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Accepted Paper:

Putting order on activism: power and social control in participatory redevelopments  
Mayane Dore (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos)

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to analyse how participatory planning can control and undermine activism whilst it shapes a specific form of collective action. For that, it focuses on the urban redevelopment of Waterloo, Sydney's largest inner-city public housing estate and highlights technologies of state power.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to analyse how participatory planning can control and undermine activism whilst it shapes a specific form of collective action. For this discussion I use ethnographic data from the ongoing redevelopment in Waterloo, Sydney's largest inner-city public housing estate. This project is part of the New south Wales´s Community Plus program and claims to be an innovative approach to public housing as it undertakes community consultation and other participatory planning techniques. In this studied case, despite the democratic effort, the process seems to have a contrary effect. Rather than enhancing democratic debates around urban planning, the community becomes demobilize, organizing very limited actions, mainly around bureaucratic tasks such as meetings, reports and motions. As observed, these artifacts create a narrative of action but can also hide the hollowness of the political debate and activism.

This paper intends to explore the understanding of participatory planning as a structure capable of defining, at the same time it orders, regulates and controls the multiple possibilities of collective actions by dictating how, where and when to engage politically and "have our say". Underlying this discussion is an analysis of the techniques of power and social control articulated in these specific cases and its implication on the emergence of forms of resistance and activism. In conclusion, this paper seeks to contribute with the panel by questioning how the structure of participatory planning can reframe the meanings of activism and its forms of influencing policy in contemporary societies.

Panel P23
The value of protest in contemporary society [panel + roundtable]
  Session 1 Wednesday 4 December, 2019, -