Cover not available
Article published In:
Practices of Dialogue, Dialogues in Practice
Edited by Alain Létourneau, Geneviève Boivin and Nicolas Bencherki
[Language and Dialogue 13:2] 2023
► pp. 200–228

“I don’t know if we should have that discussion now”

Negotiating procedural frames in collaborative governance of natural resources

 | Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
 | Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
 | Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
 | Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Collaborative governance within natural resource management relies on dialogical forums where people can negotiate complex issues through conversations. In this paper, we investigate situations where procedural frames around these discussions are negotiated in the conversations between its participants in a corpus from five different natural resource management contexts. We present how frame discussions are initiated, how actors express that actions are not aligned with the frames, and finally, how these openings of discourse about the frames are interactively managed, maintained, and closed. We argue norms of inclusiveness, consensus, and performance shape the interaction and hamper the joint investigation of the frames, and undermine the entire justification of the collaborative processes and the core quality of dialogical conversations.
Keywords: collaborative process, dialogue, procedural frame, natural resource management, negotiation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Collaboration and normative dialogue in natural resource management
  • 3.Method
  • 4.Empirical contexts of collaborative governance
  • 5.Findings – Negotiating frames
    • 5.1Initiating frame negotiations
    • 5.2Pointing out frame transgressions
    • 5.3What happens when frames are brought up for discussion?
  • 6.Discussion and recommendations
  • Acknowledgement
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 1 August 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00147.hal
References (47)
References
Abma, Tineke A., Jennifer C. Greene, Ove Karlsson, Katherine Ryan, Thomas A. Schwandt, Guy A. M. Widdershoven. 2001. “Dialogue on Dialogue”. Evaluation 7 (2): 164–180. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anguelovski, Isabelle. 2011. “Understanding the Dynamics of Community Engagement of Corporations in Communities: The Iterative Relationship between Dialogue Processes and Local Protest at the Tintaya Copper Mine in Peru”. Society and Natural Resources 24 (4): 384–399. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arias-Maldonado, Manuel. 2007. “An Imaginary Solution? The Green Defence of Deliberative Democracy”. Environmental Values 16 (2): 233–252. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Black, Laura W., Jay Leighter, and John Gastil. 2009. “Communicating Trust, Community, and Process in Public Meetings: A Reflection on How Close Attention to Communication Can Contribute to the Future of Public Participation”. Journal of Public Deliberation 5 (2): Article 8.Google Scholar
Blackstock, Kirsty L. 2009. “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Incompatible Objectives at the Heart of River Basin Planning?”. Water Science and Technology 59 (3): 425 – 431. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blackstock, Kirsty L., Caspian Richards. 2007. “Evaluating Stakeholder Involvement in River Basin Planning: A Scottish Case Study”. Water Policy 9 (5): 493 – 512. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bohm, David. 2004. On dialogue [Electronic resource]. New ed. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Buber, Martin. 2003. Between man and man. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carbaugh, Donal, David Boromisza-Habashi and Xinmei Ge. 2006. “Dialogue in cross-cultural perspective”. In Aspects of intercultural dialogue, ed. by N. Aalto and E. Reuter, 27–46. Köln: SAXA Verlag.Google Scholar
Carbaugh, Donal, Elena V. Nuciforo, Makoto Saito, and Dong-shin Shin. 2011. “’Dialogue’ in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Japanese, Korean, and Russian Discourses”. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 4 (2): 87–108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Castell, Pål. 2016. “Institutional Framing of Citizen Initiatives: A Challenge for Advancing Public Participation in Sweden”. International Planning Studies 21 (4): 305–316. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cinque, Serena. 2015. “Collaborative Management in Wolf Licensed Hunting: The Dilemmas of Public Managers in Moving Collaboration Forward”. Wildlife Biology 21 (3): 157 – 164. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cinque, Serena, Annelie Sjölander-Lindqvist and Camilla Sandström. 2022. “Frontline Bureaucrats in Wildlife Management: Caught in the Dilemma between Effectiveness and Responsiveness”. Environmental Policy and Governance 32 (1): 17 – 28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coleman, Kimberly and Marc J. Stern. 2018. “Exploring the Functions of Different Forms of Trust in Collaborative Natural Resource Management”. Society and Natural Resources 31 (1): 21–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Connelly, Stephen and Tim Richardson. 2004. “Exclusion: The Necessary Difference between Ideal and Practical Consensus”. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 47 (1): 3–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cooke, Bill and Uma Kothari (eds). 2001. Participation: The New Tyranny? London: Zed.Google Scholar
