a dialogical approach to conceptualizing resident participation in community organizing

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A Dialogical Approach to ConceptualizingResident Participation in CommunityOrganizingCourtney Hanny a & Kevin O'Connor ba University of Rochesterb University of ColoradoAccepted author version posted online: 25 Jan 2013.Publishedonline: 05 Sep 2013.

To cite this article: Courtney Hanny & Kevin O'Connor (2013) A Dialogical Approach toConceptualizing Resident Participation in Community Organizing, Mind, Culture, and Activity, 20:4,338-357, DOI: 10.1080/10749039.2012.757322

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on behalf of the Laboratory of Comparative Human CognitionISSN 1074-9039 print / 1532-7884 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10749039.2012.757322

A Dialogical Approach to Conceptualizing ResidentParticipation in Community Organizing

Courtney HannyUniversity of Rochester

Kevin O’ConnorUniversity of Colorado

This article considers “concept formation in the wild” among community organizers aiming to initiatechange through processes involving resident participation and dialogue with community members.While this approach is thought to be more effective than “top down” processes, there is little clearunderstanding of how conceptualizations of resident participation translate into authentic dialogueor substantive change. Our dialogical approach examines how a planning committee worked throughdiffering interpretations of resident participation, as a concept and a way of being, and suggests thatgenuine dialogicality can point toward experimental forms of relating and increase possibilities forconceptualizing and organizing social futures.

INTRODUCTION

In his commentary on the previous special issue on concept formation in the wild, Hutchins(2012) read the contributions with an eye for the “processes and mechanisms that create andmaintain distributed conceptual order” (p. 316) in the contexts described by the authors. Thisarticle contributes to the current special issue by considering such processes and mechanisms inthe context of a community development initiative in which “resident participation” was dialog-ically conceptualized and reconceptualized over time. The aims of this article are twofold. First,we hope to contribute to the ongoing discussion of concept formation in the wild by analyz-ing how achieving shared conceptual order is particularly challenging when roles and objectivesare not fixed and still emergent. Second, we hope that this account of concept formation in thewild will add a layer of complexity to the growing body of research on community developmentwith emancipatory aims (Cooper, Chak, Cornish, & Gillespie, 2012; Cornish, 2006; Cornish &Ghosh, 2007; Freire, 1970; Jovchelovitch, 2008; Kim & Kim, 2008). Researchers and activists

Correspondence should be sent to Courtney Hanny, Department of Education, University of Rochester, WarnerSchool, LeChase Hall, River Campus, Rochester, NY 14627. E-mail: [email protected]

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A DIALOGICAL APPROACH TO CONCEPTUALIZING 339

in this tradition have long called for the inclusion within planning processes of (often sociopolit-ically marginalized) persons who live within areas targeted for change, emphasizing the value ofdeliberative contributions from resident participants for identifying current problems and plan-ning improved futures. But precisely how the inclusion of residents in deliberations and planningtranslates or fails to translate into “authentic dialogue” (Linell, 1998) or genuine “knowledgeencounters” (Jovchelovitch, 2008) is difficult to pinpoint and remains underexamined.

Researchers focusing specifically on meeting talk (Howard & Lipinoga, 2010; O’Connor,Hanny, & Lewis, 2011; Quiñones, Ares, Padela, Hopper, & Webster, 2011; Tracy, 2002; Tracy &Durfy, 2007) have shown that voices of members of nondominant groups are often silenced bythe effects of disparate control of interactional norms, semiotic codes, and contextualization cues(Blommaert, 2005), despite intentions by organizers to make decision-making processes inclusiveand equitable. The organizers of the urban change initiative analyzed in this article were com-mitted to inclusive decision making, in which neighborhood residents’ voices and perspectiveswere of primary importance. With that in mind, the research question guiding our analysis is thefollowing: How did participants in an urban change project work together to develop and chal-lenge conceptualizations of RESIDENT PARTICIPATION1 as a central component of their work?To address this question, we focus on both ways of talking about and ways of enacting RESIDENT

PARTICIPATION as reflective of both cognitive and embodied constructions of conceptual orderand knowledge encounters.

Our analysis focuses on The Community for the Children of Lakeview2 (CCL). The CCL wasan urban change initiative aimed at improving social conditions in a region of a Northeast U.S.city with a long history of economic struggle, ethnic and racial tensions, and systemic underser-vice from government and social service agencies. Previous attempts to “fix” this community’sproblems from the outside had failed and left many residents highly skeptical of such projects.In the interest of encouraging buy-in from community members, CCL leaders adopted a com-mitment to resident participation as one of its central organizing principles, aiming to involvecommunity residents at all levels of planning and decision making. Although the inclusionof residents was a consistent and shared commitment of the CCL, what RESIDENT PARTIC-IPATION was and expectations for what it should look like changed over time and throughinteractions.

The contexts and kinds of human action analyzed in this article differ in important ways fromHutchins’s (1995) paradigmatic analysis of “cognition in the wild” in naval navigation. In mak-ing his case for the fundamentally distributed nature of cognition, Hutchins examined cognitivepractices in a largely stabilized and institutionalized activity, one in which participants’ roles andgoals were identifiable and more or less fixed. In contrast, roles in the CCL planning processeswere intentionally loosely defined and outcomes were intentionally not predetermined. That is,although the CCL’s general goal of “improved futures” for all children was stated from the begin-ning, developing (a shared sense of) objectives and roles emerged through action and interactionwithin the process itself. Recognition of the indeterminate and emergent nature of this processis important for understanding how participants achieved shared perspectives, how new kinds of

1RESIDENT PARTICIPATION (and RESIDENT PARTICIPANT) are used when referring to the terms as concepts-under-construction, to distinguish them from the terms used in their usual senses or in quoted speech.

2All proper names of organizations and persons in this article are pseudonyms.

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340 HANNY AND O’CONNOR

perspectives and new kinds of persons emerged from these processes, and how complex powerdynamics influenced the social conditions that shaped the project itself.

