IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v74y2012i12p1843-1850.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The unbearable lightness of citizens within public deliberation processes

Author

Listed:
  • Lehoux, P.
  • Daudelin, G.
  • Abelson, J.

Abstract

There is a growing literature examining the involvement of citizens in health policymaking. While determining what form such involvement should take and who should participate is of particular interest to policymakers and researchers, the current ontological understanding of what a citizen is suffers from “lightness.” This essay thus seeks to provide more depth by shedding light on the ways in which individuals define what “being” a citizen means for them and choose to embody or not such a role. Inspired by a four-year ethnographic study of a Canadian science/policy network in genetics, which integrated citizens into its operation, this paper provides four biographical sketches that portray the complexity and richness of what these individuals were “made of.” We reflect on how they sought to make sense of their participation in the network by drawing on a repertoire of cultural, relational and cognitive resources and on their lived experience. Their capacity to “be” a participant and to be acknowledged as such by the others was shaped by their values and interests and by the contributions they sought to realise throughout their participation. Our discussion suggests that the quest for the “ordinary” citizen is misleading. Instead, acknowledging the sociological concreteness of citizenship and understanding how it may be embodied and exercised should be a key focus in public involvement theory and practice in health care.

Suggested Citation

  • Lehoux, P. & Daudelin, G. & Abelson, J., 2012. "The unbearable lightness of citizens within public deliberation processes," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 74(12), pages 1843-1850.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:74:y:2012:i:12:p:1843-1850
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.02.023
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953612001979
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.02.023?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Walmsley, Heather L., 2011. "Stock options, tax credits or employment contracts please! The value of deliberative public disagreement about human tissue donation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 209-216, July.
    2. Abelson, Julia & Forest, Pierre-Gerlier & Eyles, John & Smith, Patricia & Martin, Elisabeth & Gauvin, Francois-Pierre, 2003. "Deliberations about deliberative methods: issues in the design and evaluation of public participation processes," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 239-251, July.
    3. Thompson, Andrew G.H., 2007. "The meaning of patient involvement and participation in health care consultations: A taxonomy," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(6), pages 1297-1310, March.
    4. Judith Petts & Catherine Brooks, 2006. "Expert Conceptualisations of the Role of Lay Knowledge in Environmental Decisionmaking: challenges for Deliberative Democracy," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 38(6), pages 1045-1059, June.
    5. Lehoux, Pascale & Daudelin, Genevieve & Demers-Payette, Olivier & Boivin, Antoine, 2009. "Fostering deliberations about health innovation: What do we want to know from publics?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(11), pages 2002-2009, June.
    6. Martin, Graham P., 2008. "Representativeness, legitimacy and power in public involvement in health-service management," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(11), pages 1757-1765, December.
    7. Contandriopoulos, Damien, 2004. "A sociological perspective on public participation in health care," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 321-330, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nasim Gholami & Mojtaba ANSARI & Mohammadjavad MAHDAVINEJAD, 2018. "A Scientometric Review Of Citizen Participation Research: World Trend," Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management, Research Centre in Public Administration and Public Services, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 13(3), pages 37-53, August.
    2. Baker, Rachel & Mason, Helen & McHugh, Neil & Donaldson, Cam, 2021. "Public values and plurality in health priority setting: What to do when people disagree and why we should care about reasons as well as choices," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).
    3. Degeling, Chris & Carter, Stacy M. & Rychetnik, Lucie, 2015. "Which public and why deliberate? – A scoping review of public deliberation in public health and health policy research," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 114-121.
    4. Stewart, Ellen & Ercia, Angelo & Greer, Scott L. & Donnelly, Peter D., 2020. "Between a rock and a hard place: Comparing arms’ length bodies for public involvement in healthcare across the UK," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 124(4), pages 454-461.