Curato, Nicole, John S. Dryzek, Selen A. Ercan, Carolyn M. Hendriks, and Simon Niemeyer. 2017. “Twelve Key Findings in Deliberative Democracy Research”. Daedalus 146 (3): 28–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davies, Jonathan. S. 2007. “The limits of partnership: an exit-action strategy for local democratic inclusion”. Political studies 55(4): 779–800. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eckerd, Adam and Roy L. Heidelberg. 2020. “Administering Public Participation”. The American Review of Public Administration 50 (2): 133–147. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ganesh, Shiv and Prue Holmes. 2011. “Positioning Intercultural Dialogue – Theories, Pragmatics, and an Agenda”. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 4 (2): 81–86. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ganesh, Shiv, and Heather M. Zoller. 2012. “Dialogue, Activism, and Democratic Social Change”. Communication Theory 22 (1): 66–91. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Habermas, Jörgen. 2007. “Truth and Society: The Discursive Redemption of Factual Claims to Validity”. In Theorizing Communication: Readings across Traditions, ed. by Robert T. Craig and Heidi L. Muller, 447–457. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Hallgren, Lars and Lotten Westberg. 2015. “Adaptive Management? Observations of Knowledge Coordination in the Communication Practice of Swedish Game Management”. Wildlife biology 21 (3): 165–174. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John and Clayman, Steven. 2010. Talk in Action: Interactions, Identities, and Institutions [Electronical resource]. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van den Hove, Sybille. 2000. “Participatory Approaches to Environmental Policy-Making: the European Commission Climate Policy Process as a Case Study”. Ecological economics 33 (3): 457–472. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Innes, Judith E., and David E. Booher. 2018. Planning with Complexity: An Introduction to Collaborative Rationality for Public Policy. Second edition. London: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Isaacs, William N. 2001. “Toward an Action Theory of Dialogue”. International Journal of Public Administration 24 (7–8): 709–748. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail. 1983. “Issues in the transcription of naturally-occurring talk: Caricature versus capturing pronunciational particulars”. Tilburg papers in language and literature 351.Google Scholar
Johansson, Johanna. 2018. “Collaborative Governance for Sustainable Forestry in the Emerging Bio-Based Economy in Europe”. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 321: 9–16. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kim, Joohan and Eun J. Kim. 2008. “Theorizing Dialogic Deliberation: Everyday Political Talk as Communicative Action and Dialogue”. Communication theory 18 (1): 51–70. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Létourneau, Alain. 2017. “The Bakhtin case. An apparent tension between two traditions in dialogue studies”. Language and Dialogue 7 (2): 236–252. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Linell, Per. 2014. “Interactivities, Intersubjectivities and language: On Dialogism and Phenomenology”. Language and Dialogue 4 (2): 165–193. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lundholm, Cecilia and Christian Stöhr. 2014. “Stakeholder Dialogues and Shared Understanding: the Case of Co-Managing Fisheries in Sweden”. Sustainability 6 (7): 4525–4536. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lundmark, Carina and Simon Matti. 2015. “Exploring the Prospects for Deliberative Practices as a Conflict-Reducing and legitimacy-Enhancing Tool: The Case of Swedish Carnivore Management”. Wildlife Biology 21(3): 147–156. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mannarini, Terri and Cosimo Talò. 2013. “Evaluating public participation: Instruments and implications for citizen involvement”. Community Development 44(2): 239–256. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moog, Sandra, André Spicer, and Steffen Böhm. 2015. “The politics of multi-stakeholder initiatives: The crisis of the Forest Stewardship Council”. Journal of Business Ethics 1281: 469–493. [URL]
O’Connor, Ruth A., Jeanne L. Nel, Dirk J. Roux, Joan Leach, Lilly Lim-Camacho, Fabien Medvecky, Lorrae van Kerkhoff and Sujatha Raman. 2021. “The Role of Environmental Managers in Knowledge Co-Production: Insights from Two Case Studies”. Environmental Science and Policy 1161: 188–195. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Polk, Merritt. 2010. “Sustainability in Practice: The Interpretation of Sustainable Development in a Regional Planning Arena for Dialogue and Learning in Western Sweden”. Planning Theory and Practice 11 (4): 481–497. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quintin, Bradley. 2012. “A ‘Performative’ Social Movement: The Emergence of Collective Contentions within Collaborative Governance”. Space and Polity 16:2, 215–232. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2007. Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis [Electronic resource]. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sjölander-Lindqvist, Annelie, Maria Johansson and Camilla Sandström. 2015. “Individual and Collective Responses to Large Carnivore Management: The Roles of Trust. Representation, Knowledge Spheres, Communication and Leadership”. Wildlife Biology 21 (3): 175 – 185. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sveriges mineralstrategi. För ett hållbart nyttjande av Sveriges mineraltillgångar som skapar tillväxt i hela landet [E-book]. 2014. Available at [URL]
Wallace, Derek. 2020. “’A Very Good Dialogue’?: The oral consideration stage in UN human rights monitoring”. Language and Dialogue 10 (2): 171–193. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Waylen, Kerry A., Kirsty L. Blackstock and Kirsty L. Holstead. 2015. “How does Legacy Create Sticking Points for Environmental Management? Insights from Challenges to Implementation of the Ecosystem Approach”. Ecology and society 20 (2): 21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weigand, Edda. 2015. “Dialogue in the Stream of Life”. Language and Dialogue 5 (2): 197–223. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wesselink, Anna, Jouni Paavola, Oliver Fritsch, and Ortwin Renn. 2011. “Rationales for Public Participation in Environmental Policy and Governance: Practitioners’ Perspectives”. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 43(11): 2688–2704. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 2006. “The Concept of ‘Dialogue’ in Cross-linguistic and Cross-cultural Perspective”. Discourse Studies 8(5): 675–703. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Koontz, Tomas M.
2024. Navigating the Science-Collaboration Interface for Watershed Management in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Case Studies in the Environment 8:1 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.