We adopt a dialogical approach to discuss concept formation as reflective of the potentials andlimitations of monological and dialogical orientations in a two-part analysis. The first part, usingofficial meeting minutes as data, focuses on how committee members deliberated over differentways of interpreting and negotiating RESIDENT PARTICIPATION as a categorical and ideolog-ical concept. The second, using meeting videotape and transcriptions as data, focuses on howcommittee members enacted and embodied new ways of being, in relation to the present com-mittee and to an imagined future community, as they posited and rejected new possible forms oflife (Packer, 2011). We illustrate how certain conceptualizations of RESIDENT PARTICIPATION

from early subcommittee meetings became resemiotized (Iedema, 2001) or translated (Latour,1992) into new semiotic form, specifically from discursive representational forms into the mate-rial form of new resident committee members, or RESIDENT PARTICIPANTS, in later meetings.We then examine effects of the new relational possibilities produced by this resemiotization,focusing specifically on the talk of new RESIDENT PARTICIPANTS and its uptake within thegroup.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Social scientists (Linell, 1998; Marková, 2003b, 2008; Rommetveit, 1990; Wertsch, 1991,1998) drawing upon foundational Bakhtinian ideas of dialogicality posit a theory of mind thatemphasizes intersubjectivity and multiperspectivity as irreducible qualities of authentic linguisticinteraction. To place concept formation in the wild within this framework is to suggest a dynamic,collaborative enterprise of meaning making among variously positioned interlocutors—a processof entering into and out of imagined “contracts” based on “temporarily partially shared” socialworlds (Rommetveit, 1990, p. 99). According to this view, social actors are obligated to takeaccount of the perspectives of others, or alters3 (Marková, 2003b; Moscovici, 2000), along withtheir own perspectives in order to communicate effectively and for their actions to have recog-nizable effects. In this way, collaborative concept formation depends less on shared interpretiveframeworks than on accomplishing temporarily fixed perspectives out of initial perspectival rel-ativity (Rommetveit, 1990), a process that always involves tensions and negotiations betweencompeting perspectives. The sort of multiperspectivity referred to here is less a function of like-mindedness than it is a recognition of difference of mind along with the agreement to function asif perspectives were fixed and social worlds were shared during the particular interaction. Thispolyvalence of attentions, or “attunement to the attunement of the other” (Rommetveit, 1990,p. 97; cf. Barwise & Perry, 1983), requires simultaneous attention on the part of interlocutors to agiven object of attention, whether material or conceptual, and to the fact of the other’s (or alter’s)being-in-attention.

In this framework, “authentic” dialogicality is nonteleological, resisting both dialectical syn-theses and consensus in the sense used in deliberative theory, privileging instead an ongoingstruggle with alterity—what Marková (2003a) refers to as the “strangeness” of the cognition of

3Alter, as it is used throughout this article, comes from social representations theory, and refers to the other, whetherreal or imagined, that is the implied listener of any utterance, as well as a necessary component of the self.

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the other. This struggle results in conceptual antinomies involving both “lack of tension and ten-sion . . . acknowledgment of the other and the struggle for self-recognition” (2003b, p. 116),providing “surplus” knowledge that troubles what was thought to be mutually understood, hencegenerating change (Linell, 2003, p. 7).

As interlocutors share partial intersubjectivities (Gillespie & Cornish, 2009, p. 30) and findnew ways of representing the world and its objects, they also intersubjectively constitute theworld and its objects, developing unexpected ways of being in changing relations (Packer, 2011).Such acknowledgments of struggle and alterity are particularly relevant for a discussion ofinteractions that aim to engender social change and more equitable futures for persons whose cul-tural identity or political voice has been historically underrepresented, marginalized, or silenced.As Jovchelovitch (2008) put it,

There is a power differential at the level of production, distribution and reception of repre-sentations. . . . We constitute ourselves as thinking and speaking beings through processes ofcommunication, where a multitude of interlocutors establish, from the very beginning, the field wherewe engage in becoming what we are. (p. 24)

According to this view, then, interactants in change processes develop not only new roles in activ-ities but also new selves, and this change-work is often paradoxical and conflict laden. Although atraditional scientific perspective that orients toward a final resolution would approach contradic-tions as problems to be solved, dialogical and intersubjective frameworks see them as irreducibleaspects of human interaction—occurring from everyday talk and common sense thinking (Kim& Kim, 2008; Marková, 2003b; Moscovici, 2000)—they are the fuel for tension and paradox thatsustains dialogue, and the instigators of social change.

Important for the contexts analyzed in this article, monologicality brings about and reinforcesunity and stability (desirable for sedimenting categories and meanings, as well as for expedientdecision making and consistent public representations); dialogicality, by contrast, brings aboutand reinforces polysemicity and instability (desirable for generating change and challengingexisting paradigms). Dialogical meaning happens organically, yet a tendency toward monolog-icality reinforces extant power through various normative and discursive practices. Consideredthis way, the degree to which the CCL subcommittee could sustain antinomies and tensionsand maximize their potential within a nascent and fragile conceptual order is suggestive of itscapacity for dialogical interactions that are “authentic” (i.e., heteroglossic4; multiperspectival;interminable).

SETTING AND CONTEXT

The CCL was publicly proposed by the Lakeview City School District Superintendent in March2005 and aimed to improve conditions for children within a Lakeview City neighborhood that hadexperienced generations of socioeconomic hardship and racial and ethnic oppressions. From the

4The Bakhtinian notion of heteroglossia refers to the matrix of social, historical, and other forces that govern the“operation of meaning in any utterance” (Michael Holquist, as cited in Bakhtin, 1981, p. 428). For Bakhtin, dialogismwas the “characteristic epistemological mode of a world dominated by heteroglossia” (p. 426). As Morris (1994) pointedout, this quality of “different speech-ness” foregrounds the clash of antagonistic social forces (p. 249).

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start, the CCL was intended to address a range of factors seen as impacting future success (i.e.,healthcare, education, housing, financial literacy) and to promote development from childhoodthrough adulthood through collaborative, coalition-style work.

From early in the process, the CCL was led by an executive administrator in the school dis-trict, whom we call Julie, who took on the charge to develop the project at a “grassroots” level.Julie formed a Strategy Team Subcommittee (referred to hereafter as Subcommittee or simplyCommittee), comprising approximately 15 people, including residents of the target community,social service providers working in the community, government staff, and school district per-sonnel. (Table 1 provides the names, race/ethnicity, gender, and affiliation of Subcommitteemembers at the time of the meeting analyzed in Part 2.) The role of the Subcommittee was tosupport the work of a larger Strategy Team, whose approximately 120 members from variousstakeholder groups met monthly to generate input for an official Community Plan. Additionally,eight Working Groups, composed of resident volunteers and staff from various agencies as wellas the school district, met monthly to concentrate on specific issues identified through the pro-cess as needing attention (i.e., housing, parenting, healthcare, etc.). Although Work Team andStrategy Team meetings were open to the public, Subcommittee meetings were exclusive tomembers. With approval from the Subcommittee, Julie enlisted Anika and Darren, representa-tives of a community organizing consulting group from a different city, to organize and facilitatethe planning process. The data analyzed here were collected during their tenure—use of theterm “Group Memory” for example, rather than “meeting minutes,” was part of the consultants’record-keeping practices.

