Breaking with consensus frames. Understanding the reproduction of dominant discourses and expert/lay hierarchies for the regeneration of food policy and democracy.
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Date
2023
Publication Type
Master Thesis
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yes
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Abstract
The fallibility of modern democracies’ representative institutions in the face of an ever-changing world has given momentum to democratic innovation such as citizens’ assemblies. As part of the deliberative democracy movement, citizens’ assemblies are the most common implementation of deliberative settings and are as such an ideal setting to study and understand the dynamics of deliberation. The Swiss Citizens’ Assembly for Food Policy (SCAFP), which took place over 6 months in 2022, comprised 85 citizens who generated policy recommendations for the government. Combining the measurement of intersubjective consistency, framing analysis of expert input and thematic analysis of citizens' feedback, this thesis investigates the tension that arises between the transformative potential of the SCAFP and the reproduction of power structures undermining it. The results suggest a low potential for transformation in relation to an ambiguous and general framing of sustainability by the experts, a lack of discursive representativeness of citizens and limitation due to a lack of inclusion of research in the organisation of the SCAFP. The use of sustainability as a consensus frame is shown to be a dominant category for food policies in which vague discourses are formed leaving much room for interpretation and tactical interests. This can be seen as an immaterial reproduction of political power structures inside this citizens’ assembly that encompasses the need for (1) Understanding the role of framing in citizens’ assemblies, (2) Critically reflecting on the role of knowledge inputs in citizens’ assemblies, (3) Creating environments that promote accessible languages, other than technical or expert languages. Overall, deliberative democracy seems to have the potential to solve political deadlocks of representative governments, if the reproduction of power structure can be limited inside of the settings in which it takes place. Therefore, on top of balanced information, truly authentic alternative discourses need to be included and confront each other in the knowledge inputs which also necessitates thinking about how citizens can own the language that they use to name the world and deliberate.
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published
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Examiner: Jacobi, Johanna
Examiner : Veri, Francesco
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Pages / Article No.
Publisher
ETH Zurich
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Subject
: food system, democracy, citizens’ assemblies, deliberation, framing analysis, power structures, consensus frame, language.
Organisational unit
09748 - Jacobi, Johanna / Jacobi, Johanna
01761 - MSc Agrarwissenschaften / MSc Agricultural Sciences