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SOCIOLOGICAL PRACTICE 53

based on rational choice, but to a possibility of These developmental programmes repre-
facilitating a novel political discourse to sent an innovative political form of mediating
widen the field of participatory strategies. between top-down and bottom-up gover-
The Planning Cell is but one example of the nance. At the same time, they constitute an
global tendency to focus on citizens’ rights almost utopian form of new reflexive gover-
and participation. nance, a sociotechnics of a decentralized
The Blair government introduced ‘Citizens’ welfare state. The method aims at mobilizing
Juries’ into the exercise of local social policy local people (civil society) around self-
in order to advance inclusion policies defined issues and goals, and, as such, it
(Steward et al., 1994). There are numerous remains sensitive to local context and local
forms of social action and social develop- differences throughout the world (Bility,
ment programs all over the world undertaken 1999). There is nothing fixed about such
as social experiments in the hope of finding approaches to sociotechnics. They might be
ways of involving common citizens in the transient. They are not inseparably linked to
search for solutions to local problems. The a certain level of governmental development.
political aim of such initiatives is to trigger a But they are part of a valuable practice that
process in which local volunteer resources needs to be both documented for future
are mobilized and the relation between recognition and added to the accumulated
public institutions and citizens is brought cultural capital enlarging the field of optional
into debate (Capece and Schanz, 2000; strategic choices.
Chappell and Lanza-Kaduce, 2004; Hegland, Clifford Geertz used the concept ‘the uni-
1994; Hogsbro et al., 1991; Rusmore, 1999; verse of human discourses’ to underscore the
Stoecker, 1999; Williams, 2000). They point that we are dealing with multiple possi-
involve a multiplicity of evaluation designs bilities of ways people can organize them-
from summative to formative evaluation, selves in meaningful societal relations
empowerment evaluation, participant evalua- (Geertz, 1973: 14). The limits of these possi-
tion and ‘responsive constructivist’ evalua- bilities we will never be able to anticipate.
tions (Fettermann et al., 1996; Guba and Geertz makes a statement that is relevant to
Lincoln, 1989; Patton, 1997). The reports the discussion on sociotechnics when he con-
following from these different kinds of eval- cludes: ‘The essential vocation of interpretive
uations have a triple aim: anthropology is not to answer our deepest
questions, but to make available to us answers
● For the politicians, the function of the reports is that others, guarding other sheep in other val-
to identify the profound elements in the legisla-
tion needed to push the societal development in leys, have given, and thus to include them in
the preferred direction. the consultable record of what man has said’
● For the professional practitioners and grass-roots (Geertz, 1973: 30). Sociological practice
activists, the function of the reports is to identify must realize that by contributing to the disclo-
barriers and possibilities for future practice in sure of the ‘universe of human discourses’
local projects. and reporting about sociotechnics practiced in
● For the sociologists involved, the reports different places and different times, we con-
contribute to the theoretical understanding of tribute to human development.
community relations and processes.

The legislation that might follow these
new types of developmental programme is IMPLICATIONS FOR THE ROLE OF
supposed to encourage and support further SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
developments in the field, where local mobi-
lization has already engendered a local practice From the recent and past discussions about
ready to benefit from the new legislation. sociotechnics, its methodology, goals and