SEEING WITH AN ETHNOGRAPHIC SENSIBILITY 171players, things might have turned out differently—for the better. As these studies show, participant-
observation can be a powerful tool for going beyond superficial explanations that see the less
powerful losing due to decision makers’ misinterpretations of their lifeways based on the deci-
sion makers’ own ill-placed, and sometimes ignorant, expectations. Instead, analysts grounded in
an ethnographic sensibility are more likely to look for the structural impediments to policy suc-
cess, to ask what in the policy itself or in the larger structures of society might be holding people
back (Royce 2003).
This deeper analytic orientation is particularly apparent in one of the central issues in contem-
porary policy analysis. More and more, planners and policy analysts are looking for ways to
incorporate multiple and varied stakeholders in the decision-making process. Yet, as we’ve seen
from the examples in this chapter, including a variety of stakeholders does not ensure that each
perspective is accorded equal weight or value by the other participants. This exclusion need not
be, and often is not, purposeful, intentional, or explicit. Rather, it comes about due to fundamen-
tally different ways of seeing that are both literally and figuratively invisible to one another. Innes
and Booher (2003) make the seemingly obvious, but in practice very difficult, point that collabo-
rative policy making requires finding common ground among the participants/stakeholders in the
decision-making process. Yet, as seen in the examples here,
parties must begin with their interests rather than their positions and... they must neither
give in nor insist on their own way. They must learn about each other. They must seek
mutual-gain solutions that as far as possible satisfy all interests and enlarge the pie for all.
They must persist in both competing and cooperating to make the negotiation produce
durable results. The tension between cooperation and competition and between advocacy
and inquiry is the essence of public policy collaboration. (Innes and Booher 2003, 36–37,
emphasis added)In other words, the parties must allow themselves to get to know one another at more than a
superficial level. Without knowing the questions to ask, without being able to understand why the
parties approach problem solving and daily practical living in disparate manners, how can they
possibly expect to understand one another sufficiently well to respect difference and communi-
cate across it in a constructive manner? Without such depth of understanding, there is a greater
chance that policy makers will pay mere lip service to the concept of participation in lieu of
practicing participation. Success entails listening and looking at a profoundly close and detailed
level. It might even mean reading and learning about the “whys” underlying the attitudes and
rationale of the other stakeholders. It might entail a facilitator practiced in participant-observa-
tion, or at the least participants’ willingness to read relevant interpretive ethnographies in order to
experience living an alternative reality vicariously, to get those involved to start seeing through
different eyes.
Innes and Booher (2003) relate an example of an environmentalist and a businessperson who
eventually found themselves bringing each other’s perspective to a meeting when their counter-
part was not there to do it himself. The environmentalist started understanding the businessperson’s
concerns, and the businessperson started understanding what drove the environmentalist. Each
was able to reflexively consider the basis for his own reactions to the other’s point of view, as
well as the social and political bases of their respective attitudes, both pro and con. Interestingly,
neither interpreted this new relationship as a compromise, a diminishing of their own positions or
a letting down of their side of the argument. Rather, Innes and Booher argue, the parties learned
to recognize their areas of overlap and dissonance, personal comfort and discomfort, and, above