Insisting on not being addressed in that way: Ideology,subjection and agency in the context of spatial planning

Abstract

As planning systems in many countries have faced growing pressure over recent years, this has turned the spotlight on ethical aspects of planning, in particular the roles and identities of planners. Here the notions of ideology and subjection have served as important theoretical resources. However, these lines of thought have rarely been integrated, meaning that most studies on ideology have remained at a macro level of analysis. In response to this lacuna, the present paper uses Althusser’s concept of ideology and Butler’s concept of recognition to examine how planners perceive the scope and limits of their actions. From an ideology- and subjection-theoretical perspective, we analyse excerpts from narrative interviews conducted as part of a research project on the subjection of regional planners in Germany. Specifically, we focus on calls for public participation, using these as a basis to discuss planners’ scope of action and to identify three forms of “insisting on not being addressed in that way” (Judith Butler) at the micro level. They illustrate that interpellation and subjection are not linear, straightforward phenomena, but offer many possibilities for misrecognition or subtle forms of counter-action that could be explored more fully in future empirical research.

Keywords

planners Germany wind energy public participation ideology subjection recognition agency

Introduction

In general, any attempt to write about ideologies is rife with problems. Some authors precede their discussion with various caveats, for instance pointing out that the term itself is slippery and hard to define; others identify certain arguments as being ideologically based, or defend themselves against accusations of promoting a certain ideology. Rarely, however, is light shed on the capacity of ideologies to produce our view of things, our goals, values or even – in the context of this paper – our ideas of ‘good planning’ and ‘good planners’.

Despite the fact that planning encompasses not just technical expertise but also values, politics or negotiations (see Marshall, 2021: 1), the ideological dimension of planning was long underestimated, regarded as uninteresting for planning theory and practice.

Over the past two decades, however, this situation has gradually changed as various scholars have turned their attentions to ideology-theoretical considerations. A prominent example here is the special issue of Planning Theory entitled “Narratives of power: bringing ideology to the fore of planning analysis” (Shepherd et al., 2020b), which includes a wide range of theoretical and empirical discussions aimed at exploring “some of the ways ideology can be deployed as a tool in the analysis of planning problems” (Shepherd et al., 2020a: 6).

While it seems that we are just entering a new phase of analysis in planning theory with regard to ideologies, the field of subjection, in contrast, has long been a subject of investigation. Many authors have scrutinised how planners work on their professional identities and position themselves in the face of reforms in planning systems, driven by ideas of new public management and neoliberalism, such as in the UK (Clifford, 2022) or the Nordic countries (Sager, 2009; Grange, 2017). Others have dealt with planners’ attitudes and identities in relation to leadership (Grant et al., 2018), public participation (Zhang et al., 2020) or ideas of sustainability (Murtagh et al., 2019; Högström et al., 2018; Jepson, 2003).

It is striking to note the hitherto limited attempts to forge a connection between ideology- and subjection-theoretical perspectives. We assume that such an integration of perspectives can succeed via a planning-theoretical reading of Althusser’s work on ideology and subjection. In the following, we justify this both theoretically and empirically.

We first provide insights into current research on subjection and ideology in planning. To integrate the previously unconnected perspectives, we then apply Althusser’s concepts of ideology and interpellation and Butler’s concept of recognizability. Following this, participation as a legal and normative horizon of planning processes is considered to allow us to discuss the notion of interpellation. In the next step, we confront the theoretical framework with excerpts from the narrative interviews and discuss three different forms of planners’ responses to the call for participation. The conclusion identifies how the critical application of ideology theory can benefit planning theory and practice, with suggestions for some possible avenues for further research, such as addressing problems of representation and normativity in planning.

Subjection and planning

Although the works of Althusser and Butler form the main basis of our analysis, it is necessary to briefly introduce Foucault’s concept of subjection: first, because many other authors dealing with subjectivities of planners draw on Foucault, and second, because Butler, in particular, has taken up Foucault’s ideas and developed them further, while overlaps also exist between Foucault and Althusser – especially with regard to the technologies of power – which are rarely explored.

Foucault pointed out that every society has its own constellations of power, knowledge and truth, its own mechanisms of producing and circulating this knowledge, thereby establishing a specific relationship between knowledge and power. Foucault’s questions are concerned about the “régime of truth” (Foucault, 1980 [1977]: 131) which mediates how and under which circumstances knowledge becomes intelligible.

He showed that power consists of practices that are produced and distributed through “complex social networks” (Rouse, 1994: 106). That is one reason, we believe, why Foucault (1983) insisted that he was not greatly interested in the analysis of power itself but in its functioning as a battlefield or relation of forces that transforms individuals into subjects.

Foucault went on to claim that these processes of transformation are regulated through specific social and historical, discursive and material conditions that structure scopes of action. Thereby, the specific relations of power and knowledge either facilitate or restrict certain opportunities. Subjection is the name of the process in which individuals understand themselves as subjects within practices of knowledge, power and technologies of the self – a process in which the individual is rendered and becomes accountable and responsible for its actions and self-interpretations (Ricken, 2013: 33).

