MARGINALIZING PUBLIC-PARTICIPATION IN LOCAL-PLANNING - AN ETHNOGRAPHIC ACCOUNT

The importance of public consultation and participation in local plann ing is acknowledged by the planning profession in the United States, y et anthropological research on the practice of planning in western Nor th Dakota boomtowns during the 1980s reveals that the institutional pr ocedures and formal apparatus of planning work to enforce dominant bur eaucratic forms of organization, ideology, and discourse in ways that marginalize other ones. Although efforts and mechanisms to involve res idents in planning were in place, local voices were accorded less auth ority when they used local conventions of negotiation and rhetoric. Th is paper argues for greater cultural sensitivity in matters of power a nd communication in planning practice. Tauxe is a professor of anthrop ology at Syracuse University. In addition to her work on economic deve lopment and social change in North Dakota, she has carried out researc h on the moral economy and culture of inflation in Brazil.