Open this publication in new window or tab >>2019 (English)In: Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, ISSN 1523-908X, E-ISSN 1522-7200, Vol. 21, no 6, p. 754-768Article in journal (Other academic) Published
Abstract [en]
Marine spatial planning (MSP) has emerged as a radical approach to achieving sustainable development objectives at sea. While critics challenge its avowed radicalness, often through highlighting dominative processes, more insidious mechanisms of restricted agency remain under-elaborated, as are the productive power and potential of planning. This paper offers a more robust and balanced reading of MSP/power. First, drawing on Haugaard, we read MSP as providing actors with dispositional power to act in concert, thus entailing a move from the risks of ‘resource rush’ to structuring, which facilitates predictability and promotes agency. However, MSP’ing may also restrict agency when (1) powerful actors misuse opportunities for concerted action to pursue sectoral goals; (2) planning fantasies and the planner’s cognitive limitation sustain dominative power-relations; and (3) in setting the boundaries of MSP, bias is mobilized in favor of vested interests. We thus deploy Foucault’s notion of freedom, to analyze the relationship between ‘steering’ and resistance subjectivities, and his concept of parrhesias to consider to what extent, an ethico-political planner may contribute towards more equitable processes and outcomes. We conclude that besides the planner, the state as the ultimate authority in MSP must intervene substantively to minimize differentials in the distribution of actors’social resources.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Routledge, 2019
Keywords
Development studies, Marine spatial planning; agency; empowerment; domination; Foucault and Haugaard
National Category
Environmental Sciences
Research subject
Environmental Studies
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-38064 (URN)10.1080/1523908X.2019.1673155 (DOI)000489951000001 ()2-s2.0-85073939705 (Scopus ID)
Funder
BONUS - Science for a better future of the Baltic Sea region, 185The Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies, 2186/3.1.1/2014
Note
Som manuskript i avhandling. As manuscript in dissertation.
2019-04-252019-04-252020-04-01Bibliographically approved