The CCL, under Julie’s leadership, recognized that previous attempts at broad change withinthis neighborhood had failed to deliver promised outcomes, leaving many members of the local

TABLE 1Names, Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Affiliation of Subcommittee Members at the Time of the Meeting

Analyzed in Part 2

Name Race/Ethnicity Gender Organization

Anna R. Asian Female Community organizationJulie C. White Female School districtWilliam G. African American Male Provider organizationSharice C. African American Female ResidentDavid H. White Male Provider organizationAlicia J. African American Female ResidentReginald J. African American Male Provider organizationMoses L. African American Male PrincipalKaren L. White Female Provider organizationNorma P. Latina Female School districtDerrick P. African American Male Mayor’s officeHelena E. Latina Female Provider organizationJésus S. Latino Male ResidentCarina W. Biracial (Puerto Rican, African American) Female ResidentTerrence W. African American Male ResidentDennis African American Male FacilitatorAnika Latina Female Facilitator

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community skeptical if not hostile to such interventions. To counter this, the CCL made resi-dent participation one of its highest official priorities. RESIDENT PARTICIPATION was officiallyinvoked to symbolize the project’s ethos: a way of doing change that hinged upon open dia-logue and democratic practices—it was to be, above all, “the residents’ plan” (Group Memory,11/18/06). The commitment to maximizing resident input was formalized in the spring of 2006,in an agreement that at least 51% of Strategy Team members and 33% of the Subcommittee andWorking Group members should be residents. The analysis in this article reflects data generatedbetween March 2005, the date of the CCL’s original Concept Paper, and February 2, 2007.

METHODS AND DATA CORPUS

From the spring of 2006 until the disbanding of this initiative in 2010,5 our team of ethnogra-phers observed Subcommittee meetings, Strategy Team meetings, and Working Group meetings;video-recorded meetings in community and institutional settings; conducted interviews of keyparticipants; and gathered documents produced by the CCL, including both public and inter-nal documents. For the first part of the analysis in this article, we focused on how RESIDENT

PARTICIPATION was conceptualized in Subcommittee meetings. For the second part of theanalysis, we focused on interactions among participants after discourse about RESIDENT PAR-TICIPATION was translated (Latour, 1992) into the addition of RESIDENT PARTICIPANTS—newSubcommittee members, added as a result of these earlier conceptualizations of RESIDENT

PARTICIPATION.We first examined Subcommittee meeting minutes (or Group Memory) documents. These

were coded for references to residents and resident participation. These references were groupedaccording to emergent themes, and particular attention was given to points of contention or mis-understandings among interlocutors, noting that, as Marková (2008) points out, “moving fromstasis to change requires attention not only to conflict resolution, but also conflict arousal” (p. 479,cf Moscovici & Marková, 2006, p. 173), and recognizing the important role of disorder andnonalignment within knowledge encounters and concept formation. After identifying the date atwhich a minimal resident participation benchmark for the Subcommittee was met, we conductedvideo analysis of a Subcommittee retreat at which three newly recruited resident members werein attendance. Analysis of the entire meeting pointed toward key moments in which there wereevident breaches of the groups’ existing interactional order, or the emerging conceptual order(Hutchins, 2012), followed by subsequent attempts at repair. We argue that these interactions atmeetings provide an ideal setting for analyzing the complexities and struggles that typify conceptformation in nascent group projects where both change and power imbalances are salient.

ANALYSIS

We begin with an analysis of various ways that Committee members discussed what RESIDENT

PARTICIPATION was seen to represent (i.e., participants’ interpretations of RESIDENT PARTICI-PATION). Then, to address the ways in which this developing discursive concept was translated

5After turbulent changes in leadership and funding structure in 2009 and 2010, the CCL was officially disbanded andthe initiative terminated in May 2010.

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(Latour, 1992) or resemiotized (Iedema, 2001) into a material embodiment, we follow with adiscussion of ways that resident Committee members enacted RESIDENT PARTICIPATION, asthese can be seen as constituting potential new ways of being or forms of life for RESIDENT

PARTICIPANTS.

Part 1: Negotiating the Meaning of RESIDENT PARTICIPATION

In this first analytic section, we map the development of the conceptualization of RESIDENT

PARTICIPATION as evidenced in Subcommittee Group Memories. These documents provided theofficial textual record of interactions at meetings and demonstrate, even in their condensed andbrief format, that

consensus on schemata is not the same thing as consensus about the interpretation of events. Twoindividuals could have the same schema for some phenomenon and still reach different interpretationsof events if their assessment of the evidence led them to instantiate the schemata in different ways.(Hutchins, 1995, p. 249)

We focus on instances in which RESIDENT PARTICIPATION was invoked and debated asCommittee members worked to create and maintain conceptual order.

“A new way of working.” Less than 1 year after the initial CCL launch, Julie increasedefforts to make the project more directly community driven—an approach frequently referred toas a “new way of working.” Among the “values/principles” listed in the April 2006 PurposeStatement were the requirement that “participants in a planning process must participate in thedesign and thus own the process” and the promise of “transparency in our communication anddecision-making and speak in one voice [sic].” We found that RESIDENT PARTICIPATION fre-quently symbolized the CCL’s grassroots ethos and was used to indicate not only a diversity ofvoices in decision making (suggestive of a Bakhtinian heteroglossia) but also a unity of visionand commitment (suggestive of a monologically oriented, consistent narrative).

For example, in one Subcommittee Group Memory, this rationale was given: “If we have trueand significant resident participation we will get a different quality of plan than we would havewithout it” (Group Memory, 10/24/06). Arguments such as this suggest that the CCL was ori-ented toward encouraging a dialogic process, seeing such a process as adding value to the eventualplan. But also noted in this Group Memory is the following imperative: “We need resident par-ticipation so the product has credibility in the neighborhood.” Declarations such as this suggestthat the value of resident participation rests in its capacity to reinforce perceived validity in theminds of community residents who may otherwise be skeptical. In these ways, RESIDENT PAR-TICIPATION was seen as having both an intrinsic value (a “different way of working”—inclusiveof diversity) and an extrinsic value (credibility in the eyes of the community—a public image ofunity).

