Grounding governance in floating stakeholders: Communication, collectivity, and relational transformation in theory and practice---an ethnographic and discourse-analytic case study

TLDR: Konieczka et al. as discussed by the authors argue that public participation theory and research claims that participation can transform policy and relations, but evidence supporting that assertion is limited, particularly in real-world situations.

Abstract: Konieczka, Stephen P. (Ph.D., Department of Communication) Grounding Governance in Floating Stakeholders: Communication, Collectivity, and Relational Transformation in Theory and Practice—An Ethnographic and Discourse-Analytic Case Study Dissertation directed by Professor Lawrence R. Frey Public participation theory and research claims that participation can transform policy and relations, but evidence supporting that assertion is limited, particularly in real-world situations. This dissertation argues that to understand if and how participation might transform policy and relations, it is necessary to study participation in situated practices. The chapters report details and lessons from the Community Collaborative Group (CCG), a 2-year stakeholder participation governance process. In this study, “stakeholder” has a specific meaning and is employed as an analytic concept to reflect on uses and interpretation of symbolic categories in social discourses and interactional talk. As a category, the stakeholder concept challenges received interdisciplinary ideals of collectivity as being psychological, binary, and meaningful in competitive relations, raising questions and concerns that treating categories as symbols addresses. As a symbolic construct, categories are communicative, constituted in difference, and meaningful in discursive relations. To study uses, interpretations, and influences of categories, the study examines symbolic practices of categorization, dis/identification, and representation during the CCG. Initiated by a public agency, the CCG represented ideals of investment, design, and facilitation, but it struggled to fulfill policy and relational objectives of the process and theoretical ideals. At the macrolevel, this report discusses how uses and interpretations of locally and situationally relevant categories influenced the design, process, and outcomes of the