Learning in Chicago's 49th Ward Participatory Budgeting Process: How to Study Democratic Activity Across Time and Space by Analyzing Discourse

Abstract

This study explores how learning occurs in Chicago's 49th Ward Participatory Budgeting process (PB49) through the analysis of discourse over time. Analysis was conducted on talk within Leadership committee meetings about the topic of creating a Spanish language committee (SLC) to support Latino participation in the PB49 process. This paper’s findings relate to a larger three-year longitudinal ethnographic case study focusing on how the Latino immigrant community participated in the PB49 process. Based on findings from the larger study about the nature of Latino immigrants’ participation, analysis for this paper involved purposefully selecting Leadership committee meetings that addressed talk about the topic of a SLC. The spaces in which PB49 takes place are considered enactments, which in this paper are positioned as learning environments of democratic activity. While the analysis of discourse is not new to the study of democratic activity, analysis of discourse in these contexts has typically not systemically been used to examine talk over longer periods of time. Briggs (1998) insightfully demonstrated what a socio-linguistic analysis of a participatory planning enactment could provide in three brief ethnographic accounts of interaction in a participatory planning process. This kind of analytic approach offers insights into the power dynamics at play in participants’ social interactions. However, very few, if any, planning, community development or other forms of democratic activity take place in one enactment. Expanding the analysis of discourse from one speech event, such as a public meeting, to analyses of multiple speech events over time and space provides more nuanced tools to decipher how power and learning are at play (Wortham & Reyes, 2015) in complex evolving democratic activity systems. Furthermore, there is a need for more practice-based research and analysis of learning that moves beyond summative evaluations that ask participants to self-report what they have learned. Such reports can miss nuanced manifestations of power structures at play in democratic activity. The current paper examines how learning occurs in practice from participants’ own words and actions over time across multiple speech events.