Endings and ends of invited participation: Learning from the end-users of Furuset
Keywords:
participation, sustainability, urban planning, climate change mitigationAbstract
User participation has become a cornerstone of both technology development and sustainability policy, driven by democratic ideals and pragmatic hopes that inclusion will ease adoption. But in an age when users are constantly "activated" - invited to contribute, share, and engage across platforms and programs - are assumptions about participation being desired and embraced by citizens still valid? This article examines three encounters with residents of Furuset, a stigmatised neighbourhood in Oslo, during a failed attempt to co-design a sustainable technology intervention. Drug users responded with eager compliance; youth met the researchers with ironic sarcasm; elderly residents refused outright. Drawing on Sedgwick's concepts of paranoid and reparative reading alongside recent work on the 'new production of users', we treat these varied responses symmetrically — analysing refusal with the same tools as acceptance. We find that users inhabit a repertoire of affective positions shaped by prior experiences of being researched, activated, and sometimes exploited. For participatory sustainability research, this means that enthusiasm cannot be presumed: the conditions under which people will genuinely engage must themselves become objects of inquiry.
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