For some time, scholars have been investigating the subjection processes of planners. For instance, Healey’s ‘A Planner’s Day’ (1992), although not explicitly designed as a study of subjection, analyses the forms of knowledge and power expressed through a planner’s everyday communication, the normative demands placed on the planner as well as the role expectations with which s*he is confronted. Dealing more explicitly with the topic of subjection, Inch (2010) uses interview transcriptions to show the impact of planning reforms on planners’ (ethical) ideals, beliefs or values of planning as well as their self-concepts. In this way, he contributes to an understanding of the “politics of producing spatial planners” as “both objects and agents of reform” (Inch, 2010: 360). Very impressive is also the collection of empirical accounts by Tasan-Kok et al. (2016), which explores planners’ relationships to themselves and to their profession. The paper sheds light on the problematics and struggles of everyday planning activities as well as how they can be dealt with – from the perspective of the planners themselves. Those interviewed describe the various skills and capacities required to do the job well, e.g. the use of different professional vocabularies when attempting to meet the demands of all the diverse stakeholders of a planning project. This shows how planners form their identity by dealing with attributions and self-descriptions – not only at the beginning, but throughout their entire career (see Leibenath, 2019).

Ideology and planning

Given the long-recognized fact that planning is highly political, it is rather strange that ideologies are rarely discussed in relation to planning theory (Shepherd et al., 2020a: 12). It has even been claimed that planning is “inherently ideological” (Gunder, 2010: 299) – not only because it defines our values or norms and the way in which we appropriate spaces, but also because our ideologically-shaped beliefs and value systems influence our planning decisions and the relevance of our wishes.

One of the pioneers in planning theory, Harvey (2008 [1985]) observed these relationships and developed his thoughts on planning practice against the background of an ideology-critical diagnosis of society. In particular, he considered the role of planners in relation to the processes by which (capitalist) societies work, that is the mechanisms of reproduction, domination and subjugation – especially concerning class relations (Harvey, 2008 [1985]: 166). Adopting a Marxist perspective, Harvey pointed out that a planner’s understanding of the world is influenced by their technical expertise as well as by an ideological belief system committed to social harmony. This places the planner, as Harvey put it, “in the role of ‘righter of wrongs,’ ‘corrector of imbalances,’ and ‘defender of the public interest’” (Harvey, 2008 [1985]: 177). But at the same time – and this is frequently overlooked – this belief system underpins the reproduction of social relations. Under Harvey’s assumption that the ideology of harmony may in fact turn out to be a capitalist ideology that produces not only harmony but also “a social relation of domination of capital over labor” (Harvey, 2008 [1985]: 184), planning should be seen as a process that stabilises rather than problematises relations of inequality (see also Xue, 2022; Zanotto, 2020; Marshall, 2021).

This finding has hardly lost any of its relevance today. For instance, critical planning theory (especially when dealing with the concept of ideology) almost always refers to the problematisation of a society functioning according to market logic and neoliberalism¹ (see, e.g., Purcell, 2009: 143, who, in reference to Giroux, calls neoliberalism a “public pedagogy” to clearly emphasise its ideological character). Much like Harvey, who suggested that the neoliberal agenda is reaffirmed when harmonious negotiation processes are produced within planning practice, Purcell (2009) problematises communicative planning. In particular, he argues that communicative planning based on Habermasian ideals (in theory and practice) buttresses and legitimates the hegemonic, neoliberal status quo.

Some of the many topics developed in the already mentioned special issue on ideology and planning (Shepherd et al., 2020b) are particularly relevant for our exposition due to the similar starting point. For instance, Davoudi et al. (2020: 23; italics in the original) understand ideology as “discursive performances (the use of language within a social context for the production of specific effects) rather than consciousness, and as power-infused social interactions rather than disembodied, abstract ideas”. Against this background, the authors analyse different modes through which ideology is rhetorically established, thereby revealing how neoliberal ideologies are performed and embodied in practice by planners through “strategies of legitimation which justify specific ideas, beliefs and values as natural, inevitable and self-evident” (Davoudi et al., 2020: 32). Similar to Harvey, they show that the neoliberal ideology of planning promises planners the identity of “‘guardians of public interest’” while “redefining the meaning of public interest in economic terms” (Davoudi et al., 2020: 30; italics in the original).

After this short overview, we can thus conclude that while planning theories are indeed concerned with subjection and ideology, these perspectives are rarely brought into dialogue with one another.

Our impression is that, sociologically speaking, current papers on ideology are aimed primarily at the ‘macro level’ of society. In the main, they criticise neoliberal reforms of public planning systems and underscore the need for revision or resistance. They seek to render visible or deconstruct discourses and ideologies (see, e.g., Zanotto, 2020) so as to provide a conceptual and theoretical framework for a broader critique (Sager, 2019: 81); further, some scholars call for a transformation of the discourses and/or alternative ideologies in planning (see, e.g., Shepherd et al., 2020b).

In this context, it is important to note the frequent marginalisation of the ethical dimension of ideology occurring at the ‘micro level’, namely the subject and its lived experiences within ideology. Althusser’s concepts of ideology, ideological state apparatuses and processes of interpellation as well as Butler’s thoughts on recognition provide useful starting points for such ethical reflections. Some authors such as Inch (2010) and Fox-Rogers and Murphy (2016) have already examined how “role orientations of planners are shaped by dominant discourses in planning ideology at present, namely, collaborative and participatory approaches” (Fox-Rogers and Murphy, 2016: 80). We tie in with these papers and elucidate three forms of how planners insist “on not being addressed in that way” (Butler, 1997: 95).

