Delineating Locals: Transformations of Knowledge/Power and the Governance of the Danube Delta

In this paper, we adopt a Foucauldian perspective on power/knowledge interactions to investigate the evolution and implementation of policy for the Romanian Danube delta. We argue that a better understanding of the potential for citizen participation in environmental governance can be obtained from a careful analysis of the pathways of emergence, enactment and implementation of policies affecting an area. Policies are seen as temporary conceptual structures coordinating knowledge and power, in constant transmutation because of the confrontation with other power/knowledge configurations. For the Danube delta, it is argued that policies originating at various levels of government co-create a ‘local’ that is scrutinized, silenced, exoticized, subjugated and marginalized. Finally, we investigate the implications of this and similar processes of delineation of actors for participatory natural resource governance.

[1]  M. Foucault.  Les mots et les choses : une archéologie des sciences humaines , 1968 .

[2]  M. Gerber.  Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy , 2005 .

[3]  G. Mohan,et al.  Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation: Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development , 2013 .

[4]  Eugen Avram,et al.  Perception of flood risk in Danube Delta, Romania , 2009 .

[5]  P. Devlieger,et al.  Forgetting and remembering in the margins: Constructing past and future in the Romanian Danube Delta , 2009 .

[6]  Alec McHoul,et al.  A Foucault Primer: Discourse, Power and the Subject , 1993 .

[7]  M. Reed.  Stakeholder participation for environmental management: A literature review , 2008 .

[8]  Bob Jessop,et al.  From micro-powers to governmentality: Foucault's work on statehood, state formation, statecraft and state power , 2007 .

[9]  Kenneth F. Warren.  Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland; Or Why It's Amazing That Federal Programs Work at All . By Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron B. Wildavsky. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. Pp. xviii, 182. $7.50.) , 1974 .

[10]  David Macey,et al.  Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76 , 2020 .

[11]  B. Jessop.  The rise of governance and the risks of failure: the case of economic development , 1998 .

[12]  B. Cooke,et al.  Power, knowledge and social control in participatory development. , 2001 .

[13]  D. Mosse,et al.  'People's knowledge', participation and patronage: operations and representations in rural development. , 2001 .

[14]  Robert Legvold.  Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism , 2003 .

[15]  B. Ruble.  Money Sings: The Changing Politics of Urban Space in Post-Soviet Yaroslavl , 1995 .

[16]  F. Fischer.  Citizens, Experts, and the Environment: The Politics of Local Knowledge , 2000 .

[17]  E. Turnhout,et al.  How participation creates citizens: participatory governance as performative practice , 2010 .

[18]  S. Bell,et al.  Conservation versus Livelihood in the Danube Delta , 2001 .

[19]  B. Allen.  Government in Foucault , 1991, Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

[20]  P. Goodwin,et al.  ‘Hired Hands’ or ‘Local Voice’: Understandings and Experience of Local Participation in Conservation , 1998 .

[21]  J. Kornai,et al.  Building a trustworthy state in post-socialist transition , 2004 .

[22]  S. White.  Depoliticising development: The uses and abuses of participation , 1996 .

[23]  C. Prell,et al.  Unpacking “Participation” in the Adaptive Management of Social–ecological Systems: a Critical Review , 2006 .

[24]  J. Elster,et al.  Institutional Design in Post-Communist Societies: Rebuilding the Ship at Sea , 1998 .

[25]  J. Cole,et al.  The Socialist City: Spatial Structure and Urban Policy , 1981 .

[26]  S. Harrison.  Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice , 2001 .

[27]  M. Foucault,et al.  Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. , 1978 .

[28]  James M. Acheson,et al.  Institutional Failure in Resource Management , 2006 .

[29]  Constantin Iordachi.  Citizenship, Nation-and State-Building: The Integration of Northern Dobrogea into Romania, 1878-1913 , 2002 .

[30]  L. Norsworthy.  Rural development, natural resources and the environment : lessons of experience in Eastern Europe and Central Asia , 2000 .

[31]  M. Dean.  Critical And Effective Histories: Foucault's Methods and Historical Sociology , 1994 .

[32]  G. Andrusz,et al.  Cities after socialism : urban and regional change and conflict in post-socialist societies , 1996 .

[33]  L. Pellizzoni.  The myth of the best argument: power, deliberation and reason. , 2001, The British journal of sociology.

[34]  P. Bourdieu.  The specificity of the scientific field and the social conditions of the progress of reason , 1975 .

[35]  S. Stoll-Kleemann,et al.  Biodiversity, Sustainability and Human Communities: Protecting beyond the protected , 2002 .

[36]  M. Foucault,et al.  Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977 , 1980 .

[37]  I. Popescu,et al.  Social ecology in the Danube Delta: Theory and practice , 2000 .

[38]  M. Coté,et al.  'Society Must Be Defended': Lectures at the College de France , 2004 .

[39]  T. Richardson,et al.  Reflections on Foucauldian discourse analysis in planning and environmental policy research , 2001 .

[40]  G. Brady.  Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action , 1993 .

