On the theory and practice of critical pragmatism: Deliberative practice and creative negotiations

Abstract

Critical pragmatism provides a line of analysis and imagination that might contribute both to academic planning theory and to engaged planning practices as well. To do so, it must build upon, and develop more politically, Donald Schön’s seminal work on reflective practice. It must help students of planning think critically about outcomes as well as processes, about institutional and process designs, about power and performance. It must resonate experientially with perceptions of change-oriented practitioners facing complex multi-party “problems” characterized by distrust, anger, strategic behavior, poor information, and inequalities of power. Not least of all, a critical pragmatism must—and can—help students of planning reconstruct possibilities where others might initially perceive or presume impossibilities.