p.287 The person possessing practical wisdom (phronimos) has
knowledge of how to manage in each particular circumstance that can never be equated with or reduced to knowledge of general
truths about managing. Phronesis is a sense or a tacit skill for doing the ethically practical
rather than a kind of science.
p.290 (1) Where are we going with planning? (2) Who gains and who loses,
and by which mechanisms of power? (3) Is this development desirable? (4) What, if anything, should we do about it?
p.291 Thus the primary issue for phronetic planning research
is to arrive at research that effectively answers the four value-rational questions as a basis for action... The
main point of departure for explicating the methodological guidelines for phronetic planning research is a reading of Aristotle
and Michel Foucault, supplemented with readings of other thinkers, mainly Pierre Bourdieu, Clifford Geertz, Alasdair MacIntyre,
and Richard Rorty, who all emphasize phronetic before epistemic knowledge in the study of social affairs, despite important
differences in other domains.
p.292 Phronetic planning researchers do not claim final, indisputable
objectivity for their validity claims, however, nor do they believe other social scientists can make such claims.
This is because, empirically, objectivity of that kind has never been demonstrated to exist in the social sciences. It is
not available to phronetic planning researchers, nor to positivists, nor to anyone else studying human affairs. If
positivists or others think otherwise, the history and philosophy of social science show that they carry the burden of proof.
p.292 There can be no adequate understanding of planning without
placing the analysis of planning within the context of power. Rationality without power spells irrelevance (Flyvbjerg,
1998b).
p.293 Besides focusing on questions (1), (3), and (4), which are the classical
Aristotelian questions, a contemporary reading of phronesis also poses questions about power and outcomes: ‘Who
gains, and who loses?’ ‘Through what kinds of power relations?’ ‘What possibilities are available
to change existing power relations?’ ‘And is it desirable to do so?’
p.293 Combining the best of a Nietzschean/Foucauldian interpretation
of power with the best of a Weberian/ Dahlian one, the analysis of power is guided by a conception of power that can be characterized
by six features:
(1) Power is seen as productive and positive, and not only
as restrictive and negative.
(2) Power is viewed as a dense net of omnipresent relations,
and not only as being localized in ‘centres,’ organizations, and institutions or as an entity one can ‘possess.’
(3) The concept of power is seen as ultra-dynamic; power is
not merely something one appropriates, it is also something one reappropriates and exercises in a constant back-and-forth
movement within the relationships of strength, tactics, and strategies inside of which one exists.
(4) Knowledge and power, truth and power, rationality and power
are analytically inseparable from each other; power produces knowledge and knowledge produces power.
(5) The central question is how power is exercised, and not merely
who has power and why they have it; the focus is on process in addition to structure.
(6) Power is studied with a point of departure in small questions, ‘flat
and empirical’, not only, nor even primarily, with a point of departure in ‘big questions’ (Foucault, 1982,
p. 217). Careful analysis of the power dynamics of specific practices is a core concern.
p.298 What Bourdieu (1990, p. 9) calls the “feel for the game”
is central to all human action of any complexity, including planning, and it enables an infinite number of ‘moves’
to be made, adapted to the infinite number of possible situations, which no rule-maker, however complex the rule, can foresee.
p.298 a central question for phronesis is: What should we do? To
this MacIntyre (1984, p. 216) answers: “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer
the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”
p.299 Mattingly (1991, p. 237) points out that narratives not only give
meaningful form to our experiences. They also provide us with a forward glance, helping us to anticipate situations even before
we encounter them, allowing us to envisage alternative futures.
p.301 Phronetic planning research thus explicitly sees itself as
not having a privileged position from which the final truth can be told and further discussion arrested. We cannot
think of an “eye turned in no particular direction”, as Nietzsche (1969b, pp. 119, �3.12) says. “There
is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective ‘knowing’; and the more affects
we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe
one thing, the more complete will our ‘concept’ of this thing, our ‘objectivity’, be”
(emphasis in original). Hence, ‘objectivity’ in phronetic planning research is not ‘contemplation
without interest’ but employment of “a variety of perspectives and affective interpretations
in the service of knowledge” (emphasis in original; see also Nietzsche, 1968b, pp. 287, �530).
p.302 A central task of phronetic planning research is
to provide concrete examples and detailed narratives of the ways in which power and values work in planning and with what
consequences to whom, and to suggest how relations of power and values could be changed to work with other consequences.
