Participation between consensus and contestation governmentalized practices of planning in Global South and Global North
Date
2016
Authors
Editors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AESOP
Abstract
This paper argues that planning is a technology of power aimed at 'governing' urban populations. To discuss this statement the study takes as a reference point the post-structuralist discussion on power, the state and government in contemporary societies. According to Post-structuralists, power is not something concrete or objectified from which one can take possession or keep ownership. Instead, it is a social relation between individuals that spreads over the social environment in the form of webs or networks (Foucault, 2008, Laclau and Mouffe 1985, Lemke 2007, Veiga-Neto 2005, Rose 1992).
These networks of relationships involve multiple connections between the agents targeting the governance of people’s consciousness and conduct. Within the network, the individual is both the target and the source of power relations. In democratic settings, individual autonomy is not opposed to political power, but rather, the foundation for its exercise, to the extent that individuals are not only objects of power, but they also constitute themselves as subjects of power relations.
This paper directs attention to political power, that kind of power that Foucault defines as a system of forces which is concentrated and monopolized by the state and whose function is to exercise power and influence on other spheres of society. The paper explores the concept of power by focusing on both, the micro and macro relations of power in society, and seeks to explain how they are condensed on the State in the form of government.
Description
Proceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the south
Keywords
License
All rights reserved