“A place you haven't visited before”: Creating the conditions for community dialogue

Abstract

This essay presents a case study of some critical moments in the initiation of a community movement based on dialogue. The World Health Organization's Healthy Communities movement provides a concrete context in which to examine the problems and promises of dialogue for reinvigorating public discourse. This essay, based upon a six‐month field study, describes three tensions that the community encountered as they attempted to initiate dialogue. These tensions included those between collaboration and hierarchy, between valuing communication as a medium for an impediment to social change, and between representing diversity and developing consensus. Using dialogic and feminist theory, read with and against the experiences of this community, I explore some possible ways to ease these conflicts.