Who Says? Authority, Voice, and Authorship in Narratives of Planning Research

Abstract

Recent developments in communicative planning theory and participatory research methods emphasize collaboration between researcher and research subject in the process of knowledge production. We ask how the ideal of collaboration that is integral to the process of data collection extends to the authorial phase of planning narratives and we identify ethical, pragmatic, and substantive justifications for collaborative authorship. The multidisciplinary literature on the city reveals a variety of approaches to authorship including empathetic evocation, selective deployment, dialogic collaboration, and uninterpreted transcription. More successful collaboration might require the avoidance of abstraction, an emphasis on contextualization and intersubjectivity, and a reimagining of social science from inquiry to conversation.