p.45 In turning to Foucault’s work, we argue that Foucauldian
planning theory addresses exactly the weaknesses in the communicative paradigm, and makes effective understanding
(verita effettuale, in Machiavelli's words; Wirkliche Historie in Nietzsche's and Foucault's) and effective action
possible, something planners and planning theorists have typically said they want. It requires a turn towards the
dark side of planning theory - the domain of power - which has been occasionally explored by planning theorists (e.g. Yiftachel
1994, Flyvbjerg 1996, Roweis 1983, Marcuse 1976) but has been avoided by many others who see only oppression and coercion
where power operates.
p.49 Power is needed to limit power.
p.50 Instead of side-stepping or seeking to remove the traces of power form
planning, an alternative approach accepts power as unavoidable, recognising its all pervasive nature, and emphasising its
productive as well as destructive potential... 'rationality is penetrated by power'
p.51 it is Foucault’s explanation of power as productive and
local, rather than oppressive and hierarchical, that suggests real opportunities for
agency and change (McNay 1994).
p.51-52 Foucault rarely separated knowledge from power, and the
idea of ‘power/knowledge’ was of crucial importance: ‘ we should abandon a whole tradition that
allows us to imagine that knowledge can exist only where the power relations are suspended and that knowledge can develop
only outside its injunctions, its demands and its interests ... we should abandon the belief that power makes mad and that,
by the same token, the renunciation of power is one of the conditions of knowledge. We should admit rather that power
produced knowledge .. that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation without
the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge ...’ (Foucault 1979, 27). For Foucault, then, rationality
was contingent, shaped by power relations, rather than context-free and objective.
p.53 Foucault would prescribe neither process nor outcome; he would
only recommend a focus on conflict and power relations as the most effective point of departure for the fight against domination.
p.54 The value of Foucault’s approach is his emphasis on the dynamics
of power. Understanding how power works is the first prerequisite for action, because action is the exercise of power.
And such an understanding can best be achieved by focusing on the concrete... because understanding and action have
their points of departure in the particular and the local, we may come to overlook more generalised conditions concerning,
for example, institutions... and structural issues.
p.59 Foucault takes us towards a different kind of empirical work. Many
of the methods are familiar to social researchers, but there are important differences in the overall approach:
- the researcher is equipped with a language and theoretical
analysis of power and its techniques and strategies which guides the researcher through the studies; ...
- the relations between power and rationality are a central focus; ...
- the language is of conflict rather than communication.
Planning processes and events are written as the playing out of strategies and conflicts rather than debates or arguments.
p.61 Foucault’s theory of power is exactly
not about oppressiveness, of accepting the regimes of domination which condition us, it is about using tools of analysis
to understand power, its relations with rationality and knowledge, and use the resulting insights precisely to bring about
change.
p.61 Foucauldian analysis... offers a type of planning theory which is more
useful in understanding how planning is actually done, and offers better prospects for those interested in bringing about...
change through planning.
p.62 A strong understanding of democracy, and of the role
of planning within it, must therefore be based on thought that places conflict and power at its centre, as
Foucault does
p.62 We suggest that an understanding of planning that is practical,
committed and ready for conflict provides a superior paradigm to planning theory than an understanding that is discursive,
detached and consensus-dependent.
Exploring the dark side of planning theory offers more than a negative,
oppressive confirmation of our inability to make a difference. It suggests that we can do planning in a constructive
empowering way, but that we cannot do this by avoiding power relations. Planning is inescapably about conflict: exploring
conflicts in planning, and learning to work effectively with conflict can be the basis for a strong planning paradigm.
