cooperation, or social capital, a position popularized in the works of Robert Putnam (1993, 1995) and development researchers associated with the World Bank (e.g., Narayan et al. 2000a; 2000b). Given its historically specific roots based on the European experience, the relevance and applicability of the concept of civil society to non-Western contexts in Asia, Africa, and Latin America have been questioned by many writers (e.g., Blaney and Pasha 1993; Comoroff and Comoroff 1999; Gibbon 2001; Hann and Dunn 1996; Lewis 2002). Similarly, the concept of social capital and its relevance and diverse understandings in Third World contexts have been questioned (e.g.,

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Fine 2001a; 2001b; Molyneux 2002), particularly in light of the characteristics of social capital that inheres within civil society organizations. This line of inquiry became significant as the concept of civil society has been linked to the ‘good governance’ agenda of international development institutions to promote market reforms and democratic political institutions in developing countries. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were initially (e.g., in the late 1980s) looked upon as alternative or parallel service providers to the state, a sort of ‘magic bullet’ that was part of the structural adjustment agenda of ‘rolling back the state.’ Only later under ‘good governance’ in the mid-1990s (when the role of the state was ‘rediscovered’) were the partnership and democractic accountability roles of civil society organizations emphasized. This good governance agenda saw civil society as a vital third force in a ‘virtuous circle’ that also included the state and the economy to promote equity, stability, and balanced growth. International development agencies, notably the World Bank, U.N. Development Program (UNDP), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), had earlier discounted the role of civil society, especially of NGOs, as being of marginal significance to economic development. This reinforced national governments’ biases regarding civil society organizations, especially their bias against social movements that challenge their legitimacy, policies, and practices. As these same international development agencies came to recognize the adverse impacts, especially on the poor, of structural adjustment programs that they themselves had sponsored, they also acknowledged the role of NGOs and other civil society organizations in alleviating the harsh consequences of development patterns at the grassroots level. Development aid was poured to NGOs and other civil society groups, which came to be seen as important partners of the state in building more competitive market economies and creating more democratic and transparent political institutions that deliver better services, promote public participation, and enact more just laws. Yet, even prior to the global policy diffusion of good governance discourse, another stream of thinking about civil society, influenced by the works of Antonio Gramsci, was already taking root in the developing world and elsewhere. Far from being seen simply as a policy tool or an analytical construct, civil society, seen as separate from the state and the market, is in this view celebrated as an arena for the contestation of the ideological hegemony of these two institutions, which maintain the existing order. This Gramscian idea influenced political resistance to

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authoritarian regimes in Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe from the 1970s to the 1980s (see Hann and Dunn 1996; Kaviraj and Khilnani 2001; Keane 1998). The Japanese Marxist views of civil society in the writings of Yoshihiko Uchida also draw on Gramsci. Uchida argued that the patriarchal family and culture of individual deference to authority largely shaped a weak Japanese civil society and encouraged the emergence of a specific form of Japanese capitalism that tolerated little social resistance (Keane 1998, 13). Gramscian views of civil society also influenced academic research on social movements, which underscore the role of civil society organizations and ideologies that challenge and transform identities, structures, policies, and relations (Escobar and Alvarez 1992; Grewal and Kaplan 1994). Far from promoting a homogeneous view of civil society, we use the plural form civil societies to stress the multiplicity of forms and the perspectives and approaches that inform the study and activity of civil societies. Perhaps the most common and straightforward approach to understanding civil societies is through the legal provisions made for civic action, especially those relating to the freedoms of association, movement, and speech. Clarifying the criteria for defining the nature and role of civil society beyond its civic, voluntary, and human rights aspects is important for crafting planning law, social policies, and governance-related regulations. In contemporary usage, the term ‘civil society’ itself has been equated with other loose yet highly contested terms such as non-governmental organizations, voluntary associations, benevolent societies, non-profit sector, not-for-profit sector, and the ‘third sector.’ Approaches to civil society depend not so much on what a particular approach includes, but on what it excludes and why. Thus, depending on how the terms civil society, NGOs, or third sector are used, they may or may not encompass bodies such as labour unions, cooperatives, philanthropic foundations, trade associations, and professional societies, as well as legally unrecognized and illegal bodies such as cartels and crime rings. We view civil society in terms of its positive contributions to social learning towards greater democratization of planning and governance, and thus exclude undemocratic agents such as cartels and criminal networks. In this volume, we take a combined neo-Tocquevillian-Gramscian perspective on the prospects for civil societies to create deeply rooted networks of organizations and institutions that mediate between the

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citizen and the state and, at the same time, contest and transform hegemonic state policies and market practices. These networks form the connective tissue of a democratic culture where there are active states and equally active and engaged civil societies. Civil society organizations can serve several essential functions in democratizing planning and governance. These functions include: 1 providing avenues for articulating public interests and actively addressing the varied and complex needs of society; 2 motivating individuals to act as citizens in all aspects of society rather than acquiescing to the state’s interventions or depending on the state’s welfarism; 3 promoting pluralism, as well as recognizing and respecting difference and diversity in society, such as protecting and strengthening cultural, ethnic, spiritual, religious, linguistic and other identities; 4 creating an alternative to centralized state agencies for providing services with greater independence, autonomy, and flexibility; 5 establishing mechanisms by which governments and the market can be held accountable by the public; and 6 promoting spaces for dissent and the articulation and promotion of alternatives to hegemonic practices of the status quo. Carrying out these functions may of course vary depending on how civil society groups view the character of the state, its legitimacy, its relationship to its citizenry, and the soundness of the direction and impact of its policies. The double entendre in our use of the phrase ‘learning civil societies’ is intentional. We seek to learn more about civil societies in general and, in particular, how they learn from their experiences and what we may learn from their own social learning. Social learning is a purposeful activity that refers to the process of linking knowledge (learning) to action (doing), where the knowledge of reality and of practice mutually influence each other. We are interested both in the internal process of social learning within civil society organizations, particularly social movements, and in the wider, multilayered and multidirectional process of social learning that is enabled by the existence of civil society formations at the local community, state, national, or other levels. We argue that civil societies are powerful incubators of social knowledge and social paradigm transformations, and that the public learning and

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ability to generate new paradigms from the various social movements in our world is an important function that can be furthered through academic analysis. We also seek to learn how civil societies learn. We want to know more about how civil society organizations learn about themselves and how larger societies learn. Civil societies contribute immensely to the process of social learning. More democratic forms of planning and governance are by-products of social learning, as knowledge or theory do not only reflect a particular actor’s socialization, class position, educational background, and work experience, but are also based on prior learning and evolving experience. As an intellectual tradition, social learning has many disciplinary origins, antecedents, and applications, ranging from developmental psychology to organizational management, planning, development studies, and educational studies. Influenced by the philosophical instrumentalism or pragmatism of John Dewey, who popularized the term ‘learning-by-doing,’ planning theory as social learning presupposes the possibility of historical social progress through empirical science as a unique method of self-corrective knowing and learning from past failures and successes. The history of social learning is seen as a progressive succession of plans-as-experiments, which guide and organize human action and institutions. When applied to planning and governance issues confronting civil societies, social learning may be understood as a conscious learning-by-doing practice by organizations, communities, or social movements, which are simultaneously actors and learners that gather knowledge from their own social practice. Social learning processes may also involve change agents composed of professionals, planners, or para-professionals (e.g., trainers, facilitators, community organizers, party cadres) who guide or assist actors, communities, organizations, and movements in the process of changing reality. These change agents may be actors who bring specialized expertise or formal knowledge to enrich the learning and social practice of their client group. Practice and learning are therefore seen as cumulative, iterative, and continuous processes, and the learning itself is manifest as a change in practical activity based on informal and shared or collective learning that is interwoven directly into social practice. Together, these change agents and their communities, organizations, and movements engage in an iterative process of mutual learning, or co-learning, and action. Dewey’s simple yet practical core message – ‘only ideas that work matter; the scientific method points the way to progress; one learns by

Introduction 11

changing reality’ (Friedmann 1987, 193) – has attracted many loyal disciples within and outside North America who are interested in how societies and peoples learn and change their ways. Revolutionaries, practitioners, and intellectuals as diverse as Mao Tse Tung, Lewis Mumford, Edgar S. Dunn, Jr, Kurt Lewin, Rensis Likert, and Donald Schon have been influenced by Dewey’s philosophy. Yet, it was the influence of Dewey’s social learning tradition within organizational development theory, particularly Frederick Taylor’s scientific management theory, influenced by the humanistic psychology of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, that gave way to a clear social learning approach in the study of group behaviour and organizational change. Kurt Lewin (1948), often credited for the first action research experiments, developed in the 1940s an analytical method in the study of social interactions and group dynamics, where re-education or successful group behavioural change rests on group members seeing and experiencing themselves as subjects that collectively act on their environment. Lewin and his colleagues developed training workshops in laboratory settings to enable change agents and participants to develop their self-awareness, interpersonal skills, and competence in adapting to change in organizational environments. The theory of organizational social learning was further refined by Chris Argyris and Donald Schon (1978), who explored the notion of ‘double-loop learning’ that entails recognizing mismatch between an organization and its environment and allowing a major reorganization to enable the organization to adjust to its changing environment. They demonstrated how positive organizational characteristics, such as inquiry-orientation and cooperative behaviour, diminish the occurrence of ‘games of deception’ and other dysfunctional norms and lead instead to a more trusting work and organizational environment. Like Lewin and colleagues, Argyris and Schon proposed laboratory training and other small-group interaction techniques, teaching, for example, the skills of ‘learning to learn.’ While the above organizational development thinkers did not link social learning and civil society, it is easy to see how social learning within organizations might be relevant to the analysis of civil societies and social movements. Social Learning, Civil Societies, and Participatory Planning Nowhere is the influence of social learning within social movements and community organizations more pronounced than in the fields of

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participatory development, participatory planning, and participatory governance studies. Social learning theory and its emphasis on studying collective behaviour have been applied to development planning and international development studies. Interest in social learning has been renewed in light of international development studies’ interests in civil society, partnerships, social capital, capacity-building, and participation. The increased concern for bottom-up people’s participation in community planning and governance processes was brought to community development planning studies in the 1970s by way of adult education. Influenced by the critical pedagogy in Paulo Freire’s landmark work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), which begins from ‘conscientization’ or raising people’s awareness about their local conditions, researchers working in Southern contexts promoted the idea of participatory action research within the fields of adult education and development studies. Development education, or popular education for development goals, based on social learning by local community insiders and outside development workers, was seen as an important component of development processes through political organizing and raising social awareness. Participatory development, planning, and governance are bottom-up, people-centred approaches aimed at developing the full potential of people at the grassroots level, especially poor and marginal social groups, through their full participation in development efforts and governance processes that directly affect their lives. The important role of participatory action research in the process of identifying, designing, implementing, and evaluating a project or program is inextricably intertwined with participatory development, participatory planning, and participatory governance processes. In collaborative or participatory research processes linking theory with practice, community participants and members of civil society organizations are recognized for their capabilities and skills in producing unique and diverse knowledge of local conditions and project results. Recent works in organization studies and community development planning, for example, view the social capital and action competence of organizations and communities to be mutually enhanced by the social learning that accrues from the processes of community participation. Social learning is one of the key components and proven benefits of participatory development and governance, as it makes the social, political and cultural environment more amenable to local inputs and commitments. Reflexive social learning within the context of participatory monitoring and evaluation, inte-

Introduction 13

grated impact assessments, or participatory budgeting (PB), can constitute an important basis for participatory governance. Such integrated assessments at various levels is seen as a process of social learning involving various stakeholders, researchers, scientists, policy-makers, state officials, and the society at large. Social learning implies the journey of ideas and learning-action-reflection loops in different directions – from North to South, from South to North, and back. How do ideas travel and, when they do, what analytical and ideological baggage do they carry with them? As civil society and other related concepts have travelled from Western Europe to Latin America, Asia, and then to Eastern Europe, social learning about participatory development and democratization of planning and governance has travelled from South to North and back. Southern experiments in participatory development in the 1970s brought some key lessons that would be re-echoed in the 1980s by proponents of participatory development from the North, such as Robert Chambers, David Korten, and Norman Uphoff. Later, the World Bank would peddle participation and participatory approaches to the South by using these as part of the ‘good governance’ agenda as condition in extending development assistance. Robert Chambers, who is often credited for popularizing participatory rural appraisal (PRA) worldwide, and the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex (where Chambers is based) claim that many of the earlier PRA tools have been developed by innovators in research institutions and development NGOs in Asia and Africa. PRA has also evolved further into participatory learning and action (PLA). Like PRA, self-esteem, associative strength, resourcefulness, action planning, responsibility (SARAR), is a recognized participatory methodology for working with local stakeholders in using their creative capabilities in problem-solving, planning, and evaluating initiatives. It was developed in the 1970s by Lyra Srinivasan in Asia and later applied by the World Bank, U.N. agencies (particularly the UNDP and UNICEF), and many NGOs in their development activities. Another wellknown method, which combines PRA and Freirian ideas, reflect an approach to adult learning which combines literacy with empowerment – championed by ActionAid and now being used by hundreds of organizations in about sixty countries. South-to-North social learning is also clear in the emergence and global diffusion of the practice of participatory budgeting (PB). Popularly seen as an example of ‘empowered participatory governance’

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(Fung and Wright 2003), PB has been initiated as ‘part of a deliberative struggle for a new, citizen-centred, social and political society based on the emergence of an increasingly inter-connected and globalised world’ (Beall 2005). Participatory budgeting, or the direct participation of community groups and individual citizens in the process of setting local government budgets, is successfully practised in 250 cities and municipalities around the world (Beall 2005), including 130 Brazilian cities that adopted various versions of it between 1997 and 2000 (Cabannes 2004). Perhaps the best-known PB example is in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where significant neighbourhood and social movement activity has taken place since the Second World War, including proposals in the 1970s for participatory reforms to local governance (Abers 1996, 1997, 2002; Avritzer 2002; Baiocchi 2003a; Santos 1998). As a form of participatory governance, participatory budgeting experiences have been demonstrated to generate positive benefits in the provision of public goods and services, and in improving the quality of governance and public participation. PB provides a vehicle for citizen education, brings improvements in vital infrastructure and services to poor communities, and fosters open-ended civic discourse among the urban poor (Avritzer, 2002; Baiocchi 2003a, 2003b). Engagement in various forms of participatory governance mechanisms also provides ‘high civic educational potential’ as avenues for ‘lifelong civic learning,’ and ‘social action learning’ to nurture democratic spaces and processes (Schugurensky 2002, 2003; Schugurensky and Myers 2003). The motivation for participatory planning and governance practices in the South has initially been to minimize corruption and bring much-needed services to poor communities. In contrast, the motivation behind the introduction of more democratic planning processes in North American and European municipalities, where basic social services are guaranteed, is the revitalization of civic engagement and public interest in local governance. Citizen participation in areas such as resource and environmental management has also benefited from more participatory planning processes. For example, in some European cities, ecological budgeting has been introduced to imitate financial budgeting processes in order to transfer to our natural resources the ideas, tools, and methods used to manage and plan financial resources. It has enabled municipal staff in several European local governments to understand better the use of their natural resources and their total environmental spending in the budget year, to set achievable targets for environmental quality, and to plan for the future (see, e.g., www.ecobudget.com).

Introduction 15

In some countries in the industrialized North, as well as in a few cities in the South, participatory budgeting and other forms of participatory governance have been institutionalized through electronic communication. New forms of media, particularly cable television and information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as the Internet and cellular phones have enabled diverse and unorganized groups of people to come together in real and virtual spaces for common causes and activities. Wired networks of civil societies are able to share and disseminate information, make decisions, and mobilize people using the key pads on their phones or computers. For example, it has been said that while the 1986 ‘People Power’ revolution in the Philippines that brought Corazon Aquino to power was fought over television networks and broadcast worldwide on CNN, the 2001 ‘People Power’ uprising that saw the downfall of Joseph Estrada was made possible by the urban-based mobilization facilitated by text-messaging on cellular phones. The power of new information and communication technologies in involving wide sectors of the population in governance, or egovernance, has the potential for human empowerment and enhancing people’s standard of living (Guice and Eischen 2002; Hamelink 2002). Yet, the spread of ICTs has also been uneven, and the outcomes unevenly received, which has created new tensions in terms of access, inequalities of power, and cultural appropriateness. Concerns have moved from promoting universal access to ICTs to exploring how people can fully participate in the new information and communication society by providing the necessary preconditions and fundamental changes in political, social, and economic processes (Harcourt 2002). In addition to these concerns, we are interested in the question of how ICTs facilitate the acquisition and (re)negotiation of identities and agendas on the part of individual citizens, professional planners, and their communities as they embark on the collective task of democratizing planning and governance practices. Democratizing Planning and Governance in the Globalized World: What Role for Civil Societies? Planning communities, and various forms of governance within and beyond the local community, are affected by globalization and globalized discourses and processes, which in turn are shaped by local-level initiatives. The question of what role civil societies might have in democratizing planning and governance functions is meaningful to exam-

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ine in light of recent world events that threaten not only democracies but also our collective well-being and the fibres of community life. Academic writers have debated the merits, demerits, and directions of globalization, and its impacts on individual rights and freedoms, the sovereignty of nation states, and the sustainability and self-determination of local communities. Others have derided globalization, calling it ‘globaloney,’ a ‘woolly term used to lump together many different and superficially converging trends’ (Knight et al., 2002, 20). Those who have tended to paint a rosier picture of globalization’s benefits in bringing about wealth and well-being located the ‘microfoundations’ of ‘macroeconomic growth’ in localized communities’ stock of ‘social capital.’ Academic critics of globalization said that globalization is simply another name for imperial Westernization that reduces the power of nations and local communities to determine their own destinies. Mainstream media, mouthing the popular sentiments of business corporations, advised caution in the pursuit of new global markets as they appealed to governments to further liberalize and deregulate markets. Opinion writers who professed support for globalization on ‘moral’ grounds lambasted critics of globalization for claiming that there are more losers than winners in the globalization game, a claim that the moralists said was not only simply untrue, but also immoral for excluding and ignoring Third World aspirations (see, e.g., Wolf 2000). From Canada to Cuba, from India to Indonesia, from Panama to the Philippines, the call of national governments for tighter national security measures to match the U.S. declaration of ‘global war on terror’ – that now seems to be a necessary accompaniment to its earlier call for ‘freer markets’ – has far-reaching repercussions for local communities negotiating their own space for peace, prosperity, and sustainable futures. Reflexivity, deliberative practice, and respect for the integrity of local cultures are among the ethical principles and values that educators want to impress on the new generation of citizens and community and international planners. These ethical principles and values become all the more important in a world troubled by ‘lean and mean’ social policies, tightening national borders, and hypocritical governments whose excesses are often left unchecked by public apathy and an illinformed, if not misinformed citizenry. The democratization of planning and governance as part of the everyday world of citizens worldwide is perhaps one of the most daunting challenges of our civilization. We believe that more democratic forms of governance and planning processes result in stronger cohesive communities, more meaningful forms

Introduction 17

of citizen participation, and more sustainable and livable environments. This challenge of addressing the democratic deficit in contemporary societies is often addressed by paying attention to the activities of civil societies and their relationships to states, markets, and local communities. The challenge of democratic governance and planning processes requires the presence of competent, active, and self-reflective civil societies that are engaged in social learning and promoting the power of ideas in meaningful and sustainable social change. Hence, the participatory, collaborative, and community-driven approaches necessary to create civil societies need to combine insights and perspectives from a range of disciplinary backgrounds: communicative action planning, education, sociology, environmental design, economics, ecology, policy analysis, feminist studies, political science, health promotion, cultural studies, and the humanities. This collection of essays began as papers presented at a University of British Columbia Green College Lecture Series, which sought to explore the theoretical underpinnings of civil society formation and to understand how localized communities can embrace its qualities. The questions grounding our formulation of the theme of this lecture series reflect on the challenges in creating place-based (and virtual cyberspace) communities where civil societies can function effectively in engaging various actors, including states, neighbourhood associations, and social movements. Some of these questions include the following: What role do community-based initiatives play in local and global transformations and what is the meaning of community in this context? What are the new and emerging challenges in the democratization of planning and governance and effective community-building under current conditions of globalization? How may planners and communities address these challenges for specific goals such as sustainable poverty reduction, food and livelihood security, gender equity and justice, environmental sustainability, health promotion, and natural resource management? How does participation in civil societies and in more democratic governance and planning processes lead to (re)constructed (alternative) identities, initiatives, and interests that encompass collective action and transformative goals? Hence, we posed our contributors a number of related questions: How can planning practices strengthen the effective governance of modernizing societies and communities, both locally and internationally, in this age of globalization? What are the new challenges in the governance and planning of communities, local partnerships, and development practices, given the increased glo-

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bal integration of economies, dominance of transnational institutions, and the connectivity of information and communication technologies? How are the notions of community and community-building being transformed in light of these challenges, such as the rise of transnational advocacy networks? Are the current processes of globalization conducive or antithetical to community development, democratic planning, and the expansion of North-South dialogues and cooperation? How can governments and planners support the shifts in decision-making to poor members of communities and the enhancement of direct grassroots democracy processes? What is the right mix of methods of consultation, consensus, collaboration, decentralization, and participation to support such shifts? We hope that this anthology will make an important contribution to scholarship through the multiple lenses that our contributors bring to the complex issues surrounding the challenges of democratization of planning and governance within and outside civil societies for effective community-building, a critical topic in an era where diverse and divergent forces often counteract civil society formation and initiatives. The contributors to this book, and the issues they individually and collective raise, come from a wide variety of disciplines and professional backgrounds, reflecting our conviction that there needs to be a multifaceted approach to community-building that draws from the humanities, as well as from the natural, social, and applied sciences. Their common perspectives are grounded in theory formed through the analysis of practice and social learning. Some essays address conditions in rich countries of the North, others address the experiences of Southern countries, while seeing the global and transnational linkages between communities in various places and rejecting the essentialist and dualistic connotations of these concepts. This again reflects our position that the understanding of North-South, global/transnational linkages are essential to localized community-building in an era of globalization. Hence, we begin this anthology with a number of chapters on planning, citizenship, and civic engagement in a postmodern world, which discuss postmodernity, diversity, and citizenship as key challenges in the development of new conceptualizations of civil societies. The following essays reflect the shifting contexts and perspectives that need to be considered in understanding engagement in civil societies. This volume is a search for approaches to the creation of civil societies that are participatory, collaborative, community-driven, self-

Introduction 19

reflective, and democratic. By exploring the theoretical underpinnings of civil society formation, we seek to understand how localized communities can embrace its qualities. The stories and the insights uncovered here are offered as insights for that journey.

REFERENCES Abers, Rebecca. 1996. ‘From Ideas to Practice: The PT and Participatory Governance in Brazil.’ Latin American Perspectives 23(4): 35–53. – 1997. ‘Learning Democratic Practice: Distributing Government Resources through Popular Participation in Porto Alegre, Brasil.’ In M. Douglas and J. Friedmann, eds., Cities for Citizens: Planning in the Rise of Civil Society in a Global Age. Chichester, UK: Wiley, 39–65. – 2000. Inventing Local Democracy: Grassroots Politics in Brazil. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Allmendiger, P. 2002. ‘Towards a Post-Positive Typology of Planning Theory.’ Planning Theory 1(1): 77–99. Almas, Reidar, and Geoffrey Lawrence, eds. 2003. Globalization, Localization and Sustainable Livelihoods. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Argyris, C., and D. Schon. 1978. Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Avritzer, Leonardo. 2002. Democracy and the Public Space in Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Baiocchi, Gianpaolo. 2003a. ‘Emergent Public Spheres: Talking Politics in Participatory Governance.’ American Sociological Review 68(1): 52–74. – ed. 2003b. Radicals in Power: The Worker’s Party (PT) and Experiments in Urban Democracy in Brazil. New York and London: Zed Press. Beall, Jo. 2005. Funding Local Governance: Small Grants for Democracy and Development. London: ITDG Publishing. Blaney, D.L., and M.K. Pasha. 1993. ‘Civil Society and Democracy in the Third World: Ambiguities and Historical Possibilities.’ Studies in Comparative International Development 28(1): 3–24. Brown, C. 2000. ‘Cosmopolitanism, World Citizenship and Global Civil Society.’ Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 3(1): 7–26. Box, Louk. 1993. Culture and Communication: The Forgotten Dimension in Development Cooperation. Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute, Training and Communication Development and Management Department. Cabannes, Yves. 2004. ‘Participatory Budgeting: A Significant Contribution to Participatory Democracy.’ Environment and Urbanization 16(1): 27–46.

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Carley, Michael. 2001. ‘Top-Down and Bottom-Up: The Challenge of Cities in the New Century.’ In Michael Carley, Paul Jenkins, and Harry Smith, eds., Urban Development and Civil Society: The Role of Communities in Sustainable Cities. London and Sterling: Earthscan Publications, 3–15. Carley, Michael, Paul Jenkins, and Harry Smith, eds. 2001. Urban Development and Civil Society: The Role of Communities in Sustainable Cities. London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan Publications. Comoroff, J.L., and J. Comoroff, eds. 1999. Civil Society and the Critical Imagination in Africa: Critical Perspectives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Deakin, Nicholas. 2001. In Search of Civil Society. New York: Palgrave. Escobar, Arturo, and Sonia Alvarez, eds. 1992. The Making of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategy and Democracy. Boulder, CO: Westview. Fals-Borda, Orlando, and M. Anisur Rahman, eds. 1991. Action and Knowledge: Breaking the Monopoly with Participatory Action Research. New York: Apex. Fine, B. 2001a. Social Capital versus Social Theory: Political Economy and Social Science at the Turn of the Millennium. London: Routledge. – 2001b. ‘Neither the Washington nor the Post-Washington Consensus: An Introduction.’ In B. Fine, C. Lapavitsas, and J. Pincus, eds., Development Policy in the Twentieth Century: Beyond the Post-Washington Consensus. London and New York: Routledge, 1–27. Friedmann, John. 1987. Planning in the Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Fung, Archon, and Erik Olin Wright. 2003. Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance. London and New York: Verso. Gibbon, Peter. 2001. ‘Civil Society, Locality and Globalization in Rural Tanzania: A Forty-Year Perspective.’ Development and Change, 32(5): 819–44. Grewal, Inderpal, and Caren Kaplan. 1994. Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Guice, J., and K. Eischen. 2002. ‘Information Technology for Development: From Charity to Sustainability.’ Development 45(4): 29–34. Guijt, Irene, and Meera Kaul Shah. 1998. The Myth of Community: Gender Issues in Participatory Development. London: Intermediate Technology. Hall, J.A., ed. 1995. Civil Society: Theory, History, Comparison. Cambridge: Polity. Hamel, Pierre, Henri Lustiger-Thaler, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, and Sasha Roseneil, eds. 2001. Globalization and Social Movements. Houndmills, UK, and New York: Palgrave. Hamelink, C.J. 2002. ‘Social Development, Information and Knowledge: Whatever Happened to Communication?’ Development 45(4): 5–9.

Introduction 21 Hann, C. and E. Dunn, eds. 1996. Civil Society: Challenging Western Models. London: Routledge. Harcourt, Wendy. 2002. ‘Editorial: In Search of a Democratic Information Age.’ Development 45(4): 3–4. Kaviraj, S., and S. Khilnani, eds. 2001. Civil Society: History and Possibilities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Keane, John. 1998. Civil Society: Old Images, New Visions. Cambridge: Polity. – 2003. Global Civil Society? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Knight, Barry, Hope Chigudu, and Rajesh Tandon. 2002. Reviving Democracy: Citizens at the Heart of Governance. London: Earthscan. Koonings, Kees. 2004. ‘Strengthening Citizenship in Brazil’s Democracy: Local Participatory Governance in Porto Alegre.’ Bulletin of Latin American Research 23(1): 79–99 Lewis, David. 2002. ‘Civil Society in African Contexts: Reflections on the Usefulness of a Concept.’ Development and Change 33(4): 569–86. Lewin, Kurt. 1948. Resolving Social Conflicts: Selected Papers on Group Dynamics. Edited by Gertrud Weiss Lewin. New York: Harper. Molyneux, Maxine. 2002. ‘Gender and the Silences of Social Capital: Lessons from Latin America.’ Development and Change 33(2): 167–88. Narayan, Deepa, with Raj Patel, Kai Schafft, Anne Rademacher, and Sarah Koch-Schulte. 2000a. Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us? New York: Oxford University Press for the World Bank. Narayan, Deepa, Robert Chambers, Meera Kaul Shah, and Patti Petesch. 2000b. Voices of the Poor: Crying Out for Change. New York: Oxford University Press for the World Bank. Putnam, Robert. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. – 1995. ‘Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital.’ Journal of Democracy 6: 65–78. Rittel, Horst, and Melvin M. Webber. 1973. ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.’ Political Sciences 4(2): 155–69. Rothman, Jack. 1999. ‘Intent and Content.’ In Jack Rothman, ed., Reflections on Community Organization: Enduring Themes and Critical Issues. Itasca, IL: Peacock, 3–26. Santos, Boaventura de Souza. 1998. ‘Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre: Toward a Redistributive Democracy.’ Politics and Society 26(4): 461–510. Schugurensky, Daniel. 2002. Transformative Learning and Transformative Politics: The Pedagogical Dimension of Participatory Democracy and Social Action. In E. O’Sullivan, A. Morrell, and M.A. O’Connor, eds., Expanding the Boundaries of Transformative Learning: Essays on Theory and Praxis.New York: Palgrave, 59–76.

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– 2003. ‘The Tango of Citizenship Learning and Participatory Democracy.’ In K. Mundel and D. Schugurensky, eds., Lifelong Citizenship Learning, Participatory Democracy and Social Change. Toronto: Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE), Transformative Learning Centre, 321–35. Schugurensky, Daniel, and John Myers. 2003. ‘A Framework to Explore Lifelong Learning: The Case of the Civic Education of Civic Teachers.’ International Journal of Lifelong Education 22(4): 325–52. Van Rooy, Allison. 1998. Civil Society and the Aid Industry. London: Earthscan. Wolf, Martin. 2000. ‘Why This Hatred of the Market?’ In Franck J. Lechner and John Boli, eds., The Globalization Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 9–11.

PART ONE Planning, Citizenship, and Civic Engagement in a Postmodern World

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numerous authors have documented the end of the modern era and the rise of the postmodern world. Havel (1994) describes the postmodern world as fluid and unpredictable, ‘where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.’ In denying the possibility of objective knowledge, postmodernism asserts that different cultures see the world in very different ways. It is from these multiple positionalities that our understanding of citizenship and civil society engagement are formed. A postmodern perspective offers alternatives to the globalizing forces of consumption by focusing on local actions, and in turn, a postmodernist politics offers a way to theorize about the influence of global trends on local situations. To this growing body of literature, we would like to contribute an examination not only of how local communities are responding to these forces, but also how planners within social movements and civil societies may help organize and act on their collective responses to global processes. Hence, we begin this section with two chapters that highlight the postcolonial discourses, and persistent institutional and social segregation, that govern postcolonial cities, and are embodied in their citizens. While Anthony King’s observations come from the transformations he sees in Third World cities, Jo-Anne Lee is focusing on the narratives of racialized girls and women struggling to find identities in a postcolonial Canadian city on the periphery, Victoria, British Columbia. Both argue that decentring knowledge creation and learning is critical to the formation of identity and citizenship. King’s chapter gives us a profound re-examination of the tragedies associated with 11 September 2001 – perhaps ‘one of the most significant events affecting the form, future, and nature of major cities and how we live in and use them’ – and what they might teach us about the future education of architects, urban planners, and urban cultural students. Building on his previous works that explore postcolonial perspectives in the study of global cities and global cultures (King 1990; 1997), he explains why postcolonial criticism as an analytical/historical perspective has, perhaps, the most productive potential for exposing racial/social segregation and inequalities in cities. He queries the dominant view of globalization that is often ahistorical and lacks an understanding of the role of colonialism and imperialism in shaping contemporary infrastructures and the conditions and processes of globalization. He brings our attention to a glaring example of recurring gaps in interdisciplinary research and teaching by illustrating the relatively underexplored dimensions of the ‘material, spatial, and built environment’ within postcolonial studies in literature and the humani-

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ties in general, even as these topics are already well developed in urban planning and architectural studies. Exploring the current direction of the cross-fertilization of postcolonialism and planning, King reviews the major contributions of the imaginative new directions offered by interdisciplinary research on ‘colonial cities’ in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, often written by scholars who themselves were born and have lived or currently live in the former colonial states. Some of these new directions point to the importance of bringing in a dimension to research that exposes the emerging critiques on the problematic concept of ‘colonial city’ and the all too-predictable and equally problematic formula for examining ‘postcolonial cities’ and other varieties of neo-colonial conditions. He then explores contemporary research that raises a number of policy-related issues around identity and heritage implemented in postcolonial cities in Africa, Australia, Latin America, and South and Southeast Asia – from the preservation of historic colonial sites and monuments to densification, housing, and heritage restoration policies that are all inextricably linked to the question of (multiple) identities. Another trend explored by King is the often neglected postcolonial question of language, especially English, and its political, cultural, and social implications to the study of the global condition, in particular the ‘global city’ and the ‘slum’ within the world economy space in which they are embedded. King examines the potential future of research, arguing for the ‘need for another agenda to investigate the contemporary influences of post- and neo-colonialism, post- and neo-imperialism worldwide on cities, planning and cultures’ – such as the study of new forms, features, and flows of movements, mega-structures, capital, conflict, and connections. Last, he makes a plea for learning the importance of indigenous perspectives on the city, and the equal importance of unlearning forms of knowledge that do not respect local ways. Jo-Anne Lee’s chapter analyses her findings from field research on social cohesion, identity, and citizenship among racialized girls and women in Victoria, British Columbia. Her previous works (Lee 1993, 1995; Lee and Harrison 1999) draw from feminist, poststructuralist, and postmodernist social theories in thinking about issues of race, community, diversity, and identity. Identity and community are socially constructed concepts, and as such, ‘community should not be seen as a fixed social form, but as a contested terrain of social relationships that is constantly in the process of emergence’ (Lee 1995, 104). As ethnic minority groups in Canada are often lumped together and viewed as

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homogeneous, all non-white women or women of colour are signified as ‘immigrant’ or ‘other’ – a process of racialization as a concept that ‘draws attention to the way that people are classified as different, using different phenotypical, cultural and behavioural markers as signifiers, and then treated as subordinate’ (Lee and Harrison 1999, 103). Since most immigrants face similar problems, the varied and specific aspects of domination are often obscured and sometimes exacerbated by community development, a field that also has colonial roots and Western assumptions and racist and class biases. Community development is often presented as a benign process, and issues of power in the use of the process are rarely addressed. Reflecting on her experiences in immigrant women organizing, Lee suggests that the inadequacies of conventional or orthodox community development, which emphasize a group of people’s shared geography, needs, or interests, may be addressed by seriously considering differences of race, class, gender, education, sexuality, and language, all of which contribute to identity. Like these previous works, Lee’s chapter uses participatory research to examine how racialized girls and young women who grow up in more ethnically and racially homogeneous places like Victoria develop their sense of belonging to the nation and citizenship under these conditions. It has been argued that participatory research and civil society are highly congruent ideas as both are normative, value-laden, action-based, and desirous of social change through interaction in the public arena (Knight et al. 2002, 31–2). Lee goes to great length to describe the particular cultural context of Victoria, suggesting that the city has constructed its civic identity based on its colonial past and not on its more ethnically diverse present and future. The implications of this situation on the lives of young girls and women of colour are unfortunately pervasive, shaping the girls’ and women’s feelings of isolation from others and their lack of oppositional solidarity. Lee weaves her significant narrative-based research data involving racialized girls and young women using the discourse on cultural citizenship as a frame. Cultural citizenship for Lee is a social process rather than as an abstract legal concept of status. This postmodern view of identity is an ongoing process of formation of multiple selves, diverging from the traditional conceptualizations of citizenship. In her conclusion, she questions whether or not society can look to planners, government officials, and service providers as advocates of citizenship for ethnic minorities. Reactions to Jo-Anne’s paper that came from students of planning reflect this very issue: ‘Many of us as planners will work, or have already worked, in diverse communities. How can we

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ensure that we are not contributing to the alienation, pain, and frustration expressed by the young women interviewed? Did they offer any suggestions in the interviews? How do we transform civic places (recreation centres, ice rinks, etc.) into places where the racialized girls feel comfortable, accepted, and safe?’1 Lee’s hope lies precisely in educators and students of planning, social work, public administration, and other public service professions who can learn the nuances of this conceptualization of citizenship to take up the challenge of practising institutionalized neutrality critically. The last two chapters are reflections on practice in the diverse and complex urban and social environments that King and Lee describe. Both are discussing process issues. Gurstein probes the dimensions of cyberspace for its potential to strengthen multinucleated globalized civil societies. Forester is analysing the importance of listening and mutual learning as we increasingly become more interconnected. Gurstein’s recognition of the limits to technology for participatory processes is addressed by Forester’s reverence for the infinite possibilities of respectful dialogue. The chapter by Penny Gurstein explores the increasingly important and unsettling uses of new information and communication technologies in governance and public engagement. While the global connectivity offered by these tools has the potential to promote a more engaged citizenry, caution is expressed about the ability of governments and individuals to extend surveillance and control. The digital divide, made up of those with access to ICTs and those without, is a critical factor in understanding the extent to which a ‘digital public space’ that promotes deliberative engagement is possible. Taking case studies of planning and governance practices where ICTs have been used to encourage participation, she argues for a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between ICTs and democracy that incorporates an understanding of power relations in the digital realm. Just as ideologies are embedded and inscribed in our social spaces, and that these spaces are used as a means to control, dominate, and regulate social practices, our digital public space is also governed by a similar set of practices. Gurstein argues, nevertheless, that new forms of social interactions are created by digital space that can potentially facilitate the social learning needed for effective engagement in civil society. To this end, she analyses the impact of ICT-enabled projects to add to our understanding of civil society formation in a postmodern world where diverse stakeholders’ positions need to be recognized and reconciled. Describing and evaluating a variety of e-government and e-democracy

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initiatives, and positioning them in terms of models of participation, she discovers, that ICT tools can contribute at various stages from information sharing to facilitating networking in participatory processes. Nevertheless, ICT tools have not been effective in enabling citizens’ input into final decision-making. She concludes that without an understanding that tools and applications need to be developed to meet diverse expectations and allow genuine public dialogue, their potential will fall short of expectations. John Forester explores the cynical nature of civil society by questioning common and often debilitating assumptions about ‘Others’ that blind us to new possibilities or potential solutions to problems. Wanting to get at how the practitioner can get beyond cynicism to find hope in conflict, especially through diversity and difference, Forester sets us a stage of diversity, where the actors in conflict come from disparate world-views, people are different and they explore this difference and find value in it. As conflicts occur between people with ‘deep value differences,’ planners-as-mediators must be skilful in understanding if they produce surprising results, yet it is not always ‘understanding’ that will lead practitioners to these positive results. They must understand and be mindful of many aspects integral to the lives, hopes, and dreams of people – fear, evasion, incompetence, missing social capital, missing trust, scepticism – all aspects of life that parties bring to any particular table or process and that make many practitioners hardpressed to find consensus. Forester examines the role of the mediator and ‘the drama of mediation,’ looking at its success in developing new and creative solutions between conflicting parties in the hope of finding directions that may aid planners in facing conflict and open up possibilities never before thought of in civil societies. As explored more fully in his earlier work (Forester 1999), this normative approach is achieved through looking, in part, at how the real world practices of planners and planners’ stories can inform theory. What do real world stories have to tell us? Demonstrating his adept skills as a listener and storyteller, Forester gets to the subtext underlying a mediation situation, finding its value in informing the practitioner in achieving a result that is not merely mundane, but great and surprising. In conclusion, Forester reaffirms the value of what can be learned from mediators, suggesting that planners should look carefully at the field of mediation as an aid in negotiating complex public policy issues in order to snatch ‘possibility from the jaws of impossibility.’ The chapters in this section constitute a spectrum of responses to the challenges of a postmodern world. From the macro theorizing of King’s

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piece on the challenge of postcolonialism for dominant forms of knowledge production in planning, to the deconstruction of citizenship by Lee, to an appraisal by Gurstein of civil society engagement in digital public space, and finally, to the quest by Forester to address the problem of cynicism in planning processes, these responses chronicle a multifaceted and complex milieu in which democratic governance and planning is embedded. The authors’ reflections upon ‘learning civil societies’ comprise a rich mosaic to consider for the future of planning and public policy practices.

NOTES 1 These questions were raised by UBC Planning students Jodi Newnham, Sarah Macmillan, and Brian Smith in their Green College Lecture Series Reflections Paper, PLAN 548L, 16 January 2003.

REFERENCES Forester, John. 1999. The Deliberative Practitioner: Encouraging Participatory Planning Processes. Cambridge: MIT Press. Havel, Vaclav. 1994. The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World. Speech given at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, 4 July. http://www. worldtrans.org/whole/havelspeech.html. (Retrieved 30 Oct. 2005.) King, Anthony D. 1990. Global Cities: Postimperialism and the Internationalisation of London. London: Routledge. – , ed. 1997. Culture, Globalization and the World-System: Contempory Conditions for the Representation of Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Knight, Barry, Hope Chigudu, and Rajesh Tandon. 2002. Reviving Democracy: Citizens at the Heart of Governance. London: Earthscan. Lee, Jo-Anne. 1993. Organizing with Immigrant Women: A Critique of Community Development in Adult Education. Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education 7(2) 19–42. – 1995. ‘Community Development with Immigrant Women: Theory and Practice.’ In Caterina Pizanias and James S. Frideres, eds., Freedom within the Margins: The Politics of Exclusion. Calgary: Detselig, 87–109. Lee, Jo-Anne, and Cheryl Harrison. 1999. Immigrant Settlement and Multicultural Programs for Immigrant, Refugee and Visible Minority Women: A Study of Outcomes, Best Practices, and Issues. Victoria: B.C. Ministry of Multiculturalism and Immigration, Community Liaison Division.

1 Postcolonialism and Planning: Where Has It Been? Where Is It Going? anthony d. king

Few would disagree with the statement that what happened on September 11, 2001, particularly in New York City, was the most significant event in over half a century to affect the contemporary city. Whatever its meaning for global politics, it has also massively unsettled the way people like us – academics, community and regional planners, urban professionals of one kind and another – think about both the meaning and the future of the city. Nor has it escaped the notice of anyone among this particular community that this almost unthinkable erasure, from the mental image of what is probably the most globally familiar, proudest, and – in architectural terms – most blatantly immodest of the world’s urban settlements, of its two most iconic monuments, as well as the slaughter of some 3,000 of their occupants, was accomplished by someone trained in architecture and city planning. Whatever else is known of Mohamed Atta, it is known that he had spent fourteen years studying architecture (in Cairo) and subsequently, town planning (in Hamburg), completing a thesis for which his examiners awarded him the highest possible marks. It is also known that he was deeply concerned about the erosion of traditional Middle Eastern cities by Western, capitalist development schemes and that, over the years of his education in Europe, he had become increasingly committed to a ‘fundamentalist’ position in Islam (Hooper 2001). There is, of course, no end of what might be said about the attack on the World Trade Center (and the Pentagon). As with other profoundly important and tragic historical events, the meanings we invest in them are often essentially personal. As a British ‘non-resident alien’ living in upstate New York, I watched, like millions of others, frozen with disbelief, as the events unfolded on television. But over the following years, I

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have also seen, from my university office window, the transformation of a previously neglected courtyard into a carefully landscaped Memorial Garden, dedicated to the memory of fifteen university alumni who, present in the highest floors of one of the WTC towers, lost their lives in the attack. My daily path around or across the courtyard has certainly probed the extent and nature of my identity(ies). Why dedicated to only fifteen alumni? What of the 3,000 others, from some eighty countries, who lost their lives that day? What of the 3,000 Afghan men, women, and children who died in the subsequent bombing of that country? And because of an over thirty-year personal connection with India, what of the other, in some ways comparable, though more slow-motion oneday disaster that few, if any, of the Binghamton university students will have heard of, let alone remember; the day (4 December 1984) when 4,000 Indians died (and another 16,000 in the days and weeks to follow) in the infamous industrial ‘accident’ at the Bhopal pesticide plant, the outcome of neglect by American multinational, Union Carbide (Ullah 2002, 7)? Where is their memorial? If this attack on New York City is one of the most significant events affecting the form, future, and nature of major cities and how we live in and use them, what would we need to know in order to understand why and how it took place? To begin with, a profound knowledge and understanding of contemporary religious ideology, of particular strands of political Islam, its history, and the geopolitics in which it developed, including U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. If we are thinking in terms of academic disciplines, a combination of religious studies, politics, Islamic theology, and (from a U.S. perspective) the ‘radical’ fraction of Muslim militants, and second, a thorough familiarity with Arabic and other Middle Eastern languages and the area’s cultures. Further, a profound understanding is needed of urban and architectural symbolism, the realm of representation, and in disciplinary terms, the spheres of art history and semiotics.1 How many of these topics are studied in schools of community and regional planning? This brings me to the subject of postcolonial criticism. Before I address this theme, however, let me set out what I intend to address in this chapter and suggest how the subject of postcolonialism relates not only to international development planning but to community planning more generally. Following a brief review of the notion of the postcolonial as a critical perspective that implicitly and explicitly challenges ahistorical notions of ‘globalization,’ and has the potential for questioning dominant forms

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of knowledge production, I first review some of the key planning issues that the postcolonial critique has exposed, particularly the persistence of institutionalized racial and social segregation in cities and inequalities of social and spatial provision. I then examine more recent directions in research on the postcolonial city, emphasizing important insights raised by a new generation of scholars indigenous to one-time colonial states and which relate to policy issues of identity formation and cultural citizenship, particularly as they are affected by questions of ‘heritage,’ and the provision of public space. In the final section, I address one of the most neglected issues in the postcolonial critique, namely, the increasing dominance in postcolonial states of anglophone theoretical concepts and discourses, both in the theory and practice of planning, highlighting their negative impact on the possibilities for democratic governance of cities by marginalizing the voices of indigenous communities and indigenous knowledges. By learning the possibilities of using local knowledge and unlearning forms of knowledge that do not respect these ways of knowing localized civil societies can be strengthened. Postcolonial Criticism Postcolonial criticism has been defined in many ways. In the context of what I am stating here, the most pertinent is that it demands ‘a rethinking of the very terms by which knowledge has been constructed’ (Mongia 1995, 2). We need to know under what conditions and for what reasons and (as I shall come to later), in what languages knowledge has been constructed.2 Postcolonial criticism is not, as Young (1990, 11) suggests, just about ‘questioning Western knowledge’s categories and assumptions’ but also about questioning the very language in which that knowledge is disseminated. While this focus on the colonial construction of knowledge is certainly very relevant when considering ‘postcolonialism and planning’ it is also not enough. ‘Postcolonial’ is also used to signify ‘an attitude of critical engagement’ with the material effects, and aftereffects of colonialism: the ‘material practices, actual spaces and real politics’ (Yeoh 2001, 457). Yeoh further states that, as the centrality of the ‘historical experience of colonialism and the weight of Eurocentric culture is most clearly felt in the cities and ports of colonial societies, it is also in the urban nodes that one often locates the crucibles of nationhood and the sites of postcolonial politics’ (ibid.). While this has been true in the

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past, I would not confine the relevance of postcolonial politics so precisely. For those of us who have worked either continuously or spasmodically in the field(s) of ‘development’ over the past few decades, this ‘postcolonial’ insight – a certain way of looking at the world such that ‘our understanding of the present is transformed’ (Gregory 2000, 612) – may not seem particularly new. What is new, I believe, are two things. First, a viewpoint that in the past was shared by a few people in the academy or among ‘development’ policy-makers is now, through the rapid spread of the ‘postcolonial paradigm’ since the late 1980s, widespread (at least in academic and intellectual circles). In the second place, a perspective or paradigm that three or four decades ago did not carry any particular name or label, has now been given one – ‘postcolonialism,’ or ‘postcoloniality.’ As a view of the contemporary world, and a position in relation to it, this designation allows it to compete with or challenge a variety of other paradigms, whether ‘postdevelopment,’ ‘dependency,’ or ahistorical concepts such as ‘globalization.’ As the merits and pitfalls of the term and also, the conditions giving rise to the paradigm, have been addressed elsewhere (King, 2003a),3 I want only to suggest here a few generalizations, some of which would be shared by others: 1 The increasing recognition of both the historical and contemporary conditions of coloniality and postcoloniality in determining (1) their material effects, as well as (2) the premises, nature, and content of knowledge and its production is one consequence of contemporary processes of globalization, not least, between the parts of what is only a (technically) ‘postcolonial,’ ‘postimperial’ world. 2 The forms in which the postcolonial critique has so far emerged and operated have been predominantly, if not entirely, confined to anglophone language space, especially in the humanities and also (some of) the social sciences, and professional spheres. 3 Postcolonialism criticism is an intellectual paradigm more commonly found in the intellectual space of the metropole (or postmetropole) or in Euro-America as a whole, and among the anglophone postcolonial diaspora, rather than (Australia excepted) the postcolony itself (e.g., India, Malaysia, South Africa). While there is some truth in Dirlik’s comment that postcoloniality is an

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analytical category that began ‘when Third World intellectuals arrived in First World academe’ (1994, 329), this does not mean it is without value. The obvious contradiction, which Dirlik and others point to is, of course, the very irrelevance of such a term in a world where the conditions – if not the actual formal institutions – of colonialism as well as neo-colonialism are still widespread. 4 While colonialism impacts the metropolitan society and culture as much as it does the colonial, though not in the same ways, it is selfevident that while distinguishable, the phenomena are inseparable. For clarity’s sake, however, I use the term ‘imperialism,’ or ‘neoimperialism,’ to refer to a phenomenon that originates in the metropoles; what happens in the colonies resulting from imperial domination and control, is colonialism, or neo-colonialism (Loomba 1998, 6). It is the neglect of the cultural realities and cultural politics of colonialism in recent ahistorical conceptualisations of ‘globalization,’4 or in political economy accounts of the world system and in theories of development over the past four decades, that has clearly been one of the most fundamental absences in the public understanding of the modern world. Even in the most dominant field of postcolonial studies, that is, in the humanities, and particularly literature, the absence of attention to the material, spatial, and built environment dimensions (as well as inequities) of colonial, postcolonial and post- and neo-imperial cultures, documented in what is now a significant corpus of literature in urban, planning, and architectural studies, is a glaring example of persistent gaps in interdisciplinary, cross-campus research and teaching. In the following comments, I should state at the start that I am speaking here as an academic with research and teaching interests in urban studies rather than as a practising guru in regional and community planning. And by the nature of most of the literature, I am also speaking about historical studies, though such studies have profound importance for the present and future. Finally, while my focus is on modern industrial colonialisms primarily from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – French, British, Dutch, Japanese, American – my main examples are taken from British imperial colonialism. This should not be taken as an assumption that all colonialisms and their conditions are alike, quite the contrary (Dirks 1992). However, some observations can, I believe, be transferred to other situations.5

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Postcolonialism and Planning: Where Has It Been? Over the past two decades or more, a substantial amount has been published on the relationship between colonial power and urbanism, including specific planning practices; many readers will be familiar with the major issues.6 As it is more important to know where the work is going, I won’t spend too much time on this. Yet reading about ‘global cities’ and globalization, I am also frequently surprised at the degree of amnesia there is about the historical processes of colonialism and imperialism that provided the (highly uneven) worldwide infrastructures on which contemporary forms of globalization (as well as neo-imperialism) actually developed and operate. In the early twentieth century, Europe held roughly 85 per cent of the earth as colonies, protectorates, dependencies, or commonwealths (Said 1994). To say that the importance of planning to the overall colonial enterprise is overwhelming is to understate the case. Indeed, to speak about colonialism and planning is close enough to being tautological. If we accept that colonialism is a relationship characterized by the unequal distribution of economic, political, and social, as well as cultural power, for much of modern history, land, and the human and social resources it carries, have been planned in that way. Connected to the larger regional colonial issue – the creation and subsequent reorientation of spatial economies and questions of location – is the subject of colonial cities themselves. Here, we have an excellent benchmark statement in Janet Abu-Lughod’s oft-cited comment of over forty years ago: ‘The major metropolis in almost every newly industrializing country, is not a single unified city, but, in fact, two quite different cities, physically juxtaposed but architecturally and socially distinct ... These dual cities have usually been a legacy from the colonial past. It is remarkable that so common a phenomenon has remained almost unstudied’ (1965, 429). While the last sentence is no longer true, there are, four decades later, surprisingly few studies that can tell us if, indeed, the first one is (i.e., are major metropolises in every [post-colonial] ‘newly industrializing country’ still two different cities?). And to bring Abu-Lughod’s question up to date, are the major metropolises in every supposedly post-imperial metropole two different cities, and have they become increasingly so since the 1960s? Planning, in short, is a tool of the larger imperial project. Knowledge systems – including, from the early twentieth century, the norms and

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forms of a specifically named ‘town planning’ in the metropole – are transplanted in the colony, and in the larger interests of global capitalism. Examining planning processes raises myriad issues: the commodification and distribution of land; the disciplining of bodies and, through spatial ordering, the construction of social hierarchies; the accommodation, as well as the production, of cultures; the spatial and architectural symbolization of power, both political and cultural; the provision (or non-provision) for economic, social, legislative, educational, and religious functions, among others. All of these themes need considering, at different historical junctures, and under different political and geographical conditions, colonial regimes, and with different degrees of oppression. In European colonies worldwide, the ‘sanitary syndrome’ (combined with various degrees of racism) becomes a major ordering principle. Through the urban construction of social and spatial hierarchies, rural subjects (and subjectivities) are (re)created as ‘natives,’ in contradistinction to ‘Europeans,’ or ‘coloureds’; geographical regions are transformed into ‘the tropics’ (Arnold 2000; Livingstone, 2000). If these generalizations lack reference to specific planning policies and practices, Robert Home’s interesting book, Of Planting and Planning: The Making of British Colonial Cities (1996), though confined to a discussion of one-time British imperial space, provides a fund of detail. Planner as well as historian, Home attends both to the larger ideological and theoretical context as well as on-the-ground details in particular locales in particular places: Nigeria, Malaysia, Australia, South Africa, Palestine, and the Caribbean. He explores, across space and time, planned accommodation for labour: the barracks, slave compounds, Bombay chawls; the different logics in different colonies behind racial and spatial segregation, driven by politically and culturally specific notions of social order, defence, health, or functional zoning; and the implementation of different theories and understandings of town planning by individual planners, and the rationale behind specific legislation. And where evidence is available, he recognizes the need to accord agency to the colonized. Home’s bibliography, of some 550 items (a good one-third of them published after the mid-1980s) is an indication of the enormous growth in the field of planning history in the past two decades. What studies of this kind tell us is that, if cultural mixing, irony, hybridity, fragmentation, incoherence, and schizophrenia are seen (by Harvey 1989 and others) to be the characteristics of a so-called post-

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modernism, then postmodernism occurred in colonial cities prior to and long before the advent of modernism in cities of the West (King 1995). At the risk of repetition, there are, again, some generalizations that can be made to characterize this first genre of critical writing on colonial urbanism, planning, and architecture between the 1960s and the early 1990s (and not necessarily labelled as ‘postcolonial,’ even though it clearly is). With relatively few (though important) exceptions, it is the product of (white, male) authors from the Anglo-American ‘West’ and, as we might expect, is in the metropolitan language (mostly English, though there is also considerable literature in French and Dutch), and its sources are predominantly in English.7 Theoretical and methodological framework(s) draw on whatever are the influential theoretical paradigms and theoreticians (e.g., Marxism, world-systems, poststructuralism, Wallerstein, Foucault, etc.) in the Western academy when the books are written, though in these accounts ‘colonialism’ is not necessarily treated as ‘one thing.’ Let me turn now to my second theme, ‘where is it going?,’ a somewhat arbitrary starting date for which I will put in the early 1990s. Postcolonialism and Planning: Where Is It Going? Here, I want to address four themes, which I shall, somewhat simplistically, characterize as: imaginative new directions, policy issues, questions of language, and potential futures. In referring to the increasing visibility in recent years of what I refer to as ‘indigenous’ scholars (by which I mean those originally native to the one-time colony or postcolony), I am not subscribing to some essentialist theory. As in all forms of research and scholarship, scholars from both inside as well as outside a particular culture (or indeed, a particular gender, ethnicity, or discipline) can make equally profound and critical observations. Yet in the context of what I say later about language, it is generally if not invariably the case that scholars indigenous to the country under discussion are more likely to have not only the necessary languages but also different cultural and political experiences, subjectivities, and sensibilities in relation to those from outside. The combination of both internal as well as external accounts (together with those that cross that divide) is needed to place questions in productive tension.8 Moreover, ‘indigenous’ scholars are in ‘exogenous’ locations as well as vice-versa, and the realities of transcultural experiences and positionalities undermine this simple binary division.