The use of RESIDENT PARTICIPATION in the service of a public image became particularlyimportant when the topic of negative reactions from the community toward the CCL came up.When the topic of community skepticism was raised, as it often was, responses included, “Weshould begin every conversation with this . . . that it’s a resident driven process” and “Becausethere is a skeptical contingent out there, we’re going to be tested every day we do this. The

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resident engagement piece is a test of how committed we really are to this” (Group Memory,10/24/06). In this way, RESIDENT PARTICIPATION served as a tool to head off resistance andskepticism from within the target community and to reorient the attentions of Subcommitteemembers to focus on their shared objective. In other words, RESIDENT PARTICIPATION rein-forced the group’s capacity to function as if perspectives were fixed and social worlds wereshared (Rommetveit, 1990). There was a sense that, despite any contentiousness within the meet-ing space, there was also a shared, perhaps tacit understanding that when the Subcommitteerepresented the CCL to the public, they needed to reinforce a sense of unity between the residentsand CCL leaders.

We argue that this paradoxical quality of the desire for both heteroglossia and unity servedin the CCL meeting context as a generative antinomy, in Markova’s sense: Although seeminglycontradictory, neither priority functioned meaningfully without the other. The initiative couldnot succeed without both. Next we discuss how this paradox affected concept building in thework of the Subcommittee, as members negotiated varying conceptions of what RESIDENT PAR-TICIPATION represented to them and how these negotiations involved attention to competingpriorities.

Majority versus minority. To ensure that resident participation was actual policy and prac-tice, not just an ideal or catchphrase, requisite minimum benchmarks for resident participationwere set. The group determined that the Strategy Team was to have 51% residents in attendanceat any given meeting before any official business could be conducted.6 If the minimum was notmet, the only topic to be discussed was how to recruit resident participants and sustain residentinvolvement. In this way, the 51% mandate for the public Strategy Teams served as a testimonyof sorts to the priority of RESIDENT PARTICIPATION. The idea was that voices of members of anondominant community (a “minority”)7 were to be, necessarily, the majority voice in decisionmaking. The presumable logic of this desired trajectory can be represented:

51% → resident participation → new ways of working → improved future community

But although the minimum percentage benchmarks were agreed upon, shared understand-ing among Subcommittee members regarding what RESIDENT PARTICIPATION really meant, inpractice, had not been achieved. Meeting coordinators attempted to address this lack of sharedunderstanding by holding a meeting “to build alignment around what we mean by residentengagement” (Group Memory, 10/24/06). The group was asked to address these questions:

• If we were to have resident engagement in the fullest, ideal sense, what would that looklike?

• What does resident engagement mean?• How would we know we have it?• To what end are we focused on resident engagement?

The following were among the varied responses offered:

6For various reasons it was decided that Work Teams and the Subcommittee could meet this requirement with aminimum of 33% as opposed to the 51% mandate for the larger, public Strategy Team.

7“Minority” refers to the American colloquial term for ethnic and racial groups historically marginalized or excludedin U.S. social and political activities.

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• Change the lives of people who live here.• Salvation and redemption—take people’s feelings of failure and loss and make them

feelings of hope and vision.• Making sure that people not in the room are still represented.• Diversity of input—representing different experiences of life, of us, of each other.• Create a level of shared ownership.• We are allowing residents to improve and allowing them to buy into the process, rather

than us telling them what needs to be done.

These last two points are suggestive of an ongoing tension in this work: maintaining the simul-taneous priorities of diversity and sharedness proved increasingly difficult within the particularconceptual order (Hutchins, 2012) or way of knowing (Jovchelovitch, 2008) being establishedin Committee work. The following exchange helps to elucidate this. We consider this as takingplace between three speakers: A, B, and C.

The final contribution to the list just presented, uttered by Speaker A, was, “We are allow-ing residents to improve and allowing them to buy into the process, rather than us telling themwhat needs to be done” (in effect, explaining one interpretation of the concept of a new way ofworking).

This interpretation was challenged by Speaker B, who countered: “‘Allowing’ suggests thatwe are above them, that we are in control—it’s all the things we’re accused of” (thus articulatingan alternative view, which sees Speaker A’s interpretation as reflecting a top-down perspective,or “business as usual”).

Last, Speaker C responded to Speaker B’s challenge by saying,

We can demonstrate that to effect change, residents have to be engaged. The results will be differentwith resident engagement. We’re going to develop a plan that represents the kind of systems we wantto see going forward (e.g., resident engagement).

Rather than grappling with the complexities implied by the charge that the word allow connotedasserting control, Speaker C’s response rearticulated the public-oriented message. What was notaddressed was how this “demonstration” would work. Part of what the Subcommittee struggledwith was that the declaration that residents “have to be” engaged did not help in better under-standing how they were to become engaged, nor did it deal with the roots of nonengagement. Theidea that the resistance, skepticism, or hostility existing within the community reflected historicaland systemic economic and racial inequities is glossed over by the impetus to move forward, inunity.

We have elaborated on this discussion in order to highlight the relevance of a historicallysignificant background narrative of disparate power undergirding the current discussions withinthe meeting. This is particularly important for considering the role of Committee members whowere residents themselves. For them, the tacit contracts (Rommetveit, 1990) involved in sharedperspective taking implied presumably more contested borders than it did for nonresident mem-bers. As RESIDENTS, they were expected to speak for members of the community not present atthe meeting. But as PARTICIPANTS, they were expected to participate in ways that aligned withthe expectations and norms of the CCL as it developed. When these two roles ran up againstone another, the role of power dynamics within meeting talk surfaced. Hence the discursivemove made by Speaker C, which neutralized Speaker B’s challenge, may be seen as a lack of

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understanding about the nature of the sorts of resistance that existed within the community or areluctance to engage fully with the complexities implied by the challenge.

Positioning monologicality and dialogicality along a continuum is a helpful schematic toolfor understanding this situation. Although the need to refocus attention to the consistent publicmessage was practical and expedient, it manifested a monological orientation that subsumedsome alternative perspectives in the interest of its organizing logic, or knowledge system. Theremainder of this section looks at ways in which RESIDENT PARTICIPATION was invoked onideological fronts and on relational fronts as the group attempted to define and refine the purposesof their work and the interactions that would produce that work.

