ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the issues of the 'culture' of planning itself; the nature of the 'tensions' that subtle cultural difference can create and the meaning of 'resolution' in the cultural realm; through two longitudinal ethnographic case studies, each of which represents a fairly typical response to the demands of participation, the establishment of a community-based committee to make decisions about a project on behalf of a public agency. It interrogates the detail of decision making to identify the situated emergence of various deliberative strategies which allowed each of the committees to 'move on' from moments of conflict and misunderstanding. The book develops a critical discourse-analytical approach for interrogating extended talk in the institutionally bound context of public sector planning and, in doing so, unpacks the cultural-discursive perspective on that context and on the implications of opening it up to non-habituated actors.