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Nonetheless, reviewing some of the now substantial published scholarship of the past twenty-five years on colonial architecture and urbanism and their relation to social and political power, Indonesian architect and scholar, Abidin Kusno, writes: These studies have opened up important new approaches ... yet in generating new theoretical ideas on architecture and urbanism as being the outcome of social, political and cultural forces, to what extent have studies centered on European imperialism themselves ‘colonized’ ways of thinking about colonial and postcolonial space? Is the colony, as well as the postcolonial world, condemned to be a continual consumer of ‘modernity’ and ‘coloniality’? ... While providing theoretically-innovative and valuable accounts of colonial urban situations, inflected through the practices of a specific colonial power operating in different locales, the standpoint or focus from which these works are written, to appropriate a critique offered by Chakrabarty (1992), still tends to be that of ‘Europe.’ In other words, the intellectual focus ... is still on the ‘problematic’ power of the colonizer. (2000, 6)

Here, Kusno refers to the focus, or epistemological positionality of the research. The question of the actual framework for the research is something different, something that sociologist Yogesh Atal questioned two decades earlier: how to move from ‘iconoclastic talk of “domination” of alien models and theories and construct alternative frameworks and meta-theories which reflect “indigenous worldviews and experiences”’ (1981).9 A third, related point is made by Chakrabarty, which refers, not only implicitly, to questions of focus, as well as framework, but also to the knowledge that both the framework as well as the position actually produces: ‘Third-world historians feel a need to refer to works in European history; historians of Europe do not feel any need to reciprocate’ (1992, 28). Chatterjee takes this further, when he says: ‘Europe and the Americas, the only true subjects of history, have thought out on our behalf not only the script of colonial enlightenment and exploitation but also our anti-colonial resistance and misery’ (Chatterjee 1994, 216). In this context, Yeoh (2001, 464), from whom I cite this last sentence, suggests that, ‘to imagine our cities differently,’ the first step would be ‘for the once-colonized to claim “the freedom of imagination” to do so.’ Yet none of these authors raises the question of language, and especially the language of English, a topic which I shall shortly address. We might, however, begin with those indigenous scholars who have

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questioned, problematized (Kosambi 1990) or even rejected the concept of the or a colonial city, which as far as modern industrial colonialism in Asia or Africa is concerned, gets an early mention in the classic Redfield and Singer (1954) article on ‘The cultural role of cities.’ Yet as no comprehensive, up-to-date, critical historiography of the concept of the colonial city exists in relation to Asia, Africa, Australasia, let alone North and South America, as well as Europe, even though many scholars use the term, it becomes a slippery concept with which to operate. As both Kosambi (1990) and Hosagrahar (2005) have pointed out, any attempt to construct ‘snapshot’ categories, frozen in one point of time, conceals changes over both space and time. This applies equally to notions of the colonial city and even more to the vague concept of colonial urbanism, which might extend from between ten and 300 years. We should also note the equally important distinction between colonial capitals, colonial port cities, and other locations. Yet given the enormous significance of colonial urban space, not just simply as providing the location for encounters between different pre-given cultures, religions, races, or world-views, but rather, as the sites, in many instances, for actually constructing these concepts, such a historiography would certainly merit one doctoral dissertation, not least (recalling Kusno’s comments above) because the bulk of colonial city scholarship has till recently been produced by European and American scholars.10 How do the colonial and postcolonial cities look from the indigenous viewpoint, and why? Recent work by Indian scholars has problematized earlier formulaic models of colonial cities, prompting questions about the degree and nature of racial, social, and spatial segregation in Calcutta, for example (Chattopadhyay 2005) or, in Delhi (Hosagrahar 2005), showing how the new colonial space provided opportunities to develop alternative lifestyles, either occasional or permanent, for the emerging indigenous bourgeoisie. Studies such as these deconstruct traditional colonizer/ colonized binaries, which have often characterized earlier accounts. Yeoh’s innovative studies on Singapore (1996) have also shown not only how far colonial authority was both resisted and contained but the degree to which the local Chinese community maintained control over their own space. Using a case study of twentieth-century Ahmedabad, Raychaudhuri (2001) flies a more ambitious theoretical kite, not only suggesting (like Hosagrahar 2005) that the European scholarly obsession with the colonial city has been at the expense of tracking the expansion and development of the indigenous city but extrapolating

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her argument to suggest that this has much broader significance for understanding the social and spatial transformation of cities in the socalled non-Western world. Hosagrahar’s book on Indigenous Modernities (2005) demonstrates how, in the shadow of the building of imperial New Delhi, the spaces of ‘Old’ Delhi were also transformed and modernized, though according to the (quite different) criteria of the local inhabitants. In this she both challenges as well as relativizes prevailing concepts of ‘urban modernity,’ for the most part, still invariably associated (in urban and architectural terms) with the experience of the EuroAmerican West. Also relevant here is Perera’s work on indigenizing the ‘colonial city’ (2002), in which he documents the ways in which the space of colonial Colombo, largely developed by the British as a colonial port city, was increasingly appropriated by the local population in the later nineteenth century. As well, significant here is the edited volume, Urbanism: Imported or Exported? Native Aspirations and Foreign Plans, by Nasr and Volait (2003). Emerging from a conference held in Beirut in l998, and primarily containing accounts of cities around the Mediterranean basin, the latter shifts attention from an earlier scholarly focus on the exporting of models and urban plans from the European ‘centre’ to one that aims at understanding the ways in which, as imports, these were adapted and transformed by local populations.11 The shift of urban geographers’ attention in recent years to examining the impact of globalization on cities worldwide has, in some cases, led to a fairly predictable formula for examining postcolonial cities that might be characterized as a revised ‘stages of economic growth’ representation. Irrespective of whether these cities are in Southeast Asia (Dick and Rimmer 1998), India (Chakravorty 2000) or West Africa (Grant and Yankson 2003), the analysis follows more or less the same general pattern of a three-phase political economy frame of development: colonial economy, postcolonial or command economy during a nationalist period, and ‘reform economy’ during the most recent ‘global’ period. In the postcolonial, independence period, the native upper class (capital and landowners, political leaders, top government officials) occupy the space once inhabited by the colonizers. Racial divisions turn into class divisions. With the arrival of the ‘new’ global economy, one-time low-density colonial spaces, leeward of the city, become the new spaces of international tourism with hotels, transport nodes, or space for multinational companies. However, as representations they are often too formulaic to speak to questions of difference. In contrast, Myers’s much more historically detailed account of the

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postcolonial appropriation of the colonial space of Zanzibar and the urban planning regime installed in East Africa is an excellent demonstration of how postcolonial regimes can be much more oppressive than the ones they replace: ‘Although draped in the banners of socialism rather than imperialism,’ he writes, ‘the post-colonial state inherited from the colonial regime [has] an obsession with spatial order as an ideological tool and means of civic control’ (Myers 1995, 1357). Instead of the colonial masters, projects now are put in place ‘in the interests of powerful leaders more than in the interests of the people for whom [they] ostensibly were planned.’ Exemplary here is Kusno’s study of urban space and changing political cultures in Indonesia. Following on the position cited earlier, Kusno’s agenda is to unlink postcolonial criticism from its politically correct and customary focus on the East–West axis, the colonized and the Western colonizer. Accepting that colonialisms come in many forms, he argues that, following the displacement of the Dutch and the reign of Sukarno, Indonesia continued as a colonial regime in all but name, authoritarian, recentring, neo-colonial. Moreover, because the Dutch language (unlike English in British colonies) was never introduced as a lingua franca, colonialism did not result in a displacement of indigenous by (Dutch) colonial culture (a key theme in much postcolonial criticism). And as Indonesians were encouraged by Dutch orientalist discourse to remain ‘Indonesian,’ they never conceived of themselves as part of some colonial legacy. In this context, the forms of planning and urbanism that the Dutch introduced could be treated as ‘a gift’ inherited by the postcolonial state (Kusno 2000). The emergence of new understandings of the concept of the postcolonial is best manifest in geographer James Sidaway’s (2000) essay, which sets out to consider ‘different and diverse demarcations’ of the term, exploring the possibilities of extending its scope to a much wider historical and geographical range of ‘postcolonial conditions.’ Much of Europe has had the experience of imperial rule, and he therefore considers the use of the postcolonial paradigm to address Roman, Hapsburg, Ottoman, English, French, and other empires in Europe, as also for the Soviet successor states and ex-Yugoslav republics. Castillo’s (1991) essay on the transplantation of Soviet urban planning models to Eastern Europe in the post–Second World War period is also relevant here. Sidaway also develops a useful categorization of a variety of postcolonial conditions. These include colonialism, quasicolonialisms, and neo-colonialisms; second, different forms of internal colonialisms;

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and third, breakaway, settler colonialisms, most obviously, that of the United States. These are clearly valuable theoretical ideas for scholars interested in the comparative social, cultural, and political organization of space, in the formation of ethnic and racial categories, and in the production of architectural, religious, or linguistic cultures. Applying these new tools to the understanding of the historical as well as the contemporary development of space in North America, both in the United States and Canada, within a larger comparative colonial context, is well overdue. Postcolonial perspectives, prioritizing the positionality of the colonized, their languages, epistemologies, and ways of knowing, give a new meaning to community planning. Policy Issues Singapore geographer Brenda Yeoh (2001) raises a number of policyrelated issues in urban planning in a valuable survey of literature on postcolonial cities in South and Southeast Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Australia, and Latin America. Two themes provide important background – identity and heritage. Citing an official from the Hong Kong Special Region she writes: ‘The real transition beyond colonial rule “is about identity and not sovereignty”’ (ibid., 458). However, just what identity is, how it is acquired, how manifest it is, and how it can somehow be produced by (or be a producer of) the form, space, and symbolic architecture, as well as the built forms of the city, are complex and often impenetrable questions. Central to these are issues of employment, shelter, water supply, or transportation, which are both status markers and symbols for the poor (who frequently do not have them), as well as the new middle class (who do have them) now occupying the ‘new towns’ of the Third World (Graham and Marvin 2001). Relatively trivial modifications to the urban fabric taken immediately following the transfer of sovereignty – the removal of colonial statues, renaming of streets, or more general toponymic reinscription – are, in practical and financial terms, fairly easy. They also provide nationalist leaders or city administrators cheap, and instant, political and moral capital. More fundamental planning measures, having a bigger and longer lasting potential for impacting the collective social identities of the urban public, such as creating democratic public space (for processions, demonstrations, or simple enjoyment) (Nair 2002), reducing the massive inequities of colonially segregated racial and social space, or even completely relocating and rebuilding a capital city,

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have taken decades, if indeed they are ever addressed. For the postcolonial city, these are additional to the ‘four pillars’ that John Friedmann offers as essential requirements of the ‘good city’: adequate housing, affordable health care, adequately remunerated work, and adequate social provision (Friedmann 2002, 113). Singapore’s public housing program has been a major symbol of the state’s identity (Yeoh, 2000). After half a century, the lavish spatial and architectural order of ‘Lutyens’ Imperial Delhi, for instance, is still both very largely intact and spatially clearly distinguishable from an increasingly decrepit ‘Old City’ (Chatterjee and Kenny 1999). Government ministers, not least those of the most nationalist persuasion, refuse, at the end of their terms of office, to vacate the sprawling, palatial colonial bungalows set in their three- and four-acre compounds. The spatial logic behind the largely single- or two-storey, low-density spatial layout of the LIZ (Lutyens Imperial Zone), as it is known in official Delhi Development Authority language, far from being abandoned and the zone redeveloped, has been used to further extend the LIZ area. The president of India lives in the (renamed) Lutyens-designed Viceroy’s House. In terms of size, as well as design, this makes Washington’s White House look like a weekend cottage. As Indian architect A.G. Krishna Menon (2000, 147) writes, ‘the iconic power of Lutyens’ Delhi can be judged by the fact that it is the only urban ensemble in the city that is effectively protected against development.’ Here, it is obvious that the values of an international (as well as indigenous) global elite in favour of the conservation of the architecture and (especially) the space of the one-time colonial city, prevail over the indigenous majority, not least the poor (see Logan 2002). The establishment, in 1998, by the U.N.’s International Committee on Monuments and Sites, of a new Committee on Shared Colonial Heritage12 suggests that, unless far more resources and attention are given to the housing of neglected and poorer communities, these elitist policies are likely to perpetuate colonial inequalities. The strengthening of civil societies depends on attention to local, rather than elite global priorities. In Sri Lanka, by comparison, as Perera (1998, 177–8) has shown, the transfer of the nation’s capital from the colonially founded, coastal site of Colombo, to the more inland location of Sri JayawardhanapuraKottee, with parliamentary functions evacuated from the colonial classical offices to the new Sri Lankan parliamentary complex – designed in a critical Lankan vernacular – represented a conscious effort, at the nation’s centre, to both create as well as project a new cultural identity.

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The likelihood of such decisions being made – for example, with the indigenization of India’s principal (colonially founded) port city names almost fifty years after independence – clearly varies over time, dependent on the nationalist or competing internationalist proclivities of political elites; and not least on the new global tourism, when cities such as Hong Kong and Singapore have found themselves rebuilding historically unique hotels or shop houses, mainly for the benefit of global tourists, erased earlier by overzealous nationally conscious planners. Yet half a century after independence is a long time. Those born at that time are now grandparents. Discourses about identity formation move with the times, not least between generations. The relation to and meanings of the symbolic content of architecture, buildings and urban space for the new, young, middle-class professionals are much less likely to be caught up with searching in ‘their own’ cultural history for ‘traditional styles,’ than they might have been three decades ago. If contemporary architectural and urban developments in metropolitan China, India, or Indonesia are anything to go by, contemporary identity formation arises from a new consciousness, formed within a much more global, neo-liberal, market-oriented sphere. ‘Modern’ identities, in this case, are being formed in relation to what are represented as ‘global,’ and ‘international,’ architectural images and styles, which are, however, primarily those from the United States, and Europe, though recycled through Hong Kong, Singapore, and Shanghai (Hogan and Houston 2002; King 2003b, 2004). In the major metropolises of South and Southeast Asia (Delhi, Singapore, Penang), both for the domestic as well as the visiting international consumer, colonial (both genuine and revival) architecture and culture is fashionable, and consumed with the imported postmodern. As Yeoh states, ‘postcolonial strivings for a new identity involve the selective retrieval and appropriation of indigenous and colonial culture to produce appropriate forms to represent the postcolonial present’ (2001, 259; see also Gupta 2000). Whether in its adoption, adaptation, or rejection, therefore, the architecture and space of the colonial past becomes one among many factors in relation to which postcolonial populations construct and represent their (multiple) identities. The question of identity is inextricably linked to another of Yeoh’s themes, that of heritage. Citing studies from Hanoi, Quito, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Puebla (Mexico), among other places, Yeoh underlines the importance of the ‘contested heritaging of specific elements of the urban fabric from the colonial past,’ when she writes: ‘What constitutes

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“history” in multi-ethnic postcolonial nations where the perspective of hindsight is continually destablized; what becomes valorized and mapped as “heritage” in official imaginative geographies ... who controls (and benefits from) the whole process of transforming “history” into tangible presences (and hence also absences) on the landscape and for what purposes (such as nationalism and tourism) are difficult questions which are not unique to postcolonial cities but particularly significant in such contexts’ (2001, 461). In terms of intellectual and professional as well as financial capital, investment in the restoration and maintenance of colonial/postcolonial spaces, whether in the interests of generating tourism, or some other (esthetic) architectural agenda, obviously competes with budgets for improvements or mass affordable housing. Language Surprisingly neglected is the postcolonial question of language, and especially the politics of the English language. That English, either as mother tongue or second language, has become the most widely used international language for commerce, diplomacy, science, technology, and not least, social and professional sciences, used by – depending on our sources – between 10 and 25 per cent of the world’s population, is so taken for granted by many of its mother tongue speakers that the fact of its colonial origin is either totally forgotten or brushed aside. Obviously, the spread of any language is a direct consequence of the spread of political, economic, and cultural power. In the case of English, the hegemony of British imperialism, which established English as the mother tongue in North America, Australasia, and Ireland, and as a second language in much of Southeast Asia, South Asia, and parts of Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was replaced by U.S. economic power and hegemony by the end of the nineteenth century. There are two or three interrelated factors that I want to address here. The first is the massively increasing production of knowledge, in all fields but especially in the social and professional sciences, in the English language, in all forms of electronic and printed media, now including the Worldwide Web. When enthusiasts of electronic globalization speak of time-space compression by means of the Internet, we might remember that not only does a mere 2 per cent of the global population currently have access to it (80 per cent of them in OECD countries) but that 80 per cent of all Web sites are in English – compared with 10 to 20

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per cent of the world’s population who speak it (Habitat 2001). Together with the steady increase in the number of students from outside the West studying in the West (over half a million in the United States, of whom almost 50 per cent are from four Asian countries) and despite efforts to incorporate indigenous and local perspectives, the dominant paradigms of contemporary urban and social theory are primarily drawn from Western experience and overwhelmingly published in English (and if in Spanish or French, are translated for anglophone readers). Because of the economic and cultural power of the West these paradigms get circulated worldwide – leaving those outside it always in the position of first contesting concepts, rather than generating them. The most obvious example here is the (highly contestable) notion of postmodernism (the phenomenon evident in books on, for example, ‘Postmodernism and China,’ or ‘Postmodernism and Japan’). Two prominent linguists take different views on this. In the introduction to Post-Imperial English: Status Change in British and American Colonies 1940–1990 (Fishman 1996), Joshua Fishman asks some pertinent questions: Who benefits by the spread of English? Is the spread of English into non-mother tongue areas characterizable as linguistic imperialism? While Fishman (an American linguist) concludes that the spread of English cannot be said to be linguistic imperialism (because it can beneficially lead to democracy, literacy, and improved public health conditions), he also acknowledges that, worldwide, English is linked to social stratification. It spreads in tertiary education and research, nonprint media, the higher-level economy, commerce, and technology. In the future, ‘global arrangements will increasingly make use of English while local life between locals will increasingly be attached to national languages and cultures, each complementing the other.’ The overall picture, in his (optimistic) view, ‘does not support fears of alienation between elites and local cultures’ (Fishman 1996, 3–10, 637–40). A different view is taken by British linguist Alistair Pennycook, in English and the Discourses of Colonialism (1998), where he argues that English remains a language to which colonial discourses adhere, a language ‘still laden with colonial meaning.’ In examining what he calls the ‘triumphalist’ discourses of English, Pennycock’s aim is not to explore whether the claimed merits about the value and spread of the language are in some sense true but rather to ask what such discourses produce, that is, in a Foucauldian sense, what are their truth effects. Pennycock sees English not as an unencumbered medium of communication available to all its users but rather as a language weighed down

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with colonial discourses that have come to adhere to the language. The main problem, in his view, is related to promoting monolingualism in English rather than what he sees as a preferred, and superior condition, of promoting multilingualism across13 other languages (1998, 133–9, 158, 191). Although neither of these authorities address precisely the problem that concerns me, I nonetheless want to use these ideas to speak, only, about two exemplary terms (and concepts) that are central to urban and planning discourse, not least in the Indian context I have been discussing: ‘global city’ and ‘slum,’ which can be seen as illustrative of the larger issue. If postmodernism was the dominant paradigm of the 1980s, that for the 1990s has been ‘the Global City.’14 What is problematic about the term ‘global’ as an analytical category or descriptor is its enormous built-in linguistic and epistemological ambiguities, and as I have written elsewhere, the metaphor of a (smooth and spherical) global city as an image to signify the city, its characteristics and functions and the (mainly socioeconomic) space of the world economy in which it is embedded, is too unitary, too neutral, too balanced to convey the harsh realities of the fragmented, scarred, uneven, and lopsided social and economic contradictions the city increasingly contains (King 1996, 9). But it is also totalizing, and as a categorical adjective, less analytical than evaluative. It has now metamorphized into a utopian term that describes a state somehow to be achieved rather than what exists at present. Innocently put into use as an analytical category, the term ‘global city’ has now become – for many cities worldwide – a marketing device, a designer label, just as the name of Calvin Klein decorates the front of a T-shirt. But in this case, it is often a T-shirt in tatters. Let me not be misunderstood here. I am not at this point criticizing the concept that ‘global city’ is used to represent, that is, the structural characteristics of the economy of specific cities labelled as such in the literature: its assemblage of financial control functions, its concentration of corporate headquarters, its overall role of control in the world economy, even though these characteristics are overwhelmingly economic and political, rather than social, spatial, architectural, and cultural. It is, rather, the English term itself, which, applied worldwide, loses any ability to capture either the differentiated nature of cities or, indeed, their individual, problematic, and local potential. As Bishop, Phillips, and Yeo (2003) have (again) found it necessary to point out, ‘a common assumption about cities is that they are essentially homogeneous and based on Euro-American models. However, cities in the

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postcolonial world are producing novel forms of urbanism ... that are not reducible to Western models’ (cover copy). That it has become so commonly applied is the outcome of a ‘triumphalist’ neo-colonial discourse of English which provides ready-made terms and ready-made concepts, instantly available worldwide. We should, therefore, not be surprised to learn that city administrations of many large cities today, irrespective of any ‘objective criteria,’ not only aspire to the status of ‘global city’ but, in the interest of attracting foreign investment, seem from all accounts to be following an agenda to pursue this essentially neo-liberal goal. Because of my familiarity with India, let me illustrate my argument with respect to it. Since the widespread circulation of the global city concept after 1990, all four of India’s major metropolises – Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai – are currently being interrogated, represented, as well as envisaged through this categorical lens,15 despite the ironic and contradictory anti-colonial, anti-Western rejection of their colonial names. With the accelerated spread of neo-liberal ideologies worldwide, there is an emerging consensus in South Asia that, in the scramble to attract foreign investment, most major cities are falling over themselves, as self-represented potential global cities, in their ‘modernizing,’ clean-up agendas, all of which seem to have features in common: the removal of squatters from (especially visible) inner city sites; massive reduction in welfare and spatial provision for squatter resettlement on the city’s periphery (also with the aim of reducing migration into the city); the speeding up of traffic flows with the gradual elimination of scooter rickshaws and bicycles from the main roads; the building of flyovers; and beautification projects, including the preservation and enhancement of colonial monuments.16 Of course, none of these cities would call themselves postcolonial, because, fifty years after independence, this would cause people to think of the poor, marginalization, and shanty towns. Yet the analytical advantage of that term over that of the ‘global city’ is that, while implying interconnectedness, it is also attentive to such persistent inequalities and difference. Though countrywide, only 4 to 5 per cent of the Indian population supposedly make regular use of English (Crystal 1998), the proportion is far higher in India’s capital. And as elsewhere in the world where it is not used as a mother tongue, English is the language of the social elite. This includes the members of the planning and administrative professions, who in many cases find themselves unable (or unwilling) to communicate productively with the residents of squatter settlements in their own language(s).17

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While labels from an anglophone social theory such as ‘postindustrial’ or ‘global city’ may capture some middle-range economic and social transformations, what potential have these terms for representing the unique, sometimes transient, distinctive social, spatial, political, and cultural properties of the reality? How does a term conceived by someone from New York to apply to New York come to apply equally to Delhi, Jakarta, or Dacca, or even to London, Berlin, or Lisbon? The issue here is essentially one of representation, not only of what but also of who is represented. How would Delhi appear were it to be represented in Hindi? Or Punjabi? Not only in the language of Hindi or Punjabi but from the conceptual viewpoint of people for whom one of these was their only language? The second term, widely in use among the English-speaking elite of India, and especially among the planning establishment is ‘slum,’ referring to the informal housing of self-built huts of squatters in and around the city. The continuous and persistent use of this term is a classic example of Pennycook’s point that English remains a language ‘still laden with colonial meaning.’ Any historical (as well as contemporary) analysis of the term ‘slum’ in the printed discourses of the planning profession in India (which to my knowledge, no one has attempted) would certainly find a continuous use from pre-independence British planning and public works regimes. ‘Slum’ is a term that saturates the discourse on urbanization and urban reform in Britain throughout the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Typical of the male-dominated Victorian bourgeoisie who inhabited, controlled, and described these cities, it is the term most frequently used to describe the residential habits and spatial location of the ‘Other.’ Its definition invariably invokes criteria of class, wealth, often race, and occasionally, gender. Thus, the Oxford English Dictionary (1989) still defines slum – without, of course, any self-reflective gloss, and referring to the typical inner city spaces of the early Victorian city – as ‘a street, alley, court etc. situated in a crowded district of a town or city and inhabited by people of a low class or by the very poor ... or district where the houses and the conditions of life are of a squalid and wretched character’ (my emphasis). An early use (1824, though the first cited is 1812) refers to ‘regaling ... in the back parlor (vulgo slum) of an extremely low-bred Irish widow.’ Other citations elide material conditions of the place with an assumed behavioural state of the residents, for example, ‘large tracts of indescribably dirty, profligate and felonious slums’ (1894), ‘slum people’ (1887), ‘that class rarely stray ... from their slumburrows and dens’ (1891), ‘the slum problem is fundamentally not one of

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stone and lime or cubic space but of mental and social outlook’ (1924), ‘a tribe of inconceivable people who lived in a slum street in a dark English town (1935), ‘back to slumland to spend the rest of the day with Catholic families’ (1978 – the latter, a metaphor for Irish; emphasis added in all cases). This classist, sexist, and racist content of the term ‘slum’ and its continuous use into the twentieth century when town planning was well established in the United Kingdom and also exported to its overseas territories, is fully evident from these citations. Yeoh writes, ‘Not only did the colonial project invade and conquer territorial space, it has systematically colonized indigenous epistemological spaces, reconstituting and replacing these using a wide corpus of colonial knowledge, policies and frameworks’ (2003, 370).18 What is the solution to these issues? To promote, as Pennycook suggests, an active multilingualism in these situations or to radically infuse English with terms from other languages? Whether in regard to historical accounts or contemporary ones, if we are serious in exploring ‘the theoretical underpinnings of civil society formation and [to] understand how localized communities can embrace its qualities’19 the need for local language representations of the city is an absolute prerequisite to represent subaltern perspectives. Local governance and local communities can only flourish if they maintain epistemological as well as linguistic control over the representation of their own space. Potential Futures In 1999, a book entitled Imperial Cities, was published by Driver and Gilbert. The editors’ aim was not to re-examine – as I have largely done here – the impact that centrifugal forces of different imperialisms worldwide have had on colonial cities but rather, the centripetal ones, on cities in the metropole – Paris, Vienna, Madrid, London, Glasgow, and others (see also Jacobs 1996; King 1990). Its focus, however, was strictly historical. We now need another agenda to investigate the contemporary influences of post- and neo-colonialism, post- and neo-imperialism worldwide on cities, planning, and cultures. This might address a myriad of issues, for example, the unequal exchange behind the flow of Indian high-tech labour power into America’s Silicon Valley; the postcolonial connections between the construction of mega-structures in Vancouver and others in Hong Kong;20 the reciprocal flow of capital between Hong Kong and the suburbs of Vancouver; movements of white farmers from Zimbabwe or South Africa to Australia; the traffic in nurses between the Caribbean and London; riots and street battles between young

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Asian Muslims and whites in the north of England, or the connections in the world of anglophone scholarship that enable postcolonial scholarship to masquerade as ‘global’ or ‘international’ knowledge (King 2004). We also need to look, not only at other older and better known forms of imperialism and colonialism and their impact on cities (the suburban housing of north African populations in Paris and other major cities in France comes to mind) but also new ones: the new Washington-commuter suburban developments of Northern Virginia, of populations from El Salvador, Vietnam, Korea, Sudan, Grenada, which is the outcome of other imperial countries’ colonial wars. Like its sister term ‘global city,’ ‘globalization’ evades and evacuates the political and historical that are built into ‘colonial’ and ‘imperial.’ Conclusion Let me conclude by re-emphasizing the three main contributions that I believe a postcolonial perspective can offer to contemporary international development planning studies, of the city, including community and regional planning. First, it forces us to address the persistence of ‘older’ colonial conditions – gross inequalities, marginalizations, the maldistributions of power, the racialized spaces of the city – as well as ‘newer’ neo-colonial ones, which the vaguer, generalized notion of globalization neglects. Second, it emphasizes the importance of indigenous perspectives on the city, and an obligation to make use of local languages and local knowledge in the processes of community-building and the strengthening of civil society. Finally, it brings to the foreground the uttermost importance of selectively unlearning, or displacing, older Euro-American forms of knowledge and categories and to respect local ways of knowing. This also implies taking into our conceptual and working vocabulary ways of thinking and speaking that come from other, non-anglophone parts of the social and spatial world. NOTES Many thanks to Abidin Kusno and Penny Gurstein for their valuable comments on an earlier draft. 1 In an interview with Pakistani journalist, Hamid Mir, Osama Bin Laden is reported as saying, ‘The September 11 attacks were not targeted at women and children. The real targets were America’s icons of military and economic power.’ Guardian Weekly, 15–21 Nov. 2001, 3.

Postcolonialism and Planning 53 2 Derek Gregory views postcolonialism as ‘a critical politico-intellectual formation that is centrally concerned with the impact of colonialism and its contestation on the cultures of both colonizing and colonized peoples in the past, and the reproduction and transformation of colonial relations, representations and practices in the present ... [As] there have been many colonialisms, [the] “post” brings into consciousness those of the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries in such a way that our understanding of the present is transformed’ (2000, 612). 3 King (2003a) on which I draw for the first section of this chapter. 4 For books on globalization that have either no or virtually no reference to the colonial or postcolonial see J. Beynon and D. Dunkerly (2000), M. Featherstone, S. Lash, and R. Robertson, eds. (1995), among others. 5 Despite the persistence of colonial conditions in many contemporary cities, it is worth remarking that much of the literature on the phenomenon focuses primarily on their historical development rather than the extent to which they continue. Though I have not made extensive searches in the contemporary literature on urban planning, discussion of this issue in the journal, Third World Planning Review, is conspicuous by its absence. 6 Extensive bibliographies exist in King (1990), Wright (1991), Home (1996), Yeoh (1996), Kusno (2000). 7 Attention should be drawn to Evenson’s (1989) architectural and urban history, The Indian Metropolis: A View towards the West which, particularly for the post-independence period, makes much use of Indian sources and also pays attention to question of gender. 8 See also Mudrooroo, ‘The native, the indigenous person, the Aboriginal, is I believe, as much a construction of the Master text of the European as the Master himself’ (1995, 8; also cited in Pennycook 1998, 31). 9 These views have a long history, certainly back to the 1950s and 1960s, if not earlier, in the writings of Indian historian Romilla Thapur, and Sri Lankan as well as Malaysian sociologists, S. Goonatilake and S.H. Alatas. 10 In addition to the work of scholars discussed here, it would be necessary to mention, among a growing body of others, Bozdogan (2001), Celik (1997), Chattopadhyay (2005), Goh (2005), Prakash (2002), Scriver and Prakash (2007), and Wong (1997). Kincaid (2006) is an exception here. 11 Other papers from this conference, dealing with Calcutta, Izmir, Algiers, Singapore, and Doha were published in 2000 in City and Society 12(1). 12 See www.international.icomos.org/risk/2001/colonial2001.htm. Retrieved June 2003. 13 While Pennycook’s view can be contested, for example, by citing Said’s view that English as a ‘worldwide lingua franca ... [has] ... all but termi-

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nally consigned English to the level of a technical language’ (1998, 15), it is still valid in specific cultural contexts, not least in the cultural and representational field, as in the examples cited. I am grateful to Senja Gunew for drawing my attention to Said’s point. A brief historiography of the term is in King (2007). I base this statement on papers and discussion at the conference, ‘City One,’ South Asian Conference on the Urban Experience, Delhi, 9–11 Jan. 2003 (in particular, the papers by P. Chatterjee, M.S.S. Pandian, and Gyan Pandey; also valuable was the conference, ‘Conceptualising Third World Cities,’ KRVIA, Mumbai, 28 March 2002, and newspaper reports in January l995. See previous note. Dipu Roy, Comments in the panel, ‘Urban Inequality and Social Movements after Globalization,’ ‘City One,’ South Asian Conference on the Urban Experience. Delhi, 9–11 Jan. 2003. Renu Desai, Graduate Program, Department of Architecture, University of California at Berkeley writes: ‘The official definition of a “slum” in India continues to be somewhat ambiguous in its non-differentiating definition.’ The Draft National Slum Policy of 2001. http://urbanindia.nic.in. Retrieved 28 Feb. 2002). Furthermore, she states: ‘In general, all underserviced settlements, be they unauthorized occupation of land, congested inner-city built-up areas, fringe area unauthorized developments, villages within urban areas and in the periphery, irrespective of tenure or land use, shall be covered under the definition of a slum/informal settlement.’ The Dynamics of Urban Informality and Slum Rehabilitation in Bombay (Mumbai), typescript, Feb. 2003. This apparently innocuous formal definition does not address the social realities in the everyday use of the term ‘slum’ which elides their inhabitants, habits, and practices with the material conditions of their settlement. I take this phrase from the announcement of the lecture series on which this book is based. Olds’s interesting and detailed account of this phenomenon is entitled Globalization and Urban Change (2000), though it could be more accurately termed ‘postcolonialism and urban change.’

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Postcolonialism and Planning 55 Arnold, D. (2000). ‘“Illusory Riches”: Representations of the Tropical World, 1840–1950.’ Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 21(1): 6–18. Atal, Y. (1981). ‘The Call for Indigenisation.’ International Social Science Journal 33(1): 189–97. Beynon, J., and D. Dunkerly, eds. (2000). Globalization: The Reader. London: Athlone Press. Bishop, R., J. Phillips, and W.W. Yeo, eds. (2003). Postcolonial Urbanism: Southeast Asian Cities and Global Processes. New York and London: Routledge. Bozdogan, S. (2001). Modernism and Nation-Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Bunnell, T., L.B.W. Drummond, and K.C. Ho, eds. (2002). Critical Reflections on Cities in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Times Academic and Brill. Castillo, G. (1991). ‘Cities of the Stalinist Empire.’ In AlSayyad, ed., 261–88. Celik, Z. (1997) Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers under French Rule, Berkeley: University of California Press. Chakrabarty, D. (1992). ‘Postcoloniality and the Artifices of History: Who Speaks for “Indian” pasts?’ Representations 32 (Winter): 1–27. Chakravorty, S. (2000). ‘From Colonial City to Globalizing City? The Farfrom Complete Spatial Transformation of Calcutta.’ In P. Marcuse and R. van Kempen, eds., Globalizing Cities: A New Spatial Order? Oxford: Black-well, 56–77. Chatterjee, P. (1994). ‘Whose Imagined Community?’ In G. Balakrishnan, ed., Mapping the Nation. London: Verso, 214–25. – (2003). ‘Is the Indian City Finally Becoming Bourgeois?’ Paper given at ‘City One,’ South Asian Conference on the Urban Experience, Delhi, 9–11, Jan. 2003. Chatterjee, S., and J. Kenny. (1999). ‘Creating a New Capital: Colonial Discourse and the Decolonization of Delhi.’ Historical Geography 27: 73–98. Chattopadhyay, S. (2005). Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism and the Colonial Uncanny. New York and London: Routledge. Crystal, D. (1998). English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dick, H.W., and P.J. Rimmer. (1998). ‘Beyond the Third World City: The New Geography of Southeast Asia.’ Urban Studies 35(12): 2303–21. Dirks, N. (1992). Foreword. In N. Dirks, ed., Colonialism and Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Dirlik, A. (1994). ‘The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism.’ Critical Inquiry 20: 328–56. Driver, F., and D. Gilbert. eds. (1999). Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display and Identity. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Dupont, V., E. Tarlo, and D. Vidal, eds. (2000). Delhi: Urban Space and Human

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Dimensions. Delhi: Manohar, Centre de Sciences Humaines and Institut de Recherche pour le Développement. Evenson, N. (1989). The Indian Metropolis: A View towards the West. New Haven: Yale University Press. Featherstone, M., S. Lash, and R. Robertson, eds. (1990). Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity. London: Sage. Fishman, J.A. (1996). Introduction and Conclusion. In J.A. Fishman, A.W. Conrad, and A. Rubal-Lopez, eds. Post-Imperial English: Status Change in British and American Colonies, 1940–1990. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Friedmann, J. (2002). The Prospect of Cities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Goh, R.B.H. (2005). Contours of Culture: Space and Social Difference in Singapore. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Graham, S., and S. Marvin. (2001). Splintering Urbanism. London and New York: Routledge. Grant, R., and P. Yankson. (2003). ‘Accra,’ Cities 20(1): 65–74. Gregory, D. (2000). ‘Post-colonialism.’ In R. Johnston, D. Gregory, and D.M. Smith, eds., The Dictionary of Human Geography, 4th ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 612–14. Gupta, N. (2000). ‘Concern, Indifference, controversy: Reflections on Fifty Years of Conservation in Delhi.’ In Dupont, Tarlo, Vidal, eds., 173–80. Habitat (U.N. Centre for Human Settlements). (2001). Cities in a Globalizing World: Global Report on Human Settlements. New York: Earthscan. Harvey, D. (1989). The Conditions of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell. Hogan, T., and C. Houston. (2002). ‘Corporate Cities: Urban Gateways or Gated Communities against the City? The Case of Lippo, Jakarta.’ In Bunnel et al., eds., 243–64. Home, R. (1996). Of Planting and Planning: The Making of British Colonial Cities. London: Spon. Hooper, J. (2001). ‘The Shy, Caring, Deadly Fanatic: Double Life of Suicide Pilot.’ Observer, 23 Sept. Accessed Jan. 2002. www.observer.co.uk/ waronterrorism/story/0,1373,556630,00.html. Hosagrahar, J. (2005). Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism. London and New York: Routledge. Jacobs, J. (1996). Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City. London and New York: Routledge. Kincaid, A. (2006). Postcolonial Dublin: Imperial Legacies and the Built Environment. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Postcolonialism and Planning 57 King, A.D. (1990). Global Cities: Postimperialism and the Internationalisation of London. London and New York: Routledge. – (1995). ‘Writing Colonial Space.’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 37(3): 541–54. – (1996). ‘Introduction: Cities, Texts and Paradigms.’ In Re-Presenting the City. London: Macmillan, 1–22. – (2003a). ‘Cultures and Spaces of Postcolonial Knowledges.’ In K. Anderson, M. Domosh, S. Pile, and N. Thrift, eds., Handbook of Cultural Geography. Thousand Oaks, CA, and London: Sage, 381–97. – (2003b). ‘Actually Existing Postcolonialism: Colonial Architecture and Urbanism after the Postcolonial Turn.’ In R. Bishop, J. Phillips, and W.W. Yeo, eds., Postcolonial Urbanism: Southeast Asian Cities and Global Processes. London and New York: Routledge, 167–85. – (2004). Spaces of Global Cultures: Architecture, Urbanism, Identity. London and New York: Routledge. – ‘Global Cities’ (2007). In Robertson (2007). Kosambi, M. (1990). ‘The Colonial City in its Global Niche.’ Economic and Political Weekly, 22 Dec., 2275–81. Kusno, A. (2000). Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space and Political Cultures in Indonesia. London and New York: Routledge. Livingstone, D. (2000). ‘Tropical Hermeneutics: Fragments for a Historical Narrative.’ Singapore Journal of Tropical Geogaphy 21(1): 92–8. Logan, W.S., ed. (2002). The Disappearing ‘Asian’ City: Protecting Asia’s Urban Heritage in a Globalizing World. New York: Oxford University Press. Loomba, A. (1998). Colonialism/Postcolonialism. London and New York: Routledge. Menon, A.G.K. (2000). ‘The Contemporary Architecture of Delhi.’ In Dupont et al., eds., 143–56. Mongia, P. (1995). Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mudrooroo (1995). Us Mob: History, Culture, Struggle: An Introduction to Indigenous Australia. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. Myers, G.A. (1995). ‘A Stupendous Hammer: Colonial and Post-colonial Constructions of Zanzibar’s Other Side.’ Urban Studies 32(8): 1345–59. Nair, K. (2002). ‘Past Perfect: Architecture and Public Life in Bangalore.’ Journal of Asian Studies 61(4): 1205–36. Nasr, J., and M. Volait, eds. (2003). Urbanism: Imported or Exported? Native Aspirations and Foreign Plans. Chichester: Wiley-Academic. Olds, K. (2000). Globalization and Urban Change. London: Oxford University Press.

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Pennycook, A. (1998). English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London and New York: Routledge. Perera, N. (1998). Society and Space: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Postcolonial Identity in Sri Lanka. Boulder, CO: Westview. – (2002). ‘Indigenising the Colonial City: Late 19th-Century Colombo and Its Landscape.’ Urban Studies 39(9): 1703–21. Prakash, V. (2002). Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Redfield, R., and M. Singer. (1954). ‘The Cultural Role of Cities.’ Economic Development and Cultural Change 3: 53–73. Raychaudhuri, S. (2001). ‘Colonialism, Indigenous Elites and the Transformation of Cities in the Non-Western World: Ahmedabad (Western India), 1890– 1947.’ Modern Asian Studies 35(3): 677–726. Robertson, R. (2007). Encyclopaedia of Globalization. New York: Grolier Academic (in press). Said, E. (1994). Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage. Scriver, P., and V. Prakash, eds. (2007). Colonial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon. London and New York: Routledge. Sidaway, J. (2000). ‘Postcolonial Geographies: An Exploratory Essay.’ Progress in Human Geography 24(4): 591–612. Ullah, Mazhar. (2002). ‘Bhopal Court Keeps Charge of Murder.’ Guardian Weekly, 5–11 Sept. Wong, C.T., and G.B. Nalbantoglu, eds. (1997). Princeton, NJ: Postcolonial Spaces. Princeton University Press. Wright, G. (1991). The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Yeoh, B.S.A. (1996). Contesting Space: Power Relations and the Urban Environment in Colonial Singapore. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. – (2000). ’From Colonial Neglect to Post-Independence Heritage: The Housing Landscape in the Central Area of Singapore.’ City and Society 12(1): 103– 24. – (2001). ‘Postcolonial Cities.’ Progress in Human Geography 25(3): 456–68. – (2003). ‘Postcolonial Geographies of Place and Migration.’ In K. Anderson et al., eds., Handbook of Cultural Geography. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 369–80. Young, R.J.C. (1990). White Mythologies: Writing History and the West. London and New York: Routledge. – (2000). Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Oxford and Malden: Blackwell.

2 Localities and Cultural Citizenship: Narratives of Racialized Girls Living In, Through, and Against Whiteness jo-anne lee

In Site and Out of Sight This chapter examines the formation of cultural citizenship among racialized – defined as being seen as different from the dominant majority groups because of phenotypical and cultural markers – girls and young women who live in Victoria, British Columbia. It examines the relationship among specific cultural localities and citizen identity formation. By amplifying the voices of racialized girls and young women, both immigrant and Canadian-born – voices rarely heard in theory or practice; by making visible hidden challenges and strategies of living in a context of dominant whiteness and linking these experiences to citizen-identity formation; and by bringing these narratives and experiences into conversations about heterogeneous civil societies, social learning, democratic planning, and globalization, this chapter challenges planners – ‘all those involved in non-governmental, social movements, and government agencies involved in concretely working towards democratic and socially just futures for all’ (Angeles and Gurstein, this volume) – to think differently. For example, whose cultural knowledge and social realities are represented or included in participatory planning processes? What cultural assumptions lie embedded in planning practices and theories? How might planners take action to shift and decentre their own subjectivities to ensure that those marginalized are included in decision-making and democratic processes? Issues concerning citizenship identity formation and cultural locality ought to be a central concern to those involved in planning, policymaking, and resource allocation because as state agents working in governmental and non-governmental machineries of citizenship, plan-

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ners are deeply implicated in forming and structuring contexts for citizenship identity formation. In thinking about whose interests are being served, and how interests and needs are mediated by dominant discourses about the nation and its citizens, it is necessary for planners to develop critical self-reflexivity about their own discourses and actions because planners themselves are also constituted as citizensubjects through similar processes. Planners engaging in democratic participatory planning and governance need an ethic of engagement that enables all participants to enter into planning and decision-making processes on more or less equal grounds. As a first step, planners working with ethnically and racially marginalized community-based groups must recognize and value the cultural knowledge and skills that members of these groups generate in the course of their everyday lives. As pointed out by the editors of this volume, civil societies are incubators of social learning, yet planners have paid little attention to the unvalorized, quotidian knowledge generated by marginalized groups. Without this knowledge, conceptions of democratic futures formed through a narrow set of experiences that are not reflective of those most excluded from participation will fail to attain goals of social justice. Thus, a desire to act ethically and democratically can be realized only when cultural knowledge, experiences, and skills produced by marginalized groups are recognized, acknowledged, valued, and incorporated into normative practice. In responding to the challenges of democratic planning posed by multiculturalism, migration, and globalization, planners cannot claim or adopt neutrality, objectivity, and disengagement in their pronouncements about needs, participation, and futures; nor can they ignore their own complicity in triggering or facilitating inequality. By uncovering and validating distinctive and unrecognized cultural knowledge that supports racialized girls’ and young women’s resilience in a rapidly changing world, this chapter offers micro-level data about processes of cultural citizenship formation in Victoria, British Columbia.1 These hidden, yet commonplace experiences offer different insights into the complexities involved in globalization, migration, immigrant settlement, social cohesion, citizenship, and national identification at the level of everyday interactions, and may enable planners to think differently about the elements constituting heterogeneity in civil societies. As new subjects-in-formation of globalizing and localizing civil society, racialized Canadian-born and foreign-born girls and young women

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have much valuable information to offer planners and policy-makers about negotiating complex, heterogeneous social worlds – the worlds of the future that are the focus of planners’ attentions. However, traditional renditions of democratic futures tend to ignore or subsume discourses concerning gender, ethnicity, race, immigrants, youth, culture, and girlhood. The glaring omission of racialized minority girls and young women from discussions on planning, citizenship, and democracy is partly a consequence of the use of key conceptual terms such as citizenship that tend to obscure the analytical significance of racialized young women and girls as citizens; it is partly due to a lack of conceptual tools that fully encompass their cultural knowledge and creation; and it is partly because of a devalorization and marginalization of racialized girls and women as political actors in democratic processes. More than an empirical problem, the deployment of terms such as ‘citizenship,’ ‘nationalism,’ and ‘social cohesion’ in ways that omit gender, race, and youth from consideration reflect conceptual practices of power.2 In other words, beyond consciously seeking out the voices of marginalized subjects, spaces of social learning, cultural knowledge, and grassroots community practices because formal learning systems have systematically expelled these from established repertoires of knowledge (Dei et al. 2000), there is also a need for planners to challenge their own conceptual tools and interpretative frameworks. Alternative conceptions of citizenship are required that enable these realities to surface that do not foreclose and re-expel them to the margins. To speak concretely about citizenship, globalization, and civil society, we must redefine these terms. For example, this chapter views citizenship as an ongoing, emergent process and not an already existing legal or administrative category that, once set, remains fixed over time. It differs from most orthodox discussions of citizenship. Moreover, it is necessary to bring history forward to the present. King’s observations (this volume) concerning the lingering impact of the negative weight of colonialism on former colonial societies are also relevant to understanding white settler, postcolonial societies such as Canada. In Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, the nation is represented as eternally and essentially, AngloEuropean, Western, and modern. This imagined and naturalized cultural identity has been sustained not only through violent erasures and exclusions, but also by regulating the symbolic universe of meanings and images that circulate in public spaces and discourses.

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Postcolonial cities retain particular aspects of the colonial era. Some, like Victoria, remain strongly imprinted, while others become more cosmopolitan and plural. Where King highlights the persistence of institutionalized racial and social segregation in cities by drawing on the voices of scholars from former colonial states – scholars who are perceived as writing from a postcolonial subject position, I draw on the narratives of racialized girls and young women as transnational subjects growing up and living in postcolonial, white settler contexts to perform a similar task. My research suggests that in daily embodied and imagined movements across culturally differentiated locales, and in their relations with individuals, collectivities, discourses, and practices contained within these locales, racialized girls and young women develop their identifications as national subjects in a postcolonial context that remains structured through white colonial attitudes of superiority and normativity. I want to reveal this reality to planners, not so that this information can be used to resituate girls as racialized ‘Others’ to be pitied or saved, but so that planners can acknowledge and value their cultural knowledge and skills to inform their planning practices. Girls’ narratives about living under whiteness in Victoria, British Columbia, a less heterogeneous, smaller urban centre that is known as ‘more English than England,’ reveal that their everyday experiences of living as marginalized subjects under postcolonial whiteness require cultural knowledge for negotiating multiple and unequal social worlds. This cultural knowledge helps them make sense of the contradictions in their lives and enables them to manage the challenges of living in a cultural context where they are – paradoxically – both included and excluded. This knowledge is shared among families, ethnic communities, peers, and local networks. As they move into other cultural locales, these girls and women transfer, apply, and evaluate this cultural knowledge in an ongoing process of cultural learning that nourishes their growing understanding of themselves as citizen-subjects. Such locally generated cultural knowledge supports their ability to survive marginalization and exclusion in their everyday lives. The grounded knowledge that is generated from having to make sense of their movements across multiple cultural locales offers useful and necessary critiques of existing conceptualizations of the links between the global, the local, and the national, belonging and non-belonging, and social inclusion and exclusion.