Interpellation

Although the term ‘ideology’ is often understood in a pejorative sense (see, e.g. van Dijk, 1998: 1), there do exist other more ambivalent or indeed neutral usages.² Since our focus is on subjection, we intend to follow a specific line of reasoning that foregrounds the relations between ideology and the self. Such relations encompass “the practical as well as the theoretical knowledges which enable people to ‘figure out’ society, and within whose categories and discourses we ‘live out’ and ‘experience’ our objective positioning in social relations” (Hall, 1996: 27). Hence, for us, the term ‘ideology’ has neither a negative connotation nor does it refer to a supposedly false consciousness. Similar to many other planning theorists, we use ‘ideology’ in a neutral sense as an analytical concept.

This understanding of ideology as a relation of individuals to their lived conditions has been prominently advocated by Louis Althusser, who reformulated the Marxist notion of ideology (Hall, 1996). Althusser’s concentration on scenes of ‘interpellation’ enabled a fundamental shift in theoretical thinking about ideologies by rendering obsolete the true-false dichotomy of ideas and beliefs.

Drawing on a Lacanian perspective, Althusser formulated the concept of interpellation to describe the impetus for transformation that turns individuals into subjects. In his understanding, ideology “interpellates individuals as subjects“ (Althusser, 2014: 261).

Althusser’s example of a policeman who hails a passer-by on the street with “Hey, you there!” (2014: 264) has become an ‘origin story’ of interpellation (see Saar, 2013: 18). Here two aspects must be differentiated: firstly, the act of hailing and, in particular, the hailer’s status as policeman; secondly, the understanding or ‘consent’ of the individual hailed that the utterance applies to them. Precisely this consent is the decisive moment of subjection: “By this mere 180-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject. Why? Because he has recognized that the hail was ‘really’ addressed to him, and that ‘it was really him who was hailed’ (and not someone else)” (Althusser, 2014: 264; italics in original).

Here it is crucial to note – as Butler did – that the subject is not identical with the individual but rather a “linguistic category, a placeholder, a structure in formation” (Butler, 1997: 10). Individuals gain comprehensibility only by occupying the place of the subject, a process Butler calls intelligibility. Achieving intelligibility (or occupying a subject-position) only works through ideology, through interpellation and conversion. The name – or better: the address – ‘planner’ not only enables the individual to gain intelligibility but also forms the starting point of his or her “agency” (Butler, 1997: 11), because the process of naming brings the subject to a specific place at a specific time (Butler, 2021: 29).

It becomes apparent that Butler, with recourse to Foucault and Althusser, provides an explanation for the subject's voluntary submission to power. While Foucault strongly emphasises the relationship between subjugation and transgression as a moment of power and knowledge, Butler's reading of Althusser has enabled a new perspective on “the psychic life of power” (Butler, 1997: in the title): Drawing on both Foucault and Althusser, she develops a psychoanalytic reading of subjection as a “stubborn attachment” (Butler, 1997: 31) to ideology that adds an ethical dimension to relations of knowledge and power.

That is why we have argued that by linking theories of ideology and subjection, it is possible to elaborate an ethical dimension of ideology, namely how the subject is stimulated to relate to and transform themself. By way of explanation, we can say that the name is associated with certain ‘ways of behaving’, with possibilities and limits of action: planners can be expected to respond differently depending on whether they are being addressed by citizens, politicians or colleagues and as who they are being addressed, e.g. as a planner, an environmental activist or a homeowner. They are “always already” (Althusser, 2014: 265) marked as specific subjects, which means: there is no outside of ideology (Hall, 1985: 103). When someone is addressed as a ‘planner’, s*he becomes implicated in the normative framework of what it means to be or become a planner. That is, s*he must accept these ‘norms of recognition’ as valid for her or him. “Power can only act upon a subject if it imposes norms of recognizability on that subject’s existence. Further, the subject must desire recognition, and so find him- or herself fundamentally attached to the categories which guarantee social existence” (Butler, 2002: 17).

As well as analysing these normative orders within which the subject is placed, it is also possible to examine the potentials, limits and scope of self-positioning governed by such normative horizons. From a political point of view, the question is: “What must I be in order to be recognized, and what criterion holds sway here at the very condition of my own emergence?” (Butler, 2002: 19).

In the following, we briefly introduce our empirical methodology before discussing Althusser’s concept of ‘Ideological State Apparatuses’ (ISA) and theorising the ‘recognizability’ of planners in relation to the discourse of participation.

Methods

Our empirical material stems from a research project in which narrative, biographic interviews were conducted with 18 German regional planners over a period of two years (2017-2019). Such interviews combine elements of unstructured and semi-structured interviews (Corbin and Strauss, 2015) and are typically subdivided into three sections: The first begins with an open question, e.g. “Please tell me about your life, how one thing lead to another”, followed by other open questions such as “Please describe your last day at work” (Amling and Geimer, 2016: 16). The second phase is characterised by the interviewer raising more specific questions, which, however, tie in with the initial narration. In the third section, the interviewer asks pre-formulated questions arising out of the theoretical framework, for instance concerning subjection and identity work: “How would you describe the most important qualities of someone in your position?” (Amling and Geimer, 2016; Schütze, 1983).The interviewees were active at the regional level of spatial planning in all of Germany’s states (Länder), with the exception of the three city states of Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen, where the regional level of spatial planning is virtually non-existent (see also Leibenath, 2019).³ All interviews were transcribed verbatim and then coded with a combination of theoretical and empirical codes. In the ensuing analytical process, we pursued a research design characterised by openness, circularity and constant ‘dialogues’ between theory and empirical analyses as “multiple moves back and forth between theory and empirical research increase awareness of the problem and help formulate the findings more precisely” (Herschinger, 2014: 631). Hence, the analysis proceeded in a spiral movement in which empirical findings and theoretical propositions became refined.

