Corporalidad y memoria dentro de los usuarios. VR

Power is one of the most central and contested concepts in social science and praxis (Clegg and Haugaard, 2009). While many agree about the importance of power, there is controversy about how to define it, how to study it and how to normatively appraise it (Lukes, 2005). In the planning literature, as well as in the more specific power literature, debates about these kinds of questions tend to be zero-sum. Scholars compete about the best way to define and study power.

This leads to entangled debates, where it is difficult to relate alternative notions by clarifying differences and similarities. To disentangle the treatment of power in participatory planning a plural view of power is preferable since it can lead to a broader and more complex understanding, which is conducive to reflective practice. To view power as a single entity can actually lead to unreflective practice, since it might prevent critical reflections on presumed notions of power.

In order to operationalise a plural view of power, I follow Haugaard (2010a) and suggest that power is the kind of concept that Wittgenstein (1967) coined as family resemblance concepts. This means that the concept power covers an ambiguous set of different but related concepts associated with the reproduction of social order. In this section I elaborate on why I have chosen this way of defining power.

4.1.1 A brief genealogy of power

Let us first acknowledge, through the work of Clegg and Haugaard (2009), the richness and diversity of alternative approaches to power, and thereby demonstrate the value of a plural rather than a singular view of power. Clegg and Haugaard (Ibid.) explain that already the Ancient Athenians were interested in political power. At that time legitimate and illegitimate power were distinguished through the contrast between power that followed the dictates of the law (nomos) and power that exalted in the glorification of an individual (hubris). Thereby, a line of inquiry concerned with the normative appraisal of power was opened, which is still relevant for contemporary planning practice where ethical situated judgements are made between better and worse options (Campbell, 2002).

In the medieval period, Machiavelli (1903) took the power canon further.

While he did not dwell on legitimacy he was concerned with explaining how a prince could rule, (i.e. maintain social order), through cunning manipulation.

His account revolves around power as domination with a special interest in how the successful prince manages society through strategic action. Here power is exercised over others and society is constituted through the domination of the weak by the strong (Clegg and Haugaard, 2009). Even if the prince wielded his power in a manner that was far from democratic, Machiavelli’s emphasis on the strategic use of power still tells us something important about conflictual power and also contemporary participatory planning episodes.

In contrast Thomas Hobbes’ (1981) influential work on the Leviathan, in the year of 1651, provides an image of how power flows from society to the individual. Hobbes argues that society must be ruled by absolute sovereignity, less the “egoistic nature of man” would result in civil war. Hobbes saw the legitimacy of sovereign power as a presupposition of common wealth (Clegg and Haugaard, 2009). In modern democracies we no longer think of society as a Leviathan and do not accept sovereigns. Yet, the democratic state and its planning system must be capable of exercising the kind of coercive power, which Hobbes found necessary to avoid civil war (Mansbridge, 2012).

For Nietzsche (2011), power was the ability to define reality. He showed that if you can define what is seen as real and what is seen as moral then you create the conditions for legitimacy. In the work of Nietzsche, Machiavelli’s and Hobbes’ interest in the cruder forms of power are replaced by a focus on the more sophisticated and less visible aspects of power (Clegg and Haugaard, 2009). This is the kind of power, which is central to democratic societies and democratic practices, such as planning; power that we are often not aware of, but structures social relations and thereby provides the predictability needed to make planning, as coordinated action, possible.

According to Clegg and Haugaard (Ibid.), in the post-World War II discussions about power, the consensual view of power, pursued by Hannah Arendt (1970), Talcott Parsons (1963) and Barry Barnes (1988) among others, constituted an influential strand of the power literature. These scholars saw power as the opposite of coercion and as a prerequisite for agency and society.

This kind of consensual power is the form of power that many planners would like to see arising from participatory planning processes.

Simultaneously, the Hobbesian notion of power as domination was reformulated by many, including Robert Dahl (1957), Peter Bachrach, Morton Baratz (1962) and Steven Lukes (1974). In contrast, Michel Foucault (1979, 1982) took the Nietzschean view of power as systemic and constitutive of reality further.

Both the agent-specific and the systemic understandings of power are necessary in a tool box for researching and rethinking power in participatory planning.

4.1.2 Why does it matter what kind of concept power is?

From the brief genealogy of power, it is evident that there is no consensus on how to define and study power. The differences matter, since the ways in which scholars and practitioners think about power influences what they can explain and what actions they take. How we think about power might have very real consequences for power relations in participatory planning.

[…] how we think of power may serve to reproduce and reinforce power structures and relations, or alternatively it may challenge and subvert them. […] To the extent that this is so, conceptual and methodological questions are inescapably political.