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Victoria as a Cultural Locality Localities and Subjectivities I suggest that cultural localities and citizen subjectivities are intimately connected, as both are materially produced and imagined. Planners are fully involved in shaping both through their professional responsibilities for resource allocation. The term ‘cultural localities’ encompasses much more than the notion of geographical space emptied of cultural content. Appadurai refers to localities as the cultural dimensions of situated relationships, particularly phenomenological qualities, ‘constituted through a series of links between the sense of social immediacy, the technologies of interactivity, and the relativity of contexts’ (1996, 178). As an analytical category, locality as situated relationships is predicated upon ‘certain kinds of agency, sociality, and reproducibility’ (ibid.). Appadurai contrasts the phenomenological nature of locality in relation to the materiality of neighbourhoods as a way of posing questions about how localities are produced. Physical dimensions of neighbourhoods interact with and are influenced by their cultural contents, real and imagined. In other words, cultural localities are more than built forms located in territorially bounded space; they also include values, ideologies, cultural practices, and social interactions within real and imagined spaces. Not only do they shape subjectivities, but locally situated subjects, discourses, and practices in turn shape them. Localities reflect already embedded racial, gendered, classed, sexualized, nationalized, and ethnicized hierarchies in social relations. Different cultural contexts of locality are always in the process of formation. Appadurai’s idea of ethnoscapes brings into view the multiplicity and simultaneity of ethnic and cultural practices in any given place that do not coexist on an equal plane (Appadurai 1996a, 33). In making space into place, and place into cultural localities, colonial practices leave an institutionalized legacy of unequal hierarchies of symbolic resources for the production of citizen subjectivities. Allocative decisions about the uses of spaces and places activate such resources making cultural localities critical sites where subjective attachment and feelings of belonging to family, community, and nation are produced. They are key sites for the exercise of power by planners and other professionals who make decisions about resources, spaces, and values – creating the mate-

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rial contexts for citizenship identities and hierarchically structured civil societies. Probyn (2003, 298) connects the co-constitution of space and subjectivities through an analysis of ideology. Her careful explication of interconnections among ideology, space, and subjectivity leads her to conclude that there exists a ‘spatial imperative of subjectivity’ that produces ‘difference’ in and among subjects. Probyn uses the concept of space through a geographical reading where, ‘we orient ourselves and are oriented’; I, however, use the concept of locality to speak more directly to cultural practices that constitute or form subjectivities in particular spaces and the meanings that subjects give to cultural phenomena within such spaces. By insisting that analysts pay attention to the way subjectivities are situated in relation to specific culturally informed places, including facilities, resources, and ideologies, values and attitudes, I want to use cultural localities as a way to speak about the importance of recognizing situated cultural knowledge and practices that arise in specifically grounded sites in civil society that produce particular citizen subjectivities. Cultural Locality and Citizenship Formation Obvious physical features of landscapes and cityscapes contain many resources for the manufacture of multifaceted national cultural identities (Osborne 2001). Capital cities, like Victoria, are full of symbolic meanings carefully selected to convey myths of national identity that can take the form of buildings, parks, monuments, flags, and streetscapes. Geographies of identity play a role in connecting people to particular places by attaching our bodies and memories to the symbolic systems of meaning contained within culturally laden localities (Osborne 2001). Shields (2003) argues that regional or local spatiality is constitutive of individual and social identifications as a surrogate for other markers, such as race and ethnicity, and as a resource for ‘everyday performances of identity’ as a way of bringing together and cohering diverse identities into a collective whole. Thus, identities are related to place making and place making, is an aspect of nation making and citizenship (Osborne 2001). As seen in travel pictures, Victoria’s civic identity is temporally located in the past, at the turn of the nineteenth century, and not the present or future. Visually, Victoria’s community leaders have orchestrated an imperial story for public consumption, one that is represented

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in its public architecture and art, media, monuments, parks, neighbourhoods, and tourist literature. The city narrates its civic identity of place in reference to England; to repeat, it is seen as ‘more English than the English.’ This narrative operates to cohere diverse identities into that of a pseudo-Anglo-Canadianness. Victoria’s colonial chronotype and regimes of representation construct whiteness as its dominant representational system (Ware and Back 2002; Frankenberg 1993; Razack 2002). Despite attempts to fix representational meaning, however, Victoria has always been culturally hybrid. Long a postcolonial ‘third space’ on the edge of empire, many different cultural, ethnic, and racial groups have lived, worked, and settled there. Yet, the city turns its back on Asia and the Pacific, preferring to reference the North Atlantic region, and inserts the local indigenous geography and peoples into its civic narrative in terms of their relationships to white exploration, conquest, and settlement. More recently, Victoria’s civic narrative has colonized geography, ecology, and natural history. Victorians are encouraged to see themselves as caretakers of an uncontaminated, pristine, pure, and wild frontier. Victoria’s middle-class residents are meant to assume a new civic mission – the white man’s burden as caretaker and steward of the natural environment as a legacy of conquest. Victoria’s cultural landscape has material effects on psychic understandings of selves, and experiences of domination and subordination (Shields 2003). ‘Whiteness,’ a racial identity that historians have identified as important in the formation of nationhood, class, and empire (Ware 1992; Roediger 1991; Stoler 1995; McLintock 1995) is now normative, invisible, unspoken, natural, and hegemonic in white settler colonies like Canada, the United States, and Australia. The imagined and idealized subject of citizenship in these sites is white, heterosexual, and masculine (Frankenberg 1993). Cultural resources support hegemonic citizenship, and because symbolic and material resources are unequally distributed, marginalized groups have fewer resources to perform and represent themselves as citizens within the nation (Shields 2003). Indeed, in Victoria, citizens of racialized immigrant backgrounds have access to very few services that are developed specifically to meet their needs. In Vancouver and Toronto, which are more culturally, racially, and ethnically diverse, there are over 200 immigrant-serving agencies and a broad range of ethnically and linguistically specific agencies (OCASI and AMSSA membership profiles, 2001).3 In contrast, Victoria’s two community-based agencies serving the immigrant, refugee, and

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racial minority communities do not even begin to meet the demands. These differences in service provision highlight the importance of theorizing citizenship through locality and caution against generalizing from cosmopolitan immigrant-receiving like Toronto and Vancouver to smaller, more homogeneous, urban centres cities like Victoria. Researchers have yet to fully understand how resistant subjectivities arise under dominant cultural whiteness. This is a fascinating occlusion, given the efforts that the state and its planning officials invest in managing the flow of information, the movement of people across borders and boundaries, and the forms of attachment of newcomers to the nation. Transnational feminist theories question the idea of a single, coherent subjectivity of citizenship that unproblematically presents itself upon arrival within the territorial borders of the nation. These theories view contemporary globalizing processes of migration as generating hybrid, mixed, and blended identities and not the stable, pure, and, uncontaminated identities postulated in modernist theories (Anthias 2002a; Kondo 1996; Kondo 1997). However, much writing on transnationalism has focused on borders, border crossing, and migration, and not on the particularities of glocalization as a subjective and subjectifying experience (Guarnizo and Smith 1998). Yet, the process of glocalization, which refers to the intimate interconnections between local and global, can generate common attachments among members of the community but over a range of individual responses. Different cultural localities can offer a resource to transnational subjects as well as being a source of exclusion and subordination. The Research Study on Racialized Girls in Victoria To further advance my argument, I now turn to my research with racialized minority girls and young women. The study, conducted between 2000 and 2003, employed community development and participatory action research to investigate cultural citizenship, identity formation, and the intersectionality of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and other socially constituted identities. The research team, all members of racialized groups, contacted over a hundred racialized girls and young women between the ages of twelve and twenty-eight years, and from this group, some seventy-five to eighty-five girls and young women from thirteen different backgrounds participated in individual interviews and focus group discussions. A smaller number were involved in

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popular theatre workshops and various advisory committees that helped to organize a girls’ conference called, ‘It’s About Us.’ As part of our community-based research, some members of the research team were involved in providing youth programs through an immigrant settlement agency. Selected excerpts from this research study illustrate how cultural localities constitute or mediate identities of citizenship. In the excerpts the participants, as transnational subjects, identify the types of cultural knowledge and learning that they develop, when growing up in a locale of isolation and marginalization. For example, regarding public recreation services, racialized girls speak directly to a consciousness of exclusion. This might prompt planners to consider the role that they play in the governance and planning of marginality in civil society by consciously and unconsciously excluding racialized girls. For example, when recreation planners determine that they are designing for the public, do they consider the needs of racialized girls and young women? Who belong to the communities that planners attempt to serve? Exactly which public is being addressed in the concept of public space? Do these voices enter into the planning process? Are the long-term effects of omission, however unintended, on girls’ subjective sense of belonging and non-belonging to the nation something that planners think about in their evaluative practices? I draw the first excerpt from a group discussion among the girls and a youth worker and researcher that took place after a trip to Vancouver where some members of the youth group received an award for their anti-racism work. The girls, aged between twelve and fourteen years, reflected on their visit to a neighbourhood community centre in Vancouver, a large multiethnic city with a long history of immigrant settlement. cecilia (14): It was bigger interviewer: Bigger than what? cecilia: It was bigger than here, like they had more space and different kinds of things, like they had more opportunities to get around. bree (13): And there were like, community kids were able to come and play basketball or just games, and we don’t have that kind of stuff. interviewer: In Victoria? bree: In Victoria, yeah. sorah (12): And the gym was like humongous because ... (Youth Focus Group)

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Bree, Sorah, and Cecilia, racialized immigrant girls, observed and noticed that in Vancouver girls had access to a recreation centre that offered a large enough space for youth who looked like them to ‘play basketball or just games.’ In comparison with their reality in Victoria, where they lacked access to such facilities, they remarked, ‘We don’t have that kind of stuff,’ clearly stating that they know that their entitlements as Victoria residents are not the same as those of the Vancouver youth. At a phenomenological level of awareness, they understand that living in Victoria gives them different entitlements of citizenship compared with their counterparts in Vancouver. Their consciousness of this difference and their ability to articulate such differences indicates an understanding of locational difference in cultural contexts. In stating that they did not have a place ‘to just come to’ they further revealed a self-reflective consciousness of their exclusion from publicly funded spaces. In Victoria, racialized minority and immigrant youth do not feel they have access to recreational spaces, unlike their perception of their peers in Vancouver. In Victoria, racialized girls feel as though they have to fit into a dominant public space that does not reflect them or their communities. Their discourses concerning the availability and uses of neighbourhood recreation centres by youth like themselves in Vancouver underscore the cultural knowledge that enables them to make those observations in the first place. Furthermore, their reading of the unequal use of space is informed by their knowledge about racism in everyday lives and their marginalized existence derived from moving through spaces of Victoria where they are constantly reminded of their outsider status. These girls know that publicly funded community recreation centres have a racial and sexual identity, they know that in Victoria these spaces are intended for white, middle-class, Canadian youth, and not for them. If Canadian identity is formed in everyday encounters, they are reminded of their second-class status on a daily basis. Appadurai observes that ‘neighbourhoods are imagined, produced, and maintained against some sort of ground (social, material, environmental) and in addition to producing their own intelligibility ... neighbourhoods as existing contexts are prerequisites for the production of local subjects’ (Appadurai 1996a, 184–5). The mutually constitutive nature of locales and subjective identities brings together different places with different forms of identification with the nation. Throughout our interviews and interactions, twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls demonstrated an ability to read and interpret cultural codes of belong-

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ing and non-belonging in the social and spatial landscape. They spoke knowledgably and insightfully of the chronotypes of their lives by observing not only how recreational spaces are signified, managed, and divided, but also how other sites, such as schools, ethnic community associations, places of religious worship, workplaces, shopping malls, streets, and even their homes are also bounded spheres where they experience inclusion and exclusion. Already by this age, they have acquired a sense of themselves as being made in relation to their cultural, social, and physical surroundings. Young women and girls growing up under dominant whiteness have learned to live with the state’s failure to provide the conditions for their citizenship to be fully realized. Girls must learn to make sense of contradictory discourses and experiences and to come to terms with the betrayal of the promise of liberal multicultural citizenship. The social construction of Canadianness as a white cultural identity is normalized and embodied through a conscious locational a-where-ness/awareness of whiteness as a situated cultural formation (Levine-Rasky 2002). Racialized girls learn the unwritten norms around access to public spaces as rules of belonging and non-belonging, which they translate and incorporate into their sense of inclusion/exclusion to the nation. When confronted with contrasting alternative uses of public space that are inclusive of people ‘like us,’ such as during their trip to Vancouver, they sharpen their perceptual acuity of ‘difference,’ and each time they encounter other anomalies to their experiences of growing up in Victoria, they are engaged in a process of cultural learning and informal citizenship education. Publicly funded institutions and their employees may be unaware of how they are being read by minority youth. This lack of awareness, this perceptual vanishing point, is also reflected in how clients are perceived in decisions about programming. As state agents, planners can play a pivotal role in effecting the ideals of a multicultural society by critically questioning hidden assumptions about clients and by asking how resources are allocated based on those assumptions. Cultural Knowledge of Living under Whiteness Racialized girls’ lived realities challenge liberal ideals about the need to strengthen social cohesion by fostering commonality, shared identity and values, and mutual trust (Jeanotte et al. 2002). Confronting the basis of shared values, trust, and commonality, many research participants spoke of isolation and marginalization and remarked that they

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had never been in a group with others ‘like themselves’ where they could discuss their differences within ‘sameness.’ The opportunity to talk about their difference from one another was, for many, a new experience. In a supportive atmosphere, focus group participants gradually embraced the complexity and richness of their shared, yet unique identities, without reducing themselves to caricatures or stereotypes. They shared stories of growing up as ‘different.’ They laughed, cried, joked, shocked, decentred, and confronted each other. They quickly understood that the categories that brought them together could not be taken as stable, unified, and unifying categories because each of them brought a slightly different experience to the table. But participants also questioned and challenged the provisional labels that had brought them together as South Asian, Chinese, Mixed Race, Queer, Latina, and so on, and queried each other on perceived notions of purity or authenticity. They named hierarchies that circulated among their own communities, positioning themselves and their co-narrators within these subgroups. Yet, as Anthias notes insightfully, ‘whilst identity formation and re-iteration involve narratives of belongingness which may use cultural attributions, this does not mean that identity processes are synonymous with shared cultural practices: identities do not depend solely on cultural practices or beliefs’ (2002b, 23). The research participants demonstrated complex cultural knowledge of their multiple selfpositioning within hierarchies in their own diasporic ethnic communities in Canada as well as their positioning in relation to the dominant Canadian culture. Immersed in a hegemonic regime of white representational practices, participants in all focus groups, across all ages and ethnicities, spoke freely and knowingly about whiteness. Living intimately with whiteness, they had much to say about ‘white kids,’ and about acting, talking, and performing in white spaces. I want to briefly pause on these comments because most discussions of minority identities overlook relational whiteness in the formation of hybrid identities (Mahtani 2001), and because there is a tendency in the literature to romanticize hybridity as a cultural form that may help to transcend racism. The reality is that hybridity and diasporic identities transpire and articulate with white supremacy in white settler societies like Canada. For these racialized girls and women, ‘diversity and ethnicity’ and distrust of government are not what undermines their self-esteem and their attachment to place and nation, but hegemonic whiteness and white supremacy as cultural discourses and practices of exclusion. Tensions

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of belonging/non-belonging, participation/non-involvement, recognition/rejection, and inclusion/exclusion are lived relationally, as they are forced to engage with dominant whiteness as a cultural formation. In this excerpt taken from a focus group with girls of African backgrounds, we hear narratives of talking, acting, and desiring whiteness. The girls are clearly conscious of different layers and hierarchies of desirability within white culture. In their use of nicknames such as Twinks and Skaters, shorthand for facets of a heterogeneous white popular youth culture, they revealed knowledge that allows them to decode and selectively practise different alterities within whiteness. This slang is another unseen indicator of cultural knowledge that relates to living under hegemonic whiteness. These girls indicated that they have to learn to talk and act white to belong at school, but not to talk and act white at home. They have become skilled at interpreting ‘Twinkieish’ behaviour as ‘rich and snobby’ and seeing ‘bimbo’ whiteness as a form of sexualized and classed whiteness that their family members disparage. Older brothers and uncles taunt their mimicry of ‘snobby’ and ‘bimbo’ whiteness so that their younger sisters learn not to masquerade as/within ‘whiteness.’ lari: A twink is like acts, like, they’re all great and stuff, and I don’t know. Have you ever seen Clueless? Have you ever watched that show? It’s like those people; they are, like, considered twinky people. aaliyah: And someone who’s like a bimbo, and doesn’t know anything. Kind of like, ‘Oh my god’ like, ‘ew’ and like, you know. gap: Something you do not want to be labelled as. Aaliyah, Lari, and Gap went on to recount how older male figures in their families tutor them in reading racism and racialization in their environment, and monitor their border encounters with white culture. Older sisters, brothers, uncles, and friends play an active role in mediating their consciousness of who they are as a way of transmitting what they perceive as necessary knowledge for cultural survival. Girls in the African Focus Group, twelve to fourteen years of age, learned knowledge and skills of cultural survival within family settings and interactions outside of the scrutiny of public authorities. This cultural knowledge has developed as a response to living under dominant whiteness in everyday life and popular culture. Participants commented on schools as racialized spaces and the distinctions they make about

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these spaces in terms of whiteness. Their conversation about schools indicates complex and varied gendered and racialized experiences. My sister said she’s like ‘you should have gone to [XXXX] it’s like a better school ‘cause you don’t have to do like day 1, day 2 as different classes.’ And then my brother, like, said, ‘No, I don’t want her to turn into a white girl.’ ‘Cause he’s like, ‘I prefer her to be at [CCCC] because there’s like all different cultures, and you don’t only see white people.’ My sister’s like, ‘No, they’re not all white, people,’ she’s like, ‘they’re skaters,’ and then my cousin like, says, ‘Skaters are white too.’ So then, they had this big argument thing, this morning before I got here. (African Focus Group)

The excerpt indicates a nuanced reading of differences within whiteness. For example, one respondent did not consider ‘skaters’ as white: ‘No, they’re not all white people, they’re skaters,’ and her cousin responded by saying, ‘Skaters are white, too.’ Their insights into whiteness demonstrate how siblings and close relatives share, transmit, contest, and teach cultural knowledge within the family. This knowledge of whiteness remains necessarily open, subject to continuous and ongoing dialogue. Cultural whiteness is understood as a complex cultural formation that is not fixed and closed, but undergoing change. However, none of our respondents mentioned parents or older adults as individuals who possessed useful cultural knowledge in this regard, and many said that they would never speak to their parents about these topics because they just ‘don’t get it.’ While most white feminists would probably disdain the role of older males in mediating young girls’ sense of self-identity, male relatives (who have likely experienced many more incidences of overt racism in their everyday lives than their sisters) take it upon themselves to share cultural knowledge with their younger sisters and cousins about surviving whiteness as a cultural practice. This form of cultural knowledge is related to, but is not the same as confronting overt racism. As counterhegemonic knowledge, critical awareness of whiteness is being transmitted to sisters and cousins to diminish the possibility of a psychic loss of self – self-knowledge that Frantz Fanon, author of Black Skin, White Mask, analyses as a double consciousness – to know yourself through the eyes of the dominant other and to be aware of that gaze of otherness. The ability to read, make sense of, and judge different performances of whiteness is an important skill. Some girls reported that white girls and boys attempt to act ‘non-white’ by appropriating the positive, ‘hip’

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parts of black culture. For example, the black girls indicated that white girls could easily take dance lessons in hip-hop dance, and do their hair in cornbraids so that the ‘special’ attention the black girls used to get for being black and knowing something about black American youth culture is no longer seen as valuable, ‘popular,’ and desirable. Now, ‘white wannabes’ can perform ‘blackness’ by ‘acting and talking’ black, and this form of commodified blackness displaces their limited claim to ‘popularity.’ Girls in the Latina Focus Group reported similar sentiments. Latina girls talked about white girls claiming that they are Latina and wanting to be identified with Latinness, but Latina girls perceived these claims as inauthentic through a number of markers, such as language, accent, body movements, and other bodily performances. What I understand from listening to this talk about cultural appropriation, authenticity, representation, and power is that at the level of lived reality, global cultural flows are not really seamless and free-flowing, but are interpreted by culturally informed subjects in critical ways. Cultural borrowings are imbricated in relations of power. These girls, quite rightly, judge these ‘borrowings’ not as ‘cultural fusion’ but in their situated relationships, as a further displacement, marginalization, and consumption of their cultural capital. Cultural localities, as seen in these excerpts, are much more than facilities like schools or recreation centres. They also include ideologies of race, class, ability, sexuality, and gender that mediate which bodies appear in which spaces, and the consequences that derive from signifying differences in particular ways. Indeed, many feminist geographers view localities as constitutive of gendered, raced, and classed identities that reflect dominant ideologies about who has rights to the city and citizenship (Rose 2002; Massey 1994). In other words, cultural localities are not simply about buildings, roads, and facilities; they also reflect and reproduce ideologies concerning social ‘difference.’ Everyday Racism, Everyday Exclusion The girls in the African Focus Group were candid and vocal about their experiences of racism in school and their different experiences and assessments of schools based on personal experiences and shared readings of negative experiences of racism. ‘At [MMMM] like even the students were like racist. Like she [Aaliyah] was like the only black person there that I saw, and there was like one mixed guy.’ Racism is

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an everyday experience and girls talk about these exclusionary, marginalizing experiences occurring repeatedly, regularly, and early in their life. So like everyone ... I found like there was like people that even felt that I was a wannabe of them, and I was like ‘who are you?’ because I didn’t really understand what they meant by that. But the teachers and just the people there, even the principal, they wouldn’t talk to my parents even, about like when my parents wanted to go talk to them about something like seeing how my brother was doing or whatever. They wouldn’t even talk to them. They tried to avoid them as much as they could, but it was just obvious that they were being racist by just the way they were. (African Focus Group)

Discussants who attended what they jokingly called a ‘ghetto’ school, that is, a lower-income, inner-city school, reported that there was no racism at their schools. Yet, they also told many stories of overt racism in their lives. This contradiction seems to arise because schools promote ‘strong’ multicultural discourses as a way of ‘managing’ diversity. Schools manage ethnic and racial diversity through multicultural curricula and narratives that teach the mantra, ‘we are all the same, we are all equal here, we treat each other equally, we respect each other’s difference, we don’t use racist language,’ and so on. Ironically, and somewhat perversely, these liberal, pluralistic discourses that may be effective for teaching tolerance, also work to erase consciousness of racial discrimination and to deny racism as everyday lived reality. Liberal multicultural curricula equip neither white nor racialized minority students with the tools to confront their experiences of living in a racist culture. Racialized girls have to learn how to decipher the mixed messages that the multicultural curriculum of school sends them. This message clearly says, ‘celebrate your difference, but, don’t acknowledge or speak about the hurt that you experience because of this difference.’ The same teens who stated that everyone gets along, and that there was no racism at their school, also reported being followed around in stores and shopping malls, even when they are with their parents. They spoke of merchants charging them more for goods, and stores closing in their face. Daily occurrences of overt racism are part of their lived reality. Yet, multicultural talk in school and in the wider society denies these experiences. Youth observe that people in Victoria don’t want to know about racism. They report that they acquire the language to talk

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about racism outside of school – in the language of black American teen popular culture: through rap and hip-hop music and videos, in everyday teen language, at work, with friends, and in their ethnic community and family interactions. A major theme that emerged is the degree to which racialized girls living under whiteness in Victoria feel isolated from others like themselves. They do not see themselves reflected back in their everyday interactions at school and in the community, and they become ‘strangers to themselves’ (Oliver 2002). As two of the few black girls in their school, Gap and Lari commented on competing for white girls’ attentions. gap: But before, all my friends would just be white, my brother would be like ‘What is wrong with you?’ He used to make fun of me all the time. He’s like, ‘You have no black friends; you’re like a disgrace.’ I’m like, that’s so mean. He’s really mean. lari: Well, like, at school, there’s these three, I guess, black people in my grade and there’s this ... I’m friends with one of the girls. And there’s a guy and we’re kind of friends, and there’s this other girl, and I was like, trying to be friends with her, just because. I don’t know, I was just trying to be friends with people, but she tried to act like, she’s all that, just because she’s black. And she tries to act like, she’s like, the top, ‘cause there’s not many black people, so she tries act like, she’s like, the best black person there and I’m just like, okay, whatever. (African Focus Group) Spatial separation from others like themselves results in the absence of oppositional solidarity (Tatum 2002). Because there are few opportunities to participate in discourses of Otherness, there is an absence of support for exploring their Otherness on their own terms, and there is no buffer zone from the emotional violence of being the Other. The majority of girls in focus groups had not met each other before, and had certainly not experienced a ‘brown’ space with other young racialized youth until the girls’ conference that the research team organized in July 2002. Many focus group discussions were very emotional as they allowed pent-up feelings to spill out for the first time. Young racialized girls living under hegemonic whiteness reported that they have no one to talk to, when negative experiences occur, and no one who would believe them. Participants expressed a range of feelings of isolation. Those who attended more ethnically mixed schools spoke of feeling

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more supported and less isolated than those who attended schools that were less ethnically diverse. Young women in the Queer Focus Group, who had been out of high school for several years and had time to reflect on their experiences, expressed feelings of isolation most clearly and painfully. In hindsight, they hold their school counsellors accountable for not being there for them, and any school counsellor who might be reading this article might ask, ‘Is that me?’4 hazel (27, Canadian-born): It wasn’t as though you could go to the counsellor either. We knew in our group of friends, we knew that was the last place you went, that they would not understand where you’re coming from and that they would tell your parents, and they would develop this file about you. ranya (27, immigrant): The counsellor made me cry. I’d go to the counsellor and I’d just sit there. It was this white guy. I’d start crying and then I’d leave. Basically, he was trying to help me with my family troubles. My parents. He didn’t really know what to do ... Like, he was trying to get me to tell him what the problem was, and I was, ‘No way.’ (Queer Focus Group) Transnational Subjectivities and Cultural Knowledge Feminist transnational cultural theories have begun theorizing the unevenness in cultures and identities of place to account more fully for mutability and multiple determinations of subjectivities across national boundaries by paying particular attention to scattered hegemonies of power (Grewal and Kaplan 1994). There is growing recognition among these scholars that different times and places produce different gender and racialized systems and subjects (Friedman 1998, 3; Grewal and Kaplan 1994, 1–36). Migrant women and girls’ identities are not shaped solely or even primarily by the host society’s hegemonic national culture. Under current conditions of capital globalization, information technologies, transportation, and communication developments, which have intensified compression of time and distance, identity formation is also the outcome of the bounded territorial nation, and simultaneously, other hegemonic cultural systems ‘back home,’ including diasporic, relocated homelands. The shift in analytical strategy is subtle, but important. In examining localities and situatedness, however, the local cannot be

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simply juxtaposed and opposed to the global and extra-local, for the two are intertwined. If specific lived environments produce their own contexts of alterity (Appadurai 1996b, 43), what must be determined is, how and in what ways? I suggest that racialized migrant girls undertake the work of producing subjectivities in the context of specific localities, or life-worlds made up everyday interactions with close friends, family members, teachers, students, and other significant individuals. In other words, transnational citizenship identities are formed in the quotidian crucible of everyday lives. Floya Anthias (2002a) has suggested that the concept of translocational positionality should replace an outdated notion of collective identity, such as territorially based communal ethnic identity, to capture the mobile, relational narratives of location expressed by young Cypriots in her research. I found similarities in this group of narrators. In the following excerpt, the extent to which young racialized girls in our focus group discussions possess everyday knowledge about transnational contexts of identity is revealed. Two girls of Sri Lankan background, experience Canadianness and Sri Lankanness as mobile, transnational, transregional, and diasporic. Their cultural identities of citizenship are based on multiple identifications, including emotional ties to extended families. After several circuits and waves of migration, they do not imagine Sri Lanka when they think of their Sri Lankan identity, but Scarborough, Ontario. They feel most ‘Sri Lankan’ in Scarborough because they derive their only knowledge of their family and the ethnic community from their emotional ties to that place within Canada. Ok, well, I have ‘Toronto’ here (in Canada). And, Toronto, the city is a huge part of my life. This sounds kind of silly but my parents first moved from Sri Lanka to Toronto, they lived there ... The Tamil population in Scarborough is really high. So, I feel isolated from that. [Living in Victoria] has brought us away from the kind of life they are living over there – all my cousins, my aunts and uncles; when we go there, its just like being somewhere else. I don’t even feel like I’m in Canada even, I feel like I’m in Sri Lanka. When I’m in Toronto, I feel more Sri Lankan when I’m there ... It’s like your environment. You are influenced by that. (South Asian Focus Group)

A neighbourhood, a street, a set of houses and stores, and extended families located in Scarborough and Toronto symbolize Sri Lankan

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diasporic identity for these girls offering deterritorialized and reterritorialized groundings for ethnic identity in relation to their lives in Victoria, ‘When I’m in Toronto, I feel more Sri Lankan.’ Legalistic and political concepts based on monolithic and homogeneous geopolitical and territorially based ideas of ethnic nationalism, and recent political-economic discourses on transnationalism and globalization, seem unable to capture the complexity of these attachments (see Pieterese 2002). In addition, considering recent anxieties over the perceived threat to Canada’s national identity from immigration and multiculturalism, their narratives indicate that for them, Canadian cities have already been transformed into transnational, transcultural locales. To our interlocutors, ethnically diverse Canadian cities play a crucial role in signifying Sri Lankan Canadianness. Given these developments, policy-makers and planners must rethink how they understand diversity and policies that are derived from limited understandings of diversity – for example, the idea that ethnic concentrations in Canada’s major cities have little relevance to other less diverse cities. Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal are strongly connected to less diverse cities across Canada and offer effective resources that strengthen emotional ties. Instantaneous communication through the Internet and long distance telephone calls makes it possible to share events occurring in other locales in real time. Global civil society may exist on an emotional level long before it is culturally, socially, and politically recognizable. Rather than idealizing and abstracting global civil society and emptying it of concrete social relationships, it is crucial to retain a sense of the emotionality and materiality of the local and personal. While some may perceive a hybrid, multiethnic, multiracial urban heteroglossia as a hoped-for utopia, for others, such as these young racialized girls and women who live among ‘thin’ diversity elsewhere in Canada and who are well versed in transcultural border knowledge, these cities already exist. Cosmopolitan cities in Canada provide a rich resource for forming translocational identities within the borders of the nation. Our respondents do not look to overseas national ‘homelands’ as a resource for ‘authenticating’ identity, but to thriving, transplanted, localizing ethnic diasporic communities within Canada. For example, many girls talked about going to Vancouver or Toronto to experience a ‘fuller’ sense of belonging and fitting in. Ironically, their ties to an imagined Canada are being strengthened, while the dominant majority feel their imagined community is being threatened. As transplanted, translocal

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communities, their feelings of attachment to their communities within the borders of the nation have been strengthened. These new forms of bonding help to support an emerging multicultural national identity. Transplanted ethnic communities offer alternative representational resources for imagining selves as Canadians through signifiers drawn from sources beyond official discourses and symbols of dominant nationalisms. Current debates on social cohesion seem unable to capture the energy and robustness of these emerging and newly synthesized bonds that have already re-created, readapted, and transformed the Canadian landscape. A view of citizenship as cultural and productive, of being made as selves and self-making, makes it possible to investigate racialized minority girls’ negotiations of cultural forces in their own lived environments. It opens the possibility of seeing strategic and tactical manoeuvres in identity construction. This vantage point offers a more nuanced and sensitive angle of vision through which researchers can understand the complex process of citizenship identity formation as a mutually transformative process of cultural locales and subjectivities. In stories and narratives of being and thinking Canadianness and Otherness study participants strategically and intentionally presented different aspects of themselves in relation to their changing cultural contexts and relationships. They invented their own strategies of resistance to contest being interlocuted as Other. Yet, these strategies of resistance are also conditioned and mediated illustrating the nature of citizenship identity formation as paradoxical and contradictory. tania: I was just going to say, for me; I love it when people ask me where I am from. I’m so proud of where I am from, and if they ask me where I am from, I’m like, ‘I’m from Chile!’ (Small laugh) stephanie: Get it in their heads. I am Chilean, yes, even though I was born here, I am Chilean. I am full-blooded Chilean that is what you want them to know ... I am not Canadian. Ok, I’m proud to be Canadian but I am more proud to be Chilean, because that is what you are made of. Chilean, I say Chilean, born here, Chilean. sue: I told them I’m 50/50, 50 Canadian. sarah: I pretty much say, I always say I am from Mexico; I’m Spanish, blah blah. My parents are like, ‘No your not.’ stephanie: I don’t feel Canadian, at all ... I just say ... no, I say that I was born here. Born here but I am Chilean. When you are around your family, home, and they teach you everything, you feel more a

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part of that, and you feel that more. Yeah. I am more Chileana than anything because I was there for months, in Chile. And, you discover things about yourself, your family and that is what makes you more, and if you know that, you are. Tania: They accustom you. (Latina Focus Group) Stephanie and Tania both are notable in their insistence on desiring to be ‘Chilean.’ However, this insistence may be linked to their particular historical trajectories as children of political refugees. They tell us that their parents were ‘politicos’ who were very involved in liberation struggles in Chile. We get a hint of the effects of parents’ discourses of remembering and memory on their children’s lives in the phrase, ‘they accustom you.’ One of the intergenerational consequences on children of parents’ post-remembering of the trauma of fleeing violence and oppression is a heightened identification to an idealized and romanticized vision of the ‘homeland’ and its liberation. ‘Post-memory is a powerful and very particular form of memory precisely because its connection to its object or source is mediated not through recollection but through an imaginative investment and creation’ (Hirsch 1999, 22).5 During the focus group, Stephanie and Tania spoke passionately about what they knew about their family’s experience of torture in the stadium in Santiago, Chile. Although they had only returned to Chile once in their lives, they expressed a strong emotional attachment to Chile – another Wolf (1997) and Westwood and Phizacklea (2000) have named ‘emotional citizenship.’ Feeling Canadian and Being Seen as Canadian Identities, as Stuart Hall (1990) reminds us, are always in a state of being and becoming. Identities are not a biological given but are formed in relationship to how others view us. When Ev, the interviewer, asked the girls, ‘Do you think other people see you as Canadian?’ Gap replied, ‘No.’ Lari went on to say she hates that and talked about everyday racist stereotypes that exclude her from seeing herself and being seen as ‘Canadian.’ Aaliyah agreed and described how people ask her if she lives in an African hut, and why she has a long neck. ‘Do you wear those big ring things around your neck or something?’ ... People ask you like the weirdest questions sometimes. But they always ask me like – when they find out that I’m not born here they’re actually surprised.

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Discourses of exclusion are an everyday occurrence for these girls and they describe the questions people ask about their identity as ‘dumb.’ I think they’re just like dumb questions. I mean like why would you ... if you see a white person its’ not like you’re going up there like, oh, when did you move from your Europe or whatever? ’Cause most people originated from there. You’re not going to go ask them that, so it’s just like a dumb thing.

Positioned as proto or probationary citizens, racialized girls and women in our study understand that they do not really belong, despite holding a passport or birth certificate that says ‘Canadian.’ At a young age, they had already formed an ambivalent attachment to the nation. This ambivalence translates into disinterest in participating in formal political processes, as they get older. Study findings emphasize the need to move away from culturally essentialistic ‘cultural clash’ or simplistic acculturation stages as explanations that do not acknowledge heterogeneity, complexity, and tactics of living and playing, inside and outside, between and across, multiple cultural borders, or that fail to acknowledge structural limits to individual choices. In response to living under a representational regime of whiteness as a dominant and localized cultural formation of national identity, young racialized women and girls craft heterogeneous subject identities of citizenship. In any given civil society, there will be a diversity of subjectivities being formed in different cultural locales, and many of these subject identities may not conform to majority expectations, or if they do, there may be other subject identities that are also available to them which are presented in different spaces within a cultural locale. Conclusion This chapter reveals situated cultural knowledge and learning projects of racialized girls and young women who grow up under dominant cultural whiteness, and who observe their absence from the public sphere. Racialized girls and women possess considerable knowledge to survive cultural exclusion and marginalization and have much to teach planners about strategies of flexible citizenship and accommodation to change. Respondents clearly know what many analysts, policy-makers, and planners refuse to acknowledge – that living with, in, and through

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difference alongside dominant whiteness requires the strategic performance of whiteness as a cultural identity while also deploying plural identities and performances of hybridity – acts and utterances – that draw on other cultural symbols and knowledge. On the ground, enacting multicultural citizenship is hard strategic work. Therefore, reading, interpreting, and representing racialized women and girls’ on-stage performances of ‘Canadianness’ as an indicator of their adjustment and integration into the dominant national culture would be to seriously misinterpret and simplify the complexity of their lives. As a bridge between the state and civil society, planners play a critical role in helping to shape cultural locales and the resources and ideologies of citizenship contained within them, and ultimately, racialized girls’ identities and their sense of belonging and non-belonging to the nation. Democratically oriented planners must ask themselves how their practice might help to support exclusion or inclusion when making decisions about the needs and futures of civil society. They must ask whether they possess the knowledge and skills to address the concerns of racialized girls and young women, among those most marginalized in democratic governing processes. How do they interpret their presence in cultural formations of whiteness? Do they possess selfawareness about hegemonic whiteness? Do they facilitate discourses of injustice and misrepresentation by perpetuating dominant stereotypes about ‘difference’? An ethical response to these important questions can be gained by acknowledging and seeking access to the types of knowledge and experiences that I have shown is being generated in the streets, schools, recreation centres, ethnic halls, families, and social networks – the civil societies of diversely constituted cities. Planners interested in democratic planning and governance will achieve their goals only by taking steps to involve themselves in the new challenges facing emerging multicultural cities without overgeneralizing from the major metropolitan centres. In the introduction to this volume, the editors questioned how planners and governments can support shifts in decision-making to poor and marginalized members of communities and enhance grassroots democracy. If civil societies are incubators of social knowledge needed to foster social change, democratic planners can nourish the conditions for grassroots democracy by supporting and validating the cultural knowledges of marginalized girls and young women as a resource for fostering social inclusion and social justice. Yet, the machinery of popular culture and government, largely animated by traditional planners,

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continues to accommodate differences from the norm only on a special case basis through ad hoc actions, one-off initiatives, and pilot studies. An understanding of the intersectionality of race, class, and gender, as these identities and classifications are reworked under contemporary globalizing conditions, paradoxically linked and delinked from territorial locations, is needed or attempts to foster inclusive citizenship will flounder. Continuing to deny the creative, inventive crafting of selves out of syncretic resources will continue the ongoing expulsion of racialized female and male youth to the margins of the national portrait. Furthermore, multiple national attachments and loyalties need to be understood not as destabilizing social cohesion: the national community is also undergoing transformations. Multiple transnational emotional attachments of citizenship suggest possibilities of pluralistic attachments to an already diverse multicultural nation. New diasporic, transnational family and community networks in Canada’s major cities of Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal operate as nodes in webs of farflung relationships spread over small communities elsewhere in Canada. For the younger generation who have never, or only briefly, visited their parents’ homelands, knowledge of ethnic/national cultures is derived from the hybrid cultures of diasporic communities located in Scarborough, Ontario; Richmond, British Columbia; or other Canadian urban and suburban locations and not in ‘foreign’ lands. Alternative metaphors and themes to reposition, augment, and supplant the current popularity in spatial metaphors of homelessness, exile, transience, and migrancy are needed to capture the multiple experiences of racialized Canadian-born and immigrant youth. Metaphors have weight and consequences and are not neutral and innocent in the workings of power. As Anthias (2002a) suggests, there is a need to incorporate concepts of translocationality, extra-territoriality, localisms, and relational positionality into existing frameworks to account for the situatedness and mobility of subjects and localities undergoing global transformations. Planners interested in democratic governance must begin challenging their role in the mobilization of state machineries of citizenship in other than exclusionary ways. Alexander and Mohanty observe, ‘The idea of universal citizenship (for us, [as women of color] citizenship which is defined through and across difference), and the way the state mobilizes a citizenship machinery which excludes and marginalizes particular constituencies on the basis of their “difference” in capitalist

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patriarchies ... is based on, very particular gender-, race-, class-, and sexually-specific contours’ (1997, xxxi). Given that the representation of racialized girls and women as culturally dependent victims is perpetrated by many champions of social justice, including democratically inclined planners with white, middleclass, and heterosexual privilege, Alexander and Mohanty further call for challenging ‘the state machinery which positions women of colour as dependents, and therefore, morally inferior. [This represents] one of the most important ethical, intellectual, and political problems for liberal and socialist feminist movements’ (ibid.). This chapter challenges democratically oriented planners to recognize the exclusion of racialized minority girls and women from public spaces in the city, to acknowledge and value the situated cultural knowledge that they have developed to negotiate multiple transnational, transcultural social worlds, and through learning from this knowledge, work to decentre hegemonic knowledge and subjectivities. Finally, the narratives examined in this chapter support and reiterate Nancy Fraser’s (2003) demand for a need to reframe theories of justice along three concurrent dimensions: the politics of representation, the politics of distribution, and the cultural politics of recognition. To continue privileging the dimension of political economy and distributive issues while subordinating cultural questions is to seriously impoverish the theoretical and practical tools needed to achieve a more inclusive, just, and democratic society.

NOTES 1 By approaching citizenship through culture, as opposed to philosophy, ethics, or law, feminist transnational and cultural studies approaches to citizenship and belonging are better able to account for mobile identities that move across national borders and boundaries (Ong 1999; Friedman 1998; Grewal and Kaplan 1994; Anthias, Yuval-Davis 1992; Yuval-Davis 2000; Alexander and Mohanty 1997). Several feminist researchers are beginning to investigate racialized girls’ and young women’s relationships to citizenship and democracy through ethnographic studies of identity formation through transnational feminist frameworks (Mahtani 2001; AmitTalai and Wulf, 1997; Coombes and Brah 2000; Handa 2003; Pratt 1997; Keaton 1999; Kelly 1998; Dwyer 1998). 2 Alexander and Mohanty (1997) argue that categories such as citizenship

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and social cohesion that are based on an idea of citizenship that assumes a white, masculine, consuming, tax-paying, citizen-subject provides the basis for a series of exclusions based on racialized women’s “difference” from this invented subject of definitional citizenship. They call for an explicitly anti-colonialist feminist democracy to counter Western capitalist patriarchy as the sole basis for thinking about democratic possibilities. 3 This information was obtained from the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI) web site (www.ocasi.org/index.php] and the affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies of BC (AMSSA) [http://www.amssa.org/]. Last viewed 30 June 2006). 4 See Schick (2002) for insights into teacher training and whiteness. 5 I am indebted to Geraldine Pratt for bringing Hirsch’s work to my attention.

REFERENCES Alexander, M.J., and C.T. Mohanty. (1997). ‘Introduction: Genealogies, Legacies, Movements.’ In M.J. Alexander and C.T. Mohanty, eds., Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies. New York: Routledge, xii–xiii. Anthias, F. (2002a). ‘Where Do I Belong? Narrating Collective Identity and Translocational Positionality.’ Ethnicities 2(4): 491–514. – (2002b). ‘Diasporic Hybridity and Transcending Racisms: Problems and Potential.’ In F. Anthias and C. Lloyd, eds., Rethinking Anti-Racisms: From Theory to Practice. London and New York: Routledge, 22–43. Anthias, F., N. Yuval-Davis, and H. Cain. (1992). Racialized Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class and the Anti-racist Struggle. London and New York. Routledge. Appadurai, A. (1996a). ‘Sovereignity without Territoriality: Notes for a Postnational Geography.’ In P. Yaeger, ed., The Geography of Identity. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 40–58. – (1996b). Modernity at Large: Cultural dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Coombes, A.E., and A. Brah. (2000). ‘Introduction: The conundrum of “Mixing.”’ in A. Brah and A.E. Coombes, eds., Hybridity and Its Discontents: Politics, Science, Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1–16. Dei, G., B. Hall, and D. Rosenberg, eds. (2000). Indigenous Knowledges in Global Contexts: Multiple Readings of Our World. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Dwyer, C. (1998). ‘Contested Identities: Challenging Dominant Representa-

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tions of Young British Muslim Women.’ In T. Skelton and G. Valentine, eds., Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures. London and New York: Routledge, 50–65. Frankenberg, R. (1993). White Women, Race Matters. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Friedman, S.S. (1998). Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Grewal, I., and C. Kaplan, eds. (1994). Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Guarnizo, L.E., and M.P. Smith. (1998). ‘The Locations of Transnationalism.’ In M.P. Smith and L.E. Guarnizo, eds., Transnationalism from Below. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 3–34. Hall, S. (1990). ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora.’ In J. Rutherford, ed., Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. Lawerence and Wishart, 222–36. – (1992). ‘New Ethnicities.’ In J. Donald and A. Rattansi, eds., ‘Race,’ Culture, Difference. London: Sage, 252–9. – (1996). ‘Introduction: Who Needs “Identity”?’ In S. Hall and P. Du Gay, eds., Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage, 1–17. – (1997). ‘The Centrality of Culture: Notes on the Cultural Revolutions of Our Time.’ In Thompson, ed., Media and Cultural Regulation. London: Sage, 207–38). Handa, A. (2003). Of Silk Saris and Mini-skirts : South-Asian Girls Walk the TightRope of Culture. Toronto: Women’s Press. Hirsch, M. (1999). ‘Projected Memory: Holocaust Photographs in Personal and Public Fantasy.’ In M. Ball, J. Crewe, and L. Spitzer, eds., Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. Hanover: University Press of New England, 2–23. Jeannotte, S.M., D. Stanley, R. Pendakur, B. Jamieson, M. Williams, and A. Aizlewood. (2002). Buying In or ‘Dropping Out’: The Public Policy Implications of Social Cohesion Research. Hull, QC: Strategic Research and Analysis, Department of Canadian Heritage. Keaton, T.D. (1999). ‘Muslim Girls and the “Other France”: An Examination of Identity Construction.’ Social Identities 5(1): 47–95. Kelly, J. (1998). Under the Gaze: Learning to Be Black in White Society. Halifax: Fernwood. Kondo, D. (1996). ‘The Narrative Production of “Home,” Community, and Political Identity in Asian American Theater.’ In S. Lavie and T. Swedenberg, eds., Displacement, Diaspora’s and Geographies of Identity. Durham and New York: Duke University Press, 97–117. – (1997). About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theater. New York: Routledge.

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Levine-Rasky, C., ed. (2002). Working through Whiteness: International Perspectives. New York: State University of New York Press. Mahtani, M. (2001). ‘Racial ReMappings: The Potential of Paradoxical Space.’ Gender, Place and Culture 8(3): 299–305. McLintock, A. (1995). Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context. New York: Routledge. Oliver, K., ed. (2002). The Portable Kristeva. New York: Columbia University Press. Ong, A. (1996). ‘Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making: Immigrants Negotiate Racial and Cultural Boundaries in the United States. Current Anthropology 37(5): 737–63. – (1999). ‘Introduction.’ In A. Ong, ed., Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1–26. Osborne, B.S. (2001). ‘Landscapes, Memory, Monuments and Commemoration: Putting Identity in Its Place.’ Canadian Ethnic Studies 33(3). Pieterese, N. (2002). ‘Hybridity, So What? The Anti-Hybridity Backlash and the Riddle of Recognition.’ In S. Lash, and A. Featherstone, eds., Recognition and Difference London: Sage, (pp. 219–45. Pratt, G. (1997). ‘Re-placing Race: Reactions to “Brown Skinned White Girls.”’ Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 4(3): 361–4. Probyn, E. (2003). ‘The Spatial Imperative of Subjectivity.’ In K. Anderson, M. Domosh, N. Thrift, and S. Pile, eds., Handbook of Cultural Geography. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 290–9. Razack, S.H., ed. (2002). Race, Space, and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society. Toronto: Between the Lines. Roediger, D. (1991). The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. London and New York: Verso. Rose, G. (2002). ‘Conclusion.’ In L. Bondi et al., eds., Subjectivities, Knowledges, and Feminist Geographies Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 253–8. Shields, R. (2003). ‘Intersections in Cultural Policy: Geographical, Socioeconomic, and Other Markers of Identity.’ Canadian Ethnic Studies 25(3): 150–64. Schick, C. (2002). ‘Keeping the Ivory Tower White: Discourses of Racial Domination.’ In Razack, ed. Stasiulis, D. (2002). ‘The Active Child Citizen: Lessons from Canadian Policy and the Children’s Movement.’ Citizenship Studies 6(4): 507–37. Stoler, A.L. (1995). Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Tatum, B.D. (2002). Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations about Race, 5th ed. New York: Basic Books.

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Ware, V. (1992). Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History. London and New York: Verso. Ware, V., and L. Back. (2002). Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics and Culture. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Westwood, S., and A. Phizacklea. (2000). Trans-nationalism and the Politics of Belonging. London and New York: Routledge. Wolf, D. (1997). ‘Family Secrets: Transnational Struggles among Children of Filipino Immigrants.’ Sociological Perspectives 40(3): 457–82. Yuval-Davis, N. (2000). ‘Citizenship, Territoriality and the Gendered Construction of Difference.’ In E. Isin, eds., Democracy, Citizenship and the Global City. London and New York: Routledge, 172–88.

3 Creating Digital Public Space: Implications for Deliberative Engagement penny gurstein

Increasing disillusionment and the divide between elected officials, bureaucrats, and citizens are major impediments to progressive governance. In the face of growing cynicism, and inequalities of power and political voice, how can public deliberations be effective and ‘participatory planning a pragmatic reality rather than an empty ideal’? (Forester 1999)? Decision-making that is deliberative and that recognizes the complexity of public issues – including the socio-economic, cultural, and environmental contexts in which they are embedded – and the need for a framework to engage citizens in these issues, is a prerequisite to more livable, equitable, and sustainable communities. Deliberative decision-making supports effective citizen participation by addressing the structural barriers to citizen participation and good leadership, by focusing on increasing accountability within the system, and by preparing citizens to participate. The Institute for Global Ethics (2003) identifies this as the creation of a ‘public space’ through an understanding of the benefits, drawbacks, and trade-offs of a public issue. Information and communication technologies are now being seen as tools that can promote citizen input and create this public space. E-democracy is typified as the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) or digital technologies to create strategies to enable more active citizen participation within the political and governance processes of local communities, nations, and globally (Clift 2004). E-democracy has the potential to assist in redefining local and global communities and governance. To be effective, however, e-democracy cannot just be a technologically deterministic approach; it needs to consider the range of factors that affect deliberative decision-making. Who has control of the information (i.e., who sends information to

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whom) affects the process. Case studies of planning and governance practices where ICTs have been incorporated demonstrate the complexity of the practices precipitated by them and raise several questions. What can global connectivity contribute to community-building and strengthening civil society? How can ICT-enabled tools further social learning? Where are these tools positioned in models of participation? Social learning focuses on the learning that occurs within a social context. Solutions to complex societal problems require the engagement of citizens in dialogue and decision-making. To further the development of innovative solutions, diverse stakeholders need to share experiences, learn together, and contribute to decisions. Digital ‘public space’ may contribute to the capacity-building needed to turn ideas and plans into action, but it may also create new inequities in access and power distribution. How people, aided by ICT tools, negotiate through the multiple agendas of the various stakeholders is a critical component of the social learning process. Digital media encompass a range of interactive multimedia methods and tools in educating, informing, and assisting the public in decisionmaking on governance and planning issues. There are now numerous modes of digital communication between individuals, government institutions, corporations, and the global society. Some of these interactions allow for decentralized information-gathering and decisionmaking, while others reinforce centralized and hierarchical processes. Interactive multimedia allow the integration of text, maps, drawings, photographs, video, and sound (among other types of information) in a manner that creates links between information and allows for input from users. Digital technologies offer the possibility of a new environment for public communication, which is interactive, relatively inexpensive, and unconstrained by time or distance. Just as ICTs have had profound effects on the ways that people work, shop, bank, find news, and communicate with friends and families, they could also potentially establish new modes of interaction between citizens and remote institutions of governance. However, more thought needs to be directed to how new technologies can provide support for policy changes to help shape desired futures in a purposive manner (Graham and Marvin 2000). Van de Donk and Tops (1995), in an overview of the literature, characterize the debate about the relationship between ICT applications and democracy as represented by George Orwell and ancient Athens. The Orwellian position sees the use of ICTs as a way for government

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bureaucracies to extend political and organizational control and surveillance, while in the Athenian vision ICT applications have the ability to promote decentralization, transparency, and freedom of information, and to make representative democracies more responsive. Instead of these opposing visions, Van de Donk and Tops argue for a much more nuanced understanding of the relationship between ICTs and democracy through empirical research. Avgerou and Walsham (2000) question the adequacy of a narrow technological orientation where technologies are seen as discrete, valuefree instruments that do not influence culture and are not influenced by it. Instead Akrich argues that the interaction of technology and people results in ‘a process of reciprocal definition, in which objects are defined by their subjects and subjects by their objects’ (1992, 222). Without an understanding of these complex interactions and the socioeconomic and cultural contexts in which they are embedded, technological tools will be ineffective. The following discussion delineates the intersections between public engagement and digital public space and critiques the discourses that frame this relationship. Examples of tools for e-government and edemocracy were chosen to convey the range of possibilities for civic engagement. An assessment of one particular tool was done to understand the limitations of such strategies when trying to actualize them. I argue that ICT-enabled programs have the potential, as a set of tools, to open up new horizons for people who hitherto have been left out but, as with any technology, it is how and for what purposes the tools are created that determine their effectiveness for participatory purposes. The socially constructed imprint that is placed on the tool affects its use. Information technology (IT) tools are socially constructed manifestations of existing power relationships and, therefore, subject to the same constraints. The use of digital technologies in public processes of deliberation and consensus-building could help us to expand our choices about how to live well and sustainably, and manage our coexistence in cities with increasingly diverse populations and increasingly dispersed attachments. We should, however, be cautious about the extent to which ICTs can be beneficial in these processes. Deliberative Public Engagement Coleman and Gøtze (2001) submit that if a crisis of democratic legitimacy and accountability is to be averted new relationships must emerge

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between citizens and governments. Putnam (2000), among others, argues that a decline in membership in civic networks and organizations has resulted in a significant drop in political engagement. This decline is attributed to a myriad of reasons, including the rise of highly privatized lifestyles and associated habits of consumerism, and frustration with the bureaucratization and fragmentation of the public sector in the welfare state (Corrigan and Joyce 2000). When people have community connections they become engaged in civic and wider political affairs. When these habits diminish, political commitment weakens, as governments are perceived to be distant from the life of citizens. The waning of attachments to these institutions has resulted in the emergence of new forms of social capital, based on material and symbolic resources linked to a network of social relationships within communities that is helping to redefine democratic action. The concept of civil society is core to the notion of deliberative public engagement. A civil society ‘embraces a public process at all levels where policies, legislation and regulations are crafted, implemented and revised’ (Cohen 1995). Friedmann defines civil society as ‘those social organizations, associations and institutions that exist beyond the sphere of direct supervision and control by the state’ (1998, 21). He argues that civil society is a re-emerging force in the construction of a new citizenship that reorients public value away from consumer society and towards human relationships. Friedmann contends that civil society groups are becoming a dynamic force in the political arena, reclaiming their members’ social rights as citizens. The work of the planner in supporting this movement is to be ‘passionately engaged in a transformative politics for inclusion, opportunity for self-development and social justice’ (ibid., 34). This transformative politics speaks to the work of all planners and other community leaders who understand citizenship as inseparable from human development. Friedmann further articulates a new concept of insurgent citizenship, which technology has freed up to occur at a range of scales (2002, 86). Habermas (1984) views open communication as central to democratic processes. Human survival as a species depends on communication. He argues for an undistorted and transparent communication, communicative action, which allows equal opportunity for all participants in a social discourse to initiate and sustain communication. This form of communication is intended to achieve understanding and uncover truths that can lead to public action. For communicative action to

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be effective processes must be inclusive, all participants must reach consensus, and the discourse must be authentic and truthful. The ‘bourgeois public sphere’ is central to this theory as a locale where citizens can engage in debate (Habermas 1991). In this public space all citizens, including the most marginalized, can understand and debate issues. It is in these public deliberations that legitimate law making in deliberative democracy can arise based on trade-offs between consensus decision-making and representative democracy. Key elements of deliberative participation include respectful dialogue, advocacy, critical education, and cooperative organizing. Methods of deliberative engagement encourage citizens to examine, discuss, and evaluate competing values and policy options. While polls, referenda, and government consultations do not require respondents to have access to any information before they state an opinion, deliberative engagement would include access to comprehensive and balanced information, an agenda open to revision or expansion by the deliberating citizens, time to consider issues expansively, lack of manipulation or coercion, a clear framework for discussion, inclusive participation by those affected by or concerned about the issue being considered, interaction between participants, and recognition of differences between participants, but rejection of status-based prejudice (Coleman and Gøtze 2001). Communicative action theory has been criticized because of its apparent inability to overcome societal inequalities based on gender, race, and class. Fraser argues that ‘declaring a deliberative arena to be a space where extant status distinctions are bracketed and neutralized is not sufficient to make it so’ (1991, 115). Flyvberg (1998; 2000) calls for Foucault’s consideration of power to be brought more firmly into an understanding of deliberative engagement. Lefebvre (1991) maintains that ideologies are embedded and inscribed in our social spaces and that these spaces are used as a means to control, dominate, and regulate social practices. Foucault (1977), in his analysis of institutionalized spaces and practices, stresses that techniques of surveillance and control are used in institutional settings to order power relations. Fischler (2000) argues that a consideration of power relations within communicative action would place more emphasis on what creates the mental and social relations of a discourse rather than the specific utterances in a discourse. Innes (1995), who is a leading proponent of the communicative approach to stakeholder participation, concurs that problem defi-

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nitions and assumptions are more important than participants’ specific utterances in a planning process. According to Forester (1989), critical and participatory approaches to planning involve ‘restructuring strategies’ that address the dynamics of power and powerlessness and combine practical action with political vision. Thus, to expand the language of planning to include multiple publics in decision-making, we need to enhance (1) the capacities of community-based approaches, which requires community-building, and (2) the dialogue between the state and civil society, which requires more participatory approaches. Dorcey (2004) analyses three waves of citizen participation starting from the 1960s. The fear that intertwined environmental, social, and economic problems are growing more grave and seriously threaten global sustainability has focused concerns about participation in the larger context of governance systems and the varied potential roles within them of governments, business, and civil society. The first wave, from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s, involved the use of a variety of communication and participatory techniques including information brochures, media releases, citizen surveys, public hearings, workshops, task forces, and advisory committees to involve citizens in social and environmental concerns. These techniques were soon met with cynicism and perceived to be time-consuming and costly, and unsuccessful in resolving issues. The second wave, in the second half of the 1980s, focused on sustainable development and the use of negotiation, facilitation, and mediation techniques involving multiple-stakeholder, conflict-resolution, and consensus building processes. By the mid-1990s, the hugely ambitious innovations were once again being questioned: they were perceived to be too lengthy and costly and of limited value in terms of reaching and implementing agreements that met the interests of the diversity of stakeholders. At the beginning of the twenty-first century a third wave of participatory processes emphasizes the fundamental strategic importance of the revitalization of democratic governance processes in fostering improved understanding of sustainability problems and choices, and in effecting change. Without fundamental changes in governance systems, citizen participation will continue to be limited. Following the recognition of the structural impediments posed by hierarchical institutions, the introduction of tools that foster communication to and from governing bodies may become important conduits to further participation in decision-making. In this way, the

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thrust of participation needs to consider how to engage in mutually beneficial dialogue the public and the governing institutions elected by them. The tools that foster digital public space, because of their ability to create interactivity, potentially could be a significant part of fostering that dialogue. However, it is still to be seen whether these tools can enhance the community-building dialogue, as articulated by Forester (1989), or the bourgeois public space (Habermas 1991) that is needed to bridge the state and civil society and the dynamics of power and powerlessness. Digital Public Space The Internet is seen as providing an opportunity for multiple voices to be involved in the public arena. Heng and de Moor, who contend that the Internet potentially provides users with a platform for open discussion, debate, and exchange of information free of power relations, view it as a ‘technological infrastructure for communicative empowerment of social actors, an important focus in Habermas’s work’ (2003, 336). However, the Internet since its inception has been a blend of military strategy, corporate power, and countercultural innovation (Hafner and Markoff 1991). This has resulted in the proliferation of both bottom-up initiatives and commercial enterprises. A number of directions in ICTs that have application to planning and governance are currently being explored. These include the following: information technologies for analysis (e.g., GIS [Geographical Information Systems]); for modelling and visualization (e.g., CAD [ComputerAided Design]); for communication (e.g., ‘real time’ interactive technologies); for online community (e.g., initiatives to foster community linkages); for public participation and decision-making (e.g., initiatives for public participation and community-based design over the Internet); for online planning research (e.g., joint collaboration and geographically dispersed planning research); for service delivery (e.g., public administration and delivery of services); for information dissemination or public access (e.g., making information accessible through Web portals); and for technology transfer both locally and internationally. Governments are recognizing the importance of providing conduits to ensure access. For example, a Canadian initiative, Connecting Canadians Agenda, established in 1997 by the federal government, consists of six aspects or pillars: Canada online; smart communities; Canadian content online; electronic commerce; Canadian government on-line;

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and connecting Canada to the World. Another program, the Broadband for Rural and Northern Development Pilot Program, seeks to enhance broadband access for more remote communities. Microwave links and wireless cellular systems provide access and services to rural and remote communities, effectively blurring the distinction between the city and the countryside. In the planning and design disciplines, the capabilities of new media to allow collaborations over the Internet, experiential motion models in design representation, and even participatory design in the computing environment are being explored. By conceiving planning and design as not only technical and creative, but also as a social process, the use of new media recognizes that discussion and negotiation are necessary parts of problem-solving. Ultimately, the use of new media could make the planning and design process more accessible to the uninitiated user, thus redefining the nature of the professions. Digital public space could educate people on development issues, inform them of the range of development choices and alternatives, and assist them in making decisions about the future development of their communities. At the community level there is an emerging need to develop means to optimize the opportunities that IT present. In particular there is a need to support individuals and groups to use these technologies to overcome areas of disadvantage such as physical isolation, lack of skills, and/or poverty. One technology strategy is called community informatics, an approach that links economic and social development at the community level to ICT opportunities such as Internet and electronic commerce, flexible networks, and telework (Gurstein 2001). It is an approach to community engagement that integrates participatory design of information technology resources, popular education, and asset-based development to enhance citizen empowerment and quality of life. An example of a community informatics approach is the wide proliferation of community networks in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere, which provide community- and civic-oriented public access to the Internet, gather a number of information and communication resources related to their community, organize them in a consistent way, and promote community-oriented discussion forums (Shuler 2003). Recognizing, however, that there is not one public per se that thinks as a common collective, but a multitude of publics with differing perspectives based on gender, class, race, and/or ethnicity, and life cycle (among other indicators), the tools need to allow for a nuanced ap-

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proach to problem-solving and decision-making. In addition, the issue of access in the use of ICTs in citizen involvement for many potential participants because of lack of technology, skills, and financial resources needs to be addressed (Schon et al. 1999). According to a Nielsen NetRatings survey (2003), North America now accounts for 29 per cent of the global Internet access universe, followed by Europe with 23 per cent, Asia-Pacific with 13 per cent, and Latin America with 2 per cent. In the United States 52 per cent of home Internet users – or 55 million users – are women (Nielsen NetRatings 2002). However, men spend longer online, go online more often, and view more pages than women do. The Internet has now become a primary communication tool for American teenagers to keep in contact with friends and relatives, do research, find news and current events information, listen to music, and play games (CyberAtlas 2002). According to SeniorNet (2003), 41 per cent of American seniors use online services to communicate with friends and family, get news, find health-related information, and engage in product research. While usage patterns have definitely increased, low- income households rarely have access to these services. Those who have control of ICTs are the ‘haves’ in this ‘network’ society, and those who don’t, or who must rely on those who do to provide access and work opportunities, are the ‘have nots.’ This is termed the ‘digital divide’ (Norris 2001). In her critique of the ‘digital divide,’ Menzies recognizes that the tendencies, ‘represent a shift in the distribution of power in our society towards computer systems and those who control them, and a new version of class polarization – here across the digital divide of technological enfranchisement or disenfranchisement, of working with computers or working for them’ (Menzies 1996, 110). While the gap is narrowing between rich and poor nations (and the rich and poor within nations), in terms of access to communication tools such as cellular telephones, it still remains wide in terms of high-speed Internet connectivity, which is needed for participation in information-rich industries. Mitchell has a far more benign view of the digital divide. To engage people in digital communication and exchange, user skills are needed. To ensure that access to digital communications does not perpetuate existing social inequalities, these digital technologies must be provided to all communities. While at first the privileged may be in a better position to benefit immediately from new technologies than the poor and marginalized, in the future digital technologies may be ‘an equaliz-

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ing force, by delivering services and opportunities to those who would otherwise be excluded by location or lack of mobility, and by creating products and services that can be shared widely at very low costs’ (1999a, 162). According to Mitchell, the challenge for planners is to ‘find ways of mitigating short term problems while moving as rapidly as possible to achieve long term benefits’ (ibid., 162). Boyle, in an evaluation of the role of information and communication technologies in a capacity-building international development project in Vietnam, reframes the issue of access to question ‘the divergence or convergence between the intentions of the intended users and the intentions of those designing and deploying the technology’ (2002, 111). Rather than viewing access as a technological issue pertaining to ICT connectivity or skills, the priorities of the users based on their social location need to be addressed. Sheppard (1995), in an analysis of the role of GIS, recognizes that the implementation of GIS is a social process, not just a technological tool, and as such, awareness of the effects of its use is needed. Thrift (1996) and Levy (2005) emphasize that technological determinism persists in our current understanding of the effects of ICTs. This technological determinist stance obscures an analysis grounded in the material conditions in which technologies are embedded. It is the social relations based, for example, on class, gender, ethnicity, ability, and point in life cycle, individual people’s economic and information resources, as well as temporal and spatial constraints imposed by their household responsibilities that affect their access to technologies. It is not just the role of technology that needs to be scrutinized but also the organizational structure created by the technology. Pitkin (2001), by analysing the power relations created by a technocracy, questions the role of technical experts and challenges the right of experts to speak for others. In addition, there is the potential for technologically savvy people in communities to be empowered by their technological capacity while existing leaders in communities who do not have these capabilities are marginalized (Harris and Weiner 1998). It is within this complex environment, which is both individuated and communal, that digital public space needs to be scrutinized. ICTs can foster better communication and allow increased access to information, thereby allowing people to be better informed and increasing opportunities to demand accountability. But this does not mean that people will. What the discussion above illustrates is that there is a core of belief in the inherent power of technology to transform social rela-

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tions without there necessarily being the corresponding evidence that this transformation is happening. The following is an examination and discussion of some illustrations of the impact of ICT tools. E-Government Initiatives Most developed countries have established e-government agendas. These are mainly concerned with delivering government services online, including offering access to information electronically, and online opportunities to vote on issues. Symonds (2000) argues that e-governance typically proceeds in four distinct stages. The first involves government departments and agencies using the Internet to post information about themselves for the benefit of citizens and business partners. In the second, these government Websites become tools for two-way communication, allowing citizens to provide new information about themselves instead of by telephoning or writing. During the third stage, Websites allow a formal, quantifiable exchange of value to take place. The final stage is the Website as a portal that integrates the complete range of government services and provides a path to them that is based on need and function, not on department or agency. Though many governments have plans for such portals, few are fully operational. ‘Infoville’ in Spain’s Valencia region is one example of a local information utility designed not just as a local government Website but as a portal that would combine a broad range of services from both the public and the private sectors that integrate e-commerce, e-government, online learning, and virtual governance (Symonds 2000). Infoville was designed to be relevant to its users’ daily lives and to be simple enough for even the most technophobic individuals to handle. To encourage use, the government made Infoville accessible in a variety of ways: through not only personal computers (PCs), but also kiosks in public places and digital interactive television. As well as dealing with government departments such as housing and tax collection agencies, the portal provides access to utilities, local bank accounts, schools, doctors’ surgeries, garages, restaurants, and retailers. With more than 260 services now available through the site, it is seen as an interactive version of the yellow pages. The 100,000 citizens who are involved in the pilot stage were chosen as a representative sample of the population at large. The Saskatchewan government’s CommunityNet is a cooperative effort between provincial agencies and the federal government. It is

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providing high-speed Internet access to every educational institution, health care facility, library, and government office in 366 communities throughout the province (Access and Opportunity for All, at http://www.communitynet.ca/intro.html). CommunityNet high-speed Internet connections are leading to improved services in distance learning, telehealth, and e-commerce in towns and cities throughout Saskatchewan. A report on e-governance, based on interviews with government managers, revealed that customer satisfaction was the key factor driving the development of online government services around the world (Accenture 2003). The need to meet performance targets and the pressure to reduce costs were also factors influencing adoption of online services. Turner, Holmes, and Hodgson (2000) contend that e-government initiatives go beyond merely reducing public expenditures and that they could contribute to the reduction of social exclusion in deprived neighbourhoods by improving access to information and services. These authors also assert that the use of ICTs could help redefine the relationship between government bureaucracies and citizens within the urban management arena. While new initiatives can be used to improve the productivity of public services and the responsiveness of government, Corrigan and Joyce (2000) argue that without substantial re-engineering of the government’s relationship to the public, through reconsideration of the distribution of resources, and change in the governmental culture and management structure, ICTs on their own will achieve little. To promote governance, the government’s reconnection with and accountability to the public need to be priorities in the development of technological tools. E-Democracy E-government initiatives have the potential to contribute to cost efficiencies and public convenience, but the linkage between these initiatives and an enhanced democratic sphere is tenuous. The model of e-democracy, which is the most difficult to generate and sustain, is online public engagement in policy deliberation. The challenge is to create a link between e-government and e-democracy that transcends the unidirectional model of service delivery and utilizes digital media for democratic purposes. As Coleman and Gøtze (2001) states, ‘so, instead of citizens simply being able to pay their taxes online ... they would be able to enter into a public debate about how their taxes are

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spent.’ The emphasis here is on the deliberative element within democracy and how to enrich that process. Most of the experiments on electronic democracy are created to improve democratic systems, not to fundamentally change them. Only a few allow opportunities for public deliberation and decision-making. In addition, e-democracy initiatives that allow a dialogue over the Internet on how, for example, taxes should be spent may not be a more effective way than having this discussed at a public meeting. However, given the often low participation in such public forums, tools that allow for alternative venues to attract a more broad spectrum of citizens should be encouraged. Youth, in particular, are very comfortable with using the Internet to voice their opinions. Five clusters of citizen empowerment projects have been identified by the Teledemocracy Action News + Network (TAN+N), a network dedicated to the creative use of ICT technologies to empower citizens, created by the Department of Political Science, Auburn University, Alabama: voting from the home (by mail, phone, or computer); deliberative polling and deliberative democracy; computer-assisted democracy; electronic town meetings; and organizations’ and institutions’ discussion or chat groups (2004). The Liberal Party of Nova Scotia pioneered voting from home in the spring of 1992 when party members used the telephone to select their party leader. All Liberal Party members were invited to watch the leadership convention on television and then vote for whom they wanted to lead their party. Nearly half of the registered members of the party (7,500 people) took advantage of this opportunity, which is very different from when only the several hundred delegates at a convention could vote. Though the telephone provider’s computer crashed on the first test, it was successful on the second attempt several weeks later. Since then, and especially since the difficulties experienced in the voting system during the 2000 U.S. presidential election, electronic voting has become more popular. In the 2004 presidential election, fifty million registered voters, 29 per cent of the total, were able to cast their ballots on ATM-like machines (Mooney 2004). When describing its benefits, advocates of this technology point to its ease of use, accessibility to the physically challenged, and its ability to be programmed in multiple languages. Critics of this system are concerned about the security of e-voting, the potential for tampering and manipulation of the code that creates the e-voting software, and the inability to recount ballots (Trechsel and Mendez 2005).

