Fantasy and Desire in the Construction of Sustainable Urban Development

The disputation will be held digitally, because of the Corona covid-19-situation. Spectators may follow the disputation digitally – link is available below.

Rachel Berglund of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Agder has submitted her thesis entitled «Fantasy and Desire in the Construction of Sustainable Urban Development. A Discourse Theoretical Analysis of Sustainable Urban Development in Southern Norway» and will defend the thesis for the PhD-degree Friday 25 June 2021.

She  has followed the PhD-programme at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Agder, with specialisation in Global Development and Planning.
 

Summary of the thesis by Rachel Berglund:

Fantasy and Desire in the Construction of Sustainable Urban Development

This monographic PhD thesis analyses the discourses on sustainable urban development in a cocreative arena called Southern City Network (SCN) in Southern Norway, focusing on the discursive interactions of participants during 2019.

The 'active inertia' of collaborative processes

The thesis seeks to render intelligible the characteristic 'active inertia' of the participants as they seek to arrive at a joint commitment on how sustainable urban development should be understood and acted on within the arena.

The concept of active inertia captures the phenomenon that while participants continued to engage in a wide variety of practices, interactions and ventures, their activity did not seem to produce effective decisions and outcomes, eventually leaving participants weary and disillusioned.

Understanding collaborative processes through language and meaning

The thesis endeavors to critically explain the active inertia in this instance of collaborative or network governance, by investigating how sustainable urban development is enacted in discourse, while paying close attention to the affective dimension of language-use.

Rather than investigating the political or institutional conditions and strategies involved in the many activities hosted by the arena, the thesis propose that we can understand, and further navigate, such collaborative processes according to the subjective desires and fantasies of individual actors involved in the meaning negotiation of key signifiers such as 'sustainability'.

Research theme

The overall research theme of the thesis targets meaning and conflict in collaborative discursive practices, highlighting the affective dimension of language-use while critically examining the links between co-creation, consensus, and market-inspired planning strategies.

The investigation deploys the post-foundational Discourse Theory of Ernesto Laclau, supplemented with readings of a Lacanian orientation.

Findings

Through analysis- and reconstruction of the discourse, the thesis argues that the active inertia of the participants can be understood as a mode of self-defense against the inevitable politicization necessary to arrive at concrete solutions to sustainability transitions.

To this end, the notion of the 'local development project' takes center stage as a master signifier promoting a powerful promise of a consensus-to-come in which no one must lose when it comes to identifying concrete solutions to sustainability transitions.

This promise is supported by a collective fantasy of seeking to avoid consensus-oriented planning schemes in general, a kind of narrative that produces a subconscious enjoyment in the very stalemate itself.

Contributions

In grappling with the 'application problem' of poststructuralist discourse theory, the thesis contributes with an original research strategy built around the notion of affect as a mediator between subjective desires and the structures of language-use.

This strategy considers the role of fantasy and desire in navigating dialogical processes and shows how such consideration might improve complex multi-actor collaborative processes' capability to move past instances of active inertia.

To this end, the thesis develops a tool that can assist in locating and understanding points of contestation to the dialogue itself, both early on and throughout the process, as well as the desires and fantasies involved in such contestations.

What to do as an audience member:

The disputation is open to the public, but to follow the trial lecture and the public defence, which is transmitted via the Zoom conferencing app, you have to register as an audience member.

We ask audience members to join the virtual trial lecture at 09:05 at the earliest and the public defense at 10:35 at the earliest. After these times, you can leave and rejoin the meeting at any time. Further, we ask audience members to turn off their microphone and camera and keep them turned off throughout the event. You do this at the bottom left of the image when in Zoom. We recommend you use ‘Speaker view’. You select that at the top right corner of the video window when in Zoom.

Opponent ex auditorio:

The chair invites members of the public to pose questions ex auditorio in the introduction to the public defense, with deadlines. It is a prerequisite that the opponent has read the thesis. Questions can be submitted to the chair Anne Halvorsen on e-mail anne.halvorsen@uia.no