Regional planning is an integral component of Germany’s multi-tiered, nested system of statutory spatial planning. It includes comprehensive, legally binding plans for states, regions and municipalities. Due to the country’s federalist system, the organisation of regional planning varies from state to state, many of which are subdivided into so-called planning regions. These regions each dispose of a staff of planning officials as well as an assembly of elected political representatives, functioning as a decision-making body. Hence, the staff members are planners in a technical sense, while the assembly members are true political decision-makers. As a whole, Germany’s system of spatial planning has remained remarkably stable, notwithstanding constant amendments of the Federal Spatial Planning Act (which sets the frame for respective state laws). Regional planning has gained in importance and attracted increased public attention in the course of the wind energy boom, because decisions on siting the frequently contested wind energy developments are usually enshrined in regional plans (Monstadt and Meilinger, 2020; Zimmermann and Momm, 2022; Leibenath et al., 2016).

Since ideologies do not explicitly reveal themselves as such (see van Dijk, 1998: 6), it is important to clarify how exactly we intend to treat the empirical material: with the aim of exploring German regional planners’ understandings of their roles in the field of spatial planning, we analyse the interviews to draw out that which otherwise would remain implicit, namely how ideology produces subjectivities.

For this we will illuminate some of the ideas and beliefs that the regional planners produced in the interviews regarding their job and the ways in which this work should (not) be done. We focus on how planners – often implicitly – express normative demands on their profession and its tasks. That is to say, what they anticipate as being required and, in particular, what they assume other actors in the field (such as citizens, investors or politicians) expect from them.

Participation as a legal and normative horizon of planning processes

Ideology can only be brought into existence through actions. All our acts are “located within the rituals of specific apparatuses or social institutions and organizations” (Hall, 1985: 99). Althusser calls the latter ‘Ideological State Apparatuses’ (ISAs), distinguishing these from the ‘Repressive State Apparatus’ (RSA).⁴

Althusser uses the term ISA to identify the necessary conditions for the reproduction of labour. ISAs have the “function of ‘cultivating’ labor of a certain moral and cultural kind” (Hall, 1985: 98). This means a labour force that subordinates itself to the conditions of reproduction. ISAs guarantee the functioning of the economic basis of society: social values are inscribed in the consciousness of individuals in such a way that they experience them as goals to be realised individually and thus ‘voluntarily’ take their assigned place within (material re-)production.

This becomes particularly clear when we look at the so-called ‘hidden curriculum’ discussed by Jackson (1990). Clearly, students learn not just the curriculum prescribed by educational policy but also how to behave and which routines or socially accepted rules to follow in order to get along in school. In other words, they learn to be good students so that they can later become good citizens.

Unsurprisingly, authors such as Law-Yone (2007) and Gunder (2010) have asserted that planning itself must be considered an ISA, functioning as a basis for the “state logic” to become “internalized and normalized in the minds and bodies of citizens” (Law-Yone, 2007: 319 f.). If neoliberalism, as established above, shapes planning practices as well as planning goals, beliefs, etc., then it must be assumed that precisely these neoliberal values and beliefs are being processed in the ISA of planning.

Returning to the hidden curriculum, which works by cultivating a particular morality, we could say that the ways in which the subjects of planning are addressed encourage them to develop certain ideas, for example “regarding the role of the state, market, and regulations” as well as “values such as competition, privatization, and individualism” (Zanotto, 2020: 108). Just as the school-based ISA conveys images of the ‘good’ student, the planning ISA conveys images of the ‘good’ planner.

Although a thorough analysis of the dominant ideologies of spatial planning in Germany is still lacking, and lies beyond the scope of this paper, some tendencies can be traced. According to Waterhout et al. (2012), neoliberalism had far less influence on planning systems of countries in northwest Europe such as Germany than on those of England or Ireland. However, planning in Germany is also embedded in an ideological framework geared to economic growth and the competitiveness of the German economy, which implies constant provision of newly designated areas for infrastructural and building purposes. According to the Federal Spatial Planning Act as well as official spatial visions and strategies (e.g., SCMSP, 2016), social and ecological concerns always have to be balanced with economic concerns. Notwithstanding the growing number of voices calling for more radical steps to deal with climate change and the loss of biodiversity, the current ideological framework mainly facilitates policies of ecological modernisation such as installing wind turbines and photovoltaic panels. All this is at odds with legal stipulations for public participation, because in practice there is little leeway to deviate from the path of economic growth and ecological modernisation. This situation resembles the “post-political condition” described by Swyngedouw (2011).

