Producing and performing 'communities': Looking at the paradox of public participationand de-politicisation

近几十年来，“后政治”的概念在社会科学圈中流行起来，这是左派对全球资本主义和(新)自由主义思想的批评的一部分。后政治话语的核心前提之一是，政治本身--政治作为一种将问题向冲突、分歧和社会政治关系的替代框架敞开大门的过程--越来越多地被管理、技术官僚、专家主导和寻求共识的方法和程序所排除。公众参与在这一论述中被视为一种这样的程序，并被解释为一种非政治化的战略。本讨论文件所基于的AHRC范围研究调查了后政治文献中的关键文本，并仔细审查了它们提出的与政治和公众参与有关的主张。它参照政治理论、科学社会科学和人文地理学等学科的相关文献审议了这些主张。事实证明，在这些文献之间建立对应关系是有见地的，并证实了非政治化进程确实被视为一种普遍现象，尽管对它们的解释并不总是相同。这需要一个(公众？)重新评估“政治”和“公众”在当今社会中的作用，特别是在英国，它们在政府关于“大社会”的愿景中的作用。

The notion of 'post-politics' which has gained currency in social science circles in recent decades forms part of a left critique of global capitalism and (neo)liberal thought. One of the central premises of post-political discourse is that politics proper - politics as a process of opening-out issues to conflict, disagreement, and alternative framings of socio-political relations - is increasingly foreclosed by managerial, technocratic, expert-led, and consensus-seeking approaches and procedures. Public participation is seen as one such procedure in this discourse and interpreted as a strategy of de-politicization. The AHRC-scoping study on which this discussion paper is based surveyed key texts in the post-political literature and carefully examined their claims made in relation to politics and public participation. It considered these claims in the light of relevant literatures in the disciplines of political theory, Social Studies of Science (STS), and human geography. Creating a correspondence between these literatures proved insightful and confirmed that processes of de-politicization are indeed perceived as a widespread phenomenon although they are not always interpreted in the same ways. This urges for a (public?) re-evaluation of the role of 'politics' and 'publics' in present-day societies in general, and in the UK, their role in relation to the governments' vision of a 'Big Society' in particular.