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Fishkin (1991) addresses a concrete way of applying the theory of deliberative democracy to real world decision-making employing what he calls the deliberative opinion poll. In this poll, a statistically representative sample of the nation or a community is gathered to discuss an issue in conditions that further deliberation. Using both face-to-face interactions and IT, the group is then polled, and the results of the poll and the actual deliberation can be used both as a recommending force and, in certain circumstances, to replace a vote. Fishkin acknowledges that the sample is not large enough to ensure that all miniorities within a population are represented. The outcome of the deliberation is also questionable because the participants are only representative of the wider population, not decision-makers. However, the poll has been used in a number of cases in the United States and the United Kingdom for government, public utility companies, and the media. Computer-assisted democracy projects, where computer technologies and techniques are used to reinvigorate local communities and their leaders, provide a computer-based system of informed discussion and decision-making at the community level. The intent is to place computer terminals in homes, community centres, health centres, educational institutions, and churches so that people can communicate with each other to help them solve neighbourhood problems. These projects could also have capabilities of private discussions, online voting, surveying, and polling. Community informatics is a form of computer-assisted democracy that can link economic and social development efforts at the community level with emerging opportunities in such areas as e-commerce, community and civic networks and telecentres, e-democracy and online participation, self-help and virtual communities, advocacy, and cultural enhancement, among others (Gurstein 2001). Pitkin (2001) critiques the assumption of community informatics proponents that technology inevitably can lead to positive social development. He emphasizes more self-critical methodological analysis of community informatics, more attention to how these new technologies might deepen current divisions in society and create new ones, and more recognition by leaders of community informatics of their own privileged position as experts, which can impede the intended purpose of these tools. Electronic town meetings (ETMs) are where citizens vote on an issue after information and discussion facilitated by electronic means. These are different from electronic forums, whereby citizens ask questions of a political leader. Citizens in these forums do not set the agenda, do not

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vote, and have no power. Instead, ETMs are meetings held electronically where people assess various options and vote from the home by phone or computer. ETMs include deliberative polling and/or computer-assisted democracy. They are modelled after the town meetings in townships in New England, where all citizens have an opportunity to vote on issues facing their community. Proponents of ETMs laud its potential to allow public input on issues that are normally the domain of experts. The Reform Party of Canada (before it became the Canadian Alliance and then amalgamated with the Progressive Conservatives to become the Conservative Party of Canada) used this tool in 1994 in Calgary to formulate the party’s position on physician-assisted suicide (Teledemocracy Action News + Network 2004). Reform MPs in five constituencies in the Calgary area stated in advance of the process that if there were a consensus among their constituents that physician-assisted suicide should be legal in Canada under certain circumstances, even those MPs who were personally opposed to it would be bound by the vote of their constituents. A random sample of 400 constituents from each district was selected, and participants were asked to become televoters in an ETM to be broadcast on television. Each televoter received a set of eight telephone numbers to dial: 1 for yes and 2 for no, and the six others for the degree of agreement or disagreement. After a debate on the issue with experts from all sides, the televoters were asked to vote by phone: 70 per cent were in favour of the proposition, to legalize physician-assisted suicide. This, as well as similar results from other polling methods used by the Reform Party in these districts, was sufficient to bind the MPs to this position, though a vote has not been taken in the House of Commons. Some ETMs add extensive electronic media and conflict-resolution techniques leading to as large a consensus as possible to maximize their impact on actual political decisions. One example of this was the televised electronic town meeting held in Houston, Texas, in September 1994 to review goals for that city’s future. Using goals suggested by volunteer citizens participating in the ‘Imagine Houston’ process, the ETM was structured as a two-way process where citizens at five community meeting sites around the city were linked by satellite with a studio panel. After the televised portion, the community meetings ranked fifty preliminary goals that citizen task forces had previously developed. The report on the results of this process was intended as a blueprint for action. Critics of the ETM see it as a dangerous tool to further a libertarian

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agenda that seeks to discredit the role of government and champion individual and community priorities, as has been done by proposition initiatives and referendums in the United States. London (1993) in a critique of Ross Perot’s proposal, made when he was a presidential candidate, to use electronic town meetings to formulate public policy, suggests that the electronic town hall is no more than a sophisticated Gallup poll. As such, public opinion as gauged by electronic voting will vary by how the questions are framed and will not provide information on the quality of the public’s views. While the e-democracy initiatives outlined above have interesting implications for institutional procedures such as voting, these initiatives have garnered neither popular attention nor widespread use. Edemocracy initiatives that involve opportunities for dialogue on specific issues, however, seem to be a very successful format for the exchange of ideas. In July 2002, the Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New York, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, in association with the non-profit organizations Web Lab and America Speaks, created Listening to the City Online Dialogues (City 2002). The dialogues focused on ideas on plans for redevelopment of the World Trade Center site and the surrounding business district and neighbourhoods of Lower Manhattan, and the creation of a permanent memorial for the victims and heroes of 11 September 2001. The online discussions were intended to complement the public consultations and provide a means for citizens to have their views heard and reflected in the decision-making process. During the two-week discussion, 808 participants working in twentysix parallel discussion groups (half of them facilitated and half unfacilitated), posted more than 10,000 messages and responded to thirty-two polling questions. The results of these online discussions had an impact on guidelines for new designs and the selection of architects to participate in the design competition, as well as on the final design. A final poll found that 84 per cent of the participants said they were satisfied with the dialogue, and they indicated that the chance to ‘have their say’ and the mix of ‘people and perspectives’ were the top reasons for their satisfaction. What ICT tools have also allowed is the development of alternative organizing strategies beyond the surveillance of the state. There are numerous organizations and institutions that use chat groups to further their democratic ideals. From the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas, Mexico, who use the Internet to communicate their struggle throughout Mexico and internationally, to MoveOn.org, which attempted to mobilize dis-

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enfranchised voters for the 2004 U.S. presidential election, the Internet and e-mail is used to disseminate information and keep people in constant contact on emerging issues. Now that communication tools such as the cellular phone are converging in their ability to receive and transmit information wirelessly (i.e., text-messaging and digital photography), new forms of instantaneous mobilization are occurring. In 1990 the fax machine was the indispensable tool to disseminate information and mobilize dissent during the Tiananmen Square Demonstrations in Beijing, China, but in 2005 during the riots in the suburbs of Paris, text-messaging was the preferred communication. The speed with which information can be disseminated and the innovative uses of the technologies for activist purposes are making text-messaging and other news forms of essential tools. E-Stories Though there are numerous projects focusing on e-democracy, they have a very limited appeal to the vast majority of Internet users, as they cannot see the direct benefit of participatory processes beyond their spheres of influence. Besides the burgeoning commercial activities on the Internet, what has become increasingly popular is the personal storytelling that is occurring. For example, ‘Weblogs’ or ‘blogs,’ a form unique to the Web, are personal Websites updated with links, commentary, and other images (Salon.com 2004). Blogs are distinctive for each creator, reflecting that individual’s personal reflections and opinions. Attesting to their popularity, an Internet search of the term ‘blog’ in August 2006 yielded 2.42 billion sites. In addition to the personal cathartic nature of storytelling, stories are now being recognized as a powerful tool in community development. Sandercock (2003), Forester (1999), and others discuss the importance of drawing on local knowledge, through the personal reflections of community members, in the attempt to find common threads that will help develop community priorities. This form of community process is not always effective in resolving issues, but it can become a useful starting point for further community dialogue. Recognizing the potential of stories as the memory of a community, online community stories projects and audio archives are being created through community networks. Digital ethnography, the application of new technologies to the process of ethnography, is also becoming a useful tool to develop a multilayered understanding of a community context, though so far it is

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being used more as a tool in educational training than in planning and governance (Goldman-Segall 1998). Assessing Digital Public Space The examples illustrated above demonstrate the breadth of possibilities for digital public space. Nevertheless, it is difficult to assess their impact without an evaluation of the tools used and the outcomes of specific projects. An evaluation of a tool intended for community dialogue (Murphy 2004) reveals many issues that need to be addressed if deliberative decision-making is to be furthered through ICTs. Local Stories is a community online mapping tool that can be used to create and share local views on issues of interest and importance. It is termed a decision-support tool, an interactive computerized tool that provides information to users that will help them make decisions. It provides an opportunity for users to integrate local knowledge with online geographical data from their community. Knowledge is constructed and shared through an interactive map and narrative interface. Through the process of sharing stories, Local Stories creates an opportunity for community members to identify personal and collective connections, and reflect on priorities. Accessibility and security of the tool and ethical considerations were recurring themes that emerged when participants in a Local Stories pilot project in Coquitlam, British Columbia (a suburban municipality in the Greater Vancouver region) were asked to evaluate their experience. Participants were concerned about the difficulty of accessing the interface to register, login, and navigate the map. There was concern about the security of the Website regarding content. The tool is owned by Natural Resources Canada and the Sustainable Development Research Institute at the University of British Columbia, who created it and manage the administrative functions. There is no policy regarding content, and this raised concern among participants about how inappropriate content would be managed. Stage in the life cycle also reflected differing skill levels and priorities; each of the targeted groups of participants - youth, seniors, and municipal staff – responded differently to the Local Stories application. Youth, because of their already existing knowledge of computer use, navigated very quickly though the Local Stories site and needed very little assistance to construct their own stories. Seniors, because they were usually not as adept at using computer technology, required more assistance to

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navigate the site; however, they did have a very strong sense of the potential for the tool to preserve and share stories and to highlight ongoing activities. Municipal staff, consisting of community programming coordinators and planners, were mainly interested in the theory behind the application, how it might expand their planners’ toolbox and fit into their community work. An evaluation of one particular tool has identified the necessity to immerse the design of such a tool in the social milieu in which it will be used. Murphy (2004) identifies the need for flexibility to develop and improve appropriate decision support tools to account for differing community and individual capabilities and needs. Technological tools, such as Local Stories, to be effective, need to be part of a larger community goal or vision. These tools could then be used as an aid to initiate more community involvement in policy decisions. Global Connectivity, Community-Building, and Civil Society The discussion above reveals the range of approaches to the use of ICT tools. How effective are these tools in community-building and in strengthening civil society? The success of projects generated from the use of these tools is often measured by the number of computers used, people connected, and/or communities serviced. Criteria for success rarely investigate the impact on the community, or the empowerment of the people to improve their living conditions and contribute to the development of their communities. There are countless new ICT tools being developed, connectivity is ever increasing, and access to information is being lauded. Often the actual impact in communities, especially low income and marginalized communities, is negligible, however. Some individuals in these communities have been able to access these technologies to good effect, but the widespread use of digital public space for community-building, as defined by Forester (1989; 1999) and others, is not evident. The rhetoric of the limitless potential of digital public space must be tempered by the needs and limitations of its users and by how fully users take ownership and control of ICT tools. Other than their increasing availability, these tools do not inherently guarantee a significant positive social impact. The same distrust and apathy associated with existing mechanisms for public engagement could also be directed at these tools. If the processes and institutional structures that guide the tools in digital public space are the same as these mechanisms, then

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they only reproduce existing models of decision-making. Mere access to technology results in consumers of information and services created by others. Effective community-building initiatives would require users who have the power to control the technology’s use and dissemination of its content. Digital Public Space and Models of Participation The analysis above has revealed a number of structural barriers to the use of ICT tools in public engagement. It still remains to be determined what role digital public space does and could play in participatory processes. Where are ICT tools positioned in models of participation? Arnstein’s ladder of participation (1969) and its variations have been used in numerous instances to explain the effectiveness of participatory methods. How useful is digital participation according to these criteria? In the ladder, manipulation and therapy are non-participative: Their aim is to cure or educate the participants, while the job of participation is to achieve public support by public relations. Certainly, informing and consultation are important first steps to legitimate participation, but too frequently the emphasis is on a one-way flow of information with no channels for feedback. Placation, in turn, allows citizens to advise or plan ad infinitum, but it retains for power holders the right to judge the legitimacy or feasibility of the advice. In partnership, power is redistributed through negotiation between citizens and power holders; planning and decision-making responsibilities are shared. In delegated power, citizens hold a clear majority of seats on committees with delegated powers to make decisions; the public has the power to assure accountability of the program to them. In citizen control, have-nots handle the entire job of planning, policy-making, and managing a program. E-government initiatives such as the Websites of governments, politicians, and political parties, and electronic news sites and data banks, primarily fall into the category of informing and consultation, the lowest rungs of the ladder after non-participation. These projects do provide more and better access to information and services; they do not, however, represent a fundamental redefinition of the relationship between citizens and their governments. Nevertheless, more information and access is, to some extent, more power to citizens. Currently, e-democracy tools are mainly used for consulting and placating. They have, however, the potential to transform the role of the citizen as new forms of interactive, deliberative communication and

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information technologies are being created that let citizens participate directly in policy decisions through applications of conflict resolution to facilitate citizen consensus. Nevertheless, when citizens are allowed to advise or plan, it is usually placation as they do not have the power to effect change. E-voting seems to be the tool that is in most use, and it is allowing decision-making to occur. Still, to be effective, the concerns expressed above from critics regarding security need to be addressed. Computer-assisted democracy projects are allowing more citizen control in setting agendas, identifying priorities, and acting upon those priorities, but these projects are limited in scope and duration. E-stories are at present therapeutic and informational, but they also have the potential to transform decision-making if effective strategies are developed to assimilate the individual stories into community dialogue. Another model of participation, adapted from Arnstein’s ladder, has been developed to assess the levels of public participation in the use of geographical information system (GIS) as a tool. It addresses the public’s right to know; informing the public; the public’s right to object; public participation in defining interests, actors, and determining agents; public participation in assessing risks and recommending solutions; and public participation in final decisions (Weidermann and Femers 1993). Again, the ICT tools fall into the lower rungs, as they do not provide avenues for full participation in final decisions. The Royal Town Planning Institute (2001) has recently developed what it calls a wheel of participation that conveys the cyclical nature of participation processes and the spectrum of choices for participation that start with information sharing, leading to a process of engaging in consultation, which may lead to a partnership and eventually, to empowerment of communities. In this way, there may be an exchange of information between government agencies and community organizations perhaps leading to a one-off consultation on a specific issue, resulting in a partnership between government and community that requires a high level of collaboration and decision-making, and finally, communities making their own decisions supported by government in various ways, which requires information sharing. In this process, ICT tools can contribute at various stages from information-sharing on government Websites, to facilitating the necessary networking that is needed for active relationships in participatory processes, community engagement, and decision-making. In any particular relationship there might be the need for one or a combination of tools, as well as different tools at different stages of the relationship.

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The analysis above reveals that, while the potential is there for a transformation in the citizen’s position viv-à-vis the state and community, the use of ICT tools has not realized that potential yet. Without an understanding of the power dynamics that influence the adoption of new tools and the recognition that tools need to be developed to meet the expectations of a diverse citizenry, ICT tools will have but a marginal impact on deliberative decision-making. Just as digital technologies can allow households greater freedom to select their community resources and interactions, the potential also exists for these technologies to be used to achieve greater social control. The monitoring ability of information technologies no longer makes it necessary to have the physical presence of authority, and it is reinforcing the ability of government bureaucracies to dominate. Nevertheless, it is possible to develop a range of ICT tools that can address the divide between citizens and their community and state. Telecommunications and information technologies that are controlled by individuals and groups in communities, rather than just by the political elite, can have powerful consequences. New forms of social interactions can be created that allow for more social cohesion and dialogue, thereby facilitating the social learning that is needed to engage effectively in civil society. Place-Based Community-Building The impact of digital public space on participatory decision-making does not appear to be as significant as advocates proclaim. Yet, the nature and role of place-based communities are being affected by the use of these technologies. Mitchell (1999b) contends that digital networks selectively loosen place-to-place and person-to-place relationships, thereby producing a fragmentation and recombination of urban patterns. There is now a hybrid of physical-virtual places and a transformed role of the body in space. Mitchell (2002) further emphasizes that wireless connections and portable access devices create continuous ‘fields of presence’ that are limitless in terms of the spatial reach of information access. Menzies (2004), among others, addresses the serious consequences of this transformation and the subsequent weakening of the importance of place-based communities. The expansion of digital public space is occurring at the same time as there are budgetary cutbacks in public and social spending such as in libraries, schools, and

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universities. Physical public space is diminishing as more spaces fall under the control of corporate interests, thus limiting their use. Castells (1989) has argued that the ‘telecommunicated city’ has increased the functional zoning of time and space, creating a concentration of activities around workplaces, homes, and leisure and segregating the mix of people and activities that land use zoning has tried to regulate. The consequence of such zoning is that the city is evolving into a dual society of haves and have-nots on the basis of access to telecommunications and information technologies. In addition, the trend towards the telecommunicated city is intensifying the expansion of the private domestic sphere and, correspondingly, the abandonment of uses and functions in the public sphere. Contrary to more dire forecasts, Hampton (2003) hypothesizes that the Internet is neither weakening nor radically transforming community. Instead, it is adding another form of communication, whose use and implications are intertwined with other forms of community activity. The advantage of the Internet is its ability to facilitate neighbourhoodbased interactions, especially through e-mail. His study of ‘Netville,’ a residential community equipped with a series of new information and communication technologies as part of its design, found that residents were highly effective in using ICTs to mobilize for collective action. His conclusion was that Netville was a harbinger of glocalization, whereby citizens are globally connected and locally involved. Place-based communities are not necessarily losing their importance. What is occurring is a dispersal of activities away from traditional nodes and forms of activities, a reconcentration in other nodes in other ways, and a polarization and disparity based on those who are excluded or marginalized by the use of ICTs. There is a fragmentation and recombination of place-based and non–place-based spaces that is transforming the role of physical spaces. Conclusion To develop transparency and foster civil society the complexities of civic governance must be understood and models of participation must recognize the diverse interactions that are needed to arrive at decisions. How would an approach that acknowledges the structural barriers to digital public space, while also recognizing its benefits in increasing accountability and equipping citizens to participate, be effective? Digi-

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tal public space could be used effectively to engage citizens in ongoing public dialogues on key issues. It could allow for more integrative decision-making between elected councils, boards, and advisory committees and provide a forum for mediation on key decisions. It could be used to involve groups that have not traditionally been involved, and as a venue to experiment with a variety of ways of encouraging participation. It could also allow for an integrated approach to community development that provides opportunities for citizen involvement, economic initiatives, and social activities. How does the use of ICT tools enable social learning in the quest for effective civil societies? As we have noted in the discussion of communicative action, active participation is an iterative process of mutual learning or co-learning. Digital public space can provide the conduit for the dissemination of information and the venue for mutual learning between the various stakeholders. But we have also noted that the organizational structure created in this space can perpetuate existing power hierarchies, thus impeding the opportunity for any meaningful discourse. Digital public space offers opportunities for deliberative engagement and community-building, but real caution needs to be exercised in how the digital realm is utilized for these purposes. Inequalities will not be mitigated and reversed no matter how many tools for digital participation are produced. ICT tools need to be accessible and reflect users’ priorities. Of equal importance is the process of community-building that has to occur to build trust beyond the mere use of the tools. What are needed are ICT tools and applications that can allow for genuine public dialogue.

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Creating Digital Public Space 115 Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell. Levy, Carlos Miranda. 2005. ‘Social Impact from Technology.’ Stanford: Reuters Foundation, Digital Vision Program at Stanford University. http:// fellows.rdvp.org/sift. (Retrieved 23 March 2006.) Listening to the City. 2002. http://dialogues.listeningtothecity.org/. (Retrieved 14 Oct. 2005.) London, Scott. 1993. ‘Electronic Town Hall Can’t Beat the Real Thing.’ Dayton Daily News, 20 March. Also available at http://www.scottlondon.com/ articles/etm.html. (Retrieved 9 Sept. 2004.) Menzies, Heather. 1996. Whose Brave New World? The Information Highway and the New Economy. Toronto: Between the Lines. – 2004. ‘On Digital Public Space and the Real Tragedy of the Commons.’ http://www.policyalternatives.ca/ictpolicy/menzies.html. (Retrieved 21 Aug. 2004.) Mitchell, William. 1999a. ‘Equitable Access to the Online World.’ In D. Schon, B. Sanyal and W. Mitchell, eds., High Technology and Low Income Communities: Prospects for the Positive Use of Advanced Information Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 151–62. – 1999b. E-Topia: Urban Life, Jim – But Not as We Know It. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. – 2002. From modernity to the matrix: potential impacts of information technologies on place-based communities.’ Unpublished lecture, UBC Green Lecture Series, ‘Engaging Civil Societies in Democratic Planning and Governance,’ Vancouver, British Columbia, 18 Nov. Mooney, Brian. 2004. ‘As E-Voting Grows, Calls for Paper Trail Delay Cares’ Demise.’ Boston Globe, 21 June. Also available at http://www. commondreams.org/headlines04/0621-06.htm. Murphy, Elizabeth S. 2004. ‘The Integration of Storytelling and Technology: Can IT Contribute to Community Process?’ Master’s thesis, University of British Columbia. Nielsen NetRatings. 2003. ‘Global Net Population Increases.’ http:// www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905358729&rel=true. (Retrieved 25 Feb. 2003.) – 2002. ‘More and More U.S. Women Online.’ http://www.nua.ie/surveys/ index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905357576&rel=true. (Retrieved 21 Jan. 2002.) Norris, Pippa. 2001. Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pitkin, Bill. 2001. ‘Community Informatics: Hope or Hype?’ Proceedings of the Hawai’I Conference on System Sciences, Maui, Hawaii, 3–6. Jan. http://

116 Penny Gurstein csdl.computer.org/comp/proceedings/hicss/2001/0981/08/09818005.pdf. (Retrieved 1 Sept. 2004.) Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Quan-Haase, Annabel, and Barry Wellman, with James Witte and Keith Hampton. 2002. ‘Capitalizing on the Net: Social Contact, Civic Engagement, and Sense of Community.’ In Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite, eds., The Internet in Everyday Life, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 291–324. Royal Town Planning Institute. 2001. ‘Wheel of Participation: Local CoOrdinator Training Community Participation Paper.’ Journal of the Royal Town Planning Institute. Oct. Salon.com. 2004. ‘Start Your Own Salon Blog.’ http://www.salon.com/blogs/. (Retrieved 8 Sept. 2004.) Sandercock, Leonie. 2003. Cosmopolis 2: Mongrel Cities of the 21st Century. London: Continuum. SeniorNet. 2003. ‘eMarketer reports that 46 Percent of U.S. Seniors Have Been Using the Internet for Over Five Years.’ http://www.nua.ie/surveys/ index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905358703&rel=true. (Retrieved 13 Jan. 2003.) Schon, Donald A., Bish Sanyal, and William J. Mitchell, eds. 1999. High Technology and Low Income Communities: Prospects for the Positive Use of Advanced Information Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Schuler, Doug. 2003. ‘Digital Cities and Digital Citizens.’ In Michael Gurstein, Michel Menou, and Sergei Stafeev, eds., Community Networking and Community Informatics: Prospects, Approaches and Instruments. St Petersburg: Centre of Community Networking and Information Policy Studies, 194–215. Sheppard, Eric. 1995. GIS and Society: Towards a Research Agenda. Cartography and Geographic Information Systems 22(1): 5–16. Symonds, Mathew. 2000. ‘The Next Revolution: After E-Commerce, Get Ready for E-Government.’ Economist, 22 July. Also available at http:// www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=80746. (Retrieved 1 Sept. 2004.) Teledemocracy Action News + Network. 2004. ‘Advances in Citizen Empowerment around the World.’ http://frontpage.auburn.edu/tann/tann2/ project1.html. (Retrieved 20 July 2004.) Thrift, Nigel. 1996. ‘New Urban Eras and Old Technological Fears: Reconfiguring the Goodwill of Electronic Things.’ Urban Studies 33(8). Trechsel, Alexandre, and F. Mendez, eds. 2005. The European Union and EVoting: Addressing the European Parliament’s Internet Voting Challenge. London: Routledge.

Creating Digital Public Space 117 Turner, Jeff, Len Holmes, and Frances Hodgson. 2000. ‘Intelligent Urban Development: An Introduction to a Participatory Approach.’ Urban Studies 37(10): 1723–35. Van de Donk, W.B.H.J., and P.W. Tops. 1995. Orwell or Athens? Informatization and the Future of Democracy – A Review of the Literature. In W.B.H.J van de Donk, I.Th.M. Snellen, and P.W. Tops, eds., Orwell in Athens: A Perspective on Informatization and Democracy. Amsterdam: IOS Press, 13–32. Weidemann, I., and Femers, S. 1993. ‘Public Participation in Waste Management Decision Making: Analysis and Management of Conflicts.’ Journal of Hazardous Materials 33: 355–68.

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4 Rationality and Surprise: The Drama of Mediation in Rebuilding Civil Society john forester

What I always tell people is, ‘Whenever you get to the table, you still are surprised, because you never can anticipate [really fully] where people are going to come from.’ Thom 1997

As we become increasingly interconnected, locally and globally, we will need more than ever to listen and learn from one another. We will also need both institutional processes and sensitive practices that will not only nurture mutual respect but, even more, practical cooperation, as we work to protect the environment, build community, and achieve a more just world. This essay responds to these challenges by examining the ways in which citizens acting as astute mediators can help to resolve complex public disputes – disputes that not only involve bargaining over differing economic interests but require reconciling deeply differing social and cultural identities as well. In civil societies, of course, participation means dealing with differences – differences of culture and class, interest and ideology, among many others – and that in turn means cultivating citizens’ abilities not only to understand those many differences, but to learn how to act together in and across their multiple communities. Cultivating the capacity to mediate public disputes provides no panacea, no technical fix, for the challenges of sustaining plurality and difference, encouraging not only respect but community-building and practical cooperation as well. When basic commitments come into conflict, mediation processes and practices become not irrelevant but a

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potentially important source of strategies that can complement legal and legislative action (Susskind and Cruickshank 1987). In a world of conflicting interests, many seem sceptical of solutions that depend on the ‘mere talk’ of dialogue or deliberation, facilitated or mediated processes. We shall see, however, as we consider mediation efforts involving land use and transportation issues, value conflicts over abortion and sacred sites, that planners, activists, and citizens in many other contexts have much to learn from the skills and insights, stories and strategies of experienced mediators. Living in civil society, living together with diverse deep differences, routinely involves our hope and cynicism: how we imagine, in the face of our differences, that we can or can’t live together. For all the rhetoric of multiculturalism and diversity, respect and dialogue, defenders of civil society appear to know much more about ‘how to talk the talk’ than they do about ‘how to walk the walk’: to practise the citizenship skills required to animate and nurture civil society rather than merely to espouse its important ideals (Fung and Wright 2003; Sandercock 2003a). Too often, it seems, when we see differences of values or religions, culture or class, race or gender, a deceptively simple realism can blind us by suggesting, ‘No, we can’t do that with them; they’ll never listen; they’ll never talk to us about the real issues here.’ Or friends, for example, might say about other acquaintances, ‘There’s no use talking to them; nothing’s going to be possible’ – even when a great deal might really be possible – and the result, we might suspect, is that our friends may just have set themselves up for failure. We can call this frequent scepticism, ‘the problem of seductive cynicism – and the failure of hope.’ This threatens not just our friends and acquaintances, but our lives as democratic citizens in civil society more generally (Dryzek 2000). We have several good reasons to worry and to take this problem seriously. Consider the following: • As a problem of everyday life and ethics, how do we fall into traps and miss real opportunities when they’re right in front of us? How do we fail to realize social goods, and so suffer the consequences needlessly? • As a problem of negotiation, how do we reach mutually lousy, ‘loselose’ compromises when we could actually achieve substantially better-for-both joint gains (Forester 2006a; Susskind et al. 1999)?

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• As a matter of identity and respect, how do we fail to recognize differences? How, instead of building mutually respectful relationships, do we presumptively dismiss them (Sandercock 2000; 2003b)? How are we tempted to take value differences too literally and then miss specific possibilities behind irreconcilable abstractions – and so miss specific things we can do together? • As a matter of practical learning and daily organization, how do we talk ourselves out of learning, so that we keep ourselves stupid and betray the promise of planning at its core, the ‘organization of hope’ (Friedmann and Douglas 1998; Forester 1999)? We can begin to answer such questions if we explore carefully a practical question: how can community planners, who face conflicting public demands and interests all the time, learn practically from the mediators of complex public disputes, mediators whose job it is to think carefully about complex conflicts and practical possibilities in civil society? By exploring what planners can learn, we can respond to certain silences, even failures, not just in planning education but in the broader education of democratic citizens in civil society as well. Furthermore, mediators’ experiences, we shall see, can help us to address these silences and these failures. Both planning and our broader civic education may not only keep too quiet about really ‘dealing with differences’ and working with conflicting stakeholders, but they may also too often encourage our selective attention and selective imagination – our blindness – in three ways: 1 By having us think about ‘analysis’ and even, or especially, some abstract ‘rationality,’ so that our emotional sensitivity, expression, and responsiveness seem idiosyncratic, less practically important than our ‘knowing the right answer’ about what ought to be done; 2 By having us think about notions of ‘interests’ and ‘values’ that by implication lead us to treat ‘identities’ as apparently non-negotiable; 3 By having us think of ‘deep value differences’ as presumptively, automatically, differences that we can’t negotiate, practically speaking, at all. We need to understand better how skilful mediators may have had surprising successes as they faced strong emotions, identity conflicts, or deep value differences – just those situations in which planners (or we

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ourselves) might well have thrown in the towel – so that we might really ask, of both mediators and planners, ‘What could they have been thinking?’ What were the mediators thinking that helped them to achieve surprising results – and what thinking might have led planners, or the rest of us (in exactly the same situations) to give up too soon? Why focus here on the work of mediators of public disputes? Like ‘facilitators,’ mediators try to help groups explore issues, brainstorm, clarify goals, and generally understand their circumstances better, but in addition, mediators typically try to shape practical, working agreements. Routinely working in-between conflicting interests, mediators can serve us as ‘canaries in the mine,’ especially if we want to learn how to manage tensions in civil society and how to improve public deliberations as well. Mediators can teach us about handling interdependence, when parties cannot simply satisfy their interests unilaterally – when neighbouring communities can hardly avoid dealing with each other, for example. But more, mediators know how disputing parties so often face, and can escape, the traps of producing poor compromises, what we can call ‘lose-lose’ agreements, as the parties are so easily tempted to escalate demands, exaggerate data, posture, hide their interests, and so forth (Forester 2004; 2006a; 2006b; 2006c). Mediators, too, can help us to think more carefully about settings that involve value differences as well as conflicting interests, differences of identity as well as differences of goals and preferences. When mediators who work with conflicting parties produce unexpected results, they can show us possibilities that we too will find surprising, because we do not yet really understand how those results were possible at all. When oral history accounts suggest that the parties to disputes have themselves been surprised – the parties who know their problems better than anyone presumably! – we as readers may also be surprised, and we may learn a good deal as a result (Nussbaum 1990; Forester 1999; 2006c). Iris Murdoch put a part of this beautifully once, when she said of learning from good practice, ‘Where virtue [good practice] is concerned, we often apprehend more than we clearly understand, and [we] grow by looking’ (1970). If we look closely at consensus-builders and mediators, we will see that they can teach us that our bodies reach where our intellects often do not, that actual practice can and has led theory, that our good intentions can get us so righteously stuck, that our ‘analytic understanding’ in all its realistic and well-informed glory can persuade us that nothing is possible, even as trying, sketching, playing, even taking

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walks and sharing meals, really show us that a great deal is possible after all. If we listen to mediators, we find that they speak again and again of finding outcomes that none of the parties had first thought possible (Forester 2005a). T.S. Eliot wrote of poetry as a ‘raid upon the inarticulate,’ and mediators work every day to raid the impossible, to bring back working agreements across boundaries of suspicion and distrust, culture and commitment, race and class and gender, agreements that no one first thought possible (Susskind et al. 1999). What we can call ‘the drama of mediation’ might teach us a great deal about outcomes and practices that we never thought possible, and the surprise we discover can teach us not just about new possibilities but about old expectations, old ways of thinking that won’t pay off, old ways of looking that blind us to what we really can do (SchoCn 1983; Lewicki et al.). In what follows, we explore these questions – in particular, the question of what the mediators were thinking – in three parts by working with excerpts from oral histories of mediators, excerpts we can take not so much as histories of cases but as windows onto the world of their practice. In the first part, we find that two practitioners characterize mediation and consensus-building as closely intertwined with issues of power and emotion as they shape public disputes. In the second part, we consider three short stories. In the first, mediator and consultant Frank Blechman recalls facing officials’ fears of explosive comprehensive planning meetings in three counties (Blechman 2005); in the second, mediator Stephen Thom, deputy director of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service, reflects on a case involving identity conflict in a California land use dispute. The third story is a further provocative account of Blechman’s that involves deep value differences between abortion opponents and advocates. Finally, the third and concluding section suggests what planners and the rest of us might learn from these mediators’ thinking. The Oral History Method The mediators’ ‘practice stories’ that we consider here form part of a longer term research project to explore the micro-politics of planners’ and mediators’ practices in a range of politically contested settings (Forester 1999; Forester, Peters, and Hittleman 2005). Our oral history interviews focus on accounts of the challenges and opportunities pre-

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sented by cases and projects; we do not focus upon life histories. Instead, we work to gather the accounts of insider-actors, not outsiderspectators. We ask distinctive questions to focus on practice rather than attitude, belief, or espoused theory. We ask not, ‘What do you think about X-issue?’ but instead, ‘How in this case did you handle X-issue?’ As a result, we document not full case histories but rather the mode of expression and representation of practising planners and mediators, and we try to examine their accounts not as the last words about cases, but as accounts needing triangulation and corroboration as any interpretive evidence does (Forester 2006c). Listening to the Mediators Let us begin with two mediators who summarize the promise of mediation in a world of power and emotion. The first suggests why traditional zero-sum hardball might not work anymore, and why he came, and we might come, to take mediation and consensus-building seriously. Frank Blechman, political consultant and planning consultant, worked for many years at the Conflict Clinic at George Mason University. He tells us: I’ve spent most of my career as a conflict generator ... Conflict generating is fundamentally the process of raising an issue to visibility and forcing public polarization so that fifty percent plus one will land on your side: It’s essentially the opposite of consensus-building processes, although it uses all the same fundamental skills: Understanding where people are coming from, how far they’re willing to move, getting people to feel comfortable so that they’re willing to reveal information that they initially withhold, all of those ... Sam Rayburn is alleged to have said, ‘Any bill that passes by more than ten votes wasn’t strong enough.’ [Now] that’s the ultimate statement of the virtue of non-consensus: That if in fact you only need fifty percent plus one to make policy, then in fact getting more [votes] than that means you gave up more than you had to. But in many of the public issues that we face today – because we have empowered, over the last generation, so many people to obstruct so effectively – fifty percent plus one is not enough, sixty percent plus one is not enough, seventy percent plus one is not enough, so that indeed you need to get closer to ninety percent plus one in order to actually carry out policy.

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And at that point, the skills required to get fifty percent plus one have to be re-tuned toward a different objective – and it may be a hundred percent minus one or it may just be ninety percent plus one depending on the scale. But most of the work that I [now] do falls more into the ninety percent plus one to the hundred percent minus one than the fifty percent plus one range.

This is an almost confessional statement of a practitioner’s own evolution from being a distributive win-lose conflict-generator to a more collaborative consensus-builder, and his transformation has nothing to do with idealism, but everything to do with power. Fifty per cent plus one is no longer enough, he argues. In many situations of ongoing interdependence, it does not work, the society and polity has changed, implementation is held hostage to many parties’ abilities to be obstructionist. Still, Blechman suggests that many of the skills, ‘understanding where people are coming from and how far they’re willing to move,’ remain the same for the consensus-builder as for the conflict-generator. So far we have a direct account of self-interest: If you want to get something done, pay attention to those who can block or delay or obstruct you. But lots of situations are not so straightforward and clean. The second story suggests that there is no talking about mediation without talking too about suspicion and anger, humour and irony. Let us listen, for a moment, to a facilitator who thought she had lost it in a small town’s land use case, as she tells us what she did, and what we might have done in her position. Michelle Robinson Greig, now a planning consultant with Greenplan, Inc., tells us: There were a couple moments in the meeting when things became hot. Now there was one moment I remember really well – when a woman in the front of the room became really enraged about attorneys, and she said, ‘Well, you know, the problem is that the town just tries to do something, and then somebody tries to stop it, and then it all goes to these attorneys, and they just keep fighting each other and everybody just keeps spending money on these attorneys.’ As she was speaking she rhymed off all the major issues in the community like the shopping mall and the franchises ... and she touched every button in the room ... I could see every person in the room rising up behind her, you know, filling with rage. And I thought, ‘Ohhh no,’ I felt I was going to lose control of the meeting.

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But when she stopped speaking, I, I just, I sort of lightly made a joke, and I said, ‘What should we do then? Should we shoot all the lawyers?’ And everybody just burst out laughing, and the moment was kind of salvaged. But I think ... it’s necessary to have a sense of humor about it, and to be mindful of everybody in the room and respectful of everybody in the room, and whenever somebody put something negatively I would just try to find a positive idea there. I’d try to turn it around to a positive [suggestion]. So someone would rant and rave about [something], or somebody became angry about ... houses being built in cornfields, – they [really] didn’t want to see that – and I said, ‘Well then, what do you [suggest]? and [since] they [had] said something about a land trust in the course of talking, I picked out that idea and I said, ‘So, are you saying it would be good if we had a local land trust that could try to protect some of this land?’ And they said, ‘Yes,’ – [you see?] So it was really a question – whenever anybody spoke negatively – of trying to turn it around into a positive suggestion, or just coming back with, ‘Well, what would you like to see happen?’ You know? ‘What would you like to see happen?’ And that set the tone for the meeting, and really had set the tone for our organization as a whole about what we’re trying to do, which is find positive solutions. (Greig 1997)

Here’s a wonderfully rich, but iffy and critical moment in which we see a public discussion of land use possibilities confronted by legacies of anger, not just one person’s but widely shared anger. We see a group about to turn on an easy target, a common enemy (lawyers). We hear an experienced practitioner worry and wonder if the discussion was heading irretrievably south, but we see more than her handling the anger rippling through an audience. We see part of the promise of mediation, not in comedy, but in the rationality of emotional responsiveness, a responsiveness taking the form of humour and irony that reaches beyond anger and frustration to care for future action. We see part of the promise of mediation, not in cooling out anger, but in recognizing and turning it towards a persistent and practical questioning of possibility, a persistent evocation of hope. ‘Okay,’ Greig says, in effect, ‘we don’t want to spend all our money on lawyers, so now what? What do you propose? What can we do?’ This, she suggests to us, is what mediation is all about. Other students of

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urban conflict and difference similarly recognize passion, humor, and emotion as central to the story of practical rationality in everyday work (Forester 2004; Sclavi 1994; Sandercock 2003a,b). We turn now to three short accounts that suggest not just the political and ethical challenges of mediation, but practical lessons for any planners and the rest of us who work or live in the face of public or community conflict, ethnic and cultural differences, or differences of deep value commitments. Antipathy, Distrust, and the Baggage of the Past: County Comprehensive Planning in a Contested Corridor Let us turn again to Frank Blechman, who reflects on his practice as a mediator working with county governments in a busy East Coast transportation corridor. He tells us: We were asked by one of the counties to help them consider how they ought to do comprehensive [land use] planning ... in their part of the ... corridor. Part of their concern was that this is an area which is somewhat more blue collar, a little bit tougher – a little less civil – than you have in other parts of the county: there was a lot of bitterness that the other parts of the county had been getting better service, and there was a feeling that there was no way to open up traditional citizen participation without getting completely out of hand and getting explosive. And so they asked us: could we propose a process, do process design work, give them advice on how they might proceed with comprehensive planning?

Here is a planning process that had been stymied by fear and evasion, by the threatening difficulties of ‘traditional citizen participation’ and a sense of incompetence in the face of meetings getting ‘completely out of hand,’ ‘explosive.’ Here is an allusion to missing ‘social capital’ in the form of missing trust, norms, and networks: trust that others at the meeting will not explode, norms that they needed a process design to suggest, networks that the convened parties needed to begin to form (Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti 1992). So what happened? We said, ‘Would you be interested in considering a process which inte-

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grated what you’re doing with what’s going on with the adjacent jurisdictions in the corridor?’ And they said, ‘You are out of your mind.’

This might reasonably be a point at which many planners pack their bags. As planners they are trained to see the impacts that the counties have on one another, but they are often not trained to know what to do when they have made a proposal and the key officials respond by saying, ‘You’re out of your mind.’ So let us follow Blechman’s story: We said, ‘Well, let’s take a look.’ We then went out and interviewed about a hundred and thirty people, roughly one-third business, one-third citizen-activist and political types, and one-third governmental officials. We then constructed four focus groups representing slightly different geographical areas, but each mixed in terms of those three sectors. And we then constructed, out of those focus groups and out of the interviews, a team of fourteen people who represented all of the jurisdictions and all of the sectors – who then formed a negotiating group to discuss process for integrated planning ... That group, through us, then presented the proposal for a pretty dramatically different kind of process to the planning agencies in two of the counties and to the county council [in the] third – and it eventually won approval for that new process, which is now beginning.

So far this was ‘just’ the beginning, and Blechman recognized the enormous amount of hard work remaining to be done, but he also usefully reminded us of what had been accomplished too. Now, this was a consensus-building process in the sense that county officials believed initially they could not sit in the same room with each other – but ultimately [they] sat down and came to an agreement about how the process ought to work. It included the county official who said, ‘I don’t think I can sit in the same room as those people.’ Obviously, this is not the same as building a consensus on comprehensive planning, land use, transportation, environmental management, growth [and so on] in the corridor, but it’s clearly the first step.

What might planners and others learn from this first step? First, they

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need to struggle to not get stopped cold by the officials’ visceral scepticism: ‘I don’t think I can sit in the same room as those people.’ This was not a coolly reflective, intellectual scepticism that said, ‘Pretty dubious.’ This was ‘you’re crazy’ to think about getting all these people together, getting us together with ‘those people.’ Second, we see that from an initial point of officials’ worries about cooperation, the process built on careful representation and ‘a negotiating group’ that discussed, recommended, and then gained official approval and mandate for a process that few people thought possible, that had been dismissed as ‘crazy.’ Third, there is a deceptively simple, but politically complex process of learning from interviews. Blechman suggested how much more than information such crucial interviews can produce. He tells us: While I love [doing] surveys ... I know that for purposes of conflict resolution surveying absolutely is no substitute for personal contact. Interviewing is partially information gathering, but it’s sixty percent relationship building. You are introducing yourself and inviting people to trust you. It’s a negotiation in itself. And if they trust you, to share information with you, and you treat that information with the respect that you promise, it’s then not a very large leap to say, ‘Now, will you trust me to put together a meeting where you won’t get beaten up?’

Interviewing and asking questions can reach far beyond informationgathering. Here we see not just qualities of sharing information, manifesting respect, earning trust, and building relationships, but we see putting all of this in the service of convening conversations, ‘a meeting,’ in which parties’ fears of aggression, antipathy, distrust, and disrespect can be overcome in the pursuit of practical learning and actual civic deliberation (Forester 2006b; Reich 1988; Dryzek 2000). We need not make too much of this first story, but we can take as simply worth exploring further this achievement of cooperative and officially mandated results in the face of its earlier dismissal, a dismissal not by cranks but by the officials centrally involved. Let us now turn to cases involving identity and deeper value issues. Challenges of Identity In Land Use Planning In Southern California a developer wanted to build 100 or more new homes. Local Native Americans opposed the project because the land

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in question held an ancestral burial ground. Political officials were worried about still other constituents, as we hear from our next practitioner, who is neither Anglo nor Native American, but Asian American. Stephen Thom (1997) of the federal Community Relations Service begins: When the [mayor and county supervisor] found out that somebody neutral with the experience that I’ve had working with Native American issues was available, the mayor immediately asked me to come into a private meeting with him. In his mind there were multiple parties, and he couldn’t figure out what their position was, and he wanted to know, could we assist? He was more than willing to sit down and work with the parties, [and] he wanted to ... begin to get a representative body that could enter some constructive forms of negotiations. So that’s when we entered into a series of public meetings. Our role initially was to talk to many of the tribal members in the area. In those meetings, what I attempted to do was to go over ... what the developer was proposing, and what the city was permitting the developer to do – acknowledging that there was a sacred burial ground, and acknowledging that the developer would be flexible and try to be respectful to the Native American interests – but the Native American interest needed to begin to grapple with what they felt they wanted to accomplish – what they felt was sacred and religious and respectful.

Here we have a mayor interested in a negotiated solution, not just pushing through the formal permitting process. But the mayor was unsure both about the real issues and about the parties and turned for help to a mediator who was experienced with tribal issues. Thom continues: [The tribal members] wanted to try to keep the ground from getting excavated. They wanted to try to set that land aside so there wouldn’t be development on it, and they also had an interest of [seeing that] whatever was built around complemented the intent of the tribe’s use, historically, and demonstrated a respect for what their burial ground would be ... So the picture started clearing up.

At this point, the picture may be clearing up, but we could easily enough worry about impasse, legal suits, and traditional political power. Negotiated outcomes don’t appear all that promising when one party says, ‘Let’s get the shovels,’ and another says, ‘Don’t touch

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the land – it’s sacred.’ We seem to have all the signs here of what might easily be an intractable conflict involving identity issues. Thom continued, Meanwhile the Veterans’ Administration was looking for land, and there were veterans pushing the city to get some kind of a veterans’ home, and they were a third party [coming] into the picture. The city was very interested, and the county was very interested, in having a veterans’ home [because] there was a [military] base in that area, and just a large constituency [so] that [the home] made political sense to the supervisor and to the city to support.

Now the picture’s getting more complicated, and Thom goes on: The developer owned the land. The developer was asking and trying to get permission and permits approved to do the building. The city and the county were leveraging, ‘We’d like a veterans’ home,’ and the Native Americans were leveraging, ‘You’re on a sacred burial ground.’ So you really had three agendas.

So far, viewed from the outside, we have: new housing versus a veterans’ home versus a sacred burial ground. It still does not look very promising. But Thom tells us that their meetings discovered more: Now – what was really interesting was that the Native Americans loved the idea of having a veterans’ home there because what that did for them was that it gave the land respect for the elders ... They liked the concept of having a living place for elderly people that would be respectful to their property, and they felt that the veterans would accomplish that. So the veterans and the Native Americans began to talk, and they began to agree – that they supported each other’s agendas.

How did that happen? Thom explains: A [Native American] leader [had] evolved who basically tossed out a couple of concepts that he felt were important. One was setting aside five acres, and a second was building a Native American memorial on that site which would complement a veterans’ home and would give some tribute to those Native Americans that participated in America’s wars. That be-

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came the hook: the Native Americans gravitated to this concept because it was so reverent, respectful of Native Americans, and it so well complemented the veterans’ home, and it gave tribute, like no other tribute to Native Americans in this nation. The developer had to consider [whether] to get a permit. He had no objections to building a veterans’ home and giving twenty-two acres of land for that purpose. He had no objections to giving some land ... to the Native Americans, if that be what they wanted – he was flexible on that – so long as he got to build on the balance of the thirty something acres and build, I think, a hundred twenty homes. What happened was that the city and the county had very clearly stated that a veterans’ home was going to be a clear criterion for allowing the permission for the development. One of the commissioners on the state Veterans’ Review Board – who was, I think, of Native American ancestry – had indicated clearly that if the town hoped to gain state approval and [hoped] the State would come and bring money and build the veterans’ home, it was going to have to come in unified with the Native Americans as well as with the veterans. So the leverage was all set for reaching some accord.