In the context of spatial planning in Germany, ‘participation’ refers to the process of informing and consulting with relevant branches of local and district governments as well as the broader public in the final stages of setting up a spatial plan. Federal and state legislation, in conjunction with the requirements of EU policies such as the Directive on Strategic Environmental Assessments, stipulates that draft versions of spatial plans must be made publicly accessible and that any citizen should receive the opportunity to raise concerns and to submit written opinions. The planning agency in charge has to collect and consider these submissions as well as to state if and how they were considered.

Moreover, calls for a wider participation beyond what is legally required can be found in many brochures, guidelines and scientific reports on spatial planning in Germany. Often these proposals refer to contentious issues such as wind energy (Bimesdörfer, 2014; Schmelter and Köppel, 2014; Schweizer et al., 2016; Bock et al., 2017). To meet these demands, planning agencies frequently adopt informal approaches to public participation ranging from roundtable discussions, hearings and working groups to regional visioning processes (Leibenath et al., 2016; Hartz et al., 2014). Such efforts can be designed to involve civic initiatives such as anti-wind power protest groups and pro-wind power energy cooperatives (Bues, 2020).

Returning to our theoretical argument, the legal requirements for public participation in spatial planning as well as the expectations articulated by researchers, policy-makers and citizens can be regarded as powerful interpellations addressed at those individuals working “at the coalface” (Clifford, 2007) of spatial planning in Germany, namely the planners. So how do they perceive this legal and normative horizon, which requires citizen participation while at the same time restricting it, often engendering public frustration and anger?

Many of the planners we interviewed told us that in regard to processes of public participation, you need a certain kind of “capacity for suffering” (I-13). Other statements expressed similar sentiments: “the frustration tolerances have to be really enormous” (I-3), you need a “thick skin” (I-4) or have to be “stress-resistant” (I-1). Some pointed out the need for a passion, “a certain enthusiasm or something” (I-16) for the profession, which must be maintained: “You mustn’t forget to somehow keep your motivation as well as your heart and soul intact, even if that’s difficult” (I-4). One planner also referred to “certain moral standards” (I-7), which in his case means that you must “always remain friendly and objective” (I-7) and that “justice for all concerns or all interests” (I-7) be ensured; even more frequently, the interviewees asserted the need to be “very communicative” (I-18). These quotes exemplify how planners understand the prevailing requirements for participatory planning processes in Germany and the resulting expectations to which they are exposed.

It is clear that these variations in the call for participation generate a wide array of requirements, which in turn elicit specific behaviours on the part of planners. With these ‘demands’, e.g. for certain ‘moral standards’, planners articulate normative horizons or – as Butler would say – norms of recognition of their profession. Regarding the question of recognizability, the implication is that planners are more or less compelled to respond to the call for participation: individuals who want to receive the name ‘planner’ cannot escape such a call, because the name (or subject position) ‘planner’ is accompanied by a specific (e.g. participatory) ideology and normative framework.

Here, Butler's theory of recognition is very much in line in with what Foucault wanted to clarify about the functioning of truth regimes: By placing Mendel's findings on heredity at the centre of his considerations, Foucault showed that history and context structure what can be considered knowledge and truth (Foucault, 1981). Although Mendel had discovered the 'truth' about the process of inheritance, this 'knowledge' could not claim validity: it could not be perceived within the truth regime of the time. Foucault was thus able to work out that truth is not simply objectively given and discoverable. Knowledge must be recognised as truth by others, such as the scientific community, in order to become truth. Butler's aim was to explore these processes of authorisation and recognition and their implications for the limits and possibilities they offer to individuals.

What we learn from the connection between Foucault's regime of truth and Butler's further development of authorisation and recognition is the historical and contextual conditionality of agency. The norms of recognition do not apply once and for all, but are tied to a specific time and a specific place. However, the way in which they achieve validity, i.e. what is considered a 'legitimate position' in the field of planning at any given time, simultaneously produces and limits the agency of planners. Just as we generally cannot consciously choose the conditions of our existence, planners cannot choose the ideological conditions (notions, ideas, expectations, etc.) of their profession: “Subjection consists precisely in this fundamental dependency on a discourse we never chose but that, paradoxically, initiates and sustains our agency” (Butler, 1997: 2).

Planners cannot simply pretend that the issue of participation is none of their business: “To act professionally as a committed planner requires a self-imposition of behaviours and practices that meet the expectations, norms and dominant values of the planning discipline” (Gunder and Hillier, 2004: 218).

Interpellation and conversion: how planners respond to the call for participation

While planners cannot escape the call for participation, we still do not know what it means for them to ‘follow the call’ or what concrete scope of action exists. The question to be answered is thus: Is it possible for planners to be recognizable and nonetheless indicate limits to participation? Butler’s answer here is that any interpellation process will feature moments of misrecognition: “The one who is hailed may fail to hear, misread the call, turn the other way, answer to another name, insist on not being addressed in that way” (Butler, 1997: 95).

Interestingly, the planning literature dealing with the critique of ideologies often emphasises the resistive moment of rejection (e.g., Law-Yone, 2007; Xue, 2022). This is a more or less sovereign gesture that takes a firm ‘no’ as the starting point for resistance, but we find virtually no such examples in our data.

Less often considered in the literature, however, is a form of resistance that is not based on a sovereign decision, but is rather incidental. Butler's remarks on “subjection, resistance, resignification” (Butler, 1997: 83) point in precisely this direction: She sees a form of misrecognition in the fact that the interaction becomes resistant without prior intention. This act cannot therefore be directly attributed to a critical subject, and yet it is resistant to the hailing. This moment of misrecognition offers a different view of what is usually called resistance, because it is something other than a deliberate counter-action and yet produces resistant effects, as we will show below.

