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Power and discourse in Massachusetts politics: The Franklin County Charter Commission, 1986-1988
Abstract
The political entity of the County of Franklin, Massachusetts was created in 1811 and exists at the pleasure of the state legislature. In 1986, Franklin County politicians were given the opportunity to write a charter for the county, an event which was unique in 300 years of Massachusetts political history. I investigated the political processes by which Franklin County politicians articulated and put into operation their ideals of democracy, representation, and other dominant political concepts. My emphasis was to explore these processes anthropologically in order to discover the cultural and social processes at work in political arenas. I also document a historical moment. I conducted two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Franklin County (1986-1988) utilizing participant-observation techniques, formal and informal interviewing and archival research. My focus of attention was on the development of political conflicts between two factions who struggled to gain control of Franklin County's future. In addition, I focused on how such political operators excluded and silenced public voices and professional staff which sought to interject themselves into the conflicts. This dissertation contains representative segments of political discourses as they were framed within specific struggles. I identify such dialogues as the chief symbolic capital which was mobilized, domesticated, and used to produce various documents containing plans for the future of the county. In addition, I present my observations and information gleaned from interviews in order to describe the larger social contexts which contained this particular struggle. In my discussion, I locate my investigation of the charter process within theoretical treatments of power relations. I also discuss the implications of the charter commission in terms of public policy. And finally, I point to epistemological and methodological implications and challenges of conducting traditional anthropological fieldwork among powerful peoples.
Subject Area
Cultural anthropology|Political science|American studies
Recommended Citation
Nixon, David Glyn, "Power and discourse in Massachusetts politics: The Franklin County Charter Commission, 1986-1988" (1994). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9420670.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9420670