Thus, a dispute that we could easily have framed as irreconcilable, to excavate or not, to leave the land untouched or build new housing on it, no longer seems hopeless. We began with images of marketed land versus sacred land, the clash of one group’s interests, or perhaps even ways of life, against another’s, and now we sense possibilities that might satisfy the interests (and perhaps the ways of life) of each of the apparent adversaries (cf. Fuller 2005). But even more importantly, we see our own earlier expectations of irreconcilability refuted, and so we find ourselves surprised to see new possibilities that we had not imagined. We might find ourselves less cynical, more curious now, and needing to understand better how our earlier practical assessments of likely impasse could have been mistaken. We need to ask seriously, What were we thinking? Why might we easily have missed encouraging and achieving such mutually beneficial outcomes? We see here what we earlier called ‘the drama of mediation’ and, of course, the dream of negotiation too. We start with conflict and apparently irreconcilable interests that have little to do with each other, and we wonder how in the world these parties will ever stop living at crosspurposes. Then we see that skilful negotiators and mediators sometimes come up with results that no one would have expected. We need to explore how these dramas work, how at times our own comfortable

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realism about struggles of power, interests, and identity can keep us stupid or blind (or both) and keep us from finding options and possibilities that really do work for the people involved (Forester 2006a; Heifetz and Linsky 2002; Kolb and Williams 2003). So we need to explore, once more, how mediators snatch possibilities from the apparently impossible, and how planners and others working in the face of multiple and conflicting parties might do the same. Making Progress Where Little Negotiation Seems Possible Let us turn now to a third story of negotiation, provided by Frank Blechman (2005) as well. We might come to see, in the wonderful words of Russell Norwood Hanson, that ‘there’s more to seeing than meets the eyeball,’ that there can well be more going on in a case than we expect, and that when our expectations too quickly blind us, we need to learn to see more, we need to learn to learn, to know that we do not know what we need to know even though we are confident in what we do know. As we shall see, Blechman’s account at first appears to be full of contradictions. He seems to disavow the promise of ‘agreement,’ but he tells us of agreements reached nevertheless. He speaks of nonnegotiable issues, but then points towards evidence of real and productive negotiated agreements. Let us listen closely to appreciate what he really says: The program [I work with] does not start from negotiation theory. Indeed it starts from the premises that: the conflicts that go the longest and cause the most damage are rooted in non-negotiable issues, race, class, gender, religion, nationality, deeply held values, that those deep rooted issues, therefore, will not be resolved by negotiation, and that the end product of a resolutionary process is not, therefore, an agreement. That creates a somewhat different framework for what we do. [So the end product], often, is an understanding. Parties come together, parties who are deeply divided; they join in an analytical process, and they go away not having agreed about a damn thing but having come to understand their own situation and the other people’s situation better.

So far we have not appealed to any negotiated outcome but to improved understanding, and of course we should want to know what any such ‘understanding’ might be good for. If some parties gain con-

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trol and resources while others gain ‘understanding,’ we might worry about just what they are understanding. Still, understanding our own situations and the others with whom we must act might certainly be goods in themselves, but of course there is more to it. Blechman continues: ‘With that understanding they act unilaterally in the future in ways that are less conflictual, more constructive for each, and in fact they may find that while they can not get within a shred of agreement on issue X, they in fact have dozens of issues A, B, C, to J on which they can cooperate – many of which are essentially negotiable’ (my emphasis). Here we start with non-negotiated ‘unilateral actions’: what parties do on their own, uncoordinated with others, and we have the suggestion that their ‘understanding,’ far short of any agreements, might lead these unilateral actions to be less adversarial and more constructive for each party. In such a case, again without any explicit and reciprocal agreements, parties might produce non-negotiated but mutually fruitful ‘joint gains’ (Axelrod 1984; Winship 2006). What follows these non-negotiated, more mutually constructive actions in Blechman’s account is even more interesting. Honouring the assumption that on certain issues no agreement – not a shred – will be possible on a central, defining, ‘focal’ issue, Blechman suggests nevertheless, that ‘they may find,’ they may discover, clearly having not approached one another with this understanding or this expectation, that there may be ‘dozens of issues on which they can cooperate.’ Here, of course, we are back to the possibilities of actual negotiation discovered in a setting in which no negotiation at all seemed possible on a dominant issue. But there is a lesson here too. What we can come to treat as a dominant and defining issue, we now see, can paradoxically be a blinding one. We think we see the central issue, it looks nonnegotiable, and we draw the implications for action: let us not waste resources trying to do the impossible. But Blechman suggests that this apparently reasonable rationale, ‘nothing’s possible,’ hides the real possibilities that we do have. So, Frank Blechman teaches us that seeking ‘agreement’ too early on can not only be hopeless, but worse: the pursuit of agreement can actively disempower us. We do not just set ourselves up for a fall, but we keep ourselves stupid: we ignore opportunities right in front of us. How can this work? Listen a bit more, as he continues: I’ll give you a classic example. [A few years ago], the pro-choice and prolife forces in [this state], which is heavily Catholic, had really gone to

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war with each other, and the state police were proposing to go to the legislature seeking new authority to interpose themselves to prevent violence. There was a meeting arranged between leaders of the pro-choice and the pro-life forces who immediately agreed that it would be very undesirable if such legislation was passed and that they should jointly oppose it on a variety of free speech grounds.

Here we have an agreement prompted by what both parties take, perhaps for different reasons, to be an external threat: increased intervention by the state police. But their discussions produced more, Blechman tells us: As the discussions went forward they discovered, not entirely to their amazement, that they also shared strong common interest in increasing health care for at-risk teenagers and pregnant teenagers – and they [also] wound up forming a coalition which voluntarily proposed a set of rules for how they would picket each other to sort of lower the risk of violence, thereby forestalling the state police proposal. Simultaneously they formed a coalition in the legislature to increase state funding and support for prenatal health care. That coalition, despite all the wars and despite all the interventions of groups like Operation Rescue from outside the state coming in, has held up and [for many years] since it has succeeded in increasing state funding for health care even at times of budget cuts. And that has, at some level, improved the civility of debate. Now, on the fundamental issue of abortion, needless to say, the two sides did not convince each other and did not agree, and if the purpose of bringing them together was to seek common ground on that issue, they might never have come together, and my guess is that it would have failed. But, bringing them together in a different context made it possible for them to identify very constructive things that they could do.

Several different outcomes deserve our attention here. First, two adversaries that have been involved in deeply and fundamentally value-defined, bitter, and at times violent conflict found ways to agree practically: 1 On steps to resist legislative support for increased police power;

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2 On steps to develop rules for picketing to lower the risks of violence at demonstrations; 3 On steps to improve health care for at-risk teens; 4 On steps to form a coalition to lobby the legislature for prenatal care funding; 5 On ways to improve the level of adversarial debate, of ‘civility,’ at a time when anti-abortion protests were increasingly characterized by the intimidation of women at clinics and an escalating rhetoric tantamount at times to the incitement to violence. But that is not what is most important here, as surprising as these practical agreements between arch enemies might be. The far more important lesson for planners and mediators alike follows: ‘if the purpose of bringing them together was to seek common ground on that issue, they might never have come together ... But, bringing them together in a different context made it possible for them to identify very constructive things that they could do.’ Here, Blechman suggests, looking for agreement on the core issue would have led to failure. That is the easy and obvious part for the political realists who say, ‘Of course, they’ll never agree!’ But, even more importantly, failing to bring the parties together at all – because they so obviously and realistically could not agree on the core issue – that realism too would have been a source of failure and missed opportunity because, again, ‘bringing them together in a different context made it possible for them to identify very constructive things that they could do.’ Blechman, like Thom and others (Forester 2005, 2006a) teaches us a deep lesson about our presumptions of others who appear to hold deeply, ‘fundamentally,’ different values than our own. The realists, the ones who say, ‘It’s no use talking; they fundamentally disagree,’ are being far too literal and superficial, and so they are likely to miss many real opportunities that grow from conversations that are indeed possible even when a central negotiated agreement is not. So we have at least one punch line from this third story: ‘agreement’ can at times be a deceptively simple and even inappropriate early goal of dispute resolution, and our perception of ‘no possible agreement’ on a central issue, our own negotiation realism, can produce our own blinding failure. This is all a story about realism that can become cynicism with the best of intentions. We are thinking about differences on a

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key issue. We really do think no agreement is possible, and we are both right, narrowly, and wrong, more practically. We might be happy to learn that we have been wrong, but we would have been even happier to have recognized and acted on our real opportunities in the first place. Conclusion Skilful mediators, these accounts suggest, can at times snatch real possibilities from the jaws of impossibility. How, we should ask, do they raid the impossible, when others think the game is up? How do they seem to do it, and what lessons do they suggest that planners and other citizens need to learn in situations of complex public disputes? This analysis suggests several conclusions that we should consider carefully and explore further. First, skilful mediators seem to know that in public disputes there is always more going on than meets the eye, that parties always care about even more, sometimes much more, than they say as a matter of public posture. Therefore, as planners and citizens we should be very careful about tying our own hands with the political rhetoric of those who seem to be adversaries. To put this more bluntly: in a globalizing context of increasing cultural diversity, we need to listen ever more carefully to – and every bit as importantly, beyond – ‘the words.’ In civil society, of course, this engagement with and beyond the spoken word enables practices of recognition and respect, listening, and learning. Second, these mediators have their presumptions too, but they presume that in times of conflict, stereotypes and fears can focus parties’ attention in limiting ways, so that parties need to, and can in fact, learn. As parties to complex disputes, facing differences, we need to know that we do not yet know all that we might, so we can come to learn first, and only second to act strategically to achieve our ends. Once again, in a globalizing environment, we can anticipate that our increasing contact with cultural, social, linguistic, and even religious diversity will mean quite directly and practically that we must presume less and learn more. Third, these mediators assume that parties can surprise one another, with new information, gestures, offers, disclosures of self, and more that can enable them (us) singly and together to act in new ways, as they and we learn from, and respond to, one another. Thus, the mediators presume that in the first place, initially and practically, conversation matters more than and must precede any agreement, as we saw in

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all three cases. In civil society, this means we must resist the urge to bargain too quickly, to look for fast and simple deals, simply to trade and exchange rather than allowing ourselves to talk and to listen, to inquire and to find new ways to avoid the stereotyping that ends up making us stupid and self-righteous rather than perceptive and better informed. Fourth, these mediators know that when disputes take win-lose or zero-sum complexions, complications and additional considerations can help. We look stuck, but more information, more concerns, new relationships, and fresh recognition can get us unstuck, as the role of the veterans played in the second case. Additional complexity – additional facts that matter, additionally relevant details or stakes – can save us from our own ‘rush to interpretation,’ our own pre-emptive, presumptively informed ‘realism’ that blinds us to possibilities we really have. This can sound easy, but it makes personal demands that are not always simple. We need to tolerate ambiguity and complexity, beliefs unlike our own, ways of organizing the social and cosmological world that are unlike what we know. Planners who can appreciate difference in these forms will help cultivate diversity, and cooperation, in civil society rather than run from it or suppress it. Fifth, the mediators whose work we have explored assume that dispute resolution involves not only knowledge and value claims and commitments, not only differences over epistemological and ethical claims, but practically embodied performances, small offers, reciprocal gestures, the sharing of information and the building of trust, as we saw in the first case’s interview process. More precisely, these mediators’ practice tells us to focus less on conflicting arguments, less on general and abstract knowledge and value claims, and more on the specific tone, style, and conditions of conversation, dialogue, or argumentation, the practical, embodied character of others’ and our own speaking and listening. This means, in an environment of diversity and plurality, that citizens and planners alike must not only think differently but act differently. We must learn conventions and rituals of meeting and listening, talking and eating, walking and working together. The work of civil society happens in words and in deeds together. Sixth, and finally, these mediators presume that parties typically and inevitably care about much more than they say, that they too have to manage multiple, conflicting, and ambiguous goals, responsibilities, and obligations, and that, as practical people, ‘Others’ can and will improvise, innovate, and cooperate practically to solve problems and

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build new working relationships, as did the abortion opponents and advocates, in unforeseen and unimagined ways. So too in increasingly diverse and interdependent relationships, planners and citizens will come to appreciate that our many differences are not just issue-defined, but far more complex, and that complexity provides us with opportunities as well as with obstacles to our work together. This essay makes few claims for mediation in general, but rather for what we might learn from thoughtful mediators, whose work suggests lessons about our own presumptions (and the ways these often hold us captive), our own seductive cynicism and failure to act on good judgment, our own failures of hope. In situations that can look to the realist’s eye quite irreconcilable, mediators can surprisingly snatch cooperative, consensual outcomes from looming impossibility. If we want to improve our abilities to live together in increasingly diverse and complex civil societies, if we want our planning and public policy practices to enhance our capacities for social learning in a globalizing world, we as citizens and planners alike would do well to look carefully at what such mediators of public disputes actually do.

REFERENCES Axelrod, Robert. 1984. The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books. Blechman, Frank. 2005. (1993). ‘From Conflict Generation through ConsensusBuilding Using Many of the Same Skills: A Profile of Frank Blechman.’ In J. Forester, ed., Mediation in Practice. Ithaca: Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University, 1–17. Edited from original interview, 21 Jan. 1993. Dryzek, J. 2000. Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. – 2003. ‘Alternatives to Agonism and Analgesia: Deliberative Democracy in Divided Societies.’ Draft paper for the conference on Deliberative Democracy and Sensitive Issues, Amsterdam, 25–6 March. Eckstein, Barbara, and J. Throgmorton, eds. 2003. Stories and Sustainability: Planning, Practice and Possibility for American Cities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Forester, John. 1999. The Deliberative Practitioner. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. – 2003. Edited transcriptions of interviews with MG, FB, ST. Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University. – 2004. ‘Critical Moments in Negotiations: On Humor, Recognition and Hope.’ Negotiation Journal, April, 231–8. – ed. 2005. Mediation in practice: Profiles of facilitators, mediators, coalition- and

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consensus-builders. Ms in preparation for publication, Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University. – 2006a. ‘Making Participation Work When Interests Conflict: From Fostering Dialogue and Moderating Debate to Mediating Disputes.’ Journal of the American Planning Association. Fall 72(4): 447–56. – 2006b. ‘Policy Analysis as Critical Listening.’ In Robert Goodin, Michael Moran, and Martin Rein, eds., Oxford Handbook of Public Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 124–51. – 2006c. ‘Exploring Urban Practice in a Democratizing Society: Opportunities, Techniques, and Challenges.’ Development South Africa 23(5). Forester, John, Scott Peters, and Margo Hittleman, eds. 2005. Website supporting instructional use of practice stories. http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/ courses/practicestories/ Friedmann, John, and Michael Douglass, eds. 1998. Cities and Citizens: Planning and the Rise of Civil Society in a Global Age. New York: Wiley. Fuller, Boyd. 2005. ‘Trading Zones: Cooperating for Water Resource and Ecosystem Management When Stakeholders Have Apparently Irreconcilable Differences.’ Ph.D. diss., Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Fung, Archon, and E.O. Wright, eds. 2003. Deepening Democracy. London: Verso. Greig, Michelle Robinson. 1997. Interview by Kristen Grace. On file. Profiles of Practitioners Project, Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University. Heifetz, Ronald, and Martin Linsky. 2002. Leadership on the Line. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Kolb, Deborah. 1994. When Talk Works. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Kolb, Deborah, and Judith Williams. 2003. Everyday Negotiation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Lewicki, Roy, B. Gray, and M. Elliot. 2003. Making Sense of Intractable Environmental Conflicts. Washington, DC: Island Press. Murdoch, Iris. 1970. The Sovereignty of Good. London: Ark. Nussbaum, Martha. 1990. Love’s Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Putnam, Robert, R. Leonardi, and R. Nanetti. 1992. Making Democracy Work. New York: Princeton University Press. Reich, Robert. 1988. The Power of Public Ideas. London: Ballinger. Sandercock, Leonie. 2000. ‘When Strangers Become Neighbors: Managing Cities of Difference,’ Planning Theory and Practice 1(1): 13–30. – 2003a. ‘Dreaming the Sustainable City: Organizing Hope, Negotiating Fear, Mediating Memory.’ In Barbara Eckstein and Jim Throgmorton, eds., Stories and Sustainability. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 142–64. – 2003b. Cosmopolis II: Mongrel Cities in the 21st Century. New York: Continuum Books.

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SchoCn, Donald. 1983. The Reflective Practitioner. New York: Basic Books. Sclavi, Marianella. 2006a. La Signora va nel Bronx. Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 3rd ed. – 2006b. ‘The Place of Creative Conflict Management in Intercultural Communications.’ Conference on Deliberative Democracy: New Directions in Public Policy Dispute Resolution, Cambridge, MA: 28–30 June. Susskind, Lawrence, and Jeffrey Cruickshank. 1987. Breaking the Impasse. New York: Basic Books. Susskind, Lawrence, Sara McKearnan, and Jennifer Thomas Larmer, eds. 1999. The Consensus-Building Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Reaching Agreement. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage. Thom, Stephen. 1997. Interview by Kristen Grace. On file. Profiles of Practitioners Project. Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University. Wagenaar, Hendrik. 2001. ‘Value Pluralism in Public Administration.’ In Jon Jun, ed., Rethinking Administrative Theory: The Challenge of the New Century. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 105–30. Winship, Christopher. 2006. ‘Policy Analysis as Puzzle Solving.’ In Michael Moran, Robert E. Goodin, and Martin Rein, eds., Oxford Handbook of Public Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 109–23.

PART TWO Civil Society Learning for Democratic Governance

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part 2 of this book deals with the dynamics, processes, and challenges faced by civil societies in attempting to democratize political governance through social learning. Our contributors understand civil societies to be those organizations, spaces, and activities that involve citizens acting together in their own right to achieve a common good, with no bidding or prodding from a higher authority, apart from direct party affiliation or political alignment. Hence, they are not concerned primarily with power, but they may be, and often are, vigilant against any abuse or excessive concentration of power on the part of the state and non-state organizations. Perspectives influenced by postcolonial, poststructuralist, and postdevelopment thinking coming from different disciplines are charting new forms and directions of community planning and international development practice. Interdisciplinary poststructuralist and postcolonial writers have already deconstructed community and international development practices, often imagining a world or a postdevelopment era where ‘development’ no longer becomes the central organizing principle of discourse and social life (Escobar 1995; 2000; Saunders 2002). Our contributors in Part 2 revisit the enduring theme of how societies, communities, and organizations learn, internally about themselves and externally about others and how others relate to one another, in order to further positive social change. They demonstrate that social learning involves formal and organized, as well as informal and unorganized, processes of (in)formative learning that take place within organizations, among the citizenry and broad public, which may involve or be stimulated by social movements. Some of the key questions addressed in their chapters are: How can social learning within governments and civil societies, especially organizations linked to wider social movements, contribute to the goal of democratizing planning and governance processes? How can human beings and local communities work together with their governments, states, and international agencies to link their personal behaviours and institutional practices to withstand the destructive economic and political activities that place intolerable stresses on our environments, social cohesion, and trust in public institutions and in humanity? How can we bring the notion of community good and public interest back into planning and development practices? Are there alternative concepts of development that do not entail relations of domination, disempowerment, and degradation? How do we get communities and other institutions of power to embrace these alternatives through social learning?

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We begin Part 2 with two general theme articles, one by Budd Hall, a key figure in adult education in Canada, and the other by a group of scholar-practitioners from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, that deal with the learning, teaching, and pedagogical dimensions of social organizations as they aspire and contribute to invigorating civil society and democratic governance. Hall argues that social movements provide the transformative energy-booster of civil society organizations. He demonstrates through a historical review of human organizations how the learning dimension of social movements and civil society organizations is critical to both broadening their base of participation and understanding their impact on society. Hall further argues that social movements play significant roles in creating new knowledge and new lessons for global learning, indeed, that social movements lie at the heart of social change. Engaged in his own participatory research and learning, Hall’s practice and theory inform each other in a conscious and articulated way. He examines the importance of understanding different ways of knowing, the critical evaluation of structures of power by marginalized groups (conscientization), and the social and political change occurring at the grassroots, every day, in cycles of learning, action, and reflection. According to Hall, social movements hold unique potential to foster social transformation because they have the following characteristics: incubational capacity (spaces that promote learning and growth); space for cognitive practice (space for dialogue and debate); and the capacity to create epistemic communities (communities of interest or ideology). Within social movement processes, knowledge and social learning strategies are created and negotiated. It is these processes, as much as the ‘result’ of any social movement, that Hall sees as having a profound impact on social change. The role of the educator or planner in these processes is that of facilitator, knowledge-gatherer, and resource person, bringing special skills to help communities take action themselves. It is obvious that Budd Hall is first and foremost an educator, but it is less known that he is also a poet, bringing experiences from his practice to the poetic form. The chapter by Peter Taylor, Jethro Pettit, and Lucy Stackpool-Moore examines how and why institutions of higher learning, such as college and universities, as well as educators within those institutions, have struggled with the question of how citizenship is learned and the challenges of providing educational programs and experiences that make a real difference to the lives and learning of individuals, and ultimately to

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wider society. They asked the following questions: ‘To what extent has their education really prepared these people to make critical interventions that contribute to inclusive, pro-poor social change processes? Does the learning they experienced help them to engage effectively in shaping agendas, policies, and practices? The ways in which learning and teaching are conceived, planned, and facilitated in institutions of higher learning, and how these institutions position themselves as agents of change, are crucial factors in preparing learners for such responsibilities.’ The authors argue that addressing these issues, often ranked low on the agenda of most educational institutions, could provide us with alternative perspectives and approaches to learning and teaching that can challenge current educational paradigms. Using the example of a cross-cultural dialogue and collaborative project among more than 300 educators called ‘Learning and Teaching for Transformation,’ the authors examine the insights and reflections offered by educators from around the world who are attempting to meet their transformative potential as contributors to development and social change. The educators they interviewed emphasize their own experiences and challenges in dealing with power relations in academia, enriching the curriculum, bringing education from university to nonacademic community settings, and dealing with the institutional challenges that they face in their work. On the theme of restructuring power relations between learners and teachers, Taylor, Pettit, and Stackpool-Moore give emphasis to those forms of knowledge – and ways of expressing knowledge – that lie beyond intellectual and conceptual sense-making, which higher educational institutions often privilege as the highest form of knowledge. These educators have long recognized the diverse ways – non-dialogical, experiential, artistic, intuitive, ethical, emotional and spiritual – in which knowledge and skills may be understood and expressed, including many others neglected in higher learning. They recognize that with this shift in perspectives as to what forms of knowledge, and ways of expressing these, are legitimate and worthwhile pursuing, the curriculum development process, content, and delivery must also change. Innovative curricular changes favoured by this group tend to incorporate the seemingly contradictory approach of being transparent and open about the learning process and using learning methods that involve challenge and surprise. Those involved in education and training programs outside academia, such as agricultural and rural extension, prefer a participatory approach to curriculum development, which de-

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velops the curriculum from the interactive exchange of experience and information between the various stakeholders. When the curriculum moves from the academy to the community, innovations through action research are carried out using contextdependent approaches. Here, the educators once again raise the epistemological issues around the limitations of language and the importance of valuing varied and alternative ways of knowing and being. As they are involved in practices that colleges and universities may consider non-traditional, if not radical, progressive educators are often faced with even more challenging issues of power, hierarchy, privilege, and performance-based evaluations in their own institutions. Thus, the educators focus on their own roles and positions in these institutions, offering insights about factors that are opposing change and that are conducive for change. The last two chapters in Part 2 are by Irene Guijt and Leonora Angeles. They provide case studies illustrating the challenges faced by governments and civil societies when they undertake collaborative efforts to democratize planning and governance. Their chapters are relevant to the wider examination of how decentralization, generally believed to be a context conducive to participatory planning and governance, may provide possibilities for, as well as constraints on, wider processes of political democratization. With the devolution of powers to cities occurring in both rich and poor countries and the withdrawal of foreign aid and the disengagement by international institutions in poor countries, will local governments and communities be better off, as they are forced to create their own alternative discourses and practices, and design their own policies and forms of governance? What new skills in planning for strategic policy formulation, interagency collaboration, fiscal management, and policy impact assessments are needed in light of these debates? What new forms of participation, differences in identities, and civil societies may emerge and be useful in honing these new skills? The malleable concepts of participation, civil society, gender, and community have permeated dominant development and planning discourses, and they have been wedded with every possible issue and debate. In her chapter, Irene Guijt expands on her groundbreaking book (Guijt and Shah 1998), which challenged practitioners and scholars of international and participatory development to examine ‘the myth of community,’ that is, the oversimplification of identity and dynamics

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within locality groups. Providing a more complex and critical assessment of community participation, she argues that although social inclusion is a stated goal in many participatory development programs, the complexities of community difference (age, economic status, religion, caste, ethnicity, gender, and others) are treated poorly as a result of a naive view of community as a ‘harmonious and internally equitable collective’ (Guijt and Shah 1998, 1). Guijt once again brings our attention to the oversimplication of community differences and avoidance or lack of understanding of power relationships, urging us to attend to the complexities of communities in all their rich diversity and dynamism, rather than to reduce them to singular collective units. Planners and governors who are truly committed to engaging civil societies in important public processes such as resource management, economic development, and decision-making must be perceptive of and sensitive to these diversities and complexities, particularly to the ways in which participation by men and women differs. Using her various field experience in Brazil and Africa, Guijt reminds us to let go of our preconceptions and knowledge constructs when working in an unfamiliar planning context, thereby letting local people teach us about their knowledge and needs. Guijt’s research has generated specific methods and techniques that can help us expand our gender awareness and elicit equal participation from men and women. In addition, her ideas and writings can help make us astutely aware of our own assumptions and biases (for example, assumptions about male and female attitudes towards the natural environment in a given setting) and the ways in which these influence and limit the effectiveness of our work. Participatory development and participatory governance practitioners have pointed out the importance of linking personal, behavioural, organizational, and attitudinal changes to wider institutional and policy changes. The chapter by Leonora Angeles proposes an alternative reading and (re)interpretation of the Philippines’ most awarded city in the field of ‘good practices and innovations’ in participatory urban governance. This alternative reading of Naga City’s governance and planning innovations is told in the context of the historiography and political economy of the Philippine state and Naga’s local state, the postauthoritarian experience with decentralization, and larger political culture, while recognizing the paradigmatic shift that has indeed occurred in the restructuring of state-civil society relations in the city.

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Angeles documents the various dimensions of governance and planning practices in Naga – particularly in housing the urban poor – which simultaneously combine forms of community-based initiatives for social transformation and performance of state functions while taking advantage of the spaces provided within patronage and rent-seeking politics to achieve social justice and economic redistribution goals. Angeles argues that a historically situated, discourse-sensitive, and theoretically informed rereading of Naga City’s political experiment is necessary for drawing meaningful lessons from more than fifteen years of experience of this resurgent and dynamic city. Informed, on the one hand, by the grand narrative of state-led forms of participatory governance and, on the other, by the ‘tiny tales’ of community-based initiatives, conflicts, and contests, her alternative interpretation is intended to draw lessons on decentralization and state intervention in civil society to support participatory governance initiatives. These could lead to forms of planning for governance and governance in planning that could be replicated in other localities and scaled up at higher levels. Collectively, these four chapters suggest that new organizational and binding mechanisms within and outside civil societies must be created if more democratic forms of planning and governance are to emerge and become institutionalized in the coming decades. We need to determine what sorts of issues and policy questions relevant to democratic governance rightly belong to workplaces, schools, local, city, regional, national, and supranational or global bodies, and consequently, identify how people at these levels may be involved in the direct determination of relationships, associations, and institutions that primarily affect them and their environments. Ultimately, democracy, and democratic forms of planning and governance in our increasingly global world, can only be sustained and entrenched if various competencies and powers are recognized at different levels of interaction and interconnections, as public issues and problems stretch across wide spaces affecting ever larger groups of people who, more than ever, need to learn together from their collective experiences.

REFERENCES Escobar, A. 1995. World Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Civil Society Learning for Democratic Governance 149 – 2000. ‘Beyond the Search for a Paradigm? Post-Development and Beyond.’ Development 43(4): 11–14. Guijt, Irene, and Meera Kaul Shah. 1998. The Myth of Community: Gender Issues in Participatory Development. London: Intermediate Technology. Saunders, K., ed. 2002. Feminist Post-Development Thought: Rethinking Modernity, Post-Colonialism and Representation. London and New York: Zed Books.

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5 Social Movements, Civil Society, and Learning in a World at Risk budd l. hall

Social movement learning refers to several interconnected phenomena: informal learning occurring by persons who are part of any social movement; intentional learning that is stimulated by organized educational efforts of the social movements themselves; and formal and informal learning that takes place among the broad public, the citizens, as a result of the activities undertaken by a given social movement (Hall 2005). This chapter looks at the learning dimensions of social movements as they relate to civil society and aspirations for democratic governance. It posits that social movements are the transformative energy behind the emergence of civil society organizations and that the examination of the learning dimension of social movements and civil society organizations is critical to both understanding the impact of these social formations and to broadening their base of participation. We are living in a world seriously at risk, where the structures of global governance are weak on the national state side of the equation and disconnected and often discredited on the civil society side. I am drawing attention to the sociopolitical contexts of governance that we are currently facing and then making the case for more attention to the learning dimensions of democratic governance. The links between social movements and civil society or global civil society organizations are complex and intertwined. Social movements are collective expressions of a given group of people that are intended to resist, transform, or in other ways have an impact on the political, social, or policy worlds the worlds of governance. Global civil society refers most often to the explosion of small and large globally connected non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and networks which have arisen in the past ten to fifteen years and which have become particu-

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larly prominent in the context of the World Social Forum (Hall 2000).1 Some would say, in fact, that the phenomena of the World Social Forum are a global social movement or a set of social movements in and of themselves. What the global movement(s) is/are named differs. We are alternatively speaking of a movement for alternative globalization, an anti-globalization movement, a movement for the world we want, or a movement for redefining community. A quick stroll through the World Social Forum and related Websites will reveal thousands of nongovernmental civil society organizations. These thousands of organizations working and advocating at the global level are part of what we refer to as global civil society, which can be understood as at least two phenomena: the subtotal of all local and national civil society organizations or the total of the international or transnational civil society organizations. Whichever definition one chooses, the fact remains that the actual governance of the global commons is being deeply influenced by the actions and aspirations of people of the world expressed through their staggeringly diverse organizational forms. The World Is Not OK I first began to use the shorthand notion of the world not being OK fifteen years ago. At that time a kind of rosy glow associated with the rolling out of globalization as a global market utopia was clearly in the air. Years later, with the rise of the anti-capitalist and anti-globalization movements, the protracted tension in the Middle East, and the spread of violence and insecurity to all parts of the world, the mood has become much darker. I am not referring specifically to the world since the events of 11 September 2001, and the invasion of Iraq, although those events have also provided a dramatic focus to the imbalances in our world. I am referring to a deeper set of structures and relationships of a financial, political, cultural, and environmental, and perhaps even spiritual, nature that have been coming together for a long time. Let me begin with the familiar theme of globalization, experienced as it is in a variety of forms and practices. Important dimensions of globalization also include the economy, the state, communications, movements of people, sales of arms, and violence and crime. The most dramatic financial figure, which illustrates the contemporary global market, is that each day, about one and a half trillion disconnected dollars change hands for financial transactions that are totally unrelated to global trade in goods or services. These transactions have to do

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with currency speculation by private and public banks, with investments of all kinds through the computerised stock markets of the world, and with bond undertakings at both the private and state levels. The political leadership in most parts of the world has joined the call for each of us to play our part in the competitive global market. Products are assembled everywhere, sold everywhere, crossing borders sometimes scores of times before finding an ultimate place of rest or sale. And the movement of durable goods does not stop with sale. Within days, weeks, or years most of the goods produced in the contemporary world will be discarded and our goods then rejoin the global search for another resting place. If we live in cities, we send our waste to the rural areas or nearby industrial wastelands. If our waste is poisonous or toxic, we will send it to the furthest reaches of our countries, or failing that, to the poorest parts of the world, where countries fight over the right to become a dumping ground for the waste of the rich. Jobs, health and safety conditions, environmental regulations, human rights, and immigration policies are thrown out as deregulation on a global basis strips national legislation of its force. The effects of these wasteful deregulated economies are most devastating on the world’s children. Accumulated evidence from the ‘rich’ countries, which include Australia and Canada, show that in many countries there are widening income inequalities, worrying levels of unemployment and inactivity, and growing poverty often amid a general increase in affluence. In the entire group of Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) countries there are a growing number of families where there are no wage earners, as well as a vast majority where all adult members of the family are obliged to work. Indeed, one in five of all households in OECD countries are now considered ‘work-poor.’ They are working but at such low income levels as to leave them below the poverty lines in their respective countries. In 2002, the richest one-fifth of American families received 49.7 per cent of total income and the poorest fifth received only 3.5 per cent – a record high ratio of 14 to 1. The richest 5 per cent of families received 21 per cent of income, equal to the income of the lower 50 per cent of families (Americans for Democratic Action 2004). Increasing gaps between the rich and the poor countries, and the resulting social exclusion of the underprivileged and marginal classes, create various forms of environmental problems. As rich countries further deplete non-renewable resources, other nations try to catch up, while poor families in both worlds are forced to depend on dwindling land, forest, and marine resources to survive.

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On the Environment On 24 November 2000 we learned that the Global Conference on Climate Change meeting in The Hague had failed to reach an agreement on measures to be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And this just over one year after, according to the Globe and Mail, we learned that two islands in the Kiribati Archipelago in the South Pacific were the first to be submerged by rising sea levels due to global warming. Canada, while having the highest per capita consumption of energy of any country on earth is, as we know, still engaged in the debate about whether to sign the Kyoto Agreements. The United States, while energetically seeking international support for military action on Iraq, has turned its back on the international appeal for action on global warming. Wackernagel and Rees (1996) developed the ecological footprint analysis, a method that has been elaborated for determining the percentage of the world’s resources that we use as individuals, as communities, or as whole nations. Their complex formula points out that if the entire world were to achieve the same levels of development and growth that characterize most lives in the rich countries, we would need four entire planets worth of energy resources to satisfy these demands. Clearly, we are on an ecological collision path between a Utopia of the rich and the carrying capacity of a still fragile planet. Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb, Jr, authors of For the Common Good, wrote in 1989: At a deep level of our being we find it hard to suppress the cry of anguish, the scream of horror – the wild words required to express wild realities. We human beings are being led to a dead end – all too literally. We are living by an ideology of death and accordingly we are destroying our own humanity and killing the planet. Even the one great success of the programme that has governed us, the attainment of material affluence, is now giving way to poverty ... The global system will change during the next forty years, because it will be physically forced to change. But if humanity waits until it is physically compelled to change, its options will be few indeed ... If it changes before it has to change ... it will not avoid suffering and crises, but it can be drawn through them by a realistic hope for a better world.2

More than fifteen years have passed since Daly and Cobb (1989) made their prediction and prognosis, and we are seeing every day evidence of the systemic global changes that have compelled many to bring about change, moment by moment.

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The Nature of Our Moment I would like to make the case for seeing these very days, months, and years, like other unique transformative moments in world history, as a time of dramatic change and opportunity. It is a fitting time for theory and action; a time when academic attention to social change and to the importance of ‘learning our way out’ is most thoroughly upon us. As the late Joseph Campbell said: There are certain periods when transformation is quite special and extremely radical. And ours is certainly one of those periods ... early civilizations remained in relative isolation, with a controlled horizon within which people had the same experiences. Now that those horizons are smashed, people of different beliefs and culture are colliding with each other. The transformation is really of the whole of humanity and what it means to be a cultured and world-related human being ... Our social group is humankind ... The only in group that’s proper for today is the planet, and there’s enormous challenge to open up to that: to give not only yourself but your culture to the planetary view. (Maher and Briggs 1990, xx)

Indeed, we need perhaps to look back to the past for answers in order to understand why and how we have reached our current state of affairs. Ulrich Beck draws our attention to Robert Nesbit who, as early as 1974, noted that our moment most clearly resembles that of the Reformation period in European Christianity. According to Nesbit, My reference ... to the possibility of a new Reformation taking place or beginning to take place in our age was not entirely casual. There are junctures in history when some dominant institution reveals incapacity to sustain any longer the loyalties of populations living within its authority ... However we choose to describe the events of the sixteenth century ... there is abundant evidence that among intellectuals and laymen there came a time when the church, in its visible institutional form, had ceased to be able to maintain order, supply consensus or reach out for the allegiance of human beings to the degree that it formerly had ... Has the national state reached this position in our time? (Nesbit 1974, 631, cited in Beck, 1997)

The decline of churches, and plausibly nation states, as cohesive dominant institutions has led to the emergence of new actors that perform

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their functions, such as multinational corporations and transnational social movements engaged in collective citizen action. Michael Edwards of the Ford Foundation and John Gaventa of the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Sussex brought together a distinguished group of scholars and global citizens’ groups to look at trends in global citizen action (Edwards and Gaventa 2001). In the introduction to that collection of papers, Michael Edwards noted, ‘There has been a significant move away from what was known as the Washington consensus, the belief that market liberalization and western-style democracy offered a universal blueprint for growth and poverty reduction across the world’ (Edwards 2001, 2). From the world of business come some fascinating new approaches and insights on how multinational corporations behave in ways that resemble feudal monarchies of the past. Marjorie Kelly, a small business owner in the United States has written a powerful critique of corporate shareholder capitalism in her book entitled The Divine Right of Capital. In it she says, ‘In the worldview of corporate financial statements, the aim is to pay stockholders as much as possible and employees as little as possible ... stockholders like French aristocrats of old enjoy dual privilege, doing less and making more’ (2001, 22). The French aristocrats were of course eclipsed by revolutionaries who helped set up a more democratic republic, but many similar, socalled democracies around the world have risen and then degenerated into formal institutions that serve as gatekeepers of capital, empty of the democratic principles they once professed to uphold. Fortunately, there is an emergent body of knowledge allied with a new consciousness that addresses our moment of planetary crisis.4 Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry are voices in this emergent consciousness. They make seminal contributions in their formulation of a broad system of interpretation, which locates human history in the context of earth history as well the history of the universe itself. They name our historical moment the ‘terminal Cenozoic’ – the end of the Cenozoic period. Here we see an integration of biological history and cultural history. The Cenozoic is an extended biological framework spanning massive periods of biological time. Swimme and Berry (1992) give us a picture of the scope and magnitude of Cenozoic time locating it in the Phanerzoic eon which roughly covers three eras: the Palaeozoic, from 570 to 245 million years ago; the Mesozoic, from 245 to 67 million years ago; and the Cenozoic, from 67 million years ago to the present. Each period is characterized by a unique biological and geological creativity. Thus, the

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Cenozoic is that period in the evolution of the living systems of the Earth that have developed over these past 65 million years and are now being extinguished by our present industrial economy. In biological terms, the planet Earth is at the end of the Cenozoic period. The Cenozoic period in its full grandeur and creativity is responsible for bringing the human species into being and providing the context for the unfolding of human life until the present. Swimme and Berry name this flowering of the Cenozoic as the lyric period of the evolutionary process, the period of the flowers, the birds, and the mammals. Wave upon wave of life appeared. Then finally, human beings came. Hominid types appeared some three million years ago, types that died out long ago. The appearance of humans from whom we can trace our own descent occurred some 60,000 years ago1 Their dispersal, nay movements, from original human settlements to all liveable places on the planet, have brought about incremental and dramatic changes that underpin the emergence of various social movements. Social Movements Lie at the Heart of Change What Is a Social Movement? It goes on one at a time It starts when you care To act, it starts when you do it again after They say no It starts when you say we and know what You mean, and each Day you mean one more

Marge Percy, The Low Road

My deepest understandings of relations between women and men are not primarily as a result of the reading of feminist literature, although I have done so. My understanding of white heterosexual privilege has not come primarily from a reading of anti-racist or queer studies, although I have done so. My understanding of the risk to our environment has not come primarily from my reading of environmental literature, although I have done so. In each of these cases my most profound learning of new ways of seeing and living in the world have come as a result of the direct and indirect impacts of these social movements on the daily practices of my life. My learning about gender issues began when, in the 1970s, my home became a place for weekly

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women’s meetings. My understanding of white privilege began most sharply from being on the wrong side of debates about who to hire in a community organization and from challenges to racist assumptions in my classrooms. My learning about homophobia began at a poetry reading session when another reader shared his stories of exclusion and pain. In each of these cases, the academic literature was either years or decades later in finding its way into print. Social movements create epistemic communities where new knowledge is generated and shared. Those closer to these debates take up certain ways of speaking and understanding and, if they help to explain the world around them, pass these notions on to others. The ripples from the social movement stones reach out to those of us who are not part of the movements, to those in the academy looking for more reliable ways of explaining things and eventually to the changing of institutional behaviours. The process is not smooth, it is not fun, it is not predicable, but it comes at us continually and is, from my perspective, the very core of social and cultural transformation. In reading the literature on social movements, it has become clear that each of us might agree with the notion that social movements exist. We would also each be able to perhaps name a social movement or social movements. But when one tries to pin the elusive social movement down to more precise definition, the frustration grows. We learn of old social movements such as the labour movement, which have largely taken on organizational forms. These movements most often have identified leadership structures and fixed sets of values and objectives. Members in these movements often have membership cards and can be found on lists. We learn of new social movements, which often include women’s movements, peace movements, or environmental movements, which have a combination of identifiable and diffuse leaderships. These movements are most often unified through common sets of values and perspectives. Of course, well-articulated forms of both the women’s movements and the peace movements have existed in ‘old’ forms as well. And as academics, we are now trying to come to grips with the multifaceted face of the variety of global anti-racist, antiimperial, anti-globalization, and anti-capital movements, which are understood as having continually emergent leadership and organizational forms. Some forms of these social movements are expressed through religious discourse such as fundamentalist movements of Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, or Islam. At specific moments such as the World Social Forum in 2004 in Mumbai, the Asia Pacific Economic Coopera-

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tion (APEC) meetings in Vancouver in 1998, the Quebec Summit of the Americas in April, 2001, or the Calgary G-8 meetings in June of 2002, representatives of these various movements come together with a remarkable range of creativity and alternative visions. As social movements become more institutionalized, they often take the form of non-governmental or civil society organizations. Global civil societies linked indirectly with global social movements have emerged and have gained visibility in the context of global economic consolidation. Like Locke’s argument in his original explanation of civil society that human communities exist as collectivities and in possession of agency earlier than and independent from the creation of political society, I would argue that the forms of global social movements have existed many years prior to their contemporary rediscovery. From Protest to Proposal? The emergence of several scholarly developments have come together to make the study of social movement learning particularly rich at this point in time. First, there is new interest in educational discourse about learning that occurs over a life span and the educational processes that occur in out-of-school settings. One example of this increased interest was found at the UNESCO Fifth International Conference on Adult Education in July 1997, where some 1,600 persons from 160 countries met and endorsed, among other things, a declaration which accorded special reference to the many ‘new agents of social change’ (UNESCO, Hamburg Declaration, 1997) that generate many new forms of adult and informal education. Second, there has been considerable research into the informal learning of adults, such as initiatives taken by David Livingstone and his team at the University of Toronto as part of the New Approaches to Lifelong Learning (NALL) research network (2001). The work of the NALL project researchers has documented the rich learning environments in social movement settings such as trade unions, communitybased environmental groups, ex-psychiatric patients and others. Third, there appears to be a convergence of thinking and concerns between environmentalists or ecologists and social justice activists, between critical cultural theoreticians and those who have struggled for survival in their everyday lives, and most importantly, between scholars, activists, and policy-makers. Social movements are taking in these clues from the larger field of social analysis or are, in fact, informing the

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social analysis itself. Fourth, we note the emergence of recent debates and discussions about related concepts such as ‘social capital’ or ‘civil society.’ These debates, while being informed by the work of social movements, are also critiquing the contested role of social capital in civil society movements. Fifth, new generations of social movements are not merely oriented to ‘critiquing’ dominant society, but they are simultaneously engaged in regenerative activities and offering alternatives to reshape the very grammar of life. In short, we see the transition from a phase of protest to a phase of proposal. I am interested in giving close attention to what these proposals represent and signify, what their intent and content is in rebuilding both human and non-human collectivities. Sixth, these new generations of social movements are not singleissue-based or enveloped within the larger narratives of nationalist struggles or ‘equal opportunity’ within the state and/or the market, but they have opened the Pandora’s box of multiple issues and multiple actors. Most important for us is that each actor is embodied with his or her own pragmatic and symbolic productivities. Finally, whether social movement leadership is aware or not, there is a creation of knowledge arising and taking shape as well as the appearance of a wide range of pedagogical and social learning strategies. Thus, we value social movement space as much for its process as for its results. Learning theories, which have dealt most often with issues of pedagogy in schools and schooling, or in the case of adult education, with either more individualized forms of self-directed learning or with provision by a variety of systems, have not until recently begun to deal in depth with the pedagogy of the social movements or social movement learning. Bridges need to be built between the kinds of knowledge transmitted in the name of formal and adult education and the kinds that arise from the pedagogical spaces where people in communities at a grassroots level redefine both the natural and cultural worlds around them. Towards Social Movement Learning I am motivated to elaborate my own understandings of social movement learning as a scholar in part because of the sense of urgency that I feel about the worsening situation we face in the world today and in part to understand what Ulrich Beck and others imply as academic responsibility. Beck notes, ‘As a corrective measure, it is necessary to

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“invent” and standardize methodologically a regulated opposition of social theory, social empiricism and social experience that will permit even external, extreme and explosive things to be incorporated within the horizon of that which is sociologically conceivable, observable and explicable’ (1997, 19). Social movement learning, in my mind, refers to several interconnected phenomena noted in my introduction. Social movement learning, in brief, is (1) learning that occurs by persons who are part of any social movement and (2) learning that occurs by those outside of a given social movement because of the actions of the social movements themselves. Learning within social movements can be further understood as being formal, non-formal, or informal in structure. For example, within the environmental movements considerable attention has been paid to formal educational opportunities from which both those inside and those outside have an opportunity to learn. This would be formal learning. Non-formal learning would refer to the workshops, seminars, and ‘educationals’ that are part of most movements. Perhaps the most expansive and least acknowledged learning is that which happens informally simply by being part of a movement trying to make sense out of what is being said and done. There have been a variety of intellectuals, scholars, and activists over the years such as Vandana Shiva and Mahatma Gandhi of India, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Jimmy Tompkins and Moses Coady of Canada, Myles Horton and Jane Addams of the United States, and Paulo Freire of Brazil who have planted the seeds of social movement learning. Today these traditions are vibrant with activities of various kinds. Examples are Padayatras (foot marches) that an increasing number of social movements use as a mode of pedagogy in various parts of India. In Fiji, WANIMATE is an NGO that has links to the University of the South Pacific and supports the exchange of women’s traditional knowledge of herbal medicines. Worldwide, what John Gaventa of the Highlander Centre and the University of Sussex calls the ‘housewife researchers’ are generating knowledge about toxic dumping, depletion of forests resources, pollution of water, and issues of environmental racism. In rural Nepal, the forest user groups are not only taking care of the forest, but they are actually changing the context and scope of what we mean by forest, what its use is, and who can use and protect the forest. In the poor neighbourhoods of Chicago, groups such as the Covenant Group are learning how to transform abandoned buildings into renewed and socially useful housing for the long-term residents. In

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northern Canada, the Cree of James Bay educated millions of people in Canada, the United States, and elsewhere to the dangers of uncontrolled mega-hydroelectric projects through multiple non-formal educational paths. The two most cited figures in the literature on social movement learning are Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) and Paulo Freire (1921–97). Peter Mayo (1998) has rendered the most succinct comparative analysis of these two intellectuals. Both Gramsci and Freire see the learning process most fully flourishing within social movement contexts. They both stress issues of commitment, agency, and political or structural change. While Gramsci (1971) contextualized his work in the notion of a working-class movement of the early twentieth century in Italy, Freire (1970) understood his work as relating to women and men in a wide variety of social movement contexts, even though his own roots were in Latin America. The Freirean understanding of dialogue as a transformative educational practice, while powerful, is sometimes criticized for being silent on questions of gender, race, or other forms of difference. What Freire does seem to get right is his emphasis on the importance of people writing their own history. Time is ripe to re-evaluate the Gramscian and Freirean explorations of the relationship between experts’ knowledge over the knowledge of the subjugated. The adult education literature has recently seen several theoretical explorations of social movement learning. Mattias Finger (1989), Michael Welton (1993), and John Holford (1995) have each put forward a kind of map of the linkages between social movements and adult learning. According to Finger, new social movements are the catalyst for personal transformation and the environment within which transformation occurs. They define the future topics of adult education. Learning within these movements is more powerful than the impact of schooling. Welton (1993) argues that new social movements are both personal and collective in form and content. He sees them as ‘privileged sites’ of transformative learning or emancipatory praxis. He asks the question, ‘What are adults learning?’ in new social movements, but does not go much further than outlining some ways of understanding what the new social movements are responding to. He asks one of the key questions that we are trying to answer, ‘Is something of great significance for the field of adult education occurring within these sites?’ Holford (1995) goes beyond both Finger and Welton. Holford finds much of importance in the work of Eyerman and Jamison (1991), who speak of social movements as locations of ‘cognitive praxis.’ They sug-

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gest that it is ‘through tensions between different groups and organizations over defining and acting in that conceptual space that the (temporary) identity of a social movement is formed’ (1991, 22). Through the notion of cognitive praxis they emphasize the creative role of consciousness and cognition in all human action, both individual and collective. They look at social movements through the complex lens of the social theory of knowledge that is both historically and politically informed. They focus simultaneously on the process of articulating a movement identity (cognitive praxis), on the actors taking part in this process (movement intellectuals), and on the context of articulation (politics, cultures, and institutions). What comes out of social movement action is neither predetermined nor completely self-willed. Meaning is derived from the context in which it is carried out and the understanding that actors bring to it and/or derive from it. Eyerman and Jamison emphasize that social movements are not merely social dramas; they are the social action where new knowledge including world-views, ideologies, religions, and scientific theories originate. Social movements are socially constructive forces and fundamental determinants of human knowledge. As such, they have profound implications for learning theory. Social movements are far more than ‘sites of learning’: they lie at the heart of the content of learning itself. Griff Foley of Australia wrote an extensive study of what he calls ‘learning in social action’ (1999). He looks at a number of case studies of local social, environmental, and political social action. Among his key concepts is learning through struggle, struggle being the action of those who have less power against those who have more. His work, drawing on a largely political economic tradition, nevertheless, asks similar questions. How do the political and economic contexts of a given struggle shape education and training? What are the ideological and discursive practices of social movement actors? To what extent do these practices hinder or facilitate learning and action? Several authors have provided answers to these questions. Darlene Clover, at the University of Victoria, has written extensively on learning with the environmental adult education movement and on women’s learning in a variety of community-based cultural movements (see, e.g., Clover and Hill 2003). A good example of how culturally artistic forms of expression have informed popular protests is Carole Roy’s research that looks at the learning dimensions of Canada’s Raging Grannies (2004). The Raging Grannies are older women who turn the stereotypes of old age upside down as they sing songs of political protest on the

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steps of the legislature while dressed in old-fashioned bonnets and dresses. Butterwick (1998) has written on the social movement leadership of women in Canadian adult education history. Cunningham and Curry (1997) have explored social movement learning within the Chicago African American Experience. Why do we think that social movements are privileged sites for learning and knowledge construction? Social movements are generally thought of as political or social action phenomena with much more focused goals, especially in relation to capturing the mechanisms of the state or at least sharing power with it (see Darnovsky et al. 1995; Touraine 1988; Melucci 1989 for critique). Other social movements are oriented towards social justice, seeking to find a just and equitable share of the economic pie or the benefits of development programs for those who are marginalized (Guha and Martinez-Alier 1997; Kothari and Parajuli 1993). This chapter takes the position that social movements play significant roles in creating new knowledge and new lessons for global learning. I suggest that the incubational capacity, the space for cognitive praxis, or the capacity to create epistemic communities may be the most profound contribution of social movements. It may explain why social movements have impacts well beyond the resources that they are able to command. Whether social movement leadership is aware of this or not, there is a creation of knowledge arising and taking shape as well as the appearance of a wide range of pedagogical and social learning strategies within social movements’ spaces. This is why we value social movement spaces as much for their processes as for their results. We are attracted to pedagogical content of social movement spaces for their specific trends and potential contributions. The distinct character of social movements can be understood within the context of: (1) the knowledge crunch under the globalization of the economy; (2) a move from protest to proposal; (3) social movement actors are at once knowers, learners, and teachers leading to diversification of knowledge; (4) diversity in knowledge and ways of knowing; (5) a transition from residual to emergent social formations; and (6) the contributions to democratization of civil society and governance at the grassroots. Social Movement Actors as Knowers, Learners, and Teachers Social movements deal with overlapping themes. Some are creating sustainable livelihoods, protecting biodiversity, or making communi-

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ties self-reliant in food and agriculture. Some others are seeking equity and respect for women or for sexual preferences, or decolonizing body, birth, health, and the sense of beauty from the overtly corporatized health industry and insurance companies. Some others are seeking land and other sources of life such as forest, fresh air, biomass, and water for the direct producers and appropriate technologies in harvesting as well as enhancing them. While some demand cultural diversity, language, and identity, some others try to achieve their goals through active civic participation as citizens. Knowledge produced among these groups reverberates throughout the life world: informal market networksing, cooperatives, movements to save a sacred grove, rituals, festivities, struggles to save and diversify seeds through communal network, or movements to institute self-governance. We have tried to interpret these formations in various ways: as the civil society (Hall, 1997; Tandon, 1996) or as ‘social majorities’ (Esteva and Prakash 1998), or as ecological ethnicities. These new generations of social movements are neither single issue, neither based, nor enveloped within the larger narratives of nationalist struggles. They are not limited to seeking equal opportunity within the state and/or the market either. While sharpening their own knowledge claims, there appears to be convergences and alliances across a diversity of social actors. Examples of this convergence can be seen between ecologists, women, and other social justice activists (Clover 2001; Gadgil and Guha 1995, Guha and Martinez-Alier 1997; Kothari and Parajuli 1993), between indigenous peoples’ concerns and ecologists (Laduke 1992), between analysts of peasant traditions of knowledge and discourses of green revolution (Esteva 1996; Appfel-Marglin 1996) or biotechnology (Moser and Shiva 1995, Visvanathan 1997). Today’s movements are radical, complex, visionary, and inclusive of different identities more than any existing social movement theories have been able to capture (Melucci 1989). In the Jharkhand region of India, people of diverse caste, class, and tribe are envisioning a panJharkhandi composite culture (Parajuli 1996). This is the trend we have depicted throughout India. At India’s national level too, there are attempts to bring together actors from a host of movements such as peasants, fisherfolk, women, agricultural labourers, and adivasis so that they can form a broader yet cohesive voice in matters of development and politics. During the past decade, some of these attempts have given birth to larger umbrella organizations such as Bharat Jan Andolan (Indian Peoples’ Movement) and Bharat Jan Vikas Andolan (Indian

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Movement for Peoples’ Development) and Stri Mukti Sammelan (Women’s Liberation Conferences). Mobilization and networks on specific issues such as displacement, minimum wages, and employment guarantee, gender issues, and tribal rights over forest are becoming more common and frequent. Several other organized efforts are attempting to articulate people’s alternatives to state politics (e.g., Movement for Tribal Self-rule). The Importance of Social Movement Learning Now Attention to social movement learning is critical at this specific transformative moment in time. For us to be able to make the scale of changes that many of us feel are needed in our troubled world, we need to be able to move beyond the market as the primary driver of learning theory. We need to move beyond the acontextual, degenderized, and deracialized ideas about how learning takes place within individuals, whether children or adults. Our ability to deepen our understanding of social movements depends in part on our studying the hidden dimensions of social movement action, including the learning dimension. Attention to social movement learning will also add to our understanding of adult, popular, and transformative learning at a time when such attention is needed. From the perspective of social movements, their leaderships, and their constituents themselves, attention to the learning dimensions of their work has never been more needed. Real movement resources need to be devoted to the intentional structuring of learning opportunities for those within movements and those outside of movements to engage. Reflection on the tacit skills being learning by social movement activists is of critical use for strengthening the organizational base and capacity of movements. New utopian visions and practices are being created everywhere in profusion. Ulrich Beck has noted that ‘the blueprints for alternative world views are carried about in the breast pockets, backpacks and hearts of social activists today’ (1997, 23). These new blueprints are deep, elaborate, practical, and even spiritual approaches to another world where fairness and respect form the heart of the human, and more than human, relationships. Whether in the oral naming of our world by the Aboriginal peoples, the documented practices of green economists, the business successes of women’s grassroots organizations saving groups in Asia and Africa,

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the community business incubators of VanCity Credit Union, or the participatory budget of the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, the thousands of groups building the world social movement, or the sustainable forestry of small-holder loggers in British Columbia – in spite of the attempts of the global market forces to silence or render invisible other ways of being – our world, our imagination, and our creativity have not been stopped. The anti-globalization and anti-capitalist movements are creating a powerful epistemic community where learning is accelerating. Attention to the power of learning and the power of knowledge-making in social movement contexts is a contribution that those interested in learning and engagement of civil societies can make. It seems apt to close this chapter in poetic form, that form which like social movements themselves is drawn from both our heads and our hearts. Learning to Imagine Education is about our relationships, our communities, our places of work, Our bioregions, our political structures, our planet and our universe. It is about us. It is about the kind of work we do. But above all it is about the right to imagine. To imagine a context where we are each respected for who we are; To imagine a life of sufficiency and health; To imagine that all our children could live without abuse; To imagine that violence or the fear of violence in the lives of all women and children could decline; To imagine that race would be a code for creativity and contribution rather than a filter which excludes; To imagine relationships of harmony and rhythm with the earth; To imagine that differences in ability could be cherished for the gifts they make possible; To imagine that we have the courage to speak. But to be able to move forward Taking firm hold of or on the right to imagine, We need to accept some quite simple and basic notions: That things are not OK the way they are; That we have the capacity to transform our lives;

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That the current global economic machine is killing humans, all other forms of life and puts the survival of the planet at risk; That the ways in which we think constructs our lives; That our lives, including our race, gender, sexual orientation, abilities, age, class and relations with the earth, construct the ways in which we think; That the seeds of a transformed world exists within our communities, our schools, our social movements, our locations of resistance and even amongst those who hear or read this poem.