(Lukes, 2005, p. 63)

How do we then think about power? Which notions of power are we focusing our gaze on? The most common way to approach power is to equate it with domination (Haugaard, 2015). This is the way that power is most often defined in theory as well as used in everyday speech. Power is then seen as carrying an essential meaning, which signifies social relations where powerful actors get it their way in an unfair fashion. This is also largely how power is approached in communicative planning theory (see Chapter 2).

Steven Lukes (1974, 2005) is one of the most prominent representatives of the view of power as domination. He argues that power is an “essentially contested” concept in the sense that “reasonable people, who disagree morally and politically, may agree about the facts but disagree about where power lies”

(2005, p. 64). This view of power leads Lukes to argue that his radical definition of power as domination is superior to other ways of defining power (Haugaard, 2010a). According to Lukes, a definition of power must include the hidden aspects of power, and must allow for agency since this provides possibilities to attribute responsibility to actors (Lukes, 2005).

Lukes is surely right in emphasising the hidden aspects of power and the need for attributing responsibility. These are crucial aspects of power, not least in participatory planning. Yet, his claim that his definition of power is better than the rest (Haugaard, 2010a) suggests the kind of singular view of power that I have chosen to move away from. Thinking that we have, or in the future might find, a single best way to define power does not fit with the aim of this thesis.

Given the multiple ways in which power is operating in planning processes, I find a singular view of power too reductionist, in view of my interest in enabling reflective practice.

Instead, I concur with Haugaard’s claim that power is not a single entity, rather it represents a cluster of related concepts, each of which might validly represent power (Clegg and Haugaard, 2009; Haugaard, 2010a). The advantage with this plural view of power is that the zero-sum debates about the best definition of power can be replaced by plus-sum reflections, where we gradually refine our understanding of the linked empirical phenomena related to social order. I thereby find that a plural view of power is useful for researching and rethinking notions of power in participatory planning.

4.1.3 What is a family resemblance view of power?

To operationalise a plural view of power, I follow Haugaard’s (2010a) develop-ment of Wittgenstein’s (1967) work on family resemblance concepts. As Haugaard (Ibid.) explains, Wittgenstein argued that concepts, which could be thought to be connected by one essential common feature, may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no one feature is common to all.

The word “game”, was the example Wittgenstein (1967) used to explain this idea. To make his point, he discussed common features that all the usages of the word “game” might include. He concluded that it is impossible to identify any common features. For example, he said that winning and losing could perhaps be a common feature to all usages of game. Although, this is not the case, since what a solitary kid is doing when bouncing a ball towards a wall could validly be called a game, without involving winning and losing. Thus, the word game is like the members of a family in which there are many overlapping characteristics without a single one being common to all: Maria has her father’s mouth and her mother’s eyes, while her brother has his father’s hair and mother’s temper and so on (cf. Haugaard, 2010a and Wittgenstein, 1967).

In line with this definition, power in this thesis is treated as a family resem-blance concept. This means that power concepts might signify different empirical phenomena, all of which are related to the reproduction of social order, but not necessarily united by one common feature. Thus, I see power as consisting of a cluster of concepts, each of which might accurately qualify as “power”.

Following Haugaard (2010a), this means that power can be represented through alternative concepts, all of which might be valid as members of the same family. This includes the Athenian and Habermasian interests in power and legitimacy, the Machiavellian focus on leaders’ power to rule through strategic action, the Nietzschean and Foucauldian emphasis on power as constitutive of social reality, the enabling and concerted power à la Arendt, as well as the Hobbesian emphasis on coercive power as a precondition for peace. Hence, a

family resemblance view of power is a useful basis for researching and rethinking power in participatory planning.

Importantly, a family resemblance view of power does not entail a relativistic position, in which any definition of power is as good as the other. Instead, I agree with Haugaard’s (2010a) assertion that criteria can and ought to be established for separating better from worst usages of the concept. Applying a pragmatic approach, I suggest that usages of concepts can be evaluated according to how well they fulfill their purposes. This means that I see alternative concepts of power as conceptual tools intended to help us fulfil certain purposes.

Viewing concepts as a set of conceptual tools entails that one moves away from any kind of reified views of essences, which usually entail evaluative judgements concerning correct and incorrect usages. If a certain usage enables the social scientist to explain complex ideas well, then that is all that matters. (Haugaard, 2010a, p. 427) I concur with Haugaard’s pragmatist position, even if my purpose is different from his. My task is to enable reflective practice. Hence, if concepts of power support critical reflection on routinised ways of understanding and enable situated judgements, this is what matters to me.