Numbers versus ideology. Another key tension in promoting resident engagement cameabout in Committee members’ conflicting understandings of the meaning and significance of“51%” as an ideological concept. As a case in point, much of the talk at the October 24, 2006meeting concerned interpretations of this rule. Specifically, some participants argued that the textof a Vision Statement being developed from Strategy Team input could not be considered validbecause the requisite number of participants was not present at the drafting meeting. Others coun-tered that the process had been held up too long already and that they shouldn’t hold things up anylonger waiting for the minimum to be met. One participant stated, “This has to be resolved. . . . Ifwe’ve tried and come up short, let’s consciously agree to move forward. The concern is that wenot move forward without being intentional about it” (Group Memory, 10/24/06). We argue thatthe imperative that “this has to be resolved” repeats the (necessary but problematic) orientationtoward monological order. That is, although an “authentic” dialogical encounter is an ideal, thefact that it is an interminable and perpetually contested process makes it nearly impossible to putinto practice when decisions need to made and recorded, and (importantly) when funders andpublic stakeholders need to be answered to.

It was decided that the Subcommittee could move forward with the Vision Statement draftbut would not finalize the draft without the requisite 51% minimum resident input. Althoughthe group agreed to this compromise, several members remained skeptical about the flexibleinterpretation of the 51% rule. Concerns included

• It’s not transparent without the residents involved.• It will look like, “here we go again, coming to run our lives.”• Fifty-one percent is a big thing to me. That’s sincerity to me.• If we’re going to be transparent, we have to have 51%.

These last two comments are significant, in that they indicate perceived ways of doing communitychange that value RESIDENT PARTICIPATION—that is, acting with sincerity and transparency.For many, 51% had become synonymous with resident ownership as the ethos of the project andits dedication not to conduct business as usual. For others, 51% was a symbol of that ethos,and as long as that ethos determined their decision making, the number didn’t matter. As oneCommittee member put it, 51% was “an ideological statement that we are no longer going toallow majority to those who don’t come from the area. It’s not a number, it’s an ideology” (GroupMemory, 10/24/06). But this hardly solved the problem. Whether the number flexibly interpretedor staunchly enforced better served the ideological stance remained contested, begging us to askthe question, What were the limits of the representational field (Rose et al., 1995) developing

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here? What range of dissent from the emerging conceptual order would be recognized? Thecomplicated role played by the ideal of consensus helps to frame these questions.

The paradox of consensus. The impetus to move forward in unity was also developedthrough the idea of consensus, which influenced the trajectory of the conceptualization of RES-IDENT PARTICIPATION. This influence became more important over time, as “linguisticallymediated convergence of attention” (Rommetveit, 1990, p. 89) in meetings proved increasinglychallenging and therefore more time-consuming.

Consensus was mentioned sporadically in Group Memories between June 2006 and November2006, but at the November 6, 2006, meeting, it was a main topic of discussion. During anotherdebate about the 51% benchmark, a CCL leader contributed the following:

There are two terms that may help. One is majority. . . . If you take the majority, that’s only neededwhen you rely on votes. The second concept is consensus. That allows for all minority opinions tobe heard and addressed. You continue to work on it until all concerns are addressed. You only needa majority if you’re using votes. The number 51% is political—want to say that 51% are residents.That’s a political statement. If we go back to our original belief—doing things by consensus. Thenumbers don’t matter if we’re going by consensus. (Group Memory, 11/06/06)

This moment is particularly illustrative of the tension between intentions to be inclusive andheuristics like the 51% rule within these processes. Consensus was presented here (as it often is)as a more inclusive alternative to a majority-rule voting process and can be seen as representingthe culmination of dialogic processes—soliciting heterogeneity of input in deliberations. But inpractice, insofar as achieving consensus meant moving forward as a unified group, this ideal hadthe effect of neutralizing dissent about compromising the 51% rule (which was here framed assomething dismissible—something that “doesn’t matter much”). Hence, the focus on consensuseffectually neutralized the contestatory dialogue that would accompany efforts toward authenticconsensus, or shared perspective taking. A similar tendency emerged as the group used meetingnorms to organize and order their interactions.

Rethinking norms. Throughout the CCL planning process, meeting norms served as theofficially agreed-upon code for group interaction at Subcommittee meetings. The earliest versionincluded these norms:

• Openness—say what’s on your mind.• Honest communication.• Make sure everyone has a voice and is participating and recognize and value of different

styles are different [sic].

The list also included:

• Stay on point with comments (self-monitor, help each other stay on track).• Come to table as peers.• Shared responsibility for success. (Group Norms, 2005)

We have presented the list in these two groupings to illustrate that there were both interestsin a heteroglossic sort of diversity of input as well as interests in group cohesion and orderlyprogress.

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Group Memories from the fall of 2006 show that additions were made to or suggested forthe original. In October, a norm was added: “Inquire for understanding—make sure we under-stand each other—requires some conversation/back and forth. Give the time needed to achieveunderstanding.” In November, the following request was made:

Want to add a norm—concern is that people hold onto things. Everyone needs to be heard—we needto listen and understand and if the conversation hasn’t been had, we need to have it and resolve it.When we hold onto things, we don’t move forward and the trust is never built. Part of the norm isbelieving the best in people. (Group Memory, 11/18/06)

We argue that three significant points can be made from considering this trajectory of normswith regard to the developing concept of RESIDENT PARTICIPATION. First, a fundamental para-dox is made more evident: There were inherent contradictions within the norms themselves, evenin the earliest list. That is, the norms of openness, honesty, and recognition of different voicesmight set up a tension with staying on point and sharing responsibility. Second, concern overinterpersonal relations at a local level seems to have increased over time. The progression towardadding norms that reflected relational concerns—an emphasis on “communicative relation”(Gillespie & Cornish, 2009)—suggests that least some members of the Subcommittee sometimessought to deal with tension or conflict by instituting rules rather than teasing apart the intrica-cies of what these differences meant to participants or developing their creative possibilities.This suggests that part of the basis for the difficulty in “mutually understanding” representationsrests in interpersonal dynamics as much as cognitive alignment. Third, the tendency toward amonological orientation, just referenced, seems to hold sway here as well—this time, in the inter-est of harmonious interactions rather than expediency. The need to make “believing the best inpeople” part of an official code ironically suggests that at least some participants felt that suchassumptions were not already happening “naturally.” Whereas an authentic dialogical orienta-tion might require a (time-consuming and likely unpleasant) discussion of what lay behind theseinterpretations of “holding on to things,” codifying assumptions of benevolence allows the groupto sidestep such interactions and to move on. In sum, these tendencies, which we argue are sug-gestive of certain monological orientations, have the effect of valuing particular interpretations ofRESIDENT PARTICIPATION over others, hence sedimenting particular ways of being a recognizedRESIDENT PARTICIPANT within this context.