NOTES I am grateful to have been invited to contribute to this important collection of essays on engaging civil societies in democratic planning and governance. We all owe a special debt of gratitude to the editors of this volume and the organizers of the Green College series that stimulated us to make these contributions. I would also like to acknowledge my deep gratitude to many persons with whom I have discussed all or parts of these ideas, with special thanks to Darlene Clover, Pramod Parajuli, Edmund O’Sullivan, Amir Hassanpour, Shahrzad Mojab, Michael Welton, and Daniel Shugurensky. 1 The World Social Forum is the gathering of what is sometimes called the alternative globalization movement. It is the civil society counterpart to the World Economic Forum which brings together business and political leaders each year in Davos, Switzerland. 2 Daly and Cobb (1989) begin their introduction with the following quote from John Maynard Keynes, ‘Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts upon the unthinking.’ 3 I am grateful to Edmund O’Sullivan of the Transformative Learning Centre at the University of Toronto for drawing my attention to this broad and promising stream of scholarship.

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the Boundaries of Transformative Learning: Essays on Theory and Praxis. New York: Palgrave, 59–76. – 2003. ‘The Tango of Citizenship Learning and Participatory Democracy.’ In K. Mundel and D. Schugurensky, eds., Lifelong Citizenship Learning, Participatory Democracy and Social Change. Toronto: Transformative Learning Centre, OISE, 321–35. Smith, David. 1994. First Person Plural. Ottawa: Mapleview Press. Swimme, Brian, and Thomas Berry. 1992. The Universe Story: An Autobiography from Planet Earth. San Francisco: Harper and Row. Tandon, Rajesh. 1996. Institutional Strategies of NGOs in the South. Working paper of PRIA. New Delhi: Participatory Research in Asia. Taylor, Jeffery. 2001. Union Learning: Canadian Labour Education in the Twentieth Century. Toronto: Thompson Educational. Touraine, Alain. 1988. Return of the Actor: Social Theory in Postindustrial Society. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. – 2000. Can We Live Together: Equality and Difference. London: Polity Press. UNESCO. 1997. Hamburg Declaration on Adult Education. Paris: UNESCO. Visvanathan, S. 1997. Carnival for Science: Essays on Science, Technology and Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wackernagel, Mathis, and William Rees. 1996. Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society. Welton, Michael. 1993. ‘Social Revolutionary Learning: The New Social Movements as Learning Sites.’ Adult Education Quarterly 43(3): 152–64. – 2001. Little Mosie from the Margaree: A Biography of Moses Michael Coady. Toronto: Thompson Educational.

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6 Learning and Teaching for Transformation: Insights from a Collaborative Learning Initiative peter taylor, jethro pettit, and lucy stackpool-moore

Decisions are made every day by professionals and practitioners working in government, donor organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and community-based organizations (CBOs), research institutions, and other agencies whose policies and priorities can profoundly affect the lives of millions of poor people throughout the world. Among these decision-makers are many who genuinely want to bring about positive social change, but they are an extremely heterogeneous group, exerting different levels of influence and power. Those who work at higher levels of institutions and organizations tend to have completed many years of formal education. Often their qualifications were gained in institutions of higher learning, which are here taken to include universities, schools, and colleges offering formal graduate and postgraduate programs, as well as ‘non-formal,’ governmental, or sectoral institutions offering specialized training programs for experienced professionals. To what extent has education really prepared these people to make critical interventions that contribute to inclusive, propoor, social change processes? Does the learning they experienced help them to engage effectively in shaping agendas, policies, and practices? The ways in which learning and teaching are conceived, planned, and facilitated in institutions of higher learning, and how these institutions position themselves as agents of change, are crucial factors in preparing learners for such responsibilities. Yet these issues are not high on the agenda of most educational institutions. We need to consider alternative perspectives and approaches to learning and teaching that can challenge current educational paradigms, which are often taken for granted yet fail to meet their transformative potential as contributors to development and social change.

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There is a growing realization that education, when based on a continuous cycle of reflection and action, theory, and practice, has the potential to support transformative individual learning, which in turn may contribute to change at a wider societal level (Taylor and Fransman 2004). It is important to understand those influences which determine the capacity of individuals to act within a particular social context in ways that are informed by, and build on, their existing knowledge and experience. Understanding this capacity is extremely challenging, however, and the way it is interpreted will depend on how we understand the various elements that contribute to learning within civil societies. The notion of civil society rests on concepts of knowledge that in the North stem from the Enlightenment and understandings and interpretations of democracy, while in other parts of the world, powerful cultural, social, political, and religious factors have influenced interpretations and practices of citizenship. A major challenge for education in a globalizing world is to discover forms of learning and teaching that promote the emergence of civil societies which are particular to their own social and cultural milieus, but which also are underpinned by good governance and human rights, with an ultimate goal of social justice for all members of society everywhere. Over many years, educators have struggled with the challenge of providing educative programs and experiences that make a real difference to the lives and learning of individuals, and ultimately to wider society. The question of how citizenship is learned has long exercised the minds of educators, activists, community, and political leaders. Merrifield argues that how people learn citizenship is dependent on a complex interrelationship of different forms of learning: ‘They learn from participation (or lack of participation) in political and social processes. They learn from formal and informal efforts to educate them on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. But what they learn does not always make them more actively involved citizens ... Because people learn from everyday experience, formal citizenship education efforts on their own cannot produce active citizens, especially when the political culture and everyday life experience send other messages’ (2002, 28–9). Johnston proposes a framework of four key elements for adult learning for citizenship – that it be inclusive, pluralistic, reflexive, active – while injecting a cautionary note of realism: ‘to avoid any dangers of either colonisation or tokenistic engagement, any learning initiative should try to be, as much as possible, on the terms and on the territory of individuals, social groups or movements and outside the immediate

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imperialist gaze of educational institutions ... but they also need to be accompanied by a realistic appraisal of how learning operates and what learning can (and cannot) achieve, both in the short and longer terms’ (2003, 64). How capable are higher and adult education systems in addressing the learning needs of professionals and practitioners of social change? Inclusive approaches are needed to address diversity and difference and highlight ways in which these are essential ingredients of civil society. Many approaches have engaged with issues of access, for example, by marginalized people (on the grounds of colour, ethnicity, language, gender, wealth, or well-being) as entire communities or within communities. Great gains have been made in this regard in many countries, and broader access to education has opened doors to more diverse learners, whose different needs must be met. There is also a growing recognition that the world for which learners are preparing themselves is itself enormously complex. The idea that educational institutions can serve as repositories of the knowledge and models required for professionalism and problem-solving is in ever greater doubt. Instead, we are challenged to create more effective learning environments in which both teachers and learners can develop our capacities to access, create, and share knowledge, drawing not only on what is already known and recorded, but also discovering what it means to adapt, innovate, and apply our knowledge and skills within specific and rapidly changing contexts. There is much we need to know and learn, but just as importantly, we need to understand why and how we know and learn and be able to use these capacities critically and reflectively. The institutional context in which such learning approaches take place is also subject to significant pressures (Brennan and Lebeau 2002; Mott 2005). Education programs that seek to emphasize experiential learning (Taylor 1998) through iterative processes of reflection on action, much of which may occur through collaborations between the academy and practitioner and professionals in the field, are frequently coming under threat. Participation and participatory approaches in education have emerged as a means of not only promoting inclusivity, but as a means also of recognizing and shifting power structures, and ultimately contributing to social change and transformation. This includes the recognition that knowledge is a means of propagating power; hence, participation must involve discourse around both power and knowledge. This perspective has economic, ideological, and organiza-

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tional implications (Cloete 2002) for institutions that provide and aim to facilitate adult education and learning programs. Methods of popular adult education, participatory action research (PAR; Fals Borda 2001), and participatory learning and action (PLA; Pretty et al. 1995) have been widely used in the contexts of community development and social movement organizing, often with promising results. Yet these approaches and their ability to address established relations of knowledge and power have not always been applied internally by the organisations that promote them with ‘Others.’ This may raise questions about the real commitment of such organisations to the use of innovative processes and methodologies, and invite criticism of those who are reluctant to adopt them within their own ways of working while attempting to promote them elsewhere. The encounter of diversity, complexity, change, context, knowledge, and learning raises particular challenges for educators who are seeking to prepare adults for work in social, community, and development contexts, whether in the public, private, or voluntary sectors. The issues are as relevant for educators in the global North as in the global South, where the assumptions behind mainstream development models and epistemologies are coming into question in equal measure. Those of us who work in higher learning institutions need to re-examine how our approaches to knowledge and learning may be either contributing to solutions or reinforcing problems. Are we preparing our diverse learners – including ourselves as educators or managers – to be reflective, innovative, and adaptive? This chapter addresses the issues outlined above by drawing on a dialogue that has aimed to provide a space for professionals and practitioners based both in the academy and also working within community initiatives, including NGOs and CBOs. First, we will introduce the dialogue and the theoretical and practical underpinnings that have informed its development, framed within a wider initiative on ‘learning and teaching for transformation’ (LTT). Second, we will explore five main sets of issues that have emerged through the LTT dialogue: underlying concepts and theories; learners, teachers, and power relations; curriculum; community and context; and challenges for institutional acceptance. We will examine how each of these issues influences and impacts on learning by those within civil society who wish to contribute to effective social change. The analysis is deepened through the voices and experiences of participants in the LTT dialogue. We conclude by suggesting potential implications for the evolution of education within

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higher learning institutions if these institutions are to make a real contribution to the learning needs of professionals and practitioners who are engaged in social change processes. A Dialogue for Collaborative Learning Against this backdrop and other related challenges, as researchers, since 2001 we have been involved in a dialogue that includes about 300 educators from around the world, called ‘Learning and Teaching for Transformation’ (LTT; Taylor and Fransman 2004). This LTT initiative is supported within the framework of the ‘Participation, Power and Change’ program, funded jointly by the Department for International Development (DFID, UK), Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC), and the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). It is located in the Participation Group at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. The LTT initiative has moved through several iterations, with strong roots in concepts and practices of participation. In its various forms, participation is perceived to have the potential to influence pro-poor social change and to contribute to poverty reduction and greater social justice by strengthening citizen rights and voice; participation can influence policy-making, enhance local governance, and improve the accountability and responsiveness of institutions. There has, however, also been much superficial use and abuse of participatory methods. Meaningful participation for social change involves processes of individual and social learning, critical analysis of context, and changes in dominant behaviours, attitudes, and power relationships. What is the role of education in strengthening capacities for this kind of participation and social change? What needs to be learned and how? The LTT initiative has sought to examine critically how professionals and practitioners who are engaged in social change processes learn, and are taught, within institutions of higher learning. It aims to deepen thinking about pedagogical approaches within higher learning that can challenge potentially influential people – from citizen and social movement activists to civil society and public sector leaders – to adopt participatory, inclusive, and pro-poor decision-making processes in their work. Although focusing explicitly on institutions of higher learning, the ideas emerging from the LTT initiative have implications for education and civil society more widely. As one participant in one of the nine rounds of the LTT e-forum commented: ‘I think participatory education

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is about transforming people. And transformative education is the process in which we, first of all, challenge power relations in order to create a safe environment so that different voices can emerge and be heard – but we cannot stop there. People need to say things, but they also need to reflect and question themselves in relation to what they are saying’ (participant in LTT e-forum, 2004). Over three years, the LTT dialogue has engaged with a wide range of people involved directly in education as collaborators in a mutual learning process. The ‘membership’ has included teachers, lecturers, and leaders within institutions of higher learning (around half the overall number), members of organizations and institutions in partnership with education providers, for example, from NGOs and CBOs, policy-makers, and those who guide and support teaching and learning throughout the education system. Participants in the e-forums work within many different sectors: health, education, HIV/AIDS, agriculture and forestry, housing, and other aspects of community development. Geographically, the dialogue has attracted people from around the world, including on average about seventy from throughout Europe, about fifty from the Americas, some thirty from Africa, thirty from Asia, and on average twenty from Australia and New Zealand. The proportion of men and women participants engaged has been approximately equal. Average numbers are given because the total number of participants from any particular region has varied over time – participants are free to unsubscribe at any time, and new members join regularly. Contributions from participants have often addressed deeply personal concerns and experiences emanating from the interaction between individuals and the contexts in which they are engaged as actors in the field of education. In this chapter we have not attempted to provide background details of the participants we have quoted since the quotes are themselves extracts from a wider discussion, and a discourse analysis has not been undertaken of the dialogue itself. We have drawn on the conversations as a means of illuminating the issues under discussion through the insight and reflections of participants, rather than embedding the comments in a specific context. As the dialogue continues it will be of interest to examine the experiences of contributors in relation to the contexts in which they work and to draw lessons from this. The dialogue has proved especially relevant to those involved in the preparation of individuals in fields such as development, governance, and citizenship, and within sectors that aim to bring about personal and

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social change. It advocates forms of learning that are grounded in the principles and practices of participatory development and action research, and seeks to encourage these forms through the sharing and generation of both theory and practice. As one participant put it, ‘We are attempting to establish communities of practice which transcend the usual institutional and hierarchical boundaries’ (participant, LTT e-forum1). The dialogue has occurred through preparation and discussion of concept notes, e-forums, workshops, and publications, undertaken over a period of three years. The e-forums have been a key feature, operated through a private subscription list convened by a moderator whose role was to prepare an initial concept note and questions, to encourage discussion and to provide a final synthesis report. There has also been a wider ‘interest group,’ which includes those who have not signed up to an e-forum but have been kept informed of developments in the initiative. In January 2005, to improve our means of communicating progress, findings, and ideas, we launched a new Web space for the LTT initiative that synthesizes the main insights that emerged throughout eight focused e-mail discussions. The themes included power and hierarchy, assessment and evaluation, action research, reflective learning and reflective practice, curriculum, learning from experience, and institutional change. The themes selected were based on a scanning of participant contributions, and an ‘offline’ version of the Website made available only to e-forum participants for their comments and feedback. The official launch of the Web space, and a subsequent international workshop in April 2005, supported an overall shift in the LTT initiative towards collectively developing a platform for action learning and action research to take the initiative forward: ‘The e-dialogue fed me and reminded me of why I do this. It sustained me and reminded me of the importance of community – a community that is not limited geographically’ (participant in LTT e-forum, 2004). In the next part of this chapter we highlight the wide range of comment and insights contributed to the LTT dialogue, either through the eforums or during the workshop events. We have scanned the quite vast array of these contributions and searched for themes and issues that have appeared key during the different discussions. These have helped us to identify further areas for dialogue, either branching in new directions or deepening existing strands. As the entire LTT initiative is iterative and effectively a work in progress, we present the following comments and observations as preliminary data, which we believe will be enriched through the continuation of the dialogue.

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Learning about Learning and Teaching for Social Change As the previous sections of this chapter have made clear, there are many challenges associated with the development, facilitation, and management of education programs that aim to address, either implicitly or explicitly, issues of poverty, social justice, human rights, democracy, and governance. In a recent U.S.-based report on university education for community change, Mott points out that ‘every day we see evidence of why it is essential to invest wisely and in new ways in developing the social change leaders of today and tomorrow ... it is unconscionable that our institutions of higher learning are doing so little to help address this crisis’ (2005, 60–1). The LTT dialogue has provided an opportunity for participants to share their views and experiences, many of which have direct relevance to key themes addressed within this book (see also Stackpool-Moore, Taylor, Pettit, and Millican 2005). These include views and experiences of how learning for civil societies is conceptualized, and the implications for teaching; of the way in which institutions of higher learning at the organizational and classroom level are governed and the systems of power and hierarchies that pertain, with their impact on those who learn and teach; on the relationships between these educational institutions and organizations, groups, and social movements within the communities they are located, with the ‘messages’ that the nature of these relationships conveys about the actual meaning and practice of development and social change. These are some of the key themes that we address in the following pages. Underlying Concepts and Theories in the LTT Dialogue Experiential learning and action research have both been perceived through the LTT dialogue as effective mechanisms for challenging existing theories to test their relevance and applicability in changing contexts. This draws on the extensive research and theory that has fostered the evolution of participatory action research (PAR; e.g., Tandon 1981; Rahman 1993; Fals-Borda 2001), action learning (e.g., Zuber-Skerrit 1992; Argyris and Schon 1974), action research (AR; e.g., McNiff and Whitehead 1992; Reason and Bradbury 2001), and practice-research engagement (PRE; Brown et al. 2003). Action research has been examined as a strategy for participatory knowledge creation and exploration of the contextual validity of theories (Reason and Bradbury 2001). Bringing into question dominant positivistic pressures in higher learning

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institutions that stress objectivity and rigour, action research can provide a liberating and participatory methodology to move the academic from the core to the periphery and to value other forms of knowledge. Processes of action research are indeed closely linked with concepts of participation, subjectivity, and personal reflection (Gaventa and Cornwall 2001). Some LTT participants suggested that these have the potential to promote empowerment and challenge existing power relations in the classroom, in the institution, and in the world: ‘Participatory and AR approaches most often are not only about collaboration between different stakeholders but more or less explicitly also about empowerment. They have to do with “power” – with power to “be oneself” as much as with the power to “do things” (participant, LTT e-forum6). The discussion of theory has included epistemological notions of ways of knowing and being in the world, as well as larger philosophical questions about humanity, with a view that knowledge itself is an individual construction, derived from varied sources including life experiences and applied theories. In higher education theory today, there is much interest in how to facilitate ‘deep learning,’ a process of developing and changing one’s way of viewing and thinking about the world, recognizing that ‘education is about conceptual change, not just the acquisition of information’ (Biggs 2003; Ramsden 1992). One LTT participant, for example, questioned the nearly exclusive emphasis in higher education on deepening conceptual knowledge and sense-making, at the expense of other dimensions of knowledge and sense-making. In teaching, he had used learning journals, exploratory writing, and role-playing as ways of deepening learning and reflection with postgraduate (Master’s) students coming from international development contexts, including government, NGOs, and social movements. The use of creative writing and drama techniques within a course about processes of social and political empowerment allowed students to tap into more embodied and experiential forms of knowledge (Heron and Reason 2001) and to make vivid connections between their personal and professional lives and their exploration of concepts and theories about social empowerment. One of the learning goals was to understand power as relational and multidimensional, including the hidden and invisible forms of power that are embedded in cultural and ideological norms (Lukes 1974). Students were encouraged to write about and enact their personal experiences of power and powerlessness, using evocative first-person narratives and role plays, which allowed them to locate power as a lived phenomenon and to explore and

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validate their own experience of it. These approaches also allowed this participant’s students to examine the ways in which intellectual discourses and the formal, academic, social sciences can themselves constitute forms of power and disempowerment in relation to other forms of knowledge (such as their lived experiences). One student wrote in her journal: ‘Back to times of feeling powerless, the clearest example for me is that my sense of powerlessness causes a breathless pain in my chest. This occurs whenever I come across cases of women being subjected to domestic violence ... This is really an example of the “third face of power,” the sociological and entrenched norms and behaviours in society, which are intrinsically difficult to change. It is a sensation of having all the weight of the odds of society stacked against you.’ Student responses to this educator’s use of such learning techniques were mixed and even polarized. Most really enjoyed the writing and role plays and asked for more. Some, however, were confused, and could not relate to the purpose; and one student actively resisted. Nevertheless, overall the learning journal was the most successful and perhaps least threatening of the methods used, as it was assigned as a private space (not read or assessed by faculty except at the student’s request. Keeping a journal and creative writing can allow students to step outside accepted academic styles and mindsets, and help them to reconcile and integrate their embodied, experiential, and applied knowledge with more formalized concepts and forms of expression. As this example indicates, theory may be understood as an evolving tool that gains meaning in its application and application in its meaning. The link between theory and practice further illustrates the interconnectedness of the two as co-dependent and equally important cornerstones of thinking about teaching and learning, participation and social change. The fluidity and evolutionary nature of this relationship forms part of an ongoing exploration of the roles and concepts of theory. Learners, Teachers, and Power Relations As an educator I aspire never to make my students feel they are being made ‘homeless’ by being evicted from their own self-knowledge. Participant, LTT e-forum7

Through the different rounds of LTT dialogue, the overall idea has emerged that regardless of our roles and responsibilities, whether as teachers, facilitators, students, practitioners, or researchers, we are all

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learners involved in a lifelong, dynamic, and unpredictable process of learning. This egalitarian conceptualization of learning also strongly resonates with issues of power and power relations. Evidence indicates that innovative teaching practices which encourage transformative learning have the potential to challenge and redefine relationships within a classroom as well as concepts of learning and teaching. The boundaries become blurred between who teaches and who learns, who plans, who facilitates, and even who evaluates. Risky and exciting opportunities result, generating new synergies between theory and practice, revised world-views and assumptions, and reinvigorated possibilities for continued learning. This breaking down of boundaries has significant implications for personal relationships, as well as for power. Power issues within relationships around teaching and learning are of critical importance, but frequently are underestimated or ignored. This may be because of their complexity, because of vested interests in maintaining existing power structures, or because of insufficient time and too many pressures on the part of teachers and students alike. LTT participants have cited particularly the existence of trust (between facilitators and learners, and among the group as a whole) as conducive to self- and collective reflection. Power relations sometimes have been made explicit, for example, through the categorization of teachers and students, and even managers and administrators. Each of these titles comes ready-packed with specific roles, responsibilities, and expectations that can be difficult to challenge. Students may arrive unsure of themselves, as well as being unclear about their rights and obligations. This lack of assuredness and confidence in what is expected may contribute to the difficulties that students face in forming constructive relationships as co-learners with other members of the student body, and to creating a distance between themselves and teachers, who may make assumptions about how best to push students towards achievement of learning outcomes set by the institution. One participant in the LTT dialogue described the challenge associated with questioning society and forging political positionality within her university. She talked of the need to enable young people to articulate for themselves their needs, goals, and objectives, thus giving themselves greater self-respect, a sense of identity, and an appreciation of difference. Through this, she suggested, students could begin to challenge the notion that they have no role in decision-making for their own

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learning, within their educational institution, or within their interactions in the wider community. Reflective practice is becoming more common within the disciplines of health and education in institutions of higher learning. Often, however, the focus is on reflection on professional practice rather than involvement in and reflection on personal learning. Just as what and how we teach are instrinsically linked, so too are what and how we learn. Encouraging students to challenge their deep-seated assumptions and asking them how they accommodate new learning within their existing ideas are skills that need to be consciously built into many learning programs. Linking theory to practice and personal worldviews can be an uncomfortable process for learners, and doing so raises both ethical and pedagogical questions for many teachers. Yet in transformative learning processes, teachers are learners just as learners are teachers. A transformative educative process involves reflection and self-awareness for all involved while also promoting meaningful, and meaning-making, engagement with the curriculum itself. Horizontal, egalitarian relations between individuals facilitate transformative learning where impersonal, hierarchical relationships tend to impede it: ‘Learning is of course a process of doing, and reflecting and relearning, in other words a dynamic process of growth and development which is what makes us human’ (participant, LTT e-forum7). Two dominant concepts of learning have prevailed during the LTT discussions, with intensive debate around the central ideas of experiential and dialogical learning: ‘Experiential learning: that form of learning where experience (of the world) is transformed into knowledge (about the world) as the basis for action (in the world). Experiential learning is thus a pragmatic process through which each of us continually seeks to “better fit” the world about us, where this might involve change in ourselves, change in the world about us, or change in the relationships of the one with the other (co-adaptation)’ (participant, LTT e-forum2). Dialogical (or communicative) approaches to learning involve developing new critical theories to oppose inequality, where ‘individuals have the potential to transform their lives by using agency to overcome inequality and oppression ... different kinds of knowledge are equally valued in a lifelong learning process’ (Merrill 2003:30). Praxis and learning cycles have both been criticized as being overly linear models, and as limited to the iteration of experience, conceptual analysis, and action as the basis of change. Other dimensions of learning expressed, for example, in emotional, spiritual, artistic, and embod-

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ied forms of knowledge, are not included (Heron 1992). In applications of praxis, the understanding of power is often one-dimensional, based on class oppression alone. The non-dialogical dimension of learning was strongly reflected in examples of teaching and facilitation methods. Some LTT participants have expressed confusion about how to differentiate between their roles as facilitators, participants, or both, reflecting an underlying belief in the value of self-knowledge, personal experiences, and the emotional dimensions of learning. Most approaches to learning in higher education, even those embracing ideas of deep learning, learning styles, and learning cycles, give relatively little attention to those forms of knowledge – and ways of expressing knowledge – that lie beyond intellectual and conceptual sense-making. Yet educators have long recognized the diverse ways in which knowledge and skills may be understood and expressed, including many non-dialogical, experiential, and artistic forms neglected in higher learning (Heron 1999; Kolb 1984; Bolton 2001). These may include lived experience, intuition and wisdom, values and ethics, aspects of emotional and spiritual being, forms of practical knowledge and professional skills, and artistic forms of expression such as creative writing, drama, movement, music, dance, and storytelling. Higher education privileges conceptual sense-making as the highest form of knowledge. While recognizing the great value of conceptual development, we need to ask whether there are situations in which learning should be designed to allow intellectual capacities to be strengthened in creative combination with these other, less dialogical forms of knowledge. The role of non-dialogical and experiential knowledge is particularly relevant for those learning to work with people of diverse backgrounds and cultures, and to facilitate more holistic solutions to complex social, political, and environmental problems. Because power relations, inequalities, and environmental imbalances are all deeply embedded in social and cultural norms, values, and perceptions, any efforts to understand and address these issues need to be multifaceted – not just in the interdisciplinary sense, but in truly bridging, transcending, and challenging the diverse representations of truth and knowledge that underpin our social orders. In the growing fields of action research, experiential learning, and reflective practice, there is recognition of the need to integrate these other ways of knowing and expression into higher learning strategies (Reason and Bradbury 2001). The era of the single discipline and the purely academic claim to knowledge is waning, even

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while we acknowledge that these do indeed have much to contribute to learning and professional growth: ‘In effect, what we are trying to do is to expand our learning to include not only what and how we understand – but also what and how “others” understand. It is learning that transcends borders’ (participant, LTT e-forum4). Curriculum Traditional education contexts promote predetermined learning outcomes and fixed assessment criteria – environments where it is not always easy to find space to negotiate a learning program that has personal relevance for participants, especially those working or who intend to work in rapidly shifting social contexts through social movements or community-based organizations. How may practitioners aiming to facilitate transformative learning become more creative in identifying ways of working within, while also seeking to challenge and redefine, these contexts? Innovative curricula can play a crucial role in creating and supporting existing spaces that are conducive for transformative learning. Students have often been schooled into passivity and didacticism, and they will need to experience different ways of working for themselves. This might involve teachers taking risks and expecting learners to do so, if they are to do things differently. Participants in the LTT dialogue have shared their own experiences of ways of breaking out of or finding room within the defined physical spaces of seminar rooms, as well as the intellectual spaces of curriculum content. These tended to include two seemingly contrary approaches – a commitment to being transparent and open about the learning process and using teaching and learning methods that involve challenge and surprise. If learners are to be actively involved, their expectations, and those of the course itself, need to be fully acknowledged from the start. The group needs to properly understand the expectations of different group members and to deal with the conflict caused by differing expectations, if the content is to be negotiated and made relevant. Opening up to personal change is a bold step, and all involved in the process need to understand the rules and risks as well as the possibilities. Some examples of innovative curricula include: • Group rounds, where every student speaks in turn about how they are and what they bring to this particular session • Action learning sets, where each learner has a specified time to

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speak about a particular learning-related issue and other members provide feedback • Participant-led sessions, where students take turns in designing and running seminars and activities that involve sharing value statements and physically moving around the available learning space • Reflective and exploratory writing, where learners keep journals or do writing exercises designed to deepen self-awareness and insight • Non-dialogical activites such as drama, music, or drawing that tap into presentational forms of knowledge and expression. Working in this way invites learners to share elements of their personal as well as their professional lives and, sometimes, to confront their deep fears and assumptions. It raises questions as to what is appropriate disclosure, and whether the same boundaries of appropriacy exist for teachers and for learners. A commitment to making transparent expectations and constraints, negotiating content and process, and introducing an element of risk together, could present a way forward. Transformative approaches to curriculum design and development, including more participatory approaches (Taylor 2003), are relatively new to traditional educational institutions. A participatory curriculum development approach aims to formulate a curriculum from the interchanges of experience and information between the various stakeholders in an education and training program (Rogers and Taylor 1998; Taylor 2000). The rationale for this emerges from positive outcomes resulting from the increased participation of different stakeholders in extension and community development activities. Many authors (e.g., Pretty et al. 1995; Chambers 1997; Hagmann et al. 1999) have described how participatory processes lead to increased effectiveness in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of rural development programs. Percy (2005) has explored ways in which transformative learning theory influences the practice of participatory research and agricultural extension. Building on lessons learned from field-based practice, a critical, formative element of participatory curriculum development is the identification of stakeholders, who may include educators, researchers, policy-makers, and NGO and/or CBO representatives, as well as community leaders and members. Rather than belonging to a small select group of experts, a wide range of stakeholders are involved in curriculum development in a meaningful way, drawing upon their experiences and insights in a structured approach to curriculum planning, imple-

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mentation, and evaluation (Rogers and Taylor 1998). They may contribute to setting aims and learning objectives, engage in developing of the subject matter being taught, and participate in the processes and experiences which lead to the achievement of those objectives: ‘Is curriculum in part a dialogue about roles and responsibilities for learning? And how do beliefs and values influence the way in which the curriculum emerges and comes to life through the learning process? The very act of “designing” a curriculum suggests a rational, cognitive process; but in our dialogue about learning participation, the importance of emotions, beliefs and values has been stressed so often. Are teachers being pushed frequently into trying to rationalise “learning” by creating a curriculum, which is approvable and accreditable?’ (participant, LTT e-forum8). Community and Context As indicated in the earlier sections of this chapter, dimensions of learning and participation have been explored in relation to individual contexts and identities as well as community and institutional contexts. Similarly, action research was explored as a concept and approach that is very context-dependent: ‘I get that social context (collaborative settings, etc.) are really effective and unique forms of learning, and that they are highly conducive to participatory methods, but I still am not sure that learning in solitude cannot also be participatory’ (participant, LTT e-forum8). Others suggested that the personal and the context cannot in fact be separated and that there is a close link between the personal and the political, and vice versa: ‘The personal is political: I express my politics through my self and my self through my politics’ (participant, LTT e-forum6). The role of language and communication was also explored as both limiting and facilitating dialogue. LTT participants commented frequently on the limitations of language and constructions of words for conveying meaning, and they linked these ideas with notions of extended epistemologies and alternative ways of knowing and being: ‘The question of language is crucial for facilitating expression of knowledge, accessibility of information, interaction in the learning process’ (participant, LTT e-forum8). Educational experiences, both successes and failures, however they are determined, are fundamentally context-specific. As participants shared insights and reflections from their own practices, they empha-

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sized the pitfalls of simply applying the same technique in another context: ‘For me, one critical aspect of participatory approaches (in any situation) is that space and respect is given to the personal self whilst acknowledging the context in which he/she is operating. So, in teaching and learning, the individual is paramount yet is enabled to work within the context of the collective’ (participant, LTT e-forum4). One participant shared a fascinating case study regarding his own experience in facilitating linkages between the university and the community, as the following excerpt shows: For many years I have been involved in work linking higher education courses with community-based organizations that are struggling to advance a wide variety of social justice issues affiliated with access to education, housing, jobs, and health care. This work has been challenging not only because of the demands placed upon social activists but also because the inherent messiness of political processes often does not mesh neatly with the careful controlled, if somewhat contrived, culture of learning in most higher education courses. Like many educators with commitments to social change, I have sought to link university studies with real-world issues confronting urban communities so that students can fuse theory and practice in the on-the-ground lives of real people in real communities. Recent experimentation in this area led me to discover that it was possible to develop positive outcomes with schools and community-based organizations with which I have collaborated. At the same time, a paradox opened up: while community stakeholders might express great enthusiasm for their collaboration with the university, university students themselves can express discomfort and even outright resistance to participatory practices. I have had to learn that for some students – often, those who have excelled in traditional university settings – the openness, un-predictability, and contestation that occur in participatory courses can be highly unsettling. For others, the creativity unleashed by participatory courses can provide new opportunities for reconceptualising learning and for linking their university activities with the social needs of children in urban communities. In one recent course I taught, these two groups of students became strikingly polarized, with the former group insisting upon hierarchical and traditional university practices and the latter group accusing the former of complicity in systems of oppression. The class was very stimulating, but I worried that the adversarial tone of some of the class discussions may have produced a defensiveness and rigidity that

Learning and Teaching for Transformation 189 undermines the critical goals of open inquiry and dialogue. (StackpoolMoore et al. 2005, 37)

Challenges of Institutional Acceptance The moral of the story is that we also need to work upward to change the kinds of evaluation strategies and information that those with the power of the purse will accept. It is not enough to struggle with the dilemmas as they are handed to us. We also need to try to change the rules. Participant, LTT e-forum2

Institutional issues, as highlighted in the case excerpt in the previous section and elsewhere in this chapter, have proved to be a major preoccupation of many participants in the LTT dialogue. Focusing on their own roles and positions within these institutions, participants offered reflections about factors opposing change, such as hierarchies and power relations, an ‘obsession’ with rigorous research and research ratings, and pressures for standardization in curriculum and assessment. They also shared factors that are conducive to change, such as ‘good’ facilitation, practices of action research, and experiential learning: ‘A special project with a participatory commitment and design [often] occurs in a larger university context, a context that is nearly always hierarchical and non participatory’ (participant, LTT e-forum1). Many participants reflected on their personal roles in championing the process of change, with implications for situating oneself in the core or the periphery of an institution. The relationship between higher learning institutions and the community was also examined, and indeed, how participatory approaches can impact and redefine that relationship: ‘But do you have to leave behind, effectively, the institution from which you have come in order to work deeply in communitybased research or action? ... Do you have to forego the possibility to bring about change in your own institution of higher learning when forging a different kind of relationship with those outside?’ (participant, LTT e-forum1). Participants linked their own ideas about personal change with those of the institution, suggesting that first and foremost change has to come from within. Linked with other cycles of learning and reflection, it was suggested that the change process gains momentum once processes of participation, inclusion, and reflection have effectively changed one’s

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institution. The type of change desired was subject to challenge, however: ‘Could it be that one of the most important and desirable shifts in university education is not to bring this wonderful informal learning into the classroom, but instead to recognize what occurs outside of the classroom and to provide a sounder environment for these studentdriven initiatives to take place?’ (participant, LTT e-forum4). Issues of individual contexts and identities, community and institutional contexts, the role of language and communication, and limitations in conveying meaning especially around alternative ways of knowing and being, and the institutional issues have also beset adult educators and popular educators working within and alongside social movements and civil society organizations, including those based in communities and academic institutions. The questions of who we are and what we are doing became intertwined and co-dependent, as participants in the LTT dialogue have spoken of the different hats we wear in different situations. These conversations have emphasized not only the importance of being aware and self-critically reflective, but also the necessity of recognizing the unique and heterogeneous contexts in which transformative teaching and learning take place. As an example of how learners see and have reflected on their role as change agents in a researcher-practitioner relationship where they have some privilege and higher status relative to the people/students they work with, students undertaking an MA in Participation, Development, and Social Change at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), have paid particular attention to their multiple identities: those which might be construed as professional (students, researchers, community activists, organizational leaders, and change agents), but also those within a more personal domain (mothers/fathers, husbands/wives, sons/daughters, members of particular ethnic and cultural groups, religion, and so forth). Students became aware of how these different identities come into play in their lives and practices, and how reflexivity and selfawareness around these different identities (often held simultaneously) are crucial factors that influence their positionality and ability to contribute to processes of social change. Conclusion Teachers tend to teach in the ways they themselves were taught. And this behaviour finds further reinforcement in the prevailing techno-scientific worldview that privileges so-called ‘objective’ (propositional and practical)

Learning and Teaching for Transformation 191 knowledge especially over the inherently ‘subjective’ experiential and inspirational knowledge. Participant, LTT e-forum7

Everyone is a learner, throughout all the different and contradictory experiences of life. But, as the LTT dialogue has shown, we cannot avoid the need to create time and space for reflection. We need also to provide the opportunity for both learners and teachers to turn that reflection into action and change within a specific context. Ideally, the communities from which learners come offer this. At a workshop in April 2005, several LTT participants spoke of their experiences in actively acknowledging and working with identities in processes of social change. A participant from New Zealand described how her work with the Treaty Resource Center builds on Freire’s (1974) theories of adult education and links in strongly with the idea of working with the ‘oppressors’ as well as the ‘oppressed’ to facilitate transformative learning processes: ‘In at least one way, our work does not fit his or most other models for transformative education: we are members of dominant groups working mainly with others in dominant groups.’ Likewise a participant from Mexico spoke of working with both powerful and powerless groups within a community to facilitate experiential learning opportunities. He described a postgraduate program with the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana (UAM) in Mexico City that aims to ‘relate local social action with the experiences of students from different disciplines. Through this program we collaborate with poorest social groups, communities, and social organisations in their efforts to change their situation.’ The question of how we learn to be real agents of change, as citizens, as members of civil society, as professionals and practitioners who wish to make a positive difference, requires answers that touch the core of how we imagine and construct higher education. Identification of the characteristics required by individuals who seek to contribute to processes of social change is also a question that has exercised the minds of participants in the LTT dialogue: ‘What can we do, practically, together, or individually to make a difference, as a result of what we are learning here together? Through our common and personal reflections and theorising, what are the implications for our praxis? What may we do, and how should we be?’ (participant, LTT e-forum6). We have not attempted to define the meaning of transformation in terms of changing people or their grasp of content or technologies, but

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rather we have aimed to explore intensively the ways in which education can provide the environment and support for transformative experiences. We are challenged to create more effective learning approaches and environments in which both teachers and learners can develop their capacities to access, create, and share knowledge. We need to draw on what is already known and recorded, but also we need to discover how to adapt, innovate, and apply our knowledge and skills within specific and rapidly changing contexts. There is much we need to know and learn, but just as importantly, we need to understand why and how we know and learn and to use these capacities critically and reflectively: ‘I realize now more than ever, that in fact, I cannot make transformation happen in anyone except myself, and even that is a daily struggle ... So the dilemma remains ... What are the enablers for others to make their own decisions to change their daily practice and daily thinking to work towards peace in themselves, their families, their communities, their countries and their worlds?’ (participant, LTT eforum3). In summary, those engaged in the LTT dialogue are concerned with how their practice as educators may contribute to positive change, both in individuals and society, through a common set of values and principles: • An un-ease with the established concepts and practices of teaching and learning that is embraced by many of the institutions with which we are connected • A conviction that there are alternatives, which we can share and adapt, that can make a difference in the way education is positioned and carried out • A belief in the need to attend to the personal, reflective, and relational dimensions of our practice, beyond the usual professional standards • An understanding that process and content cannot be separated and that our ways of working are as vital as the content that we manage • An appreciation of knowledge and learning as constructive processes, in which learners and their experience must play a vital and active role • A respect for the inherent worth and dignity of learners, as individual beings, with agency for transforming themselves and their societies.

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These principles have been affirmed against a backdrop of quite challenging institutional cultures and educational practices. Many institutions of higher learning, and the approaches to learning and teaching which they reproduce, are inherently conservative and risk-averse. The continuity of academic disciplines, received knowledge, bureaucratic procedures, professional standards, career paths, and funding sources are all felt to be at stake – even if, in reality, change and innovation may be precisely what is needed for both institutional relevance and for meeting the needs of learners in addressing real-world social issues. We feel fortunate to have grounds for optimism, however, since participants in the Learning and Teaching for Transformation initiative described in this chapter have shared such a rich array of experiences and perspectives of change and innovation. Their stories, methods, and approaches demonstrate that there is indeed a growing body of theory and practice of learning and teaching that supports participatory, inclusive processes of social change, contributing ultimately to learning citizenship.

REFERENCES Argyris, C., and D.A. Schon. 1974. Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Biggs, J. 2003. Teaching for Quality Learning at University, 2nd ed. Maidenhead: Open University and Society for Research into Higher Education. Bolton, G. 2001. Reflective Practice: Writing and Professional Development. London, Paul Chapman. Brennan, J. and Y. Lebeau. 2002. ‘The Role of Universities in the Transformation of Societies: An International Research Project.’ Paper presented at the CHER 15th Annual Conference, 5–7 Sept. Vienna. Brown, L.D., G. Bammer, S. Batliwala, and F. Kunreuther. 2003. ‘Framing Practice-Research Engagement for Democratizing Knowledge.’ Action Research 1(1): 65–85. Chambers, R. 1997. Whose Reality Counts? London: Intermediate Technology. Cloete, N. 2002. Transformation in Higher Education: Global Pressures and Local Realities in South Africa. Lansdowne: Juta. Fals-Borda, O. 2001. ‘Participatory (Action) Research in Social Theory: Origins and Challenges.’ In P. Reason and H. Bradbury, eds., 2001 Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. London: Sage.

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Freire, P. 1972. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin. – 1974. Education for Critical Consciousness. London: Sheed and Ward. Gaventa, J., and A. Cornwall. 2001. ‘Power and Knowledge,’ in P. Reason and H. Bradbury, eds., Handbook of Action Research. London: Sage, 70–80. Hagmann, J., E. Chuma, K. Murwira, and M. Connolly. 1999. Putting Process into Practice: Operationalising Participatory Extension. ODI Agricultural Research and Extension Network, Network Paper No. 94. London: Overseas Development Institute. Heron, J. 1992. Feeling and Personhood: Psychology in Another Key. London: Sage. – 1999. The Complete Facilitator’s Handbook. London: Kogan Page. Heron, J. and P. Reason. 2001. ‘The Practice of Co-operative Inquiry: Research with Rather Than on People.’ In P. Reason and H. Bradbury, eds., Handbook of Action Research. London: Sage, 179–88. Johnston, R. 2003. ‘Adult Learning and Citizenship: Clearing the Ground.’ In P. Coare and R. Johnston, Adult Learning, Citizenship and Community Voices: Exploring Community-Based Practice. London: National Institute for Adult and Continuing Education (NIACE), 3–21. Kolb, D.A. 1984. Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Lukes, S. 1974. Power: A Radical View. London: Macmillan. McNiff, J., and J. Whitehead. 1992. Action Research, Principles and Practice. London: Routledge. Merrifield, J. 2002. Learning Citizenship. Working Paper 158. Falmer: Institute of Development Studies. Merrill, B. 2003. ‘Adult Education for Citizenship: A European Perspective.’ In P. Coare and R. Johnston. Adult Learning, Citizenship and Community Voices. London: NIACE, 22–40. Mott, A. 2005. University Education for Community Change: A Vital Strategy for Progress on Poverty, Race and Community-Building. Washington: Community Learning Project. Olsen, J. 2000. Organisering og styring av universiteter. En kommentar til Mjosutvalgets Reformforslag Oslo. ARENA Working Paper WP 00/02. Oslo: Centre for European Studies. Percy, R. 2005. ‘The Contribution of Transformative Learning Theory to the Practice of Participatory Research and Extension: Theoretical Reflections.’ Agriculture and Human values 22: 127–36. Pretty, J., I. Guijt, J. Thompson, and I. Scoones. 1995. Participatory Learning and Action: A Trainer’s Guide. London: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

Learning and Teaching for Transformation 195 Rahman, M.A. 1993. People’s Self-development: Perspectives on Participatory Action Research, a Journey through Experience. London: Zed Books. Ramsden, P. 1992. Learning to Teach in Higher Education. London: Routledge. Reason, P. and H. Bradbury. 2001. ‘Inquiry and Participation in Search of a World Worthy of Human Aspiration.’ In P. Reason and H. Bradbury, eds., Handbook of Action Research. London: Sage, 1–14. Rogers, A., and P. Taylor. 1998. Participatory Curriculum Development in Agricultural Education: A Training Guide. Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization. Schon, D. 1983. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. London: Maurice Temple Smith. Stackpool-Moore, L., P. Taylor, J. Pettit, and J. Millican. 2005. Currents of Change: Exploring Relationships between Teaching, Learning and Development. Report of an international workshop, April 2005. Falmer: Institute of Development Studies. Tandon, R. 1981. ‘Participatory Research in the Empowerment of People.’ Convergence 24(3): 20–9. Taylor, E.W. 1998. The Theory and Practice of Transformative Learning: A Critical Review. Information series 374. Columbus: ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education, Center on Education and Training for Employment, College of Education, Ohio State University. Taylor, P. 2000. ‘Improving Forestry Education through Participatory Curriculum Development: A Case Study from Viet Nam.’ Journal of Agricultural Extension and Education 7(2): 93–104. – 2003. How to Design a Training Course: A Guide to Participatory Curriculum Development. London: Continuum. Taylor, P. and J. Fransman. 2004. Learning and Teaching Participation: Exploring the Role of Higher Learning Institutions as Agents of Development and Social Change. Working Paper 219. Falmer: Institute of Development Studies. – eds., 2003. Learning and Teaching Participation. PPLA Notes No. 48. London: IIED. Zuber-Skerrit, O. 1992. Professional Development in Higher Education: A Theoretical Framework for Action Research. London: Kogan Page.

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7 The Myth of Community? Implications for Civil Society Organizations and Democratic Governance irene guijt

The notion of community is not a myth when it comes to development impact. Communities have proven political, economic, and cultural clout in effecting unique development trajectories despite many obstacles. Indigenous communities have been gaining recognition of their identity, while economically not prosperous rural communities in many countries have slowly been creating new livelihoods as earlier options fade away. But are such communities not just illusory havens of temporary cohesion and contrived clarity? Any one of us, as a member of a community, knows of the often-serious internal differences of gender, race, class, or generation that create factions and thereby inhibit the potential of local development. So perhaps community is a myth after all. In this chapter, I will use an empirical example from Brazil to explain why my answer is both ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ In so doing, I will illustrate why examining the notion of communities can help us understand the potential of democratic governance which is so widely supported. I will first describe the participatory planning processes in three Brazilian municipalities in terms of how a notional community is embedded in and also emerges from the work of civil society.1 The three cases illustrate the convergence of existing community structures, enhanced processes that strengthen the notional community, and community action as a vehicle for democratic governance. I highlight several critical issues about the fragility and uniqueness of such processes and of the growth of a sense of community. This brings me to discuss the mythical – or not – notion of community and some key risks in using the term to guide work with social movements. I close with some implications for civil society organizations and democratic governance.

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Participatory Municipal Planning in Minas Gerais, Brazil: An Illustration of Evolving Democratic Governance2 In Brazil, recent years have seen the growth of the municipal level as a critical focus for action by both civil society and government – much in line with decentralization trends around the world. Representing the lowest level of elected government, municipal-level initiatives and partnerships are increasingly the focus of investment by federal and state government policies and programs and the arena of non-governmental organization (NGO) action. It is where communities can manifest themselves through demands for local policy changes, representation on local councils, and concrete (self)-development activities. With the historic federal election victory of the political left in 2002 that installed President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula), this trend of placing the municipality increasingly central as a forum for governance is expected to accelerate and expand. One organization that in Brazil has been at the forefront of this development at a practical level is the Centre for Alternative Technologies of the Zona da Mata (CTA-ZM). It is a local NGO working on concrete alternatives for rural smallholders in the Mata Zone (or region) of the State of Minas Gerais (see figure 7.1). The region comprises 143 municipalities in the southeast of the state, and 90 per cent have a population of less than 20,000. The economy is principally agricultural. Smallholder agriculture represents a large proportion of production, and small holdings a large proportion of the region’s 150,000 properties, though not of the total land area, given the skewed land tenure relationships: a little over 90 per cent of the properties are between zero and ninety-nine hectares in size, while the rest are larger than 100 hectares (IBGE 1997). This makes the region strategically interesting for discussing democratic governance, as the marginalized rural households and communities have had to fight for space that has hitherto been denied them by the more powerful landholders. Poor farmers and the Rural Workers Unions (Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais, STRs) to which they belong, together with academics from the nearby Federal University of Viçosa, founded CTA-ZM in 1987. Although activities are coordinated through a team of ten professionals, the direction of CTA’s work is set by elected representatives of smallholder households and the trade unions and associations. These representatives form CTA’s board and executive, but they are also activists in their own municipalities. The relationship between

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Figure 7.1. The municipalities of Araponga, Tombos, and Acaiaca in the Zona da Mata. Zona do Rio Doce

Zona Metalúrgica Acaiaca

Espera Feliz Fevedouro Carangola São Fco Glória Pedra Dourada Miradouro Tombos Vieiras Divino

Araponga Viçosa Paula Cândido

Ervália

Visc. Do Rio Branco

Espírit Santo

Antonio Prado Muriaé Eugenópolis

Guidoval Rodeiro

Zona Campo das Vertentes

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janerio

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CTA’s team and its constituents – the poorer farmers of Zona da Mata – is generally one of trust and strong co-dependency. CTA’s methodological, strategic, and technical support has greatly enhanced the effectiveness of farmers’ organizations, while at the same time, CTA would not exist without the insights and strong support of farmers. Most field activities are carried out jointly by local farmers and someone from the CTA team. Memoranda of understanding institutionalize these relationships between the parceiros or partners, as they refer to each other. The relationships are, however, subject to continuous strain and they require ongoing nurturing. For example, in 2002, several trade unions withdrew their collaboration with the CTA team and other related municipal trade unions. This occurred after years of tension about unclear accountability practices with a regional marketing association of which all the unions were members. CTA had finally brought these issues to a head, as its monies were implicated, but had left the decision-making process to the union leaders themselves. More recently, CTA’s executive director, who is chosen from among the farmer leaders, was up for re-election, and tensions emerged when the incumbent, who was from a family that had provided several very dominant local leaders, was not re-elected. Concern had been growing among other leaders that this concentration of leadership could compromise the goal of fostering a wide leadership base. At a more practical level, CTA’s early days saw much work with experimentation and the dissemination of agricultural practices to enhance productivity. Currently, its focus lies more with facilitating the search for market options, advocacy efforts, and local democratic change. The work on which this chapter focuses is known in CTA as the Local Development Program (LDP). The LDP aims to facilitate the processes of rural municipal development planning in ways that ensure an active and prominent voice for hitherto marginalized communities of rural smallholders. The LDP is active in three municipalities of Minas Gerais: Araponga, Tombos, and Acaiaca (see figure 7.1). The local development work of CTA is based on a deep-rooted political vision of rights and citizenship, the value of societal debate, environmental sustainability, and the urgent need for practical options for smallholders. Working initially with participatory rural appraisal (see Pretty et al. 1995) and farmer participatory research (see Veldhuizen et al. 1997) approaches to facilitate understanding and planning and to develop innovations, CTA and its partners soon perceived a ceiling to

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any impact that they were having. Waiting for the appropriate political party – one that favours marginalized rural smallholder – to win municipal council elections was proving to be an uncertain strategy for scaling up impact. This factor, as well as the excessive workload on a limited number of dedicated rural union activists, led the Centre and its unionbased partners to invest in planning municipal rural development on the basis of wider partnerships. Today, the municipal planning work as facilitated by CTA in the Zona da Mata has developed into elaborate processes of continuous consultation and strategic realignment using participatory methodologies. In this chapter, I will be discussing these experiences as examples of social learning within social movements and of the role of social capital. Community among the Initial LDP Players At the onset, the three main players in the municipal planning processes were the CTA’s technical team, leaders from the Rural Workers Unions (and other farmers’ organizations), and farmers active in local development. As the work progressed, the circle of actors broadened to include a diverse and municipality-specific range of other groups, including, in all three cases examined here, the municipal government administrations. The centre’s technical team consists of professionals, including agronomists, foresters, sociologists, and cooperative specialists. Their knowledge about local and regional politics, as well as about environmental and agricultural issues, is detailed and pro-poor in focus based on their concern for marginalized smallholders. They operate on the principle that cohesive community action is a key strategy to improved local futures. Those outside the organization see CTA-ZM as providing the technical team, but also as a regional initiative that is driven by all participating unions and smallholder associations. Some would say that CTA represents a community of rural activists, in terms of shared norms and activities and allegiance to a common goal and vision. The governing forums of the Centre – its general assembly, governing council, and directorate – contain scenes of difference and dispute while at the same time they constitute agreement-seeking social spaces. Thus, these forums could be considered communities as well, in terms of both convergence and divergence. The Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais (Rural Workers Unions) are pivotal to all the regional work in which the CTA is involved, including

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municipal development planning. An STR is a membership organization, federated at the state level and the national level, but operating at the municipal level. STRs are the most widely accepted democratically elected bodies that represent smallholder agriculture in Brazil. Unions, traditionally, had not been involved in the practical aspects of smallholder production, focusing instead on confrontations about legal rights and political struggles and, in some cases, basic support like organizing pensions. Therefore, a critical part of CTA-ZM’s work has entailed expanding the activities and mandate of the unions, and building capacities to include an agro-ecological interest and perspective. Membership levels are considered a key indicator of local STR strength; however, not all members are active in union work, and, therefore, a clear distinction is made between active and passive members. Farmers who are members are commonly considered to constitute a political community. But this does not rule out internal differences, of course, of which there are plenty. For example, some farmers are enthusiastic about agro-ecology while others eschew such practices. In the Local Development Program work, the STRs of Araponga, Tombos, and Acaiaca take centre-stage. They each have a unique history, maturity, and membership, and they maintain different relations with the municipal government. Yet they are all affected by limitations in capacity, with but a few dedicated leaders taking on the bulk of the work, and limitations with regard to physical access to the remoter parts of the municipality because of limited funds.3 The accessibility issue is significant, as distances are considerable and this hinders the mobilization of a wide-enough pool of community members for municipal advocacy and implementation. This mobilization is crucial in the efforts to break the domination by urban residents of municipal policies and politics. The STRs clearly represent structural social capital in the form of roles and rules, precedents, and procedures, and they continually recreate cognitive social capital (see Krishna and Uphoff 1999). This includes norms, values, attitudes, beliefs, and shared culture. However, as I will discuss below, the STRs vary greatly in the strength of their social capital and thus in their ability to catalyse effective collective action. The third key player in CTA’s municipal planning work are the farmer groups. They vary in focus and composition, but generally their participants come from among the STR memberships. Many farmer groups work solely within a municipality, on technical issues such as

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soil conservation and rehabilitation, animal husbandry, seed production, health and sanitation, education, marketing, and establishing a conservation unit (the National Forest Park). Some of them focus on experimentation with innovations such as agroforestry (Cardoso et al. 2001) or organic coffee. These tend to have a more regional, rather than only local, membership. Farmer groups are generally supported by the CTA’s technical staff and sometimes by researchers from the Federal University of Viçosa. Within the local development process, farmer groups function as local researchers and implementers of community action, and thus they often develop into close social units or subcommunities. Because of the considerable variation among them, farmer groups represent varying degrees of structural and cognitive social capital (see Guijt, forthcoming). Thus community is present among these three key players not so much in terms of geographically close units of kinship or friendship, but rather as social groups motivated by similar political agendas and shared priorities and activities. The boundaries between the groups are fluid and individuals have multiple memberships. The social capital that exists in, feeds, and is continually being created by these three key players facilitates collective action and predisposes people towards cooperation (see Krishna and Uphoff 1999). Municipal Government Administrations, Social Movements, and the Space for Community Interests Two other players are particularly important for understanding the space for community in municipal processes of (democratic) governance: the public municipal government administrations and the social movements that in Brazil are political homes to organizations such as CTA, the Rural Workers Unions, and farmers’ groups. Municipal government administrations in Brazil are not, by and large, community spaces for the marginalized. Leaving aside the two wellpublicized examples of participatory governance – in Porto Alegre and Curitiba (Santos 2002) – the country’s remaining 5,000 municipalities are generally driven by a political culture of paternalism and centralization. Partidismo – polarization along political party lines – generally splits municipal residents into ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ groups that avoid any collaboration with each other once election results are known. Few propoor candidates get far in municipal elections, and hence, they rarely play a strong role in policy implementation at the municipal level.

