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Discourse, meaning, and political participation

Abstract We present an analysis of part of a data-set from a three-year study called ‘Work, Development and Diversity’ conducted by a network of Argentinean public and private research institutions. We sought to analyze the different ways in which strategic planning for local development, with a participatory approach, had been implemented in four geographic regions of Argentina. In this article we analyze how (1) participants in a given field of practice build strategic discursive actions and orient their interactions guided by their perception of who is included, and in what aspects of the process at stake; (2) participants build discourses that shape what counts as reality. Our analysis shows what happens when participants come together, since they dispute what counts as true, valid or even real, and these disputes can be analyzed through discourse; what may appear to be a linguistic detail is loaded with meaning due to the historical context in which the specific cultural terms are produced (e.g. participant, neighbor, and activist). We also show that in calls for participatory action, any specific community of participants may impose what they determine to be true over the others. When this is achieved, one may say that they have managed to impose a certain simplifying operation over the other participants, thus making it possible for their logic to prevail, and to reduce a certain amount of complexity at play.