ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the emergence of community participation in coastal management as a policy pursuit and the 'coast' as an object of policy. The emergence of community participation in formal coastal and marine-management policy is attributed largely to the worldwide adaptation of integrated coastal zone management (ICZM). This has been adopted to promote interaction between environmental, social and economic factors affecting the coastal zone in the pursuit of ecologically sustainable development. The coast, and certainly community participation in its management, are relatively recent additions to environmental policy and the overall governmentality of the coastline. Foucault's idea draws the attention to the 'political, economic, institutional regime of the production of truth', and thus enables a critical analysis of the emergence and existence of community participation initiatives. Governmentality provides a way of exploring the institutional 'politics of detail' and 'techniques' through which individuals are inducted into programmes of self-management, and thus voluntarily act in ways that enable the realization of governmental objectives.