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Instead, local policies are implemented, in part, by civil servants with permanent jobs whose mediocre energy levels are matched by mediocre outputs. The elected office-holders, or career politicians, in the municipal administrations often have bad relationships with the civil servants, particularly if they are from opposing political parties. At times of transition, when pro-poor politicians might take office, sabotage by outgoing officials is not uncommon. Animosity among the ranks in the municipal administration is aggravated by a decentralization of responsibility towards municipalities that has not been matched with appropriate levels of funding. Growing numbers of tasks and fewer resources perpetuate the continual disputes among municipal councillors that characterize many of the municipal administrations. Only when a councillor fighting for issues related to a particular community is particularly assertive, is there a chance of success. It is in this fraught space of internal division that marginalized communities are seeking to exert their voices and influence how public monies are allocated. The claimed spaces (see Cornwall 2002) that marginalized groups have created are the social movements. Within the context of CTA’s municipal planning work, three social movements play a role: the STR or labour movement, associations, and the women’s movement. Each has its own form of governance, some with more and others with less democratic tendencies. The extent of democratic culture within a movement is not homogeneous, but varies per level and type of decision, so does not characterize a particular movement in absolute terms. For example, within the labour movement, at the state level the Federaçao dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura do Estado de Minas Gerais (Federation of Agricultural Labourers of the State of Minas Gerais or FETAEMG) has far less of a participatory democratic culture than it has at the municipal level (the STRs). Transparency about the use of funding, typically part of the call for participatory governance, varies between, for example, the union movement (less transparency) and the associations (more transparency). And yet both have the same members and often the same leaders. At the municipal level, the internal governance of social movements is strongly determined by the social relations of individuals. Hence, where individuals in a community group have frequent interactions and shared activities, a more cohesive movement and community agenda is likely to be present. But as social relations also need to be preserved, this can create tensions when different agenda priorities arise. For ex-

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ample, in one municipality the current STR leader is the daughter of a previous leader, who is himself still a key opinion-maker. In voicing her concerns about gender relations among smallholder families, she must take care not to upset her father too much, who has had a different sense of priorities. The current STR leader is balancing between maintaining the social capital base that enabled the STR to become effective in the first place and challenging certain norms and values that would require a change in the shared culture, and hence a shift in the boundaries of how people work together. Three points are significant about the relationship between social movements, as potential advocates of community interests, and government administrations, as potential spaces for these interests. 1 The relationship with the government administration varies according to the movement. Each movement has its own stated policy regarding this relationship: one of proximity, distance, or opposition. For example, in municipal councils, the labour movement – the Confederaçao Nacional dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura (National Confederation of Agricultural Labourers or CONTAG/CUT) tends to use that political space while the Movimento Sem Terra (MST), the famous landless movement, tends to stay outside and thereby avoid any risk of being co-opted. Hence, the interests of marginalized communities will emerge either within the domain of public power or stand alongside it, depending on which social movement these interests are aligned with. 2 Ideological differences define differences only to a certain extent. Personal relationships with family and friends are critical, and these can override voting preferences. For example, having a brother-in-law who belongs to an opposing political party and who is also the mayor means that there are limits to the demands one can put on him to push through a certain agenda item related to, say, the propoor alliance that one is affiliated with oneself. Hence, personal allegiances to two communities, that of kinship and that of politics, regularly vie for space. 3 Each relationship has its own evolution and dynamics, so space for community interests to be addressed is continually being (re)negotiated. With regard to the three participating municipalities of CTA’s Local Development Program in Araponga, the Rural Workers Union has always had a distant, sometimes tense relationship with the municipal council. For two years the STR sought closer ties with the coun-

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cil. The mayor of Araponga (whose party affiliation is with the opposite end of the political spectrum) invited one STR leader to consider a more formal alliance, in anticipation of the votes this may bring in future elections. In Tombos, the labour movement was in open conflict with the municipal council. Then it won the elections, but subsequently lost at the polls. Thus, space for community interests in Tombos has had a rollercoaster ride. In Acaiaca, the labour movement does have its political party in the municipal council, but the council is inexperienced and thus not very effective. Hence, there is at present a lack of clarity with regard to what real space there is for the interests of marginalized groups to be addressed. These kinds of details are critical in understanding the extent to which community is capable of manifesting itself in forums of participatory governance where social movements and government administrations meet. The next section describes how creating space in which an emergent sense of collective purpose could be expressed helped to strengthen a sense of community in the three municipalities. Working with Community in Municipal Planning Local development planning was conceptualized by CTA as a strategy for civil society, in particular marginalized farming households, to construct more democratic forms of local governance. While each of the processes in Araponga, Tombos, and Acaiaca was unique, three common features can be identified. These features are all predicated on the existence of social capital that is catalysed in community-based discussions in order for coherent and shared community priorities to emerge and inform municipal priorities. First, all three processes started with an elaborate Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and participatory formulation of a municipal rural development plan (an MRDP) to start the process of creating a sense of community and then helping community interests to be articulated. Three phases can be distinguished (see table 7.1). The process and results are documented in an MRD plan, outlining the partners involved, the methodology followed; the time-frame taken; the sectorspecific analyses of problems, causes, and consequences; and the agreed priority actions. This document represents the official agreement between the partners, that is, civil society organizations and the municipal council, and thus is a vital instrument that guides resource

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Table 7.1. Three phases of convening, analysing, and planning Phases

Focus and steps

Phase 1 – Mobilization

This involves first contacts with potential actors, farming households, groups in all geographical communities, and negotiations and networking between them to identify who wants to be a partner. The partners then agree on the principles that will guide the local development process and on their respective roles. This phase can take several months, and can culminate in a more formalized committee and agreement on the methodology for the next steps.

Phase 2 – Appraisal

All partners work with all geographical communities (note, not all individuals) in group meetings and subsequently family interviews. A smaller group, with representatives of the partners, then undertakes the first (sectoral) analysis of issues. This takes place over two to three months.

Phase 3 – Planning

This involves four steps. (1) Provide feedback to each of the communities for additional insights, corrections, debate, and the start of convergence around priorities. Usually a committee is established (in Acaiaca, each community elected three representatives – a youth, a woman, and a man). (2) Deepen, with the committee, the analysis of key problems identified by communities during the initial appraisal phase, identifying the causes and consequences of the problems. (3) Identify proposals to resolve problems related to agriculture, environment, infrastructure, health, education and social assistance. (4) Prioritize proposals and document the MRD plan.

allocation. Social learning occurs in various ways, as new alliances are tested out, different perspectives are expressed, and consensus priorities emerge. A second common feature was the establishment of a Municipal Council for Sustainable Rural Development (MCSRD) after the plans were elaborated. These councils were included as proposals in the municipal plan. The councils are responsible for implementing the MRD plan by holding the partners accountable to their commitments and monitoring progress. They are also the entity that discusses all aspects of municipal rural development policies and proposals for rural investment. The council is composed of representatives from the municipal government administration, councillors, extension and research services, CTA, the STR, and any women’s groups or smallholder cooperatives that might exist. Following guidelines set by the National Council on Rural Sustainable Development (NCSRD) at least 50 per cent of the MCSRD members represent smallholder agriculture. The MCSRD is generally the first opportunity for many marginalized com-

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munity members to have a formal political space to which to direct their concerns. It means, however, that these concerns must be clear and therefore implies considerable prior work to obtain sufficient shared clarity. The third commonality, visible in all municipalities, was the strong support given by CTA to farmers’ organizations (the STRs and associations). During all phases of appraisal and planning, CTA and the STRs and associations were in constant communication, with CTA continuously facilitating a strategy to build union leaders’ capacity to act as effective local protagonists in municipal debates. Various strategies were adopted to enable community representatives, with CTA’s financial support for transportation, to participate in meetings. The participatory methodologies used in the different phases were constructed to facilitate access by farmers to information and to enable them to express their concerns. This was critical to firmly establish the sense of a common agenda but also to build the individual capacities to represent community interests. Similarities Mask Differences While these features create the impression of considerable similarity, each of the three processes was unique. Differences include the extent to which ‘community interests’ are now articulated and marginalized smallholders are capable of engaging with public spaces in which to express their commonalities and differences. The differences between the three municipalities are a result of the initial triggers, the initial partners, the subsequent focus, and even the funding sources (see table 7.2). Most of these differences are not significant in terms of the strength of community that has emerged. Only in the case of Acaiaca does the relatively short political history seem to be significant. There, the farmers have not yet lived through enough processes as a movement to build the confidence, clarity, capacity, and mutual trust that would enable them to tackle more complex and strategically demanding governance processes. Representation and Expectation: Perspectives on Community Why Community Is Not a Myth In the example of Brazilian municipalities, community is clearly present, albeit in diverse ways. For the government administration, community is synonymous with o povo, the people, a simplification for administra-

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Table 7.2. Differences between the three MRDP processes Araponga

Tombos

Acaiaca

Year started

STR registered, 1989 First PRA in 1994, updated in 2001

STR registered, 1985 PRA in 1998

STR registered, 1990 PRA in 2001

Initial conditions

CTA keen to start municipal planning in strong partnership with STR and based on various successful practical experiences with livelihood alternatives for marginalized farmers

CTA keen to start an LDP process and created interest within STR and APAT Formal convention signed between municipal council and CTA, after STR won elections Various successful practical experiences on which to build

Newly elected (left-wing) mayor wanted convention with CTA STR keen to take on an LDP suggested by CTA Built on two other experiences with broader focus

Initial partners

STR

STR, APAT, municipal council

STR, municipal council

General state of STR

Stable, no factions, growing number of young leaders, very maledominated

Centralization around few leaders (of the same family), women and men both strong, sophisticated strategies

Young and fragile, low membership, few leaders, strong women’s voice

Trigger to initiate an LDP

Desire to increase the scale of what had hitherto been localized development experiences

Optimal use of a historic landmark, with the PT elected into municipal office, to modify the flagship public policy issues of the STR and APAT, and to strengthen the union movement Organize the work of the Secretary of Agriculture, establishing priorities to be based on an appraisal

Optimal use of a historic landmark with Father João of the Workers Party elected as Mayor, to develop public policies and strengthen the STR

Focus

MRDP is being used by STR to hold the municipal administration accountable to its promises of policies and actions Agro-ecological alternatives played relatively important role in discussions and in formulating proposals

Income generation via processing and marketing of organic produce – sugar-cane products: liquor, a local sugar; dairy products: milk, yogurt, cheese, cream; (powder) coffee

First attempt to define integrated development strategy In agriculture, emphasis was on livestock development and defining the focus of the Secretary of Agriculture and other agricultural partners (Emater, CTA, STR)

Funding sourcesa

CTA budget for technical agriculture person Municipal budget

Municipal budget IAF grant (initially CTA budget for technical agriculture person which later fell under IAF grant)

Municipal budget Local Agenda 21

aIn

chronological sequence. Abbreviations: APAT = the municipal association in Tombos for small-scale producers, which operates as a cooperative and now runs its own supermarket for organic farm produce; CTA = Centre for Alternative Technologies; Emater = Technical Assistance and Rural Extension Service; IAF = Inter-American Foundation; LPP = Local Development Program; MRDP = Municipal Rural Development Plan; PRA = Participatory Rural Appraisal; PT = Workers Party; STR = Rural Workers Union

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tive purposes. In Acaiaca, the community of marginalized farming households helped vote the current mayor into power; in Araponga they form a significant force opposed to the sitting mayor, and in Tombos community has been present in both forms. For CTA, the term ‘community’ is both a political vision but also shorthand for a group of citizens to which the team refers when planning the division of tasks, such as ‘the communities can mobilize farmers.’ In all three municipalities, for the STRs, the communities (as comunidades) represent not just the potential might of collective action, but the root of significant impacts. The growth of a sense of community, both as structural and cognitive social capital (Krishna and Uphoff 1999), and the collective power for action this represented has led to change. At a general level, the process of building partnerships and dealing with conflicts, appraisals, and planning have built the political and methodological capacities of participants. Identifying municipal-level problems, acknowledging the challenges and needs that afflict each community and organization, the debates resulting from confrontations between different interests and needs, and defining priorities represented a unique education. This form of capacity-building, while not skill- or issue-specific, has been critical in ensuring continuity of the participatory spaces needed to implement the MRD plan, as well as strengthening the management of and effectiveness of the organizations involved in these participatory processes. Other impacts include the following: enhancing political maturity beyond the narrow party-bound perspective pervasive throughout Brazil, making viable what were hitherto unlikely partnerships, making the municipal council accountable, developing a collective vision, and increasing the scope of community-level action. Some of the changes in Araponga resulting from the STR-CTA facilitated municipal planning process show that community action can lead to concrete results such as: • The STR has gained in respect and is now considered a legitimate civil society partner. Hence the invitation in 2001 from the municipal council to participate in making the MRD plan and the STR as key drivers of the Municipal Council for Sustainable Rural Development. • A Farmers’ Market has just started to sell organic produce and the association has been formalized and is active. • Araponga was recognized as well-organized at the level of

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smallholders and awarded the honour of setting up a credit cooperative. A family agriculture school is being established by smallholders from various rural communities, with land and some material being bought to construct the building plus initial training taking place. Multiple experiences with organic coffee and agro-forestry systems are central in the regional training course that CTA is developing for farmer-to-farmer extension. Organizational changes that permit more community voice to define polices and practices in the State Forest Institute were triggered by STR and CTA facilitated discussions with communities living around the designated State Park of Serra de Brigadeiro. Dozens of families practise organic agriculture, with initial impact data showing greater flexibility, autonomy, productivity, and food security (Ferrari 2002).

Similar changes can be identified for Tombos (see Florisbelo and Guijt, 2004) while in Acaiaca it remains to be seen. ... And Why Community Could Be Considered a Myth From the same examples, however, other issues stand out that challenge the existence of community. Key among these are the fragility of the sense of community and the need to create it and keep nurturing it. Clear for CTA-ZM has been the political evolution required for some level of collective – or community – action and impact to emerge. This parallels the observation made by Krishna and Uphoff (1999) that the basis of social capital can be changed and that it can grow or diminish over time. To what extent can community be manufactured, an assumption that pervades the work of many of us engaged with community-based initiatives? Is it as tangible as many commonly assume? I will illustrate the risks of assuming too easily the presence and stability of community by highlighting four concerns from the Brazil case and other work. (Re)defining Community for a Return to Quality Using a term like ‘community’ easily leads to the trap that the three famous blind men fell into when asked to touch an elephant, which was for them an unknown. Each man approached the huge animal from a

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different angle, and, as expected, each one described it in a different manner. We are all blind in some way when it comes to community. Depending on our relationship to a group that we deem to be a community, we will create a different sense of what it is and the extent to which it is tangible. CTA-ZM considers local communities as critical units to mobilize and involve in capacity-building but works with subcommunities when internal conflicts arise that need resolving. The rural unions talk in terms of active and inactive communities (vis-à-vis union activities), but know that not all households in even the most union-oriented community are necessarily active. Various factors determine how each player in a local development process sees community. How long have we been there and what has been the diversity of our contacts internally (relative insider or outsider)? Through which social group do most of our contacts happen – with which subgroups do and don’t we interact? How are we perceived by others, and therefore how do they approach us? Knowing where these biases in our understanding of community might lie is an important step in seeing our blindness. Much of what passed under the heading ‘participatory development’ has been of highly questionable quality (see Cornwall and Pratt 2003; Cooke and Kothari 2001), in part due to a lack of clarity about the complexity of community. Those working with one of the many existing participatory development approaches have often been guided by simplistic perceptions of community, social organization, and dynamics. This has led to subsequent poor interaction with communities, including inadequate reflection on who participates in ‘participatory’ planning (see Houtzager et al. 2003) and not adapting the development initiatives to local planning processes, pace, and needs. Bryson and Mowbray (1981) describe how, well over a century ago, ‘the ideal of a culturally and politically homogeneous, participatory local social system gained acceptability and currency.’ The notion of community evokes images of meeting people’s real needs and widespread participation at the grassroots level, thus creating a normative sense of a good thing. The focus of much participatory work on community meetings as the forum for decision-making and striving for a single community action plan that will somehow meet the needs of the entire community, are signs of this simplification. Inequalities, oppressive social hierarchies, and discrimination are often overlooked in the enthusiasm generated for the cooperative and harmonious ideal promised by the imagery of community.

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Some call for abolition of the term altogether. But shifting our terminology will not solve the problem. The old problems of community and local are simply being transferred to the equally nebulous notions of civil society and citizenship that are currently in vogue. Instead, it is more useful to be clear about the terms we use and to strive for quality engagement that is mindful of intracommunal differences on the ground. The concern for quality work on local governance and the role of community marks a key trend in the recent history of participation (see figure 7.2). Searches for alternative approaches to research and planning saw the start of a veritable boom in what was called participatory practice. The mid-1980s and early 1990s saw great activity among grassroots activists and NGOs seeking alternatives to outsider-driven and standardized development approaches. This led to a bewildering array of possible approaches and their widespread application (Pretty et al. 1995), in which the notion of community or village action plans took hold. Participation and community plans soon became a condition of development funding, creating what some critics later called the new ‘tyranny’ (Cooke and Kothari 2001). Relatively little attention was paid to defining good quality work. With some small early exceptions (e.g., Absalom et al. 1994), enormous assumptions were made about how empowerment ‘happens,’ and many shortcuts in social and political change processes led to poor practice. Two key paradoxes with respect to initial intentions of the methodological innovations of participatory approaches emerged: (1) the standardization of approaches that were meant to be innovative and (2) their mechanical application, when initial cries were for political engagement. With all claiming and aiming to empower communities, the original interests in power relations and reflective planning were, ironically, being forgotten. The current phase of work with community-based, participatory initiatives is one in which quality concerns are central – at least in the discourse, if not yet in practice. Some voices in that debate stress the importance of sustained learning and ongoing processes of reflection and action, not just one-off appraisals and planning events (Guijt forthcoming). Others ask who should judge success, and turn therefore to participatory monitoring and evaluation (Estrella and Gaventa 1997; Whitmore 1998; Abbot and Guijt 1998). The latest call for a (re)turn to quality comes from those working on participatory governance questions, emphasizing the need for commitment to political processes (see Gaventa 2003; Hickey and Mohan 2004) but also to be aware of the elite among the marginalized (Cornwall 2002).

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Figure 7.2. Recent trends in participatory development. 1. Need (1970s/1980s) • Practical applications –

less blueprint • Ideological concerns –

more critical reflection 2. Boom (1980s/1990s ongoing)

5. Quality? (mid- to late 1990s to date) • More concern for quality of

Practice far practice removed from • Local diversity of interests early concerns explicit • Focus on learning, monitoring (risk of a new conditionality!) • Indiscriminate use • Mechanical use for

community plans • Standardization

• Many trials in R&D • Rivalry in diversity

3. Must (1990s) • Conditionality for

planning • Peer pressure

4. Paradox (mid-1990s to date)

As participatory approaches have become a solid part of the development landscape, we need to ensure that such quality concerns also inform how we choose to define what we mean by community. Critical in this will be working with community-based diversity rather than homogeneity, to which I now turn. The Challenges of Diversity and the Special Case of Gender Inequalities Marginalized communities are diverse. Underestimating this can lead to the illusion of tackling inequality, a case in point being gender inequalities. Gender is not just any other inequality. As Agarwal (2006) states, it is special for three reasons. First, it is located in and outside the household. Second, gender differences stem not only from material

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differences but are also ‘ideologically embedded.’ Finally, gender inequalities can be created and reinforced by institutions created ostensibly for the betterment of inequality. The oversight of gender equality in the pursuit of larger pro-poor victories has clearly been the case with the municipal planning processes discussed earlier. CTA itself has only over the past three years started seriously tackling the relative neglect of women in its work, and the issue of gender inequality for the often male-dominated STRs this agenda is a fresh challenge indeed. In August 2002 at a collective event with leaders and farmers from all three municipalities involved in CTA’s Local Development Program, lessons were identified about the participatory municipal planning processes. The most contentious issue was that of gender. The few vocal women present at the event found the STRs considerably wanting in terms of creating spaces for them to voice their concerns. The women participants were intensely frustrated by this pervasive neglect by an institution into which they, too, had also invested time and effort and that was supposed to be addressing unequal power relations. At the event, heated discussions with men led to consensus about a series of lessons learned about gender issues in the context of the work on democratizing municipal planning. These lessons will be no surprise to those familiar with the gender literature and its practice. • ‘The desire for change precedes changes in attitude’ – how does one broach the topic of internally oppressive attitudes in a community that needs to remain cohesive vis-à-vis the external world to make political headway? • ‘The need to ensure women’s and youth’s own income’ – working on a general pro-poor agenda is insufficient to deal with income divides within the communities and within households. • ‘Create conditions so that youth and women are motivated and can participate in decision-making’ – the cohesive group that is active in municipal-level battles about priorities and resource allocations is only representing part of the marginalized and simply telling women they should attend meetings is insufficient to make it possible for them to attend. • ‘Start the change process from within the union movement, via personal talks and events with union members and the leadership’ and ‘create spaces for men to discuss the issues, as it is always women who end up talking to themselves about gender inequalities’ – all

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parts of a community need to be involved in making internal changes in order to continually address existing internal inequalities. In other community-based planning work in Uganda with Redd Barna Uganda (Save the Children Fund Norway, an international NGO), conflict and analysis across social groups were central in social change (Guijt et al. 1998). We saw then that considerable time was needed to develop an understanding of social differences between subgroups in the community, to discuss possible conflicts of interests, and to negotiate the social space needed for the less-powerful groups to pursue their personal interests. The unmarried young mothers were the most neglected of the groups who were left out of so-called community priorities. In the mid-1990s, Redd Barna Uganda developed a community planning process based on community and group action plans through a process of analysis that explicitly considered age and gender differences (Guijt et al. 1998). We worked out a planning process that explicitly included a step to create sufficient appreciation among social groups of the uniqueness and importance of each group’s priorities, so that older men would not, for example, oppose the needs that younger women might feel for family planning support. Instead of a simple, short analysis of shared problems and possible action points, several stages of dialogue with and between these social groups were pursued. To deal with the pervasive weakness of gender issues in the vast majority of participatory development work, which thus leaves out half the community in so-called community-based development, three areas need attention (Guijt and Kaul Shah 1998). These are: improving a conceptual understanding about community, gender, participation, and empowerment – and in particular the linkages between these concepts; developing improved methodologies that allow for better gender-based analysis and a more meaningful involvement of diverse groups of women; and creating institutional change that will result in organizational cultures and support structures that promote, enable, and implement improved conceptual understanding and methodological development. Raising Community-Level Expectations and Stakeholder Burnout Community cohesion and spirit can be fragile, particularly where needs are acute. Community is, therefore, not concrete and in that sense mythical. It is a process of ongoing investment (see Krishna and Uphoff 1999).

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Before any impacts of collective community action can be perceived, a bumpy path must often be walked. In our reconstruction of the planning processes in the three municipalities, it was only with the benefit of hindsight that current leaders were able to identify significant setbacks as moments in which they ‘matured politically.’ Others had, however, dropped out of the political struggle unwilling to deal with the threat of personal violence, the disappointment of election loss, and the fatigue of yet more meetings that dangled tantalizing but elusive promises of better futures. Failing to recognize the need to deal with significant dips in morale and engagement, with community spirit ebbing to seriously low levels, risks what I call stakeholder burnout. Disillusionment with the lack of progress, after high investment of local people’s time and emotions, is a recipe for doubt and dropping out. I offer you one formula for consideration on a topic that requires further research. This formula starts to identify key variables that need to be understood, and where possible guided, if motivation for collective action is to lead to concrete results. I contend that stakeholder burnout (SB) occurs when: EC + (ITE)*f(PP) > PB – UP In other words, if Expectation of Change + Invested Time and Effort, as a function of Pressing Problems, is greater than the Perceived Benefits – Unexpected Problems, then Stakeholder Burnout occurs. Being mindful of the fragility of a sense of community can help organizations to develop strategies that reduce the chance of community burnout. Here though, organizations have two basic options. Some would say that the challenge for organizations like CTA and the STRs is to keep this social cost-benefit relation carefully in mind, aiming to balance in favour of benefits and only raising limited expectations. Yet others, including the STRs and CTA themselves and echoed by educationalists such as Myles Horton and Paolo Freire, argue for the need to keep focused on the longer-term goal of political change. As Horton says, ‘if you come to them with a radical idea ... where they see something significant, they’d become citizens of the world. Then they’ll identify with that, but not with short-range limited objectives that they know from experience don’t get them anywhere. They won’t invest much time or energy in it’ (Horton and Freire 1990, 93).

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A Community of Mythical Proportions Community can be mythical in quite the opposite sense as well, that of having mythically large proportions. Much action from civil society, including intermediary NGOs, has focused on enabling people to feel able to voice their concerns. Yet this is only one side of the equation – the voice side (Gaventa 2003). Overemphasizing the importance of community can lead to the wish for democratic decision-making without the forum in which it can take place. As the STR actions in Araponga showed prior to their policy of rapprochement with the municipal government administration, changes remain limited when marginalized groups shout and clamor but there are no ears to listen. For communities to make a difference on a larger scale, they need to be recognized as existing by those that must cede space. Treating the community as a myth has been an effective strategy by the more powerful, but making it paramount is unlikely to be effective either. Implications for Civil Societies and Democratic Governance In for the Long Haul: Community and Participatory Governance as Evolution In Tombos, the municipal planning process as supported by CTA is now in its seventh year, although the political struggle for local smallholders to gain attention for their issues started in the 1980s. Each year brings new twists, challenges, and successes, with local leaders rising and falling in response. In Acaiaca, everyone is waiting breathlessly for the first strong successes as the process is in its infancy. Meanwhile, the STR of Araponga faces an unexpected opportunity that might turn out to be a poisoned chalice. The current mayor, never before interested in smallholder issues, is starting to treat the STR as a serious partner. But whether this is in anticipation of upcoming municipal elections and the need to secure smallholder votes or from a genuine new-found respect for their concerns is, as yet, unclear. Table 7.3 summarizes the current challenges in the three municipalities. It highlights that community members cannot let up on their efforts but must continually seek and claim space. Where collective activity has grown to such a degree that formalization is required, the challenge lies in continually creating appropriate organizations and

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Table 7.3. Current challenges for community interests Political

Organizational and Institutional

Financial

Araponga

• Find the best way to occupy political space, making use of the accumulated strength and credibility, without diluting principles or ending up with contradictions

• Implement marketing channels • Establish association for buying land for landless farmers • Establish and consolidate credit cooperative

• Establish a family agriculture school • Mobilize resources for the credit cooperative

Tombos

• Re-establish promises and alliances formulated during the plan elaboration phase that have been weakened or disappeared, such as the tie with the municipal council and with Emater Revive the Municipal Rural Development Council

• Develop more autonomy and sustainability for the commercial and food-processing activities

• Find funding for technical assistance for farmers

Acaiaca

• Maintain a partnership with the public administration • Find an appropriate form for dialogue between the union movement and the administration • Construct a working MCRD

• Strengthen the STR, expanding the issues on which it works and the number of members

• Construct an office for the STR

institutions that do not stifle such action but enhance it. Bureaucratizing community endeavours become a real risk, as the critique on participatory methodologies has amply shown (see Cornwall and Pratt 2003). However, when collective action is scaled up to the level of municipal planning, it comes with a price tag and the need to formalize procedures that can deal with the required level of resources. Considerable resources need to be mobilized in all three municipalities if investments are to be made on the priorities set down in the municipal rural development plans. Dealing with this type of funding level and writing proposals to diverse funding agencies requires much greater social and organizational maturity than the hitherto low-cash activities of community organizations. It asks for a level of accountability that not many are able to show. This is but one example of the type of evolution of which

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community organizations like STRs, intermediary support organizations like CTA, and funding agencies need to be mindful. The Critical Role of Spaces Cornwall (2002) and Gaventa (2003) discuss in some detail the notion of space as central to making community voices heard in public political arenas. Gaventa writes: ‘Participation as freedom is not only the right to participate effectively in a given space, but the right to define and to shape that space’ (2003, 8). Cornwall and Gaventa talk in terms of three types of spaces where community concerns may manifest themselves: provided or closed spaces in which the elite provide services to the people, invited spaces for which invitations are issued towards the community by authorities, and claimed or created spaces by the less powerful. The efforts of CTA and the STRs of Tombos and Araponga to create strategic spaces of participation on their own terms and occupy these do not necessarily mean that there is participation or that community in all its diversity fills these spaces. Spaces have to be co-created and continually assessed in terms of their meaningfulness. As Geovani, the STR leader in Tombos, commented on the growing potential in Brazil for rural workers to have access to municipal-level structures and resources through, for example, the newly created Municipal Councils for Sustainable Rural Development: ‘We don’t think that the municipal council will resolve our issues. It should be an instrument but if we don’t fight then even Jesus Christ can’t solve it’ (Geovani, personal communication). The STR is creating its own spaces, independent of the current elected council, to realize their aspirations. These spaces, however, are also in need of quality control to ensure they are democratic, or they will simply increase ‘endogenous community imperfections’ (Platteau and Abraham 2002), including those related to gender inequality. In Tombos, the movement is now facing the dilemmas posed by a concentration of decision-making power and knowledge in the hands of a select group of very capable farmerleaders which reduces the opportunities for others to participate and develop strategic capacities. In 2002, other STRs formerly affiliated with CTA were unable to share power in the regional association and chose to opt out of that collaboration. Learning to share and cede power within the community of supposed comrades is an acquired skill, not a given.

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Agreeing to Disagree and Extend Responsibilities for Engagement Participation is inherently about conflict and difference – this newly emerging consensus stands in sharp contrast to the operational way in which participation was widely viewed a mere five years ago.4 This is the case not just within the known arenas of conflict like the municipal councils in Brazil but also within social movements. Dissent forms an opportunity for negotiation and, therefore, for creative inputs in identifying actions. Clearly, not everything can be resolved by consensus. Each process includes moments when majority decisions, by voting, have to suffice, although this does not close the door to creating consensus in future. But each process also includes moments where disagreement must be allowed. In the community planning work in Uganda (mentioned above) where only a few priorities could be tackled simultaneously (Guijt et al. 1998), it was clear that forcing consensus implied allowing the more vocal to dominate. Actionable priorities were not the priorities of any single group – but rather the lowest common denominator priorities. Creating the opportunity for harmonious disagreement is not only critical to ensure all community subgroups have their own space but also to engender a sense of shared responsibility in a collective future. This may seem paradoxical. Giving opportunities for aspirations that might not be shared at a larger collective level to be pursued by those who hold them can engender a sense of self-development rather than disheartening them. Much was discussed by the community leaders in the three Brazillian municipalities about the extent to which participation is defined by physical presence and active engagement. During an evaluation of the municipal planning process in Araponga, in January 2003, the MCSRD noted that it is engaged in more than twenty-five different lines of work, ranging from soil conservation to the new school and from setting up the credit cooperative to gaining land for the landless. All agreed that it was not possible for a single person to participate in all these events, nor that everyone needs to keep track of everything. Nevertheless, the role of some strategic players who maintain linkages across the activities and social groups was stressed. During the evaluation, several people also affirmed that people’s ‘moral participation’ is valuable by gaining their support through informing them about what is happening, even if they are not able to participate personally at meetings. This constitutes the starting point for widening the pool of

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potentially active participants at later stages. Community spirit, motivation, and action need ongoing (re)creating. Constructing Collective Clarity The need for collective reflection on similarities and differences, the highs and the lows, was partly motivated from CTA’s perspective by its intention to document more systematically, with the partners, the social and technical innovations that they are helping to develop as alternatives for rural Brazil (CTA-ZM 2001). This was agreed in the current three-year plan of the CTA and is intended to help others considering participatory municipal planning about its possible merits but also difficulties. The technical team at the CTA could have opted to systematize alone. However, aware of their slightly hands-off facilitative role, and not being embedded in local politics and processes, they were clear about their own limitations in perceiving and understanding critical issues. Creating opportunities for strategic analysis by local leaders was also central in CTA-ZM’s capacity-building approach and its concerns about ownership. CTA staff and the farmer-leaders on its board were conscious of the ease with which an NGO-initiated process could miss out on becoming locally embedded. The shift in the mid-1990s from having STR-specific inputs to a development plan carried out by a much larger group of municipal actors was precisely to increase the ownership base. The STRs and CTA were keen to avoid the municipal planning process being seen as an artificial construction to obtain resources for shortterm development, instead they hoped it would be viewed as a longterm vision to guide local initiatives. Thus, collective reflection with municipal councillors and STRs and other local leaders was critical to develop a shared sense of what their version of what the CTA has dubbed their Local Development Program represents. Investing in the collective construction of the process for participatory municipal planning was also a way of valuing the unique differences of each process, and thereby avoiding the idea that there is a single formula or model that can be followed. Hence, a collective (re)construction of the municipal processes reined in tendencies to simplify community-creation as a reproducible process, while local participants were still inspired by the strength of these community experiences to pick up new ideas and value their own community achievements.

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Working Both Sides Democracy entails voicing and giving space to voice. Gaventa clearly describes why working both these sides, as he calls it, is critical. He urges us to look at the intersection and interactions between civil society and state-based approaches, particularly ‘as participatory approaches are scaled up from projects to policies [and ] inevitably enter the arenas of government’ (2003, 2). This is precisely what happened in the three municipal planning processes discussed in this chapter. Working with the state, in our case the government administrations at the municipal level, to make them more accountable and responsive, is vital if a political pro-poor difference is to occur. The STR leaders are venturing into the domain of elected public power, carried by a strong link to the communities they represent. By investing heavily in strengthening a sense of local community (i.e., building social capital), CTA and its partner STRs are showing that those same communities are proving capable of both moving beyond their community focus as well as turning inward to critically examine their internal differences. Thus, my answer as to whether concerning development community is a myth or not will remain as I started – it all depends on what needs to be improved. The very community that is needed to move beyond it and into participatory local governance is tenuous and hard to build. We need it to move beyond it. This is the paradox of community. This makes it difficult to articulate what processes, or how-to-do-its, can cultivate such communities. Organizations such as CTA face many questions when developing and revising strategies to support civil society’s attempts to engage with local government. Does one focus on building wider community capacities or that of specific leaders? Is the chosen entry point the community, as defined by the municipal government administration or by local groups themselves? How can community-level or leadership burnout be avoided – or indeed can it? How does one work simultaneously on internal inequities and external battles? Developing space for community to create its own versions of democracy is not a theory or a methodology. It is an ongoing dialogue between improving processes internal to the groups that want space and fighting the external battles. Myles Horton, of adult education fame, says, ‘Finding the pockets [of hope and adventurism] is not an intellectual process. It’s a process of being involved’ (Horton and Freire

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1990, 94). At a conference in Manchester titled ‘Beyond the Tyranny of Participation,’ in 2003, academics dominated, trying to pronounce theoretical generalizations based on limited exposures to the types of dynamic and diverse realities described in this chapter. Meanwhile, the development agencies at that gathering kept asking, ‘But what are the common elements that we can use to ensure such experiences are spread widely?’ CTA’s experiences of contributing to the building of social capital in three Brazilian municipalities show that there is a limit to which political process can be methodologized, while theoretical observations must be truly evidence-based or they run the risk of feeding false understandings through flawed analysis of research snapshots.

NOTES This chapter draws on a paper written by Florisbelo and Guijt (2004) and has benefited from suggestions following a presentation on 27 March 2003 at Green College, University of British Columbia. 1 Throughout this chapter, I am mindful that just as the term ‘community’ is limited, so is the term ‘civil society’ – but that is fodder for another article. 2 The information in this section is based on Florisbelo and Guijt (2004). 3 For example, it was only in 1997 that the STR of Araponga could afford to buy a motorcycle to engage households lying further afield. Prior to this it was either hitching a ride or walking – no mean feat when one considers that the municipality is over 305 km2. 4 I fully acknowledge the ubiquitous persistence of depoliticiszed forms of participation and yet see the growing understanding of its intrinsically political nature.

REFERENCES Abbot, J., and I. Guijt. 1998. ‘Changing Views on Change: Participatory Approaches to Monitoring the Environment.’ SARL Programme Discussion Paper No. 2. London: International Institute for Economic Development (IIED). Absalom, et al. 1994. ‘Sharing Our Concerns and Looking to the Future.’ PLA Notes 22 February: 5–10.

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Agarwal, B. 2006. ‘Gender Inequality, Cooperation and Environmental Sustainability.’ In J. Baland, P. Bardhan, and S. Bowles, eds., Inequality, Cooperation and Environmental Sustainability. Princeton University Press, Princeton and New York: and Russell Sage Foundation. Barbosa, J.S., ed. 2001. Plano de Desenvolvimento Rural Sustentável. Araponga; Municipal Government. Bryson, L., and M. Mowbray. 1981. ‘“Community”: The spray-on solution.’ Australian Journal of Social Sciences 16(4): 255–67. Cardoso, I.M., I. Guijt, F.S. Franco, A.F. Carvalho, and Paulo S. Ferreira Neto. 2001. Agricultural Systems. ‘Continual Learning for Agroforestry System Design: University, NGO and Farmer Partnership in Minas Gerais, Brazil.’ Agricultural Systems 69(3): 235–57. Conselho Municipal de Desenvolvimento Rural. 1999. Plano Municipal de Desenvolvimento Rural, Tombos-MG. Tombos: CMDR. Cooke, W., and U. Kothari. 2001. Participation: The New Tyranny? London: Zed Books. Cornwall, A. 2002. Making Spaces, Changing Places: Situating Participation in Development. Working Paper 170. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies (IDS). Cornwall, A., and G. Pratt. 2003. The Trouble with PRA: Reflections on Dilemmas of Quality. PLA Notes 47. (August) 38–44. CTA-ZM. 2001. Relatório do Diagnóstico Participativo do Município de Acaiaca. Viçosa: CTA-2M. Estrella, M., and J. Gaventa. 1997. Who Counts Reality? Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation: A Literature Review. IDS Working Paper 70. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Ferrari, E.A. 2002. ‘Monitoramento de impactos econômicos de práticas agroecológicas.’ Paper presented at a workshop on Métodos e Experiências Inovadoras de Monitoramento de Projetos de Desenvolvimento Sustentável. Brasília. Florisbelo, G.R., and I. Guijt. 2004. Participatory Municipal Development Plans in Brazil: Divergent Partners Constructing Common Futures. In S. Hickey and G. Mohan, eds., Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development. London: Zed Books. 190–204. Gaventa, J. 2003. Towards participatory Local Governance: Assessing the Transformative Possiblities. Paper prepared for the conference, Participation: From Tyranny To Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development, 27–8 Feb., Manchester. Guijt, I. (Forthcoming). ‘Seeking Surprise: The Role of Monitoring to Trigger

The Myth of Community 225 Learning in Collective Rural Resource Management.’ PhD diss. Wageningen University and Research Centre. Guijt, I., and M. Kaul Shah. 1998. ‘Waking up to Power, Conflict and Process.’ In I. Guijt and M. Kaul Shah. eds. The Myth of Community: Gender Issues in Participatory Development. London: Intermediate Technology, 1–23. Guijt, I., T. Kisadha, and G. Mukasa. 1998. ‘Agreeing to Disagree: Dealing with Gender and Age in Redd Barna Uganda.’ In I. Guijt and M. Kaul Shah, eds., The Myth of Community: Gender Issues in Participatory Development. Intermediate Technology, 228–42. Hickey, S., and G. Mohan. 2004. ‘Relocating Participation within a Radical Politics of Development: Citizenship and Critical Modernism.’ In S. Hickey and G. Mohan, eds., Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development. London: Zed Books. 3–24. Horton, M., and P. Freire. 1990. We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change. Edited by B. Bell, J. Gaventa, and J. Peters. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Houtzager, P.P, A.G. Lavalle, and A. Acharya. 2003. ‘Who Participates? Civil Society and the New Democratic Politics in São Paulo, Brazil.’ IDS Working Paper 210. Brighton: IDS. IBGE (Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics). Demographic Census 1996. Rio de Janeiro: IBGE. Krishna, A., and N. Uphoff. 1999. Mapping and Measuring Social Capital: A Conceptual and Empirical Study of Collective Action for Conserving and Developing Watersheds in Rajasthan, India. Social Capital Initiative Working Paper no. 13. Washington: World Bank. Platteau, J.-P., and A. Abraham. 2002. ‘Participatory development in the presence of endogenous community imperfections.’ Journal of Development Studies 39(2): 104–36. Pretty, J., I. Guijt, J. Thompson, and I. Scoones. 1995. Participatory Learning and Action: A Trainer’s Guide. London: IIED, Training Materials Series No 1. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. 2002. Democracia e Participação: O Caso do Orçamento Participativo de Porto Alegre. Porto: Ediçoes Afrontamento. Veldhuizen, L. van, A. Waters-Bayer, and H. de Zeeuw. 1997. Developing Technology with Farmers: A trainer’s guide for Participatory Learning. London: Zed Books. Whitmore, E., ed. 1998. Understanding and Practicing Participatory Evaluation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

8 Renegotiating Decentralization and State–Civil Society Relations: A Reinterpretation of Naga City’s Experiment in Participatory Governance leonora angeles

Naga City is located in the Bicol region of the Philippines. Its story as a local government internationally renowned for best practices in decentralized participatory governance has been told many times over in academic books and journals, international development bulletins, and regional and national magazines. Naga City’s outstanding achievements in various fields of governance, including health, nutrition, peace and order, child welfare, environmental protection, solid waste management, tax collection, government procurement, and so forth, have received many well-deserved accolades. Hailed as a dynamic and liveable city in a Third World country, Naga rose impressively in the 1990s from a third-class to a first-class city in terms of income and revenue, matched by the commitment of its city government to the efficient delivery of social services, through the implementation of innovative public participation mechanisms. For its many creative and precedentsetting innovations, since 1988 Naga City has received at least a hundred national, regional, and international awards (for a sampling of these, see Table 8.1). Among the most prestigious are the 2002 U.N. Conference on Human Settlements Award that cited Naga’s participatory governance as one of the ‘top 20 best practices’ in the world, and the World Bank’s 2002 award for the ‘model city with good practices and innovations in government procurement.’ In 2002 alone, Naga City garnered two international awards: nine national, eleven regional, and six individual awards given to its public officials, three of which went to its long-time mayor, Jesse Robredo, who was given credit for turning Naga into a ‘first-class’ city since the 1990s.1 Much of the material on Naga City’s experiment in participatory governance was written with the aim of documenting its good practices

Table 8.1 Some of the International and National Awards Received by Naga City Name of Award

Year Awarded and Citation

Granting Agency International awards

Recipient, U.N. Public Service Awards

2004, application of ICT in local government

U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs

Recipient, Award for Women-Friendly City

2004, contest of gender-responsive local government for Asia-Pacific

U.N.-Habitat

Recipient, CyberCity Award for Asia-Pacific

2003, for developing effective and efficient model of utilizing ICTs for promoting good governance

The Urban Governance Initiative UNDP

Finalist, World Habitat

2002, for the Kaantabay sa Kauswagan Program

Building and Social Foundation and U.N.-Habitat

Winner, International Award for Best Practices in Improving the Living Environment

1998, for Naga City Participatory Planning Initiatives

UN-Habitat and Municipality of Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Habitat II Top 40 Best Practices

1996, for the Kaantabay sa Kauswagan Program

U.N. Centre for Human Settlements

National Awards Overall Best LGU Website

2004, first national computer search for best LGU Website

Department of Science and Technology

ACE Award

2003, recognition for LGUs that were awarded for 5 consecutive years the Gawad Galing Pook Award

Ford Foundation, Asian Institute of Management, and Department of the Interior and Local Government

Recipient, Most BusinessFriendly LGU

2002, for commendable efforts in best practices in governance and promoting the interest of the business community for the benefit of the citizenry

Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry

Table 8.1 (concluded) Name of Award

Year Awarded and Citation

Granting Agency National awards

Rafael Salas Population and Development Award

2000, 2003, in recognition of the city’s highly innovative population and development programs

National Population Commission

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Child-Friendly City

2002 (second runner-up); 2003 (first runner-up), for programs promoting children’s rights and development

Department of Social Welfare and Development

Best Peace and Order Council of the Philippines

1998, 1999, for peace and order innovations by city council

National Peace and Order Council

Manuel Quezon Memorial Award

1994, for outstanding achievement in tuberculosis control

Department of Labour and Employment

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Source: Naga City Website (www.naga.gov.ph); Kawanaka (2002, Table 5.9, 65–6); ‘Naga City’s Gallery of Awards from 1992–2003,’ Philippines Free Press, 20 Sept. 2003, 16–17. ACE = Award for Continuing Excellence; ICT = Information and Communications Technology; LGU = Local Government Unit UNDP = United Nations Development Program

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and innovations, with but little attention to the question of how these fit into the larger paradigm of Philippine politics characterized as it is by patron-clientelism, local ‘bossism,’ the dominance of party machines, and rule by rent-seeking oligarchic elites. Naga City, therefore, seems like an oasis in a desert of undynamic local governments wilting under the sun of incapable leaderships, a puzzling misfit in a political culture where historical remnants of colonial rule and authoritarian states make corruption and patron-clientelism reign supreme. Can an alternative narrative or reading of Naga City’s governance under decentralization be told in light of a larger state context and political culture, while recognizing the paradigmatic shift that has occurred in the realm of state-civil society relations in that city? How would such an alternative interpretation be informed, on the one hand, by the grand narrative or macro-politics of state-led forms of participatory governance and, on the other, by the ‘tiny tales’ or micro-politics of community-based initiatives, conflicts, and contests, that in other Philippine cities have resulted in decadence, not dynamism, in fractious politics, not fruitful civic engagement? What would any such alternative narrative, bridging the macro and micro, tell us about the future of traditional politics in the Philippines and the lessons for social learning within left-of-centre social movements and progressive politicians, with regard to the potential forms of planning-for-governance and governance-in-planning that could be replicated not only in other localities but also scaled up to the national level? This chapter aims to contribute to holistic and interdisciplinary thinking about the relationship between participatory planning and governance, decentralization, and government and community capacitybuilding, using Naga City as a case study. A historically situated, discourse-sensitive, and theoretically informed rereading of Naga’s sociopolitical experiment is necessary so that we may derive meaningful lessons on progressive state-civil society relations from its more than fifteen years of experience with participatory planning and governance. This reinterpretation is an exercise in capturing the complexities of how civil societies and local states learn, and how they learn about each other, in the course of networking and forming partnerships through the introduction of participatory governance. Such a methodological exercise must benefit from the multiple standpoints from which one can view various dimensions of the governance, social learning, and contextualized planning practices that simultaneously combine forms of community-based initiatives for social transformation with features

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of state-led provisions for welfare, capital accumulation, and legitimation functions, while taking advantage of the available spaces within the patronage and rent-seeking politics in an urbanizing society. This alternative narrative of the revitalization of Nagy City is especially sensitive to the local political and organizational sociology – the micropolitics – and city planning characteristics that have provided the spark, synergy, and sustainability of its wide-ranging and precedent-setting innovations. In the context of Philippine political structures and historical developments, Naga City has partially transformed its governing apparatus, including its police. It has also structurally improved the local state’s relationship with its citizenry and with civil society by providing better city governance through a new brand of political leadership and public administration. I will first review the literature on participatory governance and situate Naga City and its progressive political leadership in the context of the wider trajectory of Philippine political economic and political sociological dynamics, particularly its decentralization efforts in the context of transnational developments. I will then describe the various participatory planning, governance, and policy-making processes in Naga that are, on the one hand, grounded in the work of civil society organizations and, on the other, embedded in local and national state institutions. While Naga has experimented with many other innovations such as e-governance, participatory budgeting, and school board reforms,2 I will illustrate these processes by examining the case of a community-based housing development for the urban poor that was a result of the coupling of community action and state mobilization through the implementation of participatory governance principles. Critical to the success of this housing development was the social learning process that occurred within civil societies (composed of organizations of the urban poor, urban land reform advocates, and academics, among others), as well as within various city and state agencies on how to deal better with the issues that such poor housing entails. In the conclusion, I highlight the limits and possibilities of institutionalizing mechanisms of participatory planning, and their implications for democratic governance, social capital formation, and state-civil society relations in the Philippines, as well as in other developing countries. Knowing Naga: Continuities and Change in Political Governance Called Ciudad de Nueva Caceres (New Caceres City) during the Spanish period, Naga City was one of the oldest Spanish settlements in the

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Luzon region, capital of the province of Camarines Sur until 1948 when it became an independent city, in the following decades it grew to become a major regional centre of education and commerce in postwar Bicol. With a population of approximately 150,000 people and an area of 84.48 square kilometres, Naga City is located in the economically depressed Bicol region of the Philippines. Situated about 450 kilometres south of the bigger cities of Metropolitan Manila and Cebu, Naga is a mid-sized, landlocked city ranking sixty-third in terms of land area and fifty-third in terms of population among the country’s 114 cities. Naga’s post-Spanish history has both typical and unique features when compared with other Philippine cities and provinces. Some prominent individuals in Camavines Sur were among those arrested and imprisoned for anti-Spanish activities, including the Quince Martires (Fifteen Martyrs) of Camarines, who were executed in 1897 in Manila. The revolt that ended Spanish rule in the province was led, however, not by the educated Masonic elites or the working class Katipuneros, but by the indio (native) members of the Spanish Civil Guards (Gerona 2003, 87–8). Independence was won without the support of the revolutionary government headed by Emilio Aguinaldo, and the local leaders set up their own provisional government. This transition was unusually orderly and peaceful, owing to the reconciliatory stance of the Governador Politico-Militar Elias Angeles towards the defeated Spanish officials. Later, Aguinaldo appointed a military government under General Vicente Lukban to replace the Angeles government, which out of respect for Aguinaldo welcomed Lukban and his staff composed of Tagalog and Bicolano Masons. The new administration, however, received little support from the general population, which not only resented the political invasion of the Tagalogs, but was also critical of the atrocities they had committed against Spanish friars and prisoners and Bicolanos (ibid., 92–3). Resentment regarding outside intervention, particularly intervention by the imperial government in Manila, would be played out time and again in the history of the city and the province. Born out of frustration with centralized colonial governments, whose power depended on the allegiance of the provincial elite, efforts to reform the degree of state centralization continued under all post-1948 governments up until the time of President Ferdinand Marcos’s authoritarian rule. Only after Marcos, however, did the clamour of provincial leaders and civil society groups for more decentralized forms of governance, albeit for different reasons, became a reality. During President Corazon Aquino’s time in office the Local Government Code was passed, providing for

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the devolution from the central government to local governments, of specific functions including urban development, with matching taxation powers to widen the local revenue base. It was envisioned that decentralizing government powers would meet several needs and objectives not best served by the old centralized framework: to promote the empowerment of civil society organizations and their partnership with government in decision-making and program implementation; to ensure that local governments had accurate information about the needs and priorities of their constituents; and to promote government accountability, political transparency, efficiency, and equity in the deployment of scarce resources (U.N. Habitat and Citynet 1997, 63–4). To help local government units (LGUs) to assume their new financial roles in raising revenue and making budget allocations, the Code provided for major tax innovations such as new tax rates, tax-sharing schemes, and the widening (or narrowing) of taxing policies (Angeles and Magno 2004). Aquino came to power in the late 1980s and early 1990s, by which time the global diffusion of decentralization as a tool of participatory governance was in full bloom. Participatory governance as an instrument used in achieving development goals involves different stakeholders, especially poor people and other marginal social groups, in decision-making processes. Based on the good governance tenets of accountability, transparency, rule of law, and good and complete information, to guide decision-making outcomes, participatory governance requires addressing not only the informational needs of these particular stakeholders, but also their access to resources, decision-making powers, and political influence. It entails enlarging their share of political and social power so that they can better control their lives and ensure that their rights are respected and their priorities addressed. The participation or involvement of people helping themselves is critical to the success of development strategies, especially those related to basic human needs and the reduction of poverty. Participatory governance is said to provide numerous advantages, including better decisions and better management of projects due to the inclusion of local knowledge. Local resource mobilization means less reliance on imported technologies, lower project costs, and the diffusion of training and skills which contribute to the social development and personal confidence of vulnerable groups, such as poor women, and the sustainability of community development efforts. Participatory approaches, especially in governance, now seem capable of achieving anything, from increasing

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project efficiency, raising social consciousness, incorporating gender sensitivity, to procuring relevant data, improving project monitoring and evaluation results, or resolving contradictions between marketoriented growth and social equity (Angeles and Gurstein 2000). In the Philippines, the call for participatory governance through decentralization was intensified by the confluence of international and national developments and demands from various domestic actors. International economic trends such as the global debt crisis, and multilateral development agencies, including financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF),3 as well as bilateral donor countries, also played important roles in pushing for decentralization in the Philippines and other countries. Calls for publicsector reform from these influential international organizations coincided with the Philippines’ post-authoritarian search for a political framework that could address issues of public participation, government accountability, and state legitimacy. Both the Philippine state and these international actors support market-based economic liberalization alongside political democratization. Sharing the view that a minimal state should be strong enough to create an institutional environment that sets the correct policies and institutes public-sector reform and good governance (Williams 1999), they have promoted decentralization as an important element of a public-sector reform program in the area of central-local government relations (Turner 1999, 2). Domestically, many national and local actors such as national government officials, provincial governors, municipal officials, and village leaders, academics, and leaders of civil society organizations pushed for the enactment of the Local Government Code that brought about significant changes in central-local government relations. Decentralization may be seen as a state-led response to the demands by civil society forces to open up political spaces for state-society engagement. The post-Marcos democratic transition provided an impetus to decentralization by increasing collaboration between the government and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and by encouraging people to participate in making decisions that affect their lives. The increased involvement of NGOs and people’s organizations (POs) in local government structures is one means by which to decentralize and diffuse the power of centralized political-administrative machinery (Brillantes 1994). The push for decentralization has come strongly from the provincial and local government officials themselves, partly due to sheer demo-

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graphic growth and increased complexity of political-territorial management.4 They stand to be the main beneficiaries of decentralization efforts that promise a greater share in the central government’s income, more authority in running local affairs, and increased capability to solve local problems. Provincial governors, who have consistently resented centralization, have clamoured for political decentralization through fiscal autonomy and more participation in the appointment of provincial administrative and military personnel (Walsh 1976). With the enactment of the 1991 Local Government Code, towards the end of Mayor Robredo’s first term in office, Naga City was set to experiment with how decentralization could be maximized using participatory governance as a tool for promoting a progressive political culture and improving the quality of life in the city. Soliman Santos, an avid Naga political observer, attributes the success of the city’s innovations in participatory governance to the city’s rich tradition of political debates and discourse, albeit framed by religious and conservative elements, an open and free press, and its people’s ‘continuing quest for meaningful politics and governance,’ which provided generations of progressive political leadership that younger leaders could emulate and improve on (Santos 1998, 12–13). As a major political, educational, and cultural centre in Bicol since the Spanish period, Naga City provides a unique context for many innovative ideas several centuries later. This legacy of pluralist politics, liberal education, and communicative spirit, along with the presence of a vibrant civil society, partly explains why the city administration has not only accommodated progressive politicians but also fully institutionalized participatory governance through its dynamic People’s Council (ibid., 13). The Robredo Factor: Querying the Aberration-Apotheosis Readings of Leadership Several factors are often cited to account for the innovative restructuring of state-civil society relations in Naga City: the Local Government Code that provided the legal environment for political decentralization; the presence of an enterprising and reformist-activist local government led by a visionary mayor; the sustained human resource development of city officials and staff that proved indispensable in continuous improvements in service delivery, program development, and community mobilization; and the active participation of civil society groups – roughly classified in Philippine political terminology as people’s organizations,

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non-governmental organizations, and community-based organizations (CBOs) within and outside city-initiated programs, particularly through the Naga City People’s Council (NCPC). Of these factors, perhaps the most frequently mentioned is the role that Mayor Jesus ‘Jesse’ Robredo has played in revitalizing Naga. Popular views of Robredo’s leadership range somewhere between seeing his administration as an aberration in the midst of corrupt and predatory local officials, or an apotheosis, exalting the mayor’s persona and his achievements – a charismatic Harvard graduate with an MBA from the University of the Philippines, the holder of many awards, the best and youngest mayor the Philippines has probably ever had – as a Christ-like figure, ‘saviour of Naga.’ Robredo himself and his political observers would be among the first to dispute these popular readings of his leadership. Some point precisely to other young and energetic politicians – the ‘new generation’ of local leaders5 (Kawanaka 1998, 10; 2002, 4) who are attuned to international discourses and local impulses, while playing the ‘rules of the game’ of the national political culture. Likewise, Robredo is certainly not an aberration when one considers that his strategies have been similar to those used by other politicians who have built their local political machinery in the absence of personal wealth and rich business patrons to back them up during expensive electoral campaigns. The Robredo administration’s characteristic features bridged the progressive platform of participatory governance with the requisite functions of traditional political party machinery: Firstly, it has shown good management of city governance, like sound fiscal management, innovative policies and minimal corruption. Secondly, it has a strong political machine at the grassroots level, which is well integrated with the city government ... (T)he case of Naga City shows that good governance alone is not enough to maintain firm political power. The political machine plays a crucial role in setting up the mechanism for controlling power through the monopoly and distribution of resources as well as the direct control of grassroots-level leaders who are responsible for collecting votes. Robredo set up his machine because he knows that a firm political power base cannot be established without such an institution, especially among the poor. (Kawanaka 2002, 4)

