160 Participatory Processes
institutional clustering. Or rather, its absence. Far-reaching institutional clustering
can, as I argued above, nip many, if not all, innovations in the bud. In this context,
it is telling that calls for ‘protected spaces’ are heard (Kemp et al, 1997; Kemp et al,
1998; Van Lente and Rip, 1998) in the very situations that are characterized by a
high degree of institutional clustering. A second essential precondition concerns
the necessary self-confidence. A third concerns the required design capacity, the art
of creating new solutions and new development opportunities.
Actors, Projects, Co-production, Convergence and
Distantiation
In the beautifully written introduction to Organizing Modernity, John Law describes
projects as ‘self-reflexive strategies for patterning the network of the social’ (1994,
p20), a description which captures the meanings of agency, virtual networks and
their interrelations. At the same time, Law describes these strategies as modes of
ordering, as the mechanisms that shape social life. This underlines that these modes
of ordering do indeed work via the future, precisely because they are the expression
of the reflexive strategies that constitute networks.
No direct one-to-one relation can be assumed between a mode of ordering and
the practices that emerge from it.^30 The decisive element is the interaction between
various modes of ordering.^31
As indicated previously (in part as a result of Figure 8.4), the presence, interac-
tion, synergy and tensions between various, sometimes even conflicting, modes of
ordering must always be anticipated in the construction of a network. The out-
come of this process is, in principle, indefinable. Strategies and projects will be
adjusted – that is, unfolded in a particular way – to enable interlocking of and/or
distantiation from other projects, strategies and modes of ordering. Considered
thus, a network (‘for patterning the social’) is, above all, a particular set of modes
of ordering linked together or defined vis-à-vis one another.^32
In the process of constituting and developing such networks as a set of interre-
lated projects, interfaces are crucial. This concept, largely developed by my colleague
Long, refers in essence to discontinuities, to issues and social relations that do not
necessarily follow on from one another (Long, 1989; Long and Long, 1992).
The idea grew from another concept: linkages. A different research group
(from Leiden University) developed this concept to explain how various issues and
relations are constantly forged together by linkages, originating from their (sup-
posedly) underlying structural patterns. The Wageningen reaction to this, most
imaginatively expressed by Long, was that it was not so much the unproblematic
linkages that should be the focus of attention, but rather the incapability to com-
bine various issues and relations (i.e. the problematic linkages).
Thus, interface analysis was born – that is, the study of both discontinuities and
the, above all, unpredictable and often difficult to grasp ways in which translations