We have focused in Part 1 on how understandings and (mis)understandings of RESI-DENT PARTICIPATION resulted in temporary moments of perspectival fixity, hence uniting theSubcommittee members around a vision, but that notions of RESIDENT PARTICIPATION alsobrought to the surface misunderstandings and conflicts about what that vision should mean. Butthese deliberations led the group to accomplish fixity of perspectives around the need for addi-tional resident representation within its own ranks, and three new members were recruited, vetted,and added to the Subcommittee by the winter of 2007.

Hutchins (1995) argues that “partial solutions to frequently encountered problems are crystal-lized and saved” (p. 374) in the ways that groups construct the social and material organizationof their activity in response to such problems. For example, in the context that Hutchins studied,the navigational problem of knowing the ship’s location was partially solved by “delegating”(Latour, 1992) aspects of the problem solution to various artifacts, such as maps, alidades, andpeloruses. In the CCL, the “problem” of RESIDENT PARTICIPATION was partially solved by del-egating specific aspects of this problem to the inclusion of new participants. As a result, the

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conceptualization of RESIDENT PARTICIPATION took on new material form; it was delegated orresemiotized (Iedema, 2001) from discursive to embodied form. The presence of the new resi-dent participants indicates that there has been a trajectory of conceptualization from RESIDENT

PARTICIPATION to RESIDENT PARTICIPANTS—a resemiotization of the problem of RESIDENT

PARTICIPATION such that these new resident members of the Committee could be viewed asRESIDENT PARTICIPANTS—a “partial solution” of sorts.

The point here is similar to one made by Latour (1996) in his discussion of Hutchins’s (1995)study. Latour points out that the navigators’ reconciliation of maps and the world is not direct,but rather mediated:

The pelorus operators are not reconciling the world with the map, they are reconciling readings on thecompass with landmarks which have been put there . . . because of the map [emphasis added]. . . .

As many mediations are required to transform the world into a map-like or a map-compatible shapeas they are inside the ship and then inside the heads of the calculators. (p. 60)

That is, landmarks don’t just happen to exist “out there” in the world; something becomesa landmark only within a system that requires it for particular purposes. Similarly, new res-ident recruits on the Subcommittee didn’t just happen to be there; they were there preciselybecause the Subcommittee required additional RESIDENT PARTICIPANTS as a partial solution toproblems the group encountered trying to better understand the community and their own rolewithin it.

To discuss the way in which this work of conceptualizing RESIDENT PARTICIPATION was thusresemiotized from talk to bodies, we analyze the video transcript from the first Subcommitteemeeting that included three new resident members. Here, rather than analyzing how participantstalked about the conceptual category of RESIDENT PARTICIPATION, we look at how two resi-dent members, newly recruited to the Committee as a result of the deliberations just discussed,embodied particular kinds of (unforeseen) participation, thus accomplishing new meanings viaenactments of RESIDENT PARTICIPATION. In this analysis, it is important to keep in mind thatnew relational forms produce new relational possibilities, and that, as Jovchelovitch (2008)argues, “taking the communicative seriously means to ask how unequal interlocutors meet andcommunicate in the public sphere, put forward and sustain the representations linked to theircommunities, ways of life and visions of the world” (p. 26).

Part 2: Embodying RESIDENT PARTICIPATION

In this section, we turn to how the polysemic and multiply interpretable concept of RESI-DENT PARTICIPATION became “fixed” (Rommetveit, 1990) in its meaning regarding minimalparticipation requirements and translated into the material embodiment of RESIDENT PARTICI-PANTS. We consider how this fixity ramifies into subsequent action and interaction (Rommetveit,1990) within the newly expanded Subcommittee, focusing specifically on two separate meetingexchanges in which “disruptions” within the meeting interactions were particularly illustrative ofthe complexities involved in concept formation in this context.

I. “Them’s fightin’ words.” The exchange represented in the following transcript occurredduring a meeting of the Subcommittee, an all-day “retreat” at which the goal was to compile

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information for a Community Plan, which Julie would later finalize with the help of a hiredprofessional writer. Anika had asked the group to brainstorm themes they had seen emergingthrough the process. Picking up on a sociocritical line of talk from the previous contributor (whooffered “racism”), Terrence offered “decolonization” as a theme (line 1), and the group began to“unpack” the term.

1 Terrence: Decolonization.Julie: ({(to Dennis, who is keeping the Group Memory) Decolonization.}Anika: What’s that? Terrence? Can-

((laughter))5 Terrence: Seriously.

Anika: Say that again?Alecia: He said coloniza-Julie: Decolonization.Jesús: O:h

10 Anika: Decolonization.Terrence: Exactly.Jesús: Okay.Anika: All right. Say- say what you mean by that.Terrence: That’s- that’s (.) ((our)) declaration of interdependence, correct?

15 Decolonization.Anika: Yes, but- s: We need to break down these words.

(.)What do you mean by that?

Terrence: What I mean is (.) it’s allowing the community (.) as you stated (.) As20 many have stated (.) to take back what is theirs. (.) (An-) It’s kind of like (.) Americans did years

ago (.) with the British. (.) They want (.) to have (.) their own (.) and (.) in order to (.) > in orderto create that independence, what does the declaration allow?< It allows you tooverthrow that government to create a new governing body.((laughter, overlapping talk, whistling))

25 Terrence: (hands up, shrugs) That’s what- that’s what it does.Julie: {(lo, accented) Them’s fightin’ words, boy.}

((loud laughter, overlapping talk))Terrence: But I’m just sayin’Julie: That’s what it means.

30 William: That was a history moment.Jesús: History by Terrence.

[12 lines omitted, all continuing the joking response to Terrence’s theme]Anika: Okay, what themes come up?

Initially, the group was attuned to Terrence, allowing him time to explain his ideas and“unpack” the term. This was the case until he said “overthrow that government to create anew governing body” (line 23), at which point the mild uneasiness among the group members(manifested as shifts of position, head tilts, and smiles) changed to laughter and joking, referringto his speech as a “history moment” (line 31), and “History by Terrence” (line 32).