Understanding Naga’s contemporary challenges in institutionalizing participatory planning and governance practices, and the political leadership characteristics that make these possible, would require an analy-

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sis of the city’s changing social and political-economic landscape in the wider context of the political dynamics of the Philippines. Naga is characterized as a ‘typical Philippine rural city’ on its official Website. It has a long history of bustling commercial activity, with a largely urban population surrounded by a receding rural frontier. The stratified social structure is composed of a tiny group of wealthy landlords and property owners, marginal entrepreneurs, middle-class professionals, and manual workers. It is said that about twenty rich families own and control Naga’s agricultural and commercial lands and buildings, while most of the white-collar middle-class are government employees and teachers in Naga’s forty-two primary schools, thirteen high schools, and seventeen post-secondary institutions (Kawanaka 2002, 27–8). In this context, electoral fortunes are determined by ‘free votes’ of the middle class, low-income earners, and the poor, as opposed to ‘command votes’ – more common in largely agricultural plantation economies that are dominated by landed oligarchic families. Naga City’s elected politicians, career civil servants, and communitybased organizations, like those in other Philippine cities and municipalities, have operated within the federal, provincial, and local political landscape, which is marked by patron-clientelism, rent-seeking, and the rule by oligarchic elite families. Like other provinces and cities, Naga has long been dominated politically by a few state-connected families whose strong kinship ties are surpassed only by their interlocking business and economic interests. From the 1970s to late 1980s, however, Naga City politics was dominated by the then unchallenged political kingpin of Bicol, Luis Villafuerte, a personal friend of President Marcos, who had appointed him to run for the government party; later he was minister of trade for several years under the martial law regime. As Marcos’s political power was declining, Villafuerte crossed over to the opposition, a strategic and astute manoeuvre that guaranteed his political survival. As opposition leader, Villafuerte was given important cabinet posts by President Aquino; afterwards he concentrated on consolidating his political base in Camarines Sur, just when Raul Roco was becoming popular. Born into a farming family of modest means, the late Senator Roco had served as legal counsel to President Aquino’s late husband. He became a representative in Congress in 1987, and a Senator in the 1990s. Villafuerte’s anointed candidate lost to Roco in 1987, and Villafuerte turned to his nephew Jesse Robredo to run for mayor in the 1988 elections. Thus began Robredo’s political career, which did not

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go well, according to his uncle’s plans (Kanawaka 2002, 37–40). Villafuerte made his nephew director of the Bicol River Basin Development Program (BRBDP) in 1986, a post from which Robredo’s candidacy was launched in 1988. Soon a rift between Robredo and Villafuerte emerged, reportedly over the latter’s intervention in Naga City politics and attempts to undermine Robredo’s plans regarding city planning and governance. The rift turned especially nasty in the 1992 elections, when Villafuerte forged an alliance with the Rocos to defeat Robredo by fielding his sister Pura Luisa Villafuerte-Magtuto, a nationally recognized high school principal. Unable to join the ruling party, Robredo joined Fidel Ramos’s newly formed party and created his own slate from among his supporters in the city government. Robredo’s first-term achievements and timely support for President Ramos gave him an overwhelming victory over the Roco-Villafuerte candidates. This popular mandate and support from the federal government cleared the way for Robredo’s innovations in revitalizing Naga City (Kawanaka 2002, 44–6). He was undefeated for three consecutive terms, the limit under the new electoral laws, then ran again successfully in 2001, and in 2004 for a fifth term in office. From this account, it is clear that Robredo, like other members of the traditional elites, benefited from kinship and patronage relations. But he was unique in steering away from his initial dependence on kinship-based patronage politics and cultivating his own political machinery based mainly on his leadership record. In his first term, Robredo depended on the Villafuerte political machinery to win, and he faced difficulties getting his budget and city ordinances passed by a council with only three supporters. Realizing the importance of a majority council, Robredo worked hard to win a full slate in the succeeding elections, brandishing the slogan ‘Ubos kung ubos, gabos kung gabos,’ which can be roughly translated as ‘all or nothing’ (Kawanaka 2002, 88). The electorate understood and voted for Robredo’s candidates across the board, creating the needed ease and control in passing budgetary policies, enacting city ordinances, and allocating resources. Robredo and his council members were neither wealthy nor landed, largely counting on their professional-managerial backgrounds and political records. In Naga City, there was an observable separation between the political elites and the economic elites, who preferred to leave politics to middle-class professionals. Without the personal wealth and business connections, the city council had to rely on Robredo’s

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ability to access and redesign government programs and projects, funded through a combination of city revenues and pork barrel funds6 from the national government, and to garner support during and between electoral campaigns. Robredo astutely sought the support of national and provincial leaders in obtaining funds. More importantly, Robredo and his supporters built their political base by working diligently with the barangay (village) officials and sectoral organizations that make up the throng of grassroots leaders who drum up support for Robredo among the general public. Often, the barangay chiefs and councillors were themselves leaders of these organizations – from the women’s group, Lakas ng Kababaihan ng Naga (Women’s Power of Naga) federation led by Robredo’s wife, to the Barangay People’s Foundation.7 This facilitated easy networking, the recruitment of new leaders, the flow of feedback from the grassroots regarding the city government’s service and management, and the gathering of intelligence information on leaders’ loyalties or potential defection. Robredo himself regularly met with his grassroots leaders, leading village-level meetings, and going on house-to-house recruitment campaigns throughout the year. Critical to the formation of Robredo’s political machinery were the various sectoral organizations that operated in close coordination with the mayor’s office. The independent Lingkod Barangay (Village Service) office created by the mayor to deal with grassroots requests for services was staffed largely by casual employees paid by city hall. The Village Service received special assistance from the city’s Department of Social Welfare and Development and from city hospitals. For example, members of the Women’s Power of Naga or the Barangay People’s Foundation mobilized during elections as poll watchers or as house-tohouse campaigners for Robredo’s camp could make use of the city government’s services by showing their membership cards. They could also approach city councillors or Lingkod Barangay staff to serve as intermediaries when requesting services or dole-outs in the event of death, the sickness of a family member, or other emergencies. Kawanaka (2002, 58) found that Naga City had an alarmingly large number of non-regular or casual city employees (392 or 50.8% of the total), mostly found in the Village Service Office, compared with the overall ratio of casual to regular employees in other local government units. Casual or non-regular employees accounted for an average of 27.6 per cent of the total number of local government employees in the Philippines from 1993 to 1997. Robredo argued that this unusually large number ‘need to work hard to support the mayor in elections to keep their jobs,’ a

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situation that ‘places the bureaucracy under the mayor’s control and makes it work as part of his political machine’ (ibid.). The implications of Kawanaka’s reading of the formation of Robredo’s political machinery, particularly the use of government resources to build it, must be closely examined in light of what happened in the 1998–2001 period. Robredo could not run for office because the Philippine Constitution prohibits a fourth consecutive term. In the 1998 elections, Robredo’s political camp faced formidable opposition from two sides: the ticket formed by the national administration’s party and the Villafuerte-led coalition, bankrolled by many wealthy elites, and headed by the party of presidential candidate Joseph Estrada. Meanwhile, Robredo’s camp became split when he endorsed Raul Roco’s brother, Sulpicio Roco, for mayor. His previous deputy-mayor, as well as two councillors who did not get Robredo’s blessing, ran under a different party. Despite the strong opposition, the Roco-Robredo ticket won an outright majority (62.9% of the votes were for Roco). On the one hand, this may be evidence of the formidable political machinery that Robredo had built up. On the other hand, it may be a clear endorsement by the people of Naga for continuity of political leadership and management, albeit sans Robredo in power. The two readings may be complementary. Taken together, perhaps, they reduce the weight of the argument that 392 casual employees at city hall whose jobs depended on Robredo’s approval could determine the electoral outcomes, while also giving weight to the position of Naga City residents who favoured maintaining and sustaining the leadership style and achievements of Jesse Robredo. One must also not discount the role played by the long-time Naga City professional staff, particularly those within the City Planning and Development Office, the City Assessor’s Office, the Metropolitan Naga Public Employment Service Office, and the City Department of Health. Their jobs and security of tenure are protected under the Civil Service Code and are not co-terminous with the mayor’s tenure in office. Hence, the boundaries between elected government representatives, senior permanent staff within the city’s bureaucracy, and civil society organizations become blurred when these three are brought together in the same political machinery during election campaigns, either through compulsion, but more likely, through the actors’ own free will and cooperation. As we will see below, however, participatory planning and governance mechanisms may require, and even celebrate, the blurring of their oft-imagined boundaries and exploit their networking and synergistic potentials, such as when city govern-

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ment services are dispensed with greater ease and efficiency through civil society organizations. Robredo himself was not completely immune to the temptations offered by this political culture that was based on discretionary powers, patronage, clientelism, and rent-seeking practices. It has been observed that he shrewdly used ‘carrot and stick’ tactics with village leaders to secure their loyalty8 (Kawanaka 2002, 89). It has often been overlooked, however, how Robredo creatively maximized the spaces offered by these aspects of the political culture, often circumscribed by law, to achieve the goals and objectives of his administration. Aware of the immense discretionary power that the chief executive has over city budgets, revenue generation, and expenditures, Robredo could have easily dispensed resources single-handedly. Nevertheless, yet it is well documented that corruption fell drastically during his time in office, while revenues sky-rocketed, with yearly surpluses as a result. City contractors who handled public works in Naga City did not receive any special favours from the mayor’s office; nevertheless, they supported the Mayor and welcomed the innovations of his government. The middle class who formed the bulk of the professional-managerial workers within the civilian bureaucracy, the education sector, and the private sector, should also not be overlooked. Under Robredo’s administration, the middle class not only grew, but it also found new confidence in sharing his government’s aspirations for good governance and respect for human rights (Santos 2004). While certain segments of the business elites resented the rise in real property taxes and other actions by his administration (Kawanaka 2002, 69), Robredo himself enjoyed consistent support from the middle class. They liked his responsible management of their tax money, the large decreases in the levels of corruption and illegal gambling, and the fine achievements realized in expanding quality social services in the city. These people also liked it that Robredo did not accumulate personal wealth while in office, and he did not practice nepotism. He professionalized the civil service, as well as the police, empowering them, and in the process, giving them honour and respect in the eyes of the taxpayers. When balance sheets of accomplishments and weaknesses are compared, both the middle-class electorate and the independent police and civil service seemed able to overlook and even serve as willing conduits in Robredo’s use of direct and indirect inducements in courting the political support of the working classes and the poor, who still form a sizeable portion of the population. Indeed, it may be that loyalties and votes can be bought with money,

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bribes, and the promise of jobs, but these need not be dispensed when one can rely on observable, quantifiable, and solid performance-based indicators and outcomes of good governance. Good governance strategies also have limits, and they work only to the extent that other nearby jurisdictions also practice these principles. The expansion of good governance practices may clash with the traditional political culture. As Robredo pushed his way towards greater cooperation and complementarity with other cities and municipalities in the Bicol region, his ability to address the challenges of regional economic development, transportation, environmental planning, tourism, and peace and order depended, too, on the prosperity of the neighbouring areas. It is difficult to negotiate and collaborate with other political leaders if they have neither the interest, nor knowledge of the language and practices of participatory governance and planning. As one political observer has suggested: ‘[Robredo] started in that direction only to find out that the road is booby-trapped. Playing big brother to old and seasoned politicians was a dicey act. Having to take their cue from a cub, especially one pictured as too bright and too popular, was unacceptable to some political leaders in Camarines Sur. And talk that Naga City was at the center of all schemes of complementation [sic] so far forwarded and was likely to smell the sweetest was dampening the spirit of cooperation in the province (Mable 2003, 13). Framing a New Social Contract in Naga City Reinventing a city and inspiring its citizenry to imagine its reinvention are herculean tasks. Naga City’s ability to reinvent itself is even more impressive when seen in the light of the cynicism and disillusion that Filipinos display when yet another newly elected administration promises to ‘eradicate corruption’ and ‘serve the people.’ Yet, in a short span of three years, the Robredo administration was able to convince not only the locals, but also other observers that hope and reforms are possible when sincerity, trust, and cooperation are generated on the part of both the rulers and the ruled. No city or town can move forward with its intended reforms without peace. Mayor Robredo was well aware of the importance of ‘peace based on justice’ to any development efforts. Like with other cities, the negative effects on peace and order of abuses by the police and of the communist underground movement plagued Naga. As the region’s centre of education, Naga was often accused throughout the 1980s of

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being the breeding ground of rebellious students who were deemed to be supplying the intellectual and human power to communist insurgents. Hence, one of Robredo’s first actions upon being elected mayor was to declare that Naga was a ‘zone of peace,’ thus sending a message to the local communist organizations that city hall was interested in accommodating progressive policy platforms. Except for a brief attack in 2003 by the communist New People’s Army on a police detachment in a village on the boundary of the city’s central business district, Naga’s ‘peace zone’ has not been disturbed by tragic military or police encounters with rebel groups in almost twenty years (Mable 2003, 13). Moreover, Robredo clearly ‘walked the talk’ as he displayed a reflexive style of leadership that endeared him to his constituents, especially the urban poor, even as he built his political base among them. When Robredo claimed that ‘Naga City’s basic strength is people participation’ (interview with Robredo, in ibid.), he was not simply paying lipservice to participation as a new and requisite ingredient of good governance. The city, its people, administrators, and elected officials were all to strive to live and practice true participation. For a new participatory governance orientation and consciousness to prevail in Naga City, the Robredo government had to forge a new social contract with its citizens using a variety of instruments, among them various program-based mechanisms and guidebooks, e-governance facilities, and new incentive structures. But a new contract is nothing without official documents and tools. Key to the framing of binding contracts is a participatory planning process that starts with collective analysis of the problem based on research and consultation with the Naga City People’s Council. From this problem-based analysis follows an envisioning process to discovering creative solutions, while relying on existing strengths and possibilities within the city’s political and social spaces. The framing of quality concerns – issues and problems that really matter – is important in elevating the quality of public confidence, in a discursive, practical, and programmatic sense. One key area of concern that was fully grasped and addressed was the need for quality and up-to-date information about what goes on in city hall, the school board, the health department, and other government agencies that deliver critical services. How these bodies operate in most cities is often obscured from public view, or made known only to interested elites, those who want to do business with the state, or those who take the initiative to know more about their own government. To

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address this problem of information deficit, the city released electronic and print versions of the Citizens Charter. The charter provides detailed information on how Naga City promotes accountability and transparency in service delivery; the steps or procedures on how to access services, from securing a building permit to filing sanitation-related complaints; the response time for service delivery; and the city officials and staff responsible for particular services. This guidebook of key city government services is envisioned to be ‘an enforceable contract between the city government and its constituents’ (Robredo, n.d., iii). The framers of the charter saw it as a ‘living document’ that would grow from iterative processes of citizens’ feedback, government response, and widespread social learning. Informed by the most recent conceptual tools and development buzzwords liberally sprinkled throughout any World Bank or the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) handbook, the charter was aimed at promoting the so-called four elements of good governance, borrowed from the Asian Development Bank: accountability, participation, predictability, and transparency.9 Designed to create a more legal-rational local state, the Citizens Charter is the result of lessons learned from several statutes and programs implemented over a decade in Naga City. Key to this is the empowerment ordinance of 1997 or City Ordinance 95–092, ‘An Ordinance Initiating a System for a Partnership in Local Governance between the City Government and the City of Naga.’ Mayor Robredo considered the ordinance to be ‘revolutionary legislation which confirmed and cemented Naga’s place on the global map of innovative governance’ (Robredo, n.d., iii). This ordinance, authored by Councillor Jaime Jacob, was envisioned to make the dream of ‘people empowerment’ a reality by strengthening the provisions of the Local Government Code for the representation of civil society groups and institutionalizing people’s participation in local governance through the Naga City People’s Council (Jacob 1996; 1998, 40). The ordinance basically follows the general outline of the Local Government Code for the representation and participation of people’s organizations and NGOs in governance, the rules for their accreditation, their powers, and their responsibilities. Naga City Council, however, took the Code even further by expanding the power of representatives within the Council and vis-à-vis the city administration, and by stressing the right to self-organization, making it a responsibility of both the city government and the People’s Council to organize the residents of Naga City into cooperatives, unions, POs,

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NGOs, and sectoral organizations or, at the very least, to support and encourage their organizing efforts (Santos 1998, 61–3). Community organizing expanded exponentially, with the number of accredited POs and NGOs increasing from forty groups in 1996 to eighty-three in 2001 (www.naga.gov.ph). This empowerment ordinance governing the work of the Naga City People’s Council was the foundation of several programs created under Robredo. These programs may be divided into (1) professionalizationfocused programs, for human resource development of government service providers and quality service provision, and (2) beneficiaryfocused programs to provide basic services with regard to health, housing, welfare, sanitation, and so forth. Some of the programs were government-initiated, others were initiated by community organizations through the People’s Council, while they all attempt to employ participatory planning and governance mechanisms once institutionalized. In the first category, one of the programs is the Productivity Improvement Program (PIP). It was launched during the early years of the Robredo administration, with the aim of implementing in the government service relevant productivity and efficiency techniques learned in the private sector. Using ‘Pip,’ the hard-working ant, as its mascot to market the program, city hall embarked on an ambitious overhaul of its service provision.10 The PIP was complemented by the Quality Service Improvement Program (QSIP), which focused on enhancing service quality in five pilot departments of the city: health, hospital, social welfare, population and nutrition, and environment. These five healthrelated departments took a comprehensive and holistic approach to health issues in the local communities and worked collectively on the Basic Customer Service Skills (BCSS) training program for front-line service providers.11 All these beneficiary-focused programs on quality service provision took an expanded and participatory nature under its I-Governance Program – inclusive governance, information openness, interactive engagement, and innovative management – which won several national and international awards for institutionalizing stronger participation of individual citizens in governance.12 As a result of these initiatives, in a short time Naga became a firstclass city based on the level of revenues it generated, as well as other indicators. The growth in revenue was largely due to more business activity and more systematic tax collection through a streamlined bureaucracy that delivered better quality services in a shorter time. For

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example, while road projects in other parts of the Philippines cost 5.6 million pesos per kilometre of road, in Naga, they cost less than 4.4 million pesos per kilometre of road. Thus more money was made available for social services, as the revenue base expanded and savings were generated through prudent financial management. Economic gains were translated into social benefits that redound to the individual and household levels. In a few years, average household income in Naga City was 126 per cent higher than the regional average in Bicol and 46 per cent higher than the national average. Citing 1998 figures from the Asian Development Bank, Naga City’s incidence of poverty dropped to 29 per cent, compared with 39 per cent in Metropolitan Manila and 49 per cent in the Bicol region (Mable 2003, 14). Naga’s unemployment rate of 5.2 per cent was also much lower than the regional and national averages. The city’s per capital gross product rose to 115 per cent higher than the national figures (www.naga.gov.ph). There are limits, however, imposed by the wider constraints and bottlenecks to development, such as the Asian financial crises of 1997 and the austerity measures taken by the national government. Aware of the fiscal constraints faced by all levels of government, Robredo, like other municipal officials, was forced to swallow the neo-liberal pill of economic efficiency, which is often achieved through budget cutbacks and other austerity measures. Yet, the success of the Robredo administration in doing more with less, even producing better outcomes than before, had to do with his planning and administrative staffs’ use of effective communicative and participatory planning, governance, and consultation strategies in making difficult budgetary decisions, providing performance-based incentives to constituents, and evaluating policy outcomes to inform future decisions and policies. It does seem easier said than done. But the difference between Robredo’s and other administrations lies in the former’s ability to go beyond the rhetoric and put vision into reality. Too often, local political leaders and their staffs have fallen into the trap of ritualistic consultations and public participation processes that merely become vehicles for appeasing dissent, or worse, for manipulating public consent to decisions that technocrats believe best serve elite interests. The Robredo-led administration took seriously the difference that participatory planning and governance can make when it pursues the implementation of its programs that utilize a number of the innovative features that sprang from experience with the Productivity Improvement Program (see Box 1).

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Box 1 Innovative Features of Naga City Government’s Productivity Improvement Program (PIP) Confidence-building. Guided by the recognition that its personnel are the organization’s precious resource, the city government implemented empowering policies that include: (1) implementation of a better and competitive compensation package; (2) setting up of a reward system based on aptitude and competence; (3) activation of the merit and promotions board, using employee representation to eliminate patronage; (4) cultivation of an atmosphere of competition; and (5) adoption of a more open, deliberative, and participative system of management. Performance metrics. To promote accountability and efficiency in service delivery, the city government applied private-sector management systems such as: (1) implementation and institutionalization of private-sector human resource management productivity seminars and semestral surveys to set benchmarks and measure performance; (2) an incentive system rewarding employee innovation, and (3) a ‘contract of deliverables’ specifying services, the person responsible, and response time for services of every city government department. Program development. Through the Productivity Improvement Program, the city government helped crystallize and operationalize the following sectoral programs: Emergency Rescue Naga (ERN); Kaantabay sa Kauswagan; Metro Naga Development Council (MNDC); Socialized Program for Empowerment and Economic Development (SPEED); Local Initiatives for Economic Activities and Partnership (LEAPS); City Government Computerization Program (CGCP); Naga Early Education and Development (NEED). Organizational development. As a consequence of program development, the city government created new organizational units to address the accelerated need for urban basic services to improve responsiveness. These include: (1) Urban Affairs Office; (2) Lingkod Barangay Office; (3) Naga City Hospital; (4) Electronic Data Processing Unit; and (5) Investment Promotion and Action Center. Institutionalization. The Productivity Improvement Program (PIP) was established through the passage of City Ordinance No. 97-002, and placed under the City Human Resource Management Office (CHRMO). Capability-building. The city government embarked on a continuous internal improvement program, creating a facilitating team in the technology of participation (TOP) methodologies and skills to improve productivity and service quality through the following: (1) performance evaluation system; (2) merit promotion plan and system of ranking positions; (3) employee suggestions and incentives awards system; (4) grievance machinery, and (5) adoption of qualification standards for certain positions. Source: Naga City Website (www.naga.gov.ph).

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The following observations distill the principles and strategies that the Robredo administration and planning staff used and speak to the contextual nature of participatory planning and governance and to their conditional outcomes that depend on leadership quality and strategies of communicative action. Vision Matched by Action Builds Public Confidence, Minimizes Cynicism, and Maximizes Optimism in Government-Community Partnerships Unlike populist and nationalist leaders who appeal to mythical notions of ‘community,’ ‘nation,’ and ‘national interests,’ or who simply lambast the status quo without providing any concrete alternatives, much less demonstrate how these might look like in practice, the Robredo administration promoted an empirically grounded vision with correspondingly oriented action to turn vision into reality. Progressive Perspective in Public Participation and Productive Partnerships Help Institutionalize Participatory Governance Participation and partnership need not remain idle rhetorical concepts. They can be put into actual practice, producing amazing and positive results when imbued with a progressive perspective and implemented with a strong political will and cooperative spirit. The institutionalization of participation and partnership invites danger when undertaken prematurely or ritualistically or manipulated for political purposes, but institutionalization may also be a first necessary step in building public confidence, especially with the poor, and in ensuring sustainable results by linking institutional frameworks with performancebased outcomes. Direct Communication with Citizens Enhances Government-Community Capacities and Increases Public Confidence in Government Complacency and apathy among the citizenry thrive when the public is ill-informed and not given the opportunity to question and communicate directly with political leaders, administrators, and city planners. Government and public-sector-capacity building in three areas – human resource development, organizational strengthening, and institutional reform (Grindle 1997, 9) – is initiated, enhanced, and sustained when the forces of organized civil society are also supported by the government in their own capacity-building efforts.

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How the above principles played out in government-civil society interactions, and in the formation of Robredo’s political base, are further illustrated in how Nasa City addressed the issue of urban poor housing development. Housing the Urban Poor The support of the urban poor and working class was as critical as support of the middle class in ensuring the survival and longevity of the Robredo administration and its social programs. Their sheer numbers made their role in voting and running the political machinery during elections significant. Thus, one of the most pressing challenges faced by Robredo when he came to power was the resolution of decades-old land disputes involving urban squatters on private and public lands, and the provision of low-cost housing for the poor and low-income groups. Following a series of village-level consultations on the position paper presented at the April 1986 National Congress of Urban Poor Organizations, the Naga City Urban Poor Federation (NCUPF) was formed soon after Corazon Aquino came to power.13 Meanwhile, members of local organizations within the NCUPF were facing evictions from their homes where they had lived for twenty to fifty years. These developments made the urban poor realize the need to get organized and participate in the policy-making process (Angeles 1997: 97–8). Robredo was personally concerned with the plight of the urban poor. One of the long-standing land tenure problems in City was in the neighbourhood behind his parental home, where some of his childhood friends shill lived (E-mail interview with Robredo by Soliman Santos, 7 June 2004). When Robredo came to power, the local economy was in a shambles, and jobs and social housing were scarce. A third of the threestorey public market, which used to be the biggest in Southeast Asia, had burned down, and the central business district was overcrowded and poorly managed. Tax collection was inefficient. Corruption and illegal gambling were rampant. The city was suffering from yearly budget deficits, so there was little money left for social services, especially for the poor and the homeless, whose numbers had doubled so that they accounted for more than 20 per cent of the city’s households (Naga City Website, naga.gov.ph). With confidence in the newly elected Aquino government, various urban poor organizations used a combination of legal and extra-legal

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means to get their grievances heard. In Naga City, academics from local universities and NGOs, such as Heart for Peace (HOPE), the Community Organizers of the Philippines Enterprise (COPE) Foundation, the People’s Council for the Promotion of Rights and Welfare (PCPRW), and the Bicol Urban Poor Coordinating Council, a regional federation, joined together to address urban land reform and housing issues from 1986 to 1988. Furthermore, the urban poor groups built up their organizational capacities through seminars, workshops, and consultations on public infrastructure needs; discussions and written position papers, policy critiques, and new legislative proposals; the circulation of petitions to suspend scheduled evictions; barricades; and public hearings to protest demolitions without proper community consultations. They also lobbied city government officials for potable water, public faucets, streetlights, and the provision of sewage disposal; and held discussion meetings and negotiations with officials and representatives of the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor (PCUP) concerning the community mortgage plan. Political forums where they aired their demands put additional pressure on the candidates during the 1988 election campaign, as urban poor groups talked to supportive city officials and candidates (Angeles 1997: 98–101). This combination of low- and high-profile activities enabled the NCUPF to succeed in its push for a government institution responsible for coordinating policies and programs for the urban poor sector and for implementing the Urban Development and Housing Act in Naga City. This new institution is called the Urban Poor Affairs Office. As a result, slum demolitions were considerably reduced and the arbitrary eviction of squatters from their homes was stopped. The centre-piece, in terms of the undertakings of the Urban Poor Affairs Office, implemented, in conjunction with the NCUPF, the City Planning and Development Office, the City Engineers Office, the Public Service Employees Office, and other government and non-government agencies, is the Kaantabay sa Kauswagan or Partners for Development program.14 With the perspective that the urban poor are partners and not a hindrance to development, this mass housing and poverty alleviation program (1) seeks to ensure that there is basic infrastructure and delivery of essential services, (2) undertakes campaigns against the demolition of urban poor people’s homes, and (3) is engaged in endeavours to create problem-solving mechanisms through dialogues between different stakeholders. The program employs several approaches to facilitate land acquisition and homelot ownership through on-site and off-site devel-

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opment (see Box 2). New resettlement sites were made available; for example, the city council declared ninety-nine lots in twenty-seven villages as to be areas suitable for socialized housing as mandated under the Housing Act (Angeles 1997, 103). The Partners for Development Program registered a 305 per cent increase in the number of beneficiaries between 1994 and 2001 and a 174 per cent increase in land area distributed to the urban poor (from 32.3 hectares in 1994 to 88.5 hectares in 2002). As of December 2001, forty-one on-site and off-site housing and resettlement projects have provided homes for 6,940 urban poor households (27 per cent of the city’s population; see www. naga.gov.ph). This successful experiment in city governance with regard to issues affecting the urban poor has relied on one of the important roles of the city administration, namely, ensuring broad-based participation in policy- and decision-making: ‘What the Robredo administration did ... was to ensure ... a mechanism for maximizing people’s participation in local governance. This was achieved by laying multiple channels through which specific sectors, groups or the entire constituency could participate in identifying development priorities and in stamping their mandate – or disapproval – on major policy issues’ (cited in Angeles 1997: 102). Mutual trust was established between local government officials and community organizations, particularly regarding people’s abilities to solve their own problems.This is evident, for example, in Robredo’s response to being asked how he had reacted to urban poor demonstrators when they stormed his office: ‘We were never threatened, primarily because our interests are basically the same, and we believe that the government’s obligation is to the poor and underprivileged, while also taking into consideration other factors and parties involved’ (Angeles 1997: 103). Political will, according to Robredo, is key, ‘as well as the willingness to negotiate, a strong bias for the poor, and a strong desire to do good things.’ To these remarks, an NGO official added that political will ‘begins with an intrinsic feeling of what or how the poor live [and] a clear, concise and objective understanding of the real issues besetting urban and rural poverty’ (ibid., 108). With mutual trust as its foundation, the Kauswagan program became notable for its adoption of a ‘partner-beneficiary perspective,’ where urban poor people see themselves, simultaneously, as program implementation partners and program beneficiaries. Kauswagan also institutionalized a tripartite mechanism that brings together associations of the urban poor, government agencies, and private landowners to re-

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Box 2 Approaches and Strategies of the Urban Poor Housing Program The on-site development approach facilitates land ownership transfer from government and private owners to current occupants using any of the following strategies: • Direct purchase. Land occupied by urban poor purchased from owner by the city government itself. Occupants amortize the cost of their homelots to the city government. • Land swapping. Property occupied by urban poor exchanged by a private owner for another lot, of roughly equal value, purchased by the city government. Amortization on individual homelots is paid to the city government. • Land-Sharing. Mutually beneficial arrangement allowing both private landowners and urban poor occupants to satisfy their respective use needs. • Community mortgage. Wholesale purchase of a private property occupied by members of an urban poor association, using the Community Mortgage Program of the National Home Mortgage Finance Corporation. Off-site development approaches establish safety nets for victims of eviction and demolition and for potential homelot owners, using any of the following strategies: • Establishment of resettlement sites. City government properties, acquired either through direct purchase or land swapping, consolidated and developed as relocation sites. • Disposition of public lands. The national government’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources authorizes disposition of public lands within the city’s territorial jurisdiction, with urban poor families as priority beneficiaries. Source: Naga City Website (www.naga.gov.ph).

solve land tenure disputes and any other problems that involve all three of these actors. The tripartite body adopted a policy of dealing only with urban poor organizations, and not individuals, thus facilitating organizing and capacity-building within this sector. More recently, Naga City adopted a work-for-pay scheme called Bayadnihan (a play on the word bayanihan, meaning mutual help, but using bayad or payment, as

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the root word) to enable the unemployed urban poor people to keep up with their amortization payments through casual jobs in road works and other infrastructure projects. These policies may have also intentionally helped build Robredo’s political base among the urban poor, particularly through the Bayadnihan scheme and the work of the Urban Poor Affairs Office, which reports directly to the office of the mayor. Conclusions The insights generated in this chapter have broader relevance to theories on state capacity-building, city civic traditions, the revitalization of civil society, and social capital formation, in terms of the trust, reciprocity, networks, and cooperation that facilitate collective action and community-building. These insights are also relevant to other countries undergoing decentralization and participatory governance initiatives. If indeed, participatory, community-led interventions in solving local problems are more effective in strengthening civic traditions and social capital than are formal, hierarchical, government initiatives (Warner 1999), then how do we characterize the nature of civic-hood and social capital created by such ‘initiator states and governments,’ like in Naga City, that not only facilitate civil society and the social capital formation, but also intentionally create legislation and planning mechanisms that will support new civil society organizations, their social learning, and their capacity-building? Are the civil society organizations and the linkages between the state and civil society that are initiated by the state more sustainable and conducive to community-building than those that develop organically outside the aegis of state influence? Are the forms of social capital that are generated under conditions where the state serves as catalyst of their creation more easily invested in other situations, and thereby used for productive ends, than the types of social capital that rely less on their bridging, vertical links to the state? What would be the ideal role for community and government planners in mediating a successful and effective relationship between local government and civic organizations? Contrary to Putnam’s (1993) view that social capital is the root cause or primary determinant of democratic and effective governance, the relationship between good governance and social capital may not necessarily be linear or unidirectional, nor correlated at all times. As we have seen with Naga City, there is a dialectical, mutually reinforcing relationship whereby trustworthy, progressive governance, such as the one led by Jesse Robredo, could influ-

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ence the character of civil society organizations, and in turn, these organizations could enhance the politics of governance and planning towards more participatory and democratic decision-making, thus further developing the city’s civic tradition. The question of political leadership, its autonomy, and linkages with planning professionals, local civil society leaders, and outsiders to the city, is also relevant. If interventionist approaches on the part of government leaders, or even planners, can help build civic communities (Ostrom 1990), then how do we ensure that such approaches employ strategies that also forge trust, respect, and cooperation among community members as they come together to solve their problems? To say that the often-interventionist innovations of Naga City in participatory planning and governance to build stronger and more civic-minded communities and organizations would not have taken place without the role of a progressive and reform-minded mayor may be placing too much faith in a key tenet of methodological individualism – that it is individuals who think, act, and make a difference in the real world – thus neglecting the role of the state, social classes, organizations, and other institutions and collectivities in the process. To say, however, that Mayor Robredo – his background, biography, and personal interests – have not had much to do with Naga City’s achievements, downplays the role of political leadership and tends to lack the ‘sociological imagination’ (Mills 1959) that sees social structures and institutions as products of the intersection of people’s biographies and social histories. This alternative reading of Naga City’s experiences with decentralization and participatory governance, therefore, avoids the pitfalls of methodological individualism without ignoring the role that leaders and other individuals play in shaping the history and policies of their environment. Moreover, this reinterpretation brings together a sensitivity not only to state-civil society relations and state-elite connections, but also to the shaping of such relations by professional city planning practitioners and community organizers who are relied upon by elected officials to shape policy directions and program decisions. This reinterpretation also supports the view that the political economy and its deeper structural problems largely determine the nature of decision-making and the quality of the civic traditions of communities. The complete story, therefore of how participatory planning and governance practices operate, and their implications for social learning, community-building, and civil society capacity-building, has yet to be told. Yet, it cannot not be told without attention to the micro-politics of

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such relationships and how their purported principles are observed, or ignored, in the actual mechanisms and strategies implemented. A good test of how and why, and whether or not in the first place, participatory principles are working, or not, to build strong communities, does not lie in the level of national and international acclaim, but in an examination of the level of the people’s confidence in their political leaders and in the level of their support for these leaders’ policies, planning, and governance. Voting for a political leader, consistently, in successive elections is a good initial indicator. Similarly, testing the contribution of decentralization to participatory democracy rests on an analysis of how the institutionalization of decentralization has led to better outcomes for the poor and in the other marginalized social groups through their participation in decision-making and in the implementation of programs that affect their lives. Lastly, the Philippine and Naga City experiences with decentralization as an instrument of democratic, participatory planning and governance demonstrate the highly dependent and contextual future of civil societies, as well as the social learning that goes on within this domain and its fields of interaction on the nature of the local political economy and political leadership. Decentralization and devolution of powers under the Local Government Code in the Philippines has produced rather uneven results within and across that country’s regions and municipalities. While some cities and municipalities have experienced improved local governance in areas where non-governmental organizations and private organizations can fully participate in implementation of the Code, there are others where the new code’s provisions have either been ignored or used by vested political interests to sidestep the opposition (Santos 1997; Angeles and Magno 2004). There are limits to the effects of decentralization as a tool of participatory democracy, limits imposed by social class stratification, by a rent-seeking political culture, and by the near-monopoly by the traditional elite over the political party machinery and the state’s resources; nevertheless, decentralization does open up possibilities for communities and the forces of civil society, especially when elected officials take the initiative in experimenting with new innovations, institutionalizing them, and protecting their gains from erosion. Indeed, communities and their local governments stand to either lose or gain from decentralization, begging the question: Why have some Philippine communities had success in taking maximum advantage of the provisions in the Local Government Code for civil society representation in local government councils, while others had not?

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The case of Naga City shows some of the conditions and strategies under which good political leadership and cooperative interactions between government and civil society interactions happen to truly make decentralization an effective instrument of social learning and participatory governance. The social learning that takes place between civil society organizations and the state’s executive, legislative, and judicial branches are often initiated, mediated, negotiated, and redirected by professional city planners and community organizers who understand the benefits of decentralized power and authority. Discussions of participatory and democratic governance raise the question of which social forces will lead the state to greater democracy and who will benefit most from this transformation (Dowbor 1998). The answer to this question is clear in the minds and practices of Naga City government officials and civil society proponents. Participatory planning and democratic governance are useless practices if they do not benefit the poor and marginal social groups. Naga City has creatively used decentralization policies to support diverse goals such as the promotion of economic productivity and social justice, the reduction of poverty, community participation in the delivery of basic services, and in building urban infrastructure. To Robredo, the benefits of decentralization are clear: ‘More resources were provided. Little intervention allowed more initiative’ (e-mail interview with Robredo by Soliman Santos, 7 June 2004). While Robredo sees initiative as a responsibility arising from less intervention, other politicians see less intervention as a reward and a right that does not bring with it any corresponding duty to their citizenry. Naga City clearly demonstrates that decentralization, to be an effective tool of community-building and articulation of the public interest through participatory democracy, must incorporate more than political representation and rights (McCarthy 1994). It must also be accompanied by a framework for the political representation and participation of once-excluded communities to effectively channel resources to local needs (Geddes 1997). By institutionalizing various forms of participatory governance, or the people’s participation in the government and policy decisions that affect their lives, Naga City has achieved a partial transformation of economic inequalities and clipped the coercive powers of the state that often destroy cooperation, trust, and confidence-building, especially among the poor. In doing so, decentralization-induced mechanisms of participatory planning and governance have become meaningful instruments in upholding the public good in Nasa City, bringing about greater democratization and economic prosperity for its marginalized and powerless groups.

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In Third World societies, where political rent-seeking is strong and where political parties and corporatist bodies are dominated by oligarchic families and male-dominated interest groups, decentralization may be used either by elite parties to further entrench themselves in power and marginalize opposition, or it may open up formal mechanisms for the active participation of a broader civil society to support participatory planning and governance. In Naga City, decentralization has clearly resulted in a substantial increase in participation by the poor and socially marginalized groups in political decision-making, without alienating and threatening the middle class, business, and economic elites. It has also aided in the local organizational capacity of community-based groups, non-governmental organizations, and other civil society organizations, thereby reinforcing the ability of people to trust one another, mobilize resources, resolve conflicts, and work together in solving their common problems and achieving agreed-upon goals. Capacitybuilding, on the part of both government and community organizations, is a necessary ingredient and outcome of social learning based on the principles of participatory planning and governance, which enables local people to rediscover their strengths and limitations and empowers them to take control of their own lives and develop their fullest potential. When civil society organizations are supported by government, and when they are used as conduits in communicating directly to citizens with regard to their own political education and concerted actions, civil society groups, in turn, could move beyond mere advocacy politics and participate effectively in the arenas of policy-making and program implementation.

NOTES I am highly indebted to Soliman and Doods Santos for sharing materials and encouraging me to do research on Naga City. I also thank Sol and Doods, Jo-Anne Lee, Penny Gurstein, Clare Mochrie, and Willie Prilles for reading previous drafts, and three anonymous reviewers who gave invaluable feedback. 1 Mayor Robredo received the 2000 Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize; the 2000 Konrad Adenauer Medal of Excellence; the 1996 Ten Young Outstanding Young Persons of the World; the 2002 Outstanding Mayors of the Philippines Award; the 2002 Jose

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Rizal Awards for Excellence; the 1991 Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines (TOYMP); and the 1990 Dangal ng Bayan (Honour of the Nation) Award. Florencio Mongoso, manager of the Metropolitan Naga Public Sector Employees Office received the 2002 TOYMP Award for public service and the 1999 Dangal ng Bayan Award. Three other Naga City civil servants – Antonio Amparado, David Casper Nathan Sergio, and Salvador del Castillo – received the award from the Civil Service Commission in 1996, 1997, and 1998, respectively. The head of the City Population and Nutrition Office, Teresita del Castillo, also received the 2001 Gawad Parangal Award from the Commission on Population and have been responsible for city programs that received the Rafael Salas Population and Development Award. 2 On experience with participatory budgeting and reform of the Naga School Board, see Prilles (2003). 3 The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are perhaps the best known international development agencies pushing for decentralization as part of their emphasis on good governance and public-sector reforms to improve project or program efficiency. The World Bank defined governance as ‘the manner in which power is exercised in the management of the country’s economic and social resources for development.’ Good governance is ‘epitomized by predictable, open, and enlightened policymaking (that is, transparent processes); a bureaucracy imbued with professional ethos; an executive arm of government accountable for its actions; and a strong civil society participating in public affairs; and all behaving under the rule of law’ (World Bank 1994, vii). In the Philippine case, the World Bank and the IMF have likewise pushed for administrative decentralization in the form of privatization of state corporations, most notably public utility companies, as part of its structural adjustment program loans. Decentralization in the form of fiscal autonomy of local units seems to be the logical consequence of massive cuts in the national public investment programs and operations and maintenance expenditures since the adoption of Fiscal Austerity Measures in response to the 1983–85 crisis. 4 The change towards decentralization seems to be inevitable in light of the increase in population and proliferation of many political-administrative units. As of 1999, there were 78 provinces, 83 cities, and over 40,000 barangays or village units in 1,526 municipalities or towns. The barangay is the basic and smallest political-administrative unit headed by a kapitan (captain) and kagawad (councillors). Both the municipal and city governments are headed by a mayor assisted by a deputy-mayor and several councillors who are elected for a limited term, with the possibility of re-election.

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Together, they compose the local government’s legislative body, the Sangguniang Bayan (municipal council) or Sangguniang Panlungsod (city council). Likewise, officials at the provincial level are all elected. The provincial government is also called the Sanggunian Panlalawigan (provincial council or board). Among these local leaders are Mayor Edward Hagedorn of Puerto Princesa City, Mayor Eddie Dorotan of Irosin City, Mayor Mauricio Domogan of Baguio City, and Mayor Rosalita Nunez of General Santos City. There are at least two categories or sources of pork barrel funds: the countrywide development funds allocated in the national budget to every Senator and Congress Representative for infrastructure, materials, and equipment; and the Congressional Initiative Allocation devoted to the lower house members’ discretionary use of the Special Purpose Funds in the budgets of specific government agencies and departments, such as the School Building Fund in the Department of Education, Culture and Sports; the Public Works Fund in the Department of Public Works and Highways; and other congressional insertion in the budgets of the Department of Health and the Department of the Interior and Local Government. Much of these pork-barrel funds are dispensed during and between election campaigns in exchange for political support, and they also become the source of corruption when funds are diverted for these purposes, bribes, and other inappropriate uses of public funds (Rocamora 1998; Parreno 1998). The sectoral organizations under the influence of the city government, and their corresponding membership estimates, that collectively form the backbone of Robredo’s political machinery are as follows: Lakas ng Kababaihan ng Naga Federation (15,000); Lakas ng Kababaihan Cooperative (5,000); Seniors Citizen League (10,000); Naga City Youth Federation (3,000); Barangay People’s Foundation (6,000); Padyak (pedal-driven bicycle with sidecar) Operators and Drivers Association (2,000); Trimobile (motorcyle with a sidecar) Operators and Drivers Association (4,500); Market Stallholders Federation (6,000); Metro Naga Vendors Federation (1,000); Vegetable Planters Federation (4,000); Karetela (horse-driven carriage) Association (150); Rabzu (zone) Naga (no estimate). See Kawanaka (2002, Table 6.1, 77). Kawanaka asserts that in the 1998 elections, 26 out of 27 barangay leaders supported Robredo, although not all gave their firm support. He describes Robredo’s stance towards leaders who showed wavering loyalties: ‘When a barangay chief is not loyal to the mayor, Robredo will turn to a loyal

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councilor ... and designate him/her as a barangay coordinator. The mayor will then channel all city government projects in the barangay through this ... coordinator and exclude the disloyal chief from access to the city government. The mayor will use the barangay coordinator for election campaigning, in which case, the disloyal barangay chief loses access to the resources [putting] the chief into a difficult situation ... because he has no access to resources for distributing to the residents’ (2002, 89). These elements are (1) accountability, building government capacity to make public officials answerable to the people; (2) participation, participatory development processes to ensure citizens’ access to institutions that promote development; (3) predictability, legal frameworks that ensure not only the existence of rules to regulate behaviour but also their fair and consistent application; and (6) transparency, information openness and the availability of information to the general public (Citizens Charter, n.d., 1; see also Naga City website: www.naga.gov.ph). Living its Performance Pledge, based on the ‘5-S’ (sorting, sweeping, sanitizing, systematizing, self-discipline) and ‘3-R’ (reduce, reuse, recycling) mantras frequently used by environmentalists, city hall through PIP was able to reduce office waste, promote efficient operations, and implement effective delivery of front-line services, down to the response time or minutes per transaction promised in the Citizen Charter. The QSIP was developed with funding assistance from the USAID’s demand-driven technical assistance project called Governance and Local Democracy (GOLD). In GOLD’s 1999–2000 extension phase, the city used technical assistance funds to create the Public Service Excellence Program (PSEP) that institutionalized city hall’s role as a ‘service provider’ instead of a bureaucracy. I-governance stands for inclusive governance, to embrace, rather than exclude, individuals, peoples, and sectors in government; information openness, to demonstrate that information is power and truly empowers when placed at the hands of citizens; interactive engagement, to promote information exchange through continuing dialogue between authority and constituency; and innovative management committed to a culture of excellence sustained by creativity and innovativeness (Citizens Charter, n.d., 5; see also www.naga.gov.ph). The key position papers at the National Congress focused on the creation of a national agency for the urban poor and the repeal of the Anti-Squatting Law (or Presidential Decree 772) signed by President Marcos. The Congress took place in the midst of other progressive developments on housing under Corazon Aquino’s administration, such as the urban land

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reform bill that created the Urban Development and Housing Act, the introduction of the community mortgage plan, and the creation of an office for the Presidential Commission on Urban Poor Affairs. Never before have urban poor and social housing issues been on the agenda of the national government. 14 The program operates alongside similar programs such as Naga City Socialized Program for Empowerment and Economic Development (Naga SPEED), which creates consultative channels like the multisectoral meetings called Oralay-olay sa Sektor (deliberations in the sector), village consultative meetings called Bayanihan sa Barangay (mutual helping hands in the village), and the expanded City Development Council (Angeles 1997: 103).

REFERENCES Angeles, Jocelyn Vicente. 1997. ‘The Role of Naga City Urban Poor Federation in the Passage of Pro-Poor Ordinances and Policies.’ In Marlon Wui and Glenda Loez, eds., State-Civil Society Relations in Policy Making, vol. 2, Philippine Democracy Agenda, Quezon City: Third World Studies Center, University of the Philippines. Angeles, Leonora, and Penny Gurstein. 2000. ‘Planning for Participatory Capacity Development: The Challenges of Participation and North-South Partnership in Capacity-Building Projects.’ Canadian Journal of Development Studies (Special Issue): 447–78. Angeles, Leonora, and Francisco Magno. 2004. ‘The Philippines: Decentralization and Local Democracy.’ In Philip Oxhorn, Andrew Selee, and Joseph Tulchin, eds. Decentralization, Civil Society and Democracy: Comparative Experiences in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Baltimore and Washington: Johns Hopkins University Press and Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, 211–65. Brillantes, Alex B., Jr. 1994. ‘Re-democratization and Decentralization in the Philippines: The Increasing Leadership Role of NGOs.’ International Review of Administrative Sciences 60: 575–86. Dowbor, Ladislau. 1998. ‘Response to Critics.’ Latin American Perspectives 25 (Jan.): 49–52. Geddes, Mike.1997. ‘Poverty, Excluded Communities and Local Democracy.’ In Nick Jewson and Susanne MacGregor, eds., Transforming Cities: Contested Governance and New Spatial Divisions. London: Routledge, 205–18. Gerona, Danilo Madrid. 2003. Naga: The Birth and Rebirth of a City. Naga City: Local Government Unit.

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Grindle, Merilee S., ed.. 1997. Getting Good Government: Capacity Building in the Public Sectors of Developing Countries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Institute for International Development. Jacob, James. 1996. ‘Local Democracy: Naga Local Governance and Democratization.’ Conjuncture 7(4): 8–10. – 1998. ‘Explanatory Statement, 11 January 1995.’ In Soliman Santos, ed., The Theory and Practice of People’s Councils: Focus on the Naga City Model. Quezon City: Institute of Politics and Governance, 39–41. Kawanaka, Takeshi. 1998. ‘The Robredo Style: Philippine Local Politics in Transition.’ Kasarinlan: A Philippine Quarterly of Third World Studies 13(3): 5–36. – 2002. Power in a Philippine City. Chiba, Japan: Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization. Mable, Jing A. 2003. ‘Naga’s Star’s Rising.’ Philippines Free Press, 30 Sept., 12–14. McCarthy, Florence. 1994. ‘Dilemmas of Decentralization and the Contradictions of Democratic Process.’ Paper presented to the American Sociological Association meeting, Los Angeles, August. Mills, C. Wright. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. Naga City Citizen’s Charter: A Guidebook on Key City Government Services. n.d. Naga City: City Hall. Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Parreno, Earl. 1998. ‘Pork.’ In Sheila Coronel, ed., Pork and Other Perks: Corruption and Governance in the Philippines. Manila: Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, 32–55. Perez, Joe. 2003. ‘Naga Emerges: The Makeover of an Ordinary Mono-Dimensional Philippine City.’ Philippines Free Press, 30 Sept., 20. Prilles, Willy, Jr. 2003. ‘Naga Pushes Education Reform.’ Philippines Free Press, 30 Sept., 21–3. Putnam, Robert D. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Transitions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Robredo, Mayor Jesse M. n.d. ‘Foreword.’ In Naga City Citizen’s Charter: A Guidebook on Key City Government Services. n.d. Naga City: City Hall, iii–iv. Rocamora, Joel. 1998. ‘Corruption in the Philippines: A Beginner’s Guide.’ In Sheila Coronel, ed., Pork and Other Perks: Corruption and Governance in the Philippines. Manila: Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, 8–31. Santos, Soliman. 1998. ‘Salient Features of the Empowerment Ordinance.’ In Soliman Santos, ed., The Theory and Practice of People’s Councils: Focus on the Naga City Model. Quezon City: Institute of Politics and Governance, 61–3.

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Santos, Soliman, ed. 1997. Working Group, Working Papers: NGO-PO Perspectives for the Local Government Code Review. Quezon City: Institute of Politics and Governance. Santos, Soliman. 2004. E-mail communication with the author, Nov. Turner, Mark, ed. 1999. Central-Local Relations in Asia-Pacific: Convergence of Divergence? London: Anthony Rowe. U.N. Center for Human Settlements (Habitat) Community Development Program for Asia and CityNet Regional Network of Local Authorities for the Management of Human Settlements. 1997. ‘Partners in Development in Naga City, the Philippines.’ In Partnership for Local Action: A Sourcebook on Participatory Approaches to Shelter and Human Settlements Improvement for Local Government Officials. Bangkok: U.N. Habitat and CityNet, 62–73. Walsh, Thomas P. 1976. ‘Perceptions of Gubernatorial Authority: Aspects of the “Reality World” of the Philippine Governor.’ Philippine Journal of Public Administration 20(1): 68–103. Warner, Mildred. 1999. ‘Social Capital Construction and the Role of the Local State.’ Rural Sociology 64: 373–93. Williams, David. 1999. ‘Constructing the Economic Space: The World Bank and the Making of the Homo Oeconomicus.’ Millennium Journal for International Studies 28(1): 79–99. World Bank. 1994. Development in Practice: Governance, the World Bank’s Experience. Washington: World Bank.

Contributors

Leonora Angeles is associate professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning and Women’s Studies Program. Besides doing research and teaching on participatory development planning, gender, and governance issues at UBC, she is also involved in community and international development work and participatory action research with Filipino communities across Canada, as well as women’s NGOs and local government units in the Philippines. John Forester is professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University. His research includes the micro-politics of the planning process, ethics, and deliberative planning. Drawing upon oral history ‘practice stories,’ his work explores the ways skilful planners and mediators foster participatory processes and manage contentious public disputes. Forester is working on a book exploring environmental and public dispute mediation as it informs challenges of democratic governance, including value and identity conflicts. Forester’s recent books include The Deliberative Practitioner(1999) and Israeli Planners and Designers: Profiles of Community Builders (2001, co-edited with Raphael Fischler and Deborah Shmueli). Irene Guijt is an independent adviser and researcher focusing on learning processes and systems (including monitoring and evaluation) in rural development and natural resource management, particularly where this involves collective action. Key publications include Participatory Learning and Action: A Trainer’s Guide (co-author, with J.N. Pretty, I. Guijt, J. Thompson, and I. Scoones) and The Myth of Community: Gender

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Issues in Participatory Development (with M.K. Shah). She is completing her PhD on the contribution of monitoring to trigger learning in collaborative resource management. Penny Gurstein is professor in the School of Community and Regional Planning and the Centre for Human Settlements at University of British Columbia. She specializes in the sociocultural aspects of community planning with particular emphasis on those who are the most marginalized in planning processes. Her most recent book, Wired to the World, Chained to the Home: Telework in Daily Life (UBC Press, 2001) investigates the socio-spatial consequences of work patterns in the new economy. She has worked extensively on international projects focusing on gender and youth development issues and has considerable experience working with community groups in the greater Vancouver region. Budd L. Hall is currently Director, Office of Community-Based Research and senior fellow in the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria. He is the former dean of education at UVic, former chair of adult education at the University of Toronto, and former secretarygeneral of the International Council for Adult Education. He is a student of social movement learning, community-based research, and global civil society. He is also a poet. Anthony D. King is emeritus professor of art history and of sociology, State University of New York at Binghamton, and currently lives in the United Kingdom. He has been visiting professor in architecture, University of California Berkeley, and was, for five years, professor, humanities and social sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He has written extensively on the impact of colonialism and globalization on cities and the built environment; his most recent book, Spaces of Global Cultures: Architecture, Urbanism, Identity, was published in 2004. With Thomas A. Markus he is co-editor of the Routledge series, Architext, on architecture and social/cultural theory. Jo-Anne Lee is associate professor of women’s studies at the University of Victoria and past president of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW). She is the co-editor with John Lutz of Situating ‘Race’ and Racisms in Space, Time and Theory (2005). She has published articles on community development and organizing with

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immigrant women, participatory action research, citizenship formation, and adult education. She is currently researching indigenous and racialized girls’ views of each other as mediated by ‘official’ discourses and policies. Jethro Pettit is a member of the Participation, Power and Social Change Group at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, where he works on approaches to the design and facilitation of learning for reflective practice in both organizational and educational contexts. He is interested in processes of personal and social change, and strategies for shifting power relations and realizing rights. He has worked in the past with international NGOs, including World Neighbors and Oxfam America, and with social justice, environment, and peace movements in the United States and the United Kingdom. He has co-edited Development and the Learning Organisation (Oxfam) and Developing Rights (IDS), and is currently doing action research on teaching, learning, and transformation at IDS and with the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice, University of Bath. Lucy Stackpool-Moore is a program officer with the HIV/AIDS team at Panos London. Formerly a research assistant with the Participation Group at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the School of International Education at the University of Sussex, her main areas of interest are HIV/AIDS, learning and teaching for social change, participation, and communication for development. Her research also draws from her experiences as a youth worker and life skills educator in Sydney, Australia, an adult educator in Mozambique, and a facilitator of outdoor education in the United States. Peter Taylor is a research fellow in the Participation, Power and Social Change Group at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, where he is also head of graduate programmes. With a background in agriculture and education, he has worked for many years internationally with governmental and non-governmental organizations on issues relating to education for agricultural and rural development, and participatory approaches and processes in educational arenas. He has a strong interest in learning and teaching and currently convenes the MA in Participation, Power and Social Change, and international dialogues on ‘Learning and Teaching for Transformation,’ and ‘Facilitating Learning for Social Change.’