[41]  R. D'amico.  Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison , 1978, Telos.

[42]  F. Berkes.  Rethinking Community‐Based Conservation , 2004 .

[43]  M. Foucault.  The Subject and Power , 1982, Critical Inquiry.

[44]  R. Beunen,et al.  Divergence and Convergence in Policy Meanings of European Environmental Policies: The Case of the Birds and Habitats Directives , 2010 .

[45]  M. Hajer,et al.  A decade of discourse analysis of environmental politics: Achievements, challenges, perspectives , 2005 .

[46]  M. Reed,et al.  Biodiversity, land degradation, and climate change: Participatory planning in Romania , 2009 .

[47]  D. Grigorescu.  Danube Delta , 2019, Dictionary of Geotourism.

[48]  Michel Foucault,et al.  Ethics Subjectivity and Truth ; the Essential Works of Michael Foucault, 1954-1984 , 2000 .

[49]  R. French.  Plans, Pragmatism and People: The Legacy of Soviet Planning for Today's Cities , 1995 .

[50]  Conservation of fish stocks in the Danube Delta, Romania: Present status, constraints, and recommendation , 1998 .

[51]  B. Cruikshank,et al.  The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects , 1999 .

[52]  Jane Lewis.  ADOPTION: THE NATURE OF POLICY SHIFTS IN ENGLAND AND WALES, 1972-2002 , 2004 .

[53]  M. Schlüter,et al.  Research, part of a Special Feature on Implementing Participatory Water Management: Recent Advances in Theory, Practice and Evaluation Participatory Research for Adaptive Water Management in a Transition Country - a Case Study from Uzbekistan , 2010 .

[54]  E. Uslaner,et al.  Civil Society Development and Democratic Values in Romania and Moldova , 2004 .

[55]  M. Hajer.  Coalitions, Practices, and Meaning in Environmental Politics: From Acid Rain to BSE , 2005 .

[56]  M. Foucault.  The History of Sexuality , 1976 .

[57]  M. Brett‐Crowther.  Conservation is Our Government Now: The Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea , 2010 .

[58]  R. French,et al.  The Socialist City: Spatial Structure and Urban Policy , 1980 .

[59]  Lisa Anderson.  Transitions to democracy , 1999 .

[60]  James C. Scott,et al.  Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed , 1999 .

[61]  A. Mol,et al.  Participation and Environmental Governance: Consensus, Ambivalence and Debate , 2003, Environmental Values.

[62]  Bruno Latour,et al.  Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy , 1999 .

[63]  H. Maibom.  Social Systems , 2007 .

[64]  Michel Foucault,et al.  Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1974-1975 , 2003 .

[65]  M. Foucault,et al.  Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth , 1997 .

[66]  Bob Jessop,et al.  The governance of complexity and the complexity of governance , 2005, Putting Civil Society in Its Place.

[67]  B. Cooke,et al.  Participation: the New Tyranny? , 2001 .

[68]  M. Foucault.  Society Must Be Defended , 2003 .

[69]  I. Năvodaru,et al.  The challenge of sustainable use of the Danube Delta Fisheries, Romania , 2001 .

[70]  Martha Lampland.  The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania , 2005 .

[71]  Elke Mannigel.  Integrating Parks and People: How Does Participation Work in Protected Area Management? , 2008 .

[72]  Raoul Beunen,et al.  Implementation and integration of EU environmental directives. Experiences from The Netherlands , 2009 .

[73]  Michel Foucault,et al.  The Will to Knowledge , 2006 .

[74]  D. Sparti.  Making up People , 2001 .

[75]  J. Burgess,et al.  Environmental Communication and the Cultural Politics of Environmental Citizenship , 1998 .

[76]  M. Kohn.  Language, Power, and Persuasion: Toward a Critique of Deliberative Democracy , 2000 .

[77]  M. Wells,et al.  Integrating Protected Area Management with Local Needs and Aspirations , 2004, Ambio.

[78]  R. Beunen,et al.  Laws, People and Land Use: A Sociological Perspective on the Relation Between Laws and Land Use , 2009 .

[79]  M. Gentile,et al.  Metropolitan processes in post‐communist states: an introduction , 2007 .

[80]  Bent Flyvbjerg,et al.  Bringing Power to Planning Research , 2002 .

[81]  Frances Cleaver,et al.  Reinventing Institutions: Bricolage and the Social Embeddedness of Natural Resource Management , 2002 .

[82]  Adriana S. Benzaquén,et al.  Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1974–1975 , 2005 .

[83]  I. Szelényi,et al.  Cities After Socialism , 1996 .

[84]  T. Lemke.  An indigestible meal? Foucault, governmentality and state theory , 2007 .

[85]  K. Verdery.  The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania , 2003 .

[86]  B. Stone,et al.  Foucault, Michel . Abnormal: Lectures at the College de France,1974-1975 , New York:Picador, 2003; "Society Must Be Defended:"Lectures at the College de France, 1975-1976 . New York: Picador, 2003 , 2004 .