In a sense, Terrence had represented an alternative possible way of conceptualizing RESIDENT

PARTICIPATION—what we might call a radicalized version. The subsequent jokes had a twofoldeffect with regard to the conceptual order developing within the Subcommittee. On one hand,making jokes allowed the group to assure Terrence that the interactional tone remained friendlyand cohesive—he was still very much “in” the group. But at the same time, the jokes also curtailed

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the trajectory of talk Terrence had initiated, making it clear that his point wasn’t to be taken tooseriously or to be allocated much time in the discussion. In other words, rather than explore theroots of the “revolutionary” stance, or explore whether Terrence was speaking specifically forsome members of the community who advocated for such an approach, the group demonstrated(rather than stated outright) where its limits were regarding such perspectives.

One way of understanding this exchange is to consider that by suggesting the AmericanRevolution as a formative discourse in the current context, Terrence “violated” the presumedconsensual representational field that bounded or set limits on ways of being a RESIDENT PAR-TICIPANT. The assumed breach, as evidenced by laughter, joking, and requests for clarification,resulted from Terrance’s stepping outside the boundaries past which the Subcommittee was ableor willing to conceptualize ways of being a RESIDENT PARTICIPANT. By repairing the breachin such a way as to dilute the potency of the (aberrant) speech, the group protected its unityas well as the stability of its narrative or conceptual order—following the tendency, identifiedin Part 1, toward a monological orientation for external legitimacy at the expense of a deeperunderstanding of the roots of nonaligned or disruptive contributions. Ultimately, the group didnot explore the “strangeness” of Terrence’s stance. This suggests that perspectives, even oncefixed, can move back into everyday discourse, shaping that discourse in unpredictable ways asthe discourse itself is subjected to dialogic forces (Rommetveit, 1990). How the group managedthis conceptual surplus that overshot its boundaries is indicative of the priorities that shaped itsdeveloping conceptual order.

But it is important to note that Terrence was not only suggesting an alternative conceptu-alization of RESIDENT PARTICIPATION (positing ways that residents might be in the futurecommunity), but also embodying an alternative way of being a RESIDENT PARTICIPANT at aSubcommittee meeting. A newcomer to the Committee, Terrence can be understood to have beentrying out possible ways of being in relation to this group. His trials reflect not only his positionin the current group but also his position as a member of a community within which historicaland political narratives may run counter to the prevailing narrative or knowledge system withinthe CCL. His contribution and the resulting exchanges demonstrate indirectly what Linell (1998),drawing on Rommetveit (1988), says about discourse, that it “involves building and using frag-ments of understanding and contexts. As interlocutors in dialogue, we are “struggling to establishtemporary dyadic states of intersubjectivity in a contextually understood and only partially sharedworld (Rommetveit, 1988, p. 18)” (p. 141). This sense of fragmentation and partialness is par-ticularly relevant for community residents on this Committee, who, as noted in Part 1, wereasked to represent multiple and divergent perspectives—which were not always aligned withthe (arguably increasingly fixed) perspective of the CCL initiative itself. The following interac-tion further illustrates this sort of conceptual fragmentation and the challenge it posed to grouporder.

II. What the hell is goin’ on. Not long after the discussion of themes, the group was askedto brainstorm about challenges they had faced in the CCL planning processes thus far. Jesús, acommunity resident who had been active with the project but was new to the Committee, madeseveral nonverbal gestures to get the floor. The following exchange occurred just after Anikarecognized him.

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1 Anika: Jesús (extends arm toward Jesús)Jesús: What was the question again?

(laughter)Anika: The challenges

5 Jesús: No no I- one of the challenges (laughter) that I see- (laughs)I’m just trying to make people happy.

Julie: (laughs) Now you remember him, right?(laughter)

Jesús: Don’t you gu:ys ever ever think (.) that this has been completely (.)10 completely (.) taken by the whole community.

Julie: Oh no no no.Darren: Oo:hJesús: So (.) we gotta understand that it’s not completely com-Helena: Embraced

15 Unknown: (embraced)Jesús: ah eh you know (.) embraced by the whole community (.)

[you know what [I’m sayingAnika: [rightJulie: [so then community skepticism?

20 Jesús: er (.) and and yeah (.) not everybody in the communityTerrence: believesJesús: or understands what the hell is goin onAnika: ok goodJesús: so that’s a big-

25 Julie: YepJesús: that’s a big challenge, cause unless you do that, forget it, we could-

we could work for (.) years (Terrence places hand on Jesús’s shoulders)and if [the people don’t understand then they’re not gonna get involvedan (.) do what-.

30 Anika: [okTerrence: (to Jesús) we’re gonna send you out with a posterboardAnika: all right, so (sweeps arm) Amelia, Dan, Julie, and then back to Helena.

(laughter, inaud talking)Jesús: (to Terrence) no that’s what you gonna do

Jesús began to make a point, gesturing with his hands toward other Subcommittee memberswhile saying in slow speech—as if selecting his words carefully—“don’t you guys ever ever think. . . that this has been completely . . . completely . . . eh you know . . . embraced by the wholecommunity . . . you know what I’m saying?” (lines 9–16). Here Julie interjected, “oh, no, no,”and as he considered his next words, she offered, “so then community skepticism” (line 19), asif that were the phrase he was looking for—or at least captured his intended meaning. But whenJesús did finish his own turn, he phrased things very differently: “er . . . and, and, yeah . . . noteverybody in the community . . . understands . . . what the hell is goin’ on” (lines 20, 22).

The difference in speech genres used by Jesús and by Julie is informative. We suggestthat the discursive shift from the everyday speech (Packer, 2011) or common sense think-ing (Jovchelovich, 2008; Marková, 2003b; Moscovici & Marková, 2000) reflected in Jesús’sadmonishment of the Committee toward the more formalized or “scientific” speech8 reflected in

8Here we draw a parallel from the distinction in social representations theory between common sense thinking andscientific thinking (Jovchelovitch, 2008; Marková, 2003b; Moscovici & Marková, 2000) to the difference in speechgenres between Jesús and Julie, respectively, suggesting that nominalizations and bureaucratized forms of talk indicate aprivileging of scientific (hence more monological) ways of speaking and thinking.

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Julie’s nominalization of Jesús’s admonishment functioned to inscribe a bureaucratic monolog-icality onto Jesús’s talk, collapsing the difference and divisiveness that informed his utterance(O’Connor et al., 2011). As was the case with Terrence’s interaction, this is suggestive of whatHutchins (2012) calls order-reinforcing work, here promoting unity over faction and disorder.Again, what was lost in this efficiency is what appeared to be an important point about the waysin which linguistic and ethnic differences were being experienced in the lives of communityresidents.

