Partecipazione e apprendimento democratico: narrative, retoriche e miti

This article is about the role of participation in spreading changing, learning and innovation in the public administration and in empowering the democratic skills of citizens. It analyzes the case of the Creeks Task Force, established by the City of Berkeley (CA) to tackle the problem of the watershed management. The methodology applied is the interpretative one: a method aiming to explore the different narratives of the "communities of meaning" interested by the issue. This methodology goes beyond facts to focus on the actors’ meanings, interpretations and conflicts. Applying it to such a participative city as Berkeley, where the community participation in decision taking has a long tradition, gets the rhetoric and myths behind those narratives to emerge. That’s how we discover the construction of a different and simplified reality hiding the one we are actually facing in analyzing the case. And it’s by means of this complexity that the interpretative method can help the researcher, but also the practitioner, in decoding and overcoming conflicts, that often arise where narratives are not outspoken or not listened to, thus collecting "areas of silence" in public discourse.

Keywords: Participation, Learning, Interpretative Method, Innovation, Script

Jel codes: H75

Patrizia Daneluzzo, Partecipazione e apprendimento democratico: narrative, retoriche e miti in "ECONOMIA E SOCIETÀ REGIONALE " 3/2011, pp 126-147, DOI: 10.3280/ES2011-003012