However, ‚insisting on not being addressed in that way‘ should not necessarily be understood as a conscious act. The possibility of misrecognition inevitably arises through the repetitive nature of acting. Lissandrello et al. (2017) assume with Butler that planning must be understood as routinised, and thus repetitive, acts by planners: “Planning as performative points to what can be understood as an iterative activity based on a repetition – and thus a reproduction – of a specific range of normalized practices” (Lissandrello et al., 2017: 4). Clearly, for power or ideologies to persist, they must be repeated by subjects (Butler, 1997: 16); yet the repetition of an act is never identical to what came before. This explains why the possibility of change is grounded in each of these acts.

In what follows, we consider three such situations in which the norms of recognizability are repeated, but in which there simultaneously occur different moments of misrecognition. The three situations epitomise micro-level mechanisms.

The first situation centres on the idea of withstanding. Previously we quoted an interviewee who talked about the need to have a thick skin. In a similar vein, another planner referred to participating citizens who were trying to get the planners to work in their favour and explained in more detail:

“If we [...] are to be used for individual egoistic interests; and if you then derive personal accusations from it – that’s what annoys me. I can still look at the whole thing with a lot of irony, because in the end I know we have the upper hand. But at the same time, I think it’s stupid. I can withstand all of that, but an employee who isn’t used to dealing with it publicly like that doesn’t think it’s so funny. And then I have to make sure that people like that are protected if they can’t do it or don’t know it or whatever. And that’s what I consider annoying. I also think it’s unnecessary.” (I-17)

On the one hand, this statement indicates the planner’s compliance with the normative requirement of affirming participation processes. Even those processes that serve “egoistic interests” are not per se to be excluded from the discourse. He gives two reasons for this: firstly, the planners “have the upper hand”. This means, for example, that they possess a high level of professional expertise that citizens usually do not have and, furthermore, enjoy a degree of (political) agency: “basically, we give political advice” (I-3). In principle, so the argument goes, he can withstand “stupid” participatory processes because, in the end, the victory in the contest is predetermined. Secondly, there are planners – like him, as head of the planning agency – who are more resilient than others in dealing with such situations and who are also able to “protect” others. Withstanding here seems to be a kind of marker that distinguishes planners who are used to “dealing with it publicly like that” from those who are not (yet). The latter will be spared and “protected” for the time being.

On the other hand, one can assume that to “withstand” is also a form of distancing from the interpellation: by emphasising that his endurance is a reaction to the perceived “stupid” form of participation, the planner makes it clear that citizen participation is also tied to conditions of recognition. In his response, the planner thus affirmatively refers to the interpellation while narrowing down the field of ‘intelligible’ participation. Even if not explicitly addressed by the interviewee, the question about who planners have to be “in order to be recognized” (Butler, 2002: 19) is always tied to another question: What constitutes a ‘recognizable form’ of participation?

Our second empirical vignette highlights a contrast between the subject position implied in a certain interpellation and the self-image of the one who is interpellated and who insists on being a different kind of person as well. Rimbaud’s phrase “Je est un autre” (Arthur Rimbaud 1871, quoted in Brunelle et al., 2013: 818; literally: “I is another”), illustrates the notion that the act of hailing an individual’s address is associated with specific positioning offers that can overlap or contradict other positionings. When one of our interviewees was asked to describe her relationship with citizens, she replied:

“Well, I, for one, don’t really have a relationship with them. Most of them are complete strangers. I have them on the phone and then I might see them again somewhere, but I don’t even know that they have called me two or three times already. So, first of all, these are people who are strangers to me personally, but who have some concern that is my responsibility. For the callers, I’m sure I’m a different person: simply the representative of the institution that causes them trouble, distress and problems.” (I-10)

When asked to explain her relationship with citizens, she chose two narratives: one describing her own position, i.e. that the citizens are strangers to her, and the other outlining her idea of what the citizens think of her, i.e. that she is not a stranger but regarded as a “representative of the institution that causes trouble”.

Previously, we theorised that planning practices are enacted in the ISA of planning. Here it could be said that the planner sees herself addressed (through the eyes of the citizens) as a representative of this ISA. She affirms the position by claiming to be “sure” that this is the perception: as a planner, she is always a representative of the planning system. However, she distances herself to some extent from this particular positioning by highlighting the difference between self-perception and the perception of others. Only in the eyes of the others is she the “representative” who causes “trouble”. This is not how the planner sees herself, but rather “a different person”… une autre.

