Abstract
This paper contributes to empirical knowledge of citizen participation as a communicative event, by analyzing discursive tensions in interviews between civil servants and citizen-parents, that are part of a participatory process on how to mitigate violence in a suburban area in Sweden. Citizen participation events are increasingly initiated by public institutions in Western societies. Research, however, shows that goals of participatory processes often conflict with formal decision-making structures and institutional boundaries. Yet, how such tensions play out on the level of interaction is little researched. This study therefore analyzes discursive practices deployed by civil servants and how these construct characteristic tensions for the interviews. Three practices are identified: (1) pursuing the initial question, (2) cueing an institutional frame, and (3) epistemic positioning of the parents. These practices, being guided by an institutional agenda, create tensions both to the parents’ lifeworld and for the ideals of the participatory method itself.
Highlights
This study analyzes interviews between civil servants and citizen-parents taking place in 2017 as part of a citizen participation process aimed at mitigating violence in a suburban area of Sweden
The study has identified three recurring practices deployed by the civil servants, which manifest symptomatic tensions that provide empirical knowledge about the norms and conditions of this communicative situation
The first practice, pursuing the initial question, illustrates a tension between the processual ideals of, on the one hand, inviting the interviewees to participate in an open and inclusive way, while on the other, pursuing the main question in ways that constrain it to aspects that are beneficial for the forthcoming steps of the process
Summary
This study analyzes interviews between civil servants and citizen-parents taking place in 2017 as part of a citizen participation process aimed at mitigating violence in a suburban area of Sweden In detail, it analyzes how recurring practices deployed by the civil servants construct symptomatic discursive tensions for this communicative situation. Studies have found that as a practice is imbued with conflicting ideals, that lead the professionals to deploy contradictory discursive strategies, tensions within the communicative situation can occur (Tracy and Robles, 2013) Examples of this include journalists in news interviews being guided by norms of both adversarialness and neutrality, or doctors in medical interviews when guided by the principles of both optimization and in-depth problem attentiveness (Clayman, 1992; Heritage 2002, 2010).
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