Power, Knowledge, and Public Engagement: Constructing ‘Citizenship’ in Alberta's Industrial Heartland

Abstract

Foucault's concept of governmentality has provided the basis for recent analysis of governance that explains the connections between power and knowledge in the formation of subjects in advanced liberal societies. In this paper, we apply this concept to help to understand the persistent conflict and power struggles that are characteristic of contemporary public engagement in environmental planning, using the case study of a regional land use plan known as Alberta's Industrial Heartland. Drawing on document and media analysis and key stakeholder interviews carried out between 2002 and 2003, we describe how several ‘technologies of citizenship’ were deployed and ultimately resisted in a public engagement program that attempted to prescribe the terms of reference for public participation. The findings support a view that sees public engagement less as a tool for promoting democratic consensus and more as means to legitimate particular forms of governance that privilege narrowly defined economic goals at the expense of citizen rights and values.

Keywords:

• Public engagement
• citizenship
• governmentality
• power
• environmental planning
• Canada

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the participants of this study, sponsored by the Canadian Agricultural Rural Communities Initiative (AB/RES/006). During the time of the study, the first author was supported by a doctoral award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. All authors would like to thank Ed Jackson and Susan Elliott for their thoughtful feedback on earlier drafts.

Notes

We use the term public engagement based on the work of Rowe & Frewer (2005). This concept covers a spectrum of models from one-way information flow from plan sponsors to the public (‘public communication’), to information conveyed from the public to sponsors (‘public consultation’), to information exchange between members of the public and sponsors (‘public participation’) (Rowe & Frewer, 2005). However, we recognize that the term public participation has been used widely in practice to describe the broad range of engagement opportunities.

Most of the documents in this analysis are available in appendices of the AIHA Background Report (2002).

We use the term ‘respondent’ to indicate those members of the community that took part in our study. We recognize the disadvantage of this term because it implies one-way information gathering. However we are avoiding the preferred term ‘participant’ to reduce confusion between taking part in our study (respondent) versus involvement in the AIH public engagement program (participant).