In our final example, we want to discuss a conversion that can be understood even more strongly as a demarcation against a specific form of call for participation. The interviewer provided the following stimulus: “Please tell me about somebody who really impressed you.” Following this suggestion, the interviewee elaborates:

“Well, this is someone who just … Well, we have, we call it a bit of a protest village. There, in the surroundings of this village, wind turbines are planned. And this protest village is of course very active in ensuring that the wind turbines are not built in this village. […] And there are three people in particular who are very active in this area. And one of them is just VERY active. Calls all the time, too. Comes into the office just like that. […] So, of course, they particularly stick in your mind, such people. […] Because of course you try to treat people reasonably and keep things at a professional level. But he is trying anyhow to make it personal. We don’t want that. Because I’m doing this as a job, too. I’m not ‘the’ planner of wind energy in person or anything else. Instead, erm… he’s got it in the meantime. But it’s not that easy sometimes. I’ve also met him at the weekly market. He talked to me right away. But I’m thinking: ‘Yes, but now I’m here as a private person and not on the job.’ Some can’t tell that apart. You realise that from time to time.” (I-9)

While many interviewees responded to the opening stimulus by describing a ‘role model’ for their work, this interviewee chose another story. She describes a citizen who behaved in an encroaching manner toward her. The planner explicitly points out that others ought to be able to make a distinction between her professional and private lives. However, the citizen did not make this distinction in an area designated as recreational for the respondent.

Following Butler (1997), we could say the planner shows that she does not want to be addressed in this way at this point in time and in this place. The planner highlights the ‘limits’ of the interpellation to participation, thereby displaying a form of agency.

She describes two delimitations: first, in saying “I’m doing this as a job, too”, she rejects a positioning that mixes the private and the professional. Possibly this refers to the projected ‘image of the planner’ and to the norms of recognizability discussed above. In many other interviews, “enthusiasm” (I-16), “passion” (I-1), or “heart and soul” (I-4; I-16) were reported as necessary for the practice of the profession. The fact that one can also do a job ‘just’ as a job (and not necessarily be absorbed in it) seems here to be a first demarcation from the ‘discursive identity offer’.

The second demarcation refers to the context: at the local market, she is a private person. Of course, the fact of being addressed by the citizen confirms that the identity as planner cannot simply be discarded, even at such a location; but it is precisely this repetitive interpellation that allows an articulation of the discrepancy between the professional and private positions. The repetition makes it possible to show the interpellation as illegitimate here and now.

Gunder and Hillier (2004: 225) point out that “[o]ur individual identities as a subject, however, are fundamentally different from our group identifications”. The above example shows that the subject position ‘planner’ (as it were, the group identification) cannot simply be discarded, even at the weekly market. Yet even if the interviewee is indeed a planner, she insists on always being someone else as well. Agency becomes visible in this example as a ‘work of subjection’: by insisting on “always already” (Althusser, 2014: 265) being someone else, the norms of having to be a (participation-oriented) planner can be distanced to a certain extent.

Discussion

We will address two issues in this section. First, in the planning literature, there are frequent calls not merely to investigate and critique ideologies, but also to take action. This is a specific way of formulating a critique of ideology; the resistance here manifests itself as a more or less conscious rejection of prevailing norms and values. From such a perspective, theory is supposed to foster societal change so that it “moves further from a pure critique of beliefs and ideas to include positive action to transform the ideology” (Xue, 2022: 126). Especially from a feminist perspective, such attempts have already been made, for instance in studies that explore the possibilities of political solidarity in planning processes (see Jon, 2020), namely how marginalised groups can be given a voice in planning that they otherwise lack.

However, these demands for ‘different ideologies’ or for counter-action in planning practice always pose a certain degree of risk: if ideological critique is supposed to turn planning processes into normative and utopian projects so as to enable “an imagining of better alternatives” (Xue, 2022: 126), the discussion must also turn to the contested, “‘political’ and therefore value-based character of the activities with which planners engage” (Campbell, 2012). In particular, the issue of representation must not be overlooked: the question of who is entitled to know and/or decide what is the better or best alternative remains unanswered and, furthermore, the fact that relations of inequality will still be re-enacted, for example between those who are (not) heard and those who listen. In our opinion, further critical analysis and research is needed at this point – for example, based on Jacques Rancière’s (1999) insights on ‘disagreement’ (see, e.g., Dikeç, 2012; or van Wymeersch et al., 2020).

It is in the light of this problem, among others, that we wanted to address another form of resistance. We have highlighted moments of resistance in the everyday actions of planners, emphasising the ideological becoming of the planning subject and asking about its possible scope for action. In so doing, it was important for us not to think of this form of agency as a deliberate decision of the subject or to discuss it as the opposite of power. Referring to the concept of ideology, we assume with Rouse: “Resistance cannot be external to power, because power is not a system of domination with an inside or an outside” (Rouse, 1994: 108).

From our perspective, that means the planning subject remains unintentionally bound to the conditions of subjection and ideology, and cannot simply be made to transcend these conditions. Its agency consists rather in the fact that, while the conditions are being recognized, moments of misrecognition will also occur (Butler, 1997). While these moments of misrecognition will serve to prolong forever the process of subjection (Eagleton, 2007: 145), in this infinity of repetitions of subjection and positioning there exists the potential for the practices of conversion to be less compatible than expected with the hailing.

With Butler, we have described a form of resistance that has the potential to re-signify norms of recognition. In contrast to a resistance that forms on the basis of a decisive ‘no’, this resistance operates in a subtle way that materialises into resistance over time. We have just presented empirical examples to illustrate this: The aim was not to show that the planners are trying to break through the planning ideology, but to address how they position themselves as actors: They are hailed and respond in their own way with a ‘no’ by behaving in a way that is incompatible with the call – whether they do this deliberately or not is of little importance.

Even if this positioning in the situation does not, at first sight, lead to anything that could be understood as a critique of ideology, this act of insisting on not being addressed in that way is relevant on the one hand at an ethical level: The planners inevitably position themselves against the call to fulfil the expectation here and now.