    5. Brad Wright, 2015. "Voices of the Vulnerable: Community health centres and the promise and peril of consumer governance," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(1), pages 57-71, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Degeling, Chris & Carter, Stacy M. & Rychetnik, Lucie, 2015. "Which public and why deliberate? – A scoping review of public deliberation in public health and health policy research," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 114-121.
    2. Greer, Scott L. & Stewart, Ellen A. & Wilson, Iain & Donnelly, Peter D., 2014. "Victory for volunteerism? Scottish health board elections and participation in the welfare state," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 221-228.
    3. El Enany, Nellie & Currie, Graeme & Lockett, Andy, 2013. "A paradox in healthcare service development: Professionalization of service users," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 24-30.
    4. Mauro Serapioni & Pedro Lopes Ferreira & Patrícia Antunes, 2014. "Participação em Saúde: Conceitos e Conteúdos," Notas Económicas, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra, issue 40, pages 26-42, December.
    5. Degeling, Chris & Rychetnik, Lucie & Street, Jackie & Thomas, Rae & Carter, Stacy M., 2017. "Influencing health policy through public deliberation: Lessons learned from two decades of Citizens'/community juries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 166-171.
    6. Marit By Rise & Aslak Steinsbekk, 2016. "Long Term Effect on Professionals’ Knowledge, Practice and Attitudes towards User Involvement Four Years after Implementing an Organisational Development Plan: A Controlled Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(3), pages 1-18, March.
    7. Steffensen, Mette B. & Matzen, Christina L. & Wadmann, Sarah, 2022. "Patient participation in priority setting: Co-existing participant roles," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 294(C).
    8. Abelson, Julia & Forest, Pierre-Gerlier & Eyles, John & Casebeer, Ann & Martin, Elisabeth & Mackean, Gail, 2007. "Examining the role of context in the implementation of a deliberative public participation experiment: Results from a Canadian comparative study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(10), pages 2115-2128, May.
    9. Lopes, Edilene & Carter, Drew & Street, Jackie, 2015. "Power relations and contrasting conceptions of evidence in patient-involvement processes used to inform health funding decisions in Australia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 84-91.
    10. Kenter, Jasper O. & Reed, Mark S. & Fazey, Ioan, 2016. "The Deliberative Value Formation model," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 21(PB), pages 194-207.
    11. Croft, Charlotte & Currie, Graeme & Staniszewska, Sophie, 2016. "Moving from rational to normative ideologies of control over public involvement: A case of continued managerial dominance," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 124-132.
    12. France Légaré & Antoine Boivin & Trudy van der Weijden & Christine Pakenham & Jako Burgers & Jean Légaré & Sylvie St-Jacques & Susie Gagnon, 2011. "Patient and Public Involvement in Clinical Practice Guidelines," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 31(6), pages 45-74, November.
    13. Serapioni, Mauro & Matos, Ana Raquel, 2014. "Citizen participation and discontent in three Southern European health systems," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 226-233.
    14. Takeuchi Ayano, 2021. "A survey of methods for evaluating mini-publics," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-19, February.
    15. Sadie McEvoy & Frans H. M. van de Ven & Reinder Brolsma & Jill H. Slinger, 2019. "Evaluating a Planning Support System’s Use and Effects in Urban Adaptation: An Exploratory Case Study from Berlin, Germany," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-27, December.
    16. Pietrzyk-Kaszyńska, Agata & Olszańska, Agnieszka & Rechciński, Marcin & Tusznio, Joanna & Grodzińska-Jurczak, Małgorzata, 2022. "Divergent or convergent? Prioritization and spatial representation of ecosystem services as perceived by conservation professionals and local leaders," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    17. Lehoux, P. & Miller, F.A. & Williams-Jones, B., 2020. "Anticipatory governance and moral imagination: Methodological insights from a scenario-based public deliberation study," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    18. Giuseppe Di Liddo & Annalisa Vinella, 2021. "Centralized standards and local taxation in municipal waste management," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 92(4), pages 603-619, December.
    19. Karnieli-Miller, Orit & Eisikovits, Zvi, 2009. "Physician as partner or salesman? Shared decision-making in real-time encounters," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 1-8, July.
    20. Evelien Tonkens & Imrat Verhoeven, 2019. "The civic support paradox: Fighting unequal participation in deprived neighbourhoods," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(8), pages 1595-1610, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:74:y:2012:i:12:p:1843-1850. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.