If we take seriously the notion that speakers attend not only to the addressees present butalso to (perhaps multiple) alters (Marková, 2003b; Moscovici, 2000), we can map out the likelydifferent “camps” (or what Bakhtin might call “social languages”) to which Julie and Jesús ori-ented in their talk. It is reasonable to acknowledge that, however dedicated to the grassrootsethos of the project, Julie was also required to attend to nonpresent alters in the form of fundersand stakeholders (who expected a professional and financially viable plan) in ways that no otherSubcommittee member was required (O’Connor et al., 2011). By contrast, it is reasonable toassume that Jesús was attendant to alters from a segment of the community who were cut off (beit for linguistic, sociocultural, or economic reasons, or a combination of these) from the largertarget community—a group that was silent or unheard within the discursive spaces that informeddecision making and planning in the CCL (Quiñones et al., 2011). One reason for this not-hearingmay be that the concept of community being developed by the CCL was one in which the gen-erative tension between unity and diversity—one that had been recognized by participants sincethe beginning of the project—was increasingly “resolved” in favor of unity, that is, of seeingthe region, the people within it, and the general community sensibility as singular and relativelylike-minded. In other words, the group may have unwittingly protected its conceptual integrityby delineating and reinforcing invisible borders of an internal logic that had been increasinglysolidified through discursive and embodied interactions that (tacitly or overtly) worked towardconceptual order with increasingly narrow parameters on dialogical difference.

DISCUSSION

We have demonstrated ways in which Subcommittee members’ collaborative working-throughof differing interpretations of RESIDENT PARTICIPATION served as a resource for creating andmaintaining a reasonable degree of sharedness within planning meetings, and hence reinforc-ing an emerging conceptual order, and that this process also generated tensions that challengedinteractional order and required subsequent repair. The question, however, remains: If some com-munity participants were effectively “silenced” in the interest of group unity, can we say thata shared concept of RESIDENT PARTICIPATION was successfully established? If this “workingtoward” ultimately failed, how are we to understand this failure?

The dialogical lens that we have adopted throughout his article helps to clarify not only whysuccess and failure are difficult to determine in this context but also why the distinction betweensuccess and failure may not quite serve for measuring this work. That is, we might benefit fromcomplicating that distinction and thinking instead about the subtleties required for partially andtemporarily shared perspectives (Rommetveit, 1990) in an ongoing heteroglossia. The difficul-ties of maintaining conceptual sharedness increased over time, as RESIDENT PARTICIPATION wasresemiotized (Iedema, 2001) from an abstract, discursive concept into a materialized, embodiedway of being, in which resident participants negotiated affinities for and differences with the

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dominant knowledge system developing in the CCL process. As that dominant perspective grewincreasingly sedimented over time, maintaining conceptual order and fixed perspectivity seems,from our analysis, to have required increasing attunement to norms and expectations more thanto an authentic dialogic encounter. In this way, trajectories of concept building around RESIDENT

PARTICIPATION are indicative of how establishing conceptual order in contexts where identitiesand roles are still emergent and where political and historical inequities are relevant involvescomplex interactional work and a multilayered approach to analysis. This group was able toachieve shared perspectivity around a representational ideal of RESIDENT PARTICIPATION, butlater, after this representational concept had become materialized—resemiotized in the form ofembodied, interacting persons, as RESIDENT PARTICIPANTS—efforts at fixity and sharednesshad the unintended paradoxical effect of undermining what the ideal was presumed to stand for.That is to say, our analysis suggests that in several instances, the emphases on normative inter-actional ways of being a (particular kind of) RESIDENT PARTICIPANT within the Subcommitteeled the group to divest some community members’ voices of their full power to offer dissentingperspectives—hence allowing a monological organizing orientation to subsume the authenticallyheteroglossic (albeit complicated and time-consuming) dialogical potentialites. Our reading ofthese instances suggests that we need such an analytical approach if we are to gain an under-standing of the relationships between speaking, knowing, and being as components of distributedcognition. Dialogism provides an avenue toward this work. As Linell (1998) explains:

Dialogism claims that the explanation of shared and mutual understanding must be grounded in anal-ysis of the situated discursive and interpretive activities themselves, rather than simply by recourseto (the assumed existence of) a common code. Dialogism would of course not abolish the notion ofa common language, but it would insist that linguistic meanings are open to potentials, rather thanfixed coded meanings. (p. 113)

It is intuitively accepted and expected that organizations, whatever their purpose or scope,need to “move forward.” From this perspective, a purely dialogical exchange (heteroglossic,interminable) could not succeed in making substantive change. But our analyses indicate thata widening of possibilities arises when authentic dialogical exchange is encouraged ratherthan reined in. To do this would require making these tacit normative tendencies a subject ofdiscussion—initiating more thorough reflexivity on the part of organizers and other interlocutors.This seems entirely possible and is partly evidenced by the analysis in Part 1, which illustrateshow this sort of desire to interrogate multiple interpretations of what community representationand voice really meant to participants played out in Committee processes. Indeed, the increasedpresence of residents on the Committee was the result of a transformational recontextualizationarising from discursively expressed disagreements, confusions, and contestations (Iedema, 2001),alongside the shared commitment to the CCL, its goals, and its members. Allowing greater timeto attend to this sort of conflict-laden and fluid relationship building in order to work towardshared meaning (so that something closer to everybody understanding “what the hell is goingon”) would make a significant difference in substantive change work.

Our analysis has illustrated how establishing genuinely inclusive democratic speaking spacesis a highly complex interactional achievement, often undermined by its own intentions. Thetendency to synthesize or subsume multiple interpretations within prevailing extant knowledgesystems is difficult to resist, particularly when (economic or political) stakes are high; dialogical

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interactions are not necessarily “efficient” practices. Rather, they entail representational and con-stitutive multiplicities and paradoxes that are difficult to contain within discursive codes andsemiotic practices that make meetings and decision making processes run smoothly.

Jovchelovitch (2008) argues that whenever a community

acts and develops a certain way of knowing about itself and others, it is, by the same token, institutingitself as such, inviting a future for what it does and indeed, actualizing the power it holds to shape away of life. (p. 29)

Prioritizing genuine (and hence reflexive) dialogicality with added attention to the ways in whichdisorder points toward experimental ways of being in relation, rather than prioritizing a normativetendency toward established order, might greatly increase possibilities for conceptualizing andorganizing social futures (O’Connor & Allen, 2010).

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a dialogical approach to conceptualizing resident participation in community organizing

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