On the other hand, we would like to emphasise that this gives us impulses for critical normative reflection. This is the second point we wish to underline: It is also the task of research to talk about the normative horizons that planners have revealed in our empirical material. This concerns, for example, the ‘necessity’ of participation, even if it is “stupid”.

With Butler, we initially raised the question of recognition theory: “What must I be in order to be recognized, and what criterion holds sway here at the very condition of my own emergence?” (Butler, 2002: 19). With this question in mind, it is important to discuss the aforementioned norms of recognizability of planners. One might ask, for example, whether planners should really be expected to endure the various concomitant frustrations of participatory processes, e.g. “that others just insult you” (I-4).

We have shown that recognition is embedded in power relations. Identities are fixed through recognition relations and subjects are assigned to a certain place. Our perspective on resistance shows that we need to talk about these identity constructions in the context of recognizability in order to address and negotiate transformations of the legitimate demands (norms) on planners from there.

If the recognizable position of planners is that it is considered normal to be offended in a participatory process, this repeatedly normalises injurious speech (Butler, 2021) as a legitimate means of citizen participation. In this respect, the ethical dimension of subjection processes also points in the direction of a discussion about ethical planning: When we analyse the recognizability of planners and examine how planners resist certain ideas about their tasks, it is always because this reveals possible other images of the ‘good planner’. In the frame of ethical debates (see, e.g., Lennon and Fox-Rogers, 2016; McClymont, 2018), these conditions of recognizability could be rendered more visible and thereby problematised. And from the perspective of recognition theory, one could also ask, in fundamental terms, “what normative perspective a planner should be equipped with” (Jon, 2020: 151).

This is why we need to study how planners manage to act in unexpected ways despite (or within) the interpellation and conditions of misrecognition, and why we can learn so much from empirical examples. It helps us to see which norms and values are rejected by the planners, even if they do not make this explicit or act in a dismissive manner. The question of ideology then plays out less at the level of the mind and the necessity of changing it (see also Foucault, 1980 [1977]: 133). Rather, one begins to pay attention to the conditions (such as norms of recognizability) that help explain how concrete, personal resistance is exercised against these ideological “attachments” (Butler, 1997) – without immediately assuming that the ideology per se has been seen through and thus invalidated.

Ideology and recognition theory thus also sensitises us to a broader understanding of resistance. While resistance is often seen as a form of opposition, for example in the form of a protest action, the theoretical framework presented here makes it clear that possibilities for resistance can also be found where one would not initially expect them, namely in the repetition of the conditions of recognition of the planning action. Small changes to these conditions open up a broad horizon of resistance possibilities. This horizon can be explored through the analysis of empirical material while applying the theoretical framing of Butler and Althusser. In addition to the subtle mechanisms we have elucidated and open opposition as the other extreme, there probably exist many intermediate forms of resistance that operate between these poles.

Conclusion

By integrating Althusser’s take on ideology and interpellation with Butler’s thoughts on subjection and recognizability, and by confronting these theoretical considerations with findings from narrative interviews with regional planners in Germany, we were able to discern three different manifestations of misrecognition. The planners interviewed described these moments as withstanding, as being a different person as well and as not being addressable as a planner in private life. By challenging valid conditions of recognition, these manifestations point to forms of resistance that can certainly be found in a similar way in other empirical materials and may be complemented by other types of misrecognition.

These insights from the micro-level of spatial planning add to the existing literature on both ideology and subjection as well as regional planning, which is rather oriented towards the macro-level of society (see, e.g., Davoudi and Brooks, 2021; Dixon et al., 2023; Harrison et al., 2021). They illustrate that interpellation and subjection are not linear, straightforward phenomena, but offer many possibilities for misrecognition or counter-conduct (Death, 2010). This is relevant not only to the ideology of participatory planning, but perhaps even more so in relation to the dominant ideology of ecological modernisation and the concomitant largely unfettered use of natural resources such as fertile soils, fossil fuels and sand. Seen this way, our analysis speaks to other studies of resistant behaviour in public administration such as Hysing and Olsson’s (2018) work on “green inside activism” in local government, Inch’s (2010) study of changing planning culture through changing planners’ identities or Robertson’s (2010) auto-ethnographic account of performing the subjectivity of an environmental bureaucrat within a neoliberal state.

The combination of power-critical, subjection- and ideology-theoretical perspectives enables us to conduct a much deeper form of analysis. In this way, we can identify precisely those moments when resistance became possible and thus open up fresh avenues to explore other horizons of possibilities and foundations for resistant action. In addition, empirical analyses offer opportunities to reflect on ideas of the ‘good planner’, which can be problematised scientifically, and to discuss questions of planning ethics.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/ or publication of this article: This work was supported by the German Research Foundation [Grant Number 401342127].

ORCID iDs

Sabrina Schröder

Markus Leibenath

Notes

Author biographies

Markus Leibenath is Professor of Landscape Planning and Communication at the University of Kassel, Germany. His research areas include the roles and identities of planners, participatory planning, landscape governance, biodiversity conservation and sustainability transformations.

Sabrina Schröder is PhD candidate in the Department of Theory and History of Education at Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main, Germany. Her dissertation focuses on power relations within the practices of examination and subjectivation.

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