Short abstract:

This presentation uses Isabelle Stengers’ philosophy to unpack the idealised concepts of democracy and participation in a case of a legislative reform regulating mental health and addiction services.

Long abstract:

One of the most profound democratic ideals is that of participation: the elevating ideal of citizens taking part in political decision-making concerning their common issues. In this presentation I will examine how the ideals of democracy and participation are co-produced, contested and evoked within a specific case of drafting novel legislation to regulate mental health and addiction services in Finland. This legislative process took several years and harnessed a multiplicity of expertise and experience from scientific experts and professionals working in social and health care to small NGO’s and service users as experts-by-experience.

I am interested in how the formats and platforms for participation shape notions of experience and expertise: what kinds of knowledges are considered as valid? Who gets to participate and how? Drawing on Isabelle Stengers’ speculative philosophy, I explore the interweaving of the involved actors’ (subjective) experience and (objective) knowledge. The focus is on relations between professional common sense and the misplaced abstractions of specialised forms of knowledge in this specific legislative setting in social and health care. In this legislative reform, the concepts of democracy and participation become technologised and bureaucratised making them ‘factishes’ of a kind. I wonder if there is a way these idealised concepts can be remade by making sense in common?