An observation from attending the public meetings was the degree to which the issue of Public Participation was actually an explicit focus of the public discussion. Some of the interaction was about why the Government department DEFRA was not explicitly consulting the public on the sowing of GM crops, not responding to public opinion, and in some cases, apparently ignoring a local survey or referendum.
A second observation was that the debate about public participation was played out in a more implicit and subtle way within the interaction. In particular, the institutional Discourse(s) of DEFRA at the meeting seemed to construct a political, administrative, environmental and commercial world of experts, committees and procedures in which there was no intrinsic need for, and little place for, public participation.
With this in mind, we are using the phrase Discourses around Public Participation to refer not only to ways of talking about public participation, but also to Discourses that are ostensibly not concerned with public participation at all, but which routinely get drawn into the processes of public participation, or which are influential in any debate about the need and possibilities for public participation. These of course include Discourses of science, administration, governance, commerce and so on. Through the implicit views of knowledge, expertise, procedures, etc, these bring with them assumptions about the potential role, nature and limits of public participation, and about the possible subject positions (identities and relations) within any public-institution interaction. Exploring an event in terms of the Discourses being invoked within it, is a helpful way of prompting, understanding and organising our insights on subject positioning.
For the participants, the act of invoking established institutionalised Discourses within an event can be immensely powerful. Discourses effectively bring with them the authority relations, the subject positions, and the views of knowledge from the contexts in which they have been used. Within the GM debate, Brian Wynne (2002) has suggested that the subject positioning in these Discourses is a fundamental issue.
There would seem to be three interesting avenues within this strand. The first is the analysis of the set of Discourses around Public Participation contained within the institutional discourse of DEFRA. As we said above, this seems subtly and effectively to give the listener or reader the sense that they have little or no part to play in the permitting procedures. The effect is to close the space for participation, and to justify and maintain the existing absence of public participation. The institutional discourse of DEFRA would seem particularly interesting to explore, since it effectively negotiates the dual priorities of governance ?democratic accountability and executive power ?in a context where they are potentially pulling in opposite directions. The subject positioning of experts and public is central to this.
The second avenue is the analysis of the oppositional public Discourses which attempt to open spaces for public participation and invoke in various ways the subject positions of participants in decision-making. These Discourses may work in two complementary ways, (i) expecting or demanding greater public participation in the wider political sense, and (ii) expecting or demanding that the current event be reconfigured as a form of public participation.
A third avenue would focus on the Discourses of the GMO industry and its public relations, which seem very different from those of the Government in potentially interesting ways. The data suggests that the industry are invoking rhetorical elements that we used to associate with political discourse, and which are familiar in advertising, such as invoking a feeling of hope, of embarking on a shared project, of excitement about the future, in ways which potentially leapfrog the more democratic and procedural arguments about public safety, accountability and monitoring.
Strand 4: The Discourses of Citizenship
The fourth strand of our analysis ?Discourses of Citizenship ?entails a more direct focus on citizenship. It is useful to identify this as a strand of our analysis separate from the Discourses around Public Participation for two reasons.
First, we want to keep in view our particular interest in Discourses which are either specifically focussed on citizenship, and/or notable for being implicated in establishing and maintaining identities and relations of citizenship as well as people抯 views of what these are and might be. This strand is therefore another interesting lens for looking at the Discourses of science, economics and commerce which are drawn into the GM discussions.
Second, not all Discourses of citizenship will be around public participation. Some may be quite separate from public participation issues and events. Some may be contrary to public participation, such as Discourses around individual freedom, non-co-operation, collective opposition, and the positioning of the public merely as consumers. These may orientate to views of citizenship as non-participatory.
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