Creating new truths: Understanding power in public health and planning
People working in public health and planning want to include health in their plans but feel like they do not have the power to do so was a key theme to arise from TRUUD’s phase one interviews. We asked TRUUD PhD candidate Martha Jordan about her research which focusses on understanding power dynamics and how people can cultivate more power for themselves to make health a priority.
What are you working on?
My research focusses on understanding power dynamics within groups of people. Specifically, I’m trying to understand how people might create power for themselves through their resources, confirm-structuration (acting in groups) and through the creation of new meaning and truth. The types of power I’m looking at is not the kind of violent or coercive power you might be thinking about but more subtle forms of power that occur without you realising when people are discussing their work, their priorities etc.
From the TRUUD phase one interviews, one of themes that came out was that people felt that they wanted to include health in their work but didn’t feel they had the power to. So, my research is trying to understand what methods of power creation are impactful within this realm, specifically with people who work in public health or planning, so we can maybe understand a little better how to create power for ourselves when we feel powerless. I’m looking at what resources professionals are allocated and trying to see what methods are used to make health a priority.
Why choose to look into power dynamics in urban development?
My background is in psychology, and specifically environmental psychology. In my masters I was looking a lot at how we encourage people, using psychological methods, to behave more sustainably. This really stretches out to health as well as the two are so inherently interlinked. Although my PhD is technically in the field of Management, I really feel it has such strong links with psychology. Understanding how and why people behave in the way they do is interesting from a power perspective. Therefore, looking into power dynamics in this way felt like it suited where I was on my academic journey and provided an opportunity for me to really get stuck into a new field!
I think it is so important that research is being done currently to understand how we can shift the structures of society and change the current norms. It seems that a large proportion of the country, including the current government, isn’t really committed to sustainability and improving social services. I think that more people want to make changes than the political climate suggests, therefore researching power dynamics, and how those with less power can create power for themselves, changing the norms and the discourse from below, could be really important for enacting change.
My research is specifically interested in how we create new truths. While this sounds like a deep philosophical question it just looks at how people, who feel they have little power, can start to change the conversation. If this is something we can better understand we can use this understanding to leverage our own power for social change.
How is it progressing?
It’s moving! It went pretty slowly at first, I was new to the field of power and so I spent probably the majority of my first year just reading – which was lovely. It also took me a bit of time to get access to the spaces I wanted to observe, but once I was in it all moved quite fast and I’ve now got loads of rich observational data. I’m currently working on analysing the observational data, and later this year I’ll be starting to conduct some interviews based on what comes out of the analysis.
It’s been a great experience working on my PhD alongside the TRUUD project and seeing the two come together and then draw apart again. It’s also been such a good resource to have loads of knowledgeable academics with wide ranging specialisations who I can go to with my questions.
After I’ve done the interviews, it’ll be all onto analysis and digging into the detail of my data to find out what is happening. I think getting from analysis to understanding is quite a big leap but I’ve got lots of people on my team to help me get there! Once that’s done it’ll just be about writing up my three papers – which is a nerve racking but also quite an exciting prospect.
Who do you hope will use the findings?
I’m really hoping to produce something that is of value to most people working in organisations who want to create power for themselves. It would be great (but don’t hold me to this) if I could create some kind of practical tool that would allow decision-makers to present their ideas in a way that is more impactful when trying to get their opinions into actions, really utilising the forms of power they have access to.
I think I’m somewhat more excited to see what happens after the TRUUD project and if there is an impact with my work on that, I’m delighted with the way that our intervention area is shaping up (and the way my PhD work is feeding into it) so seeing some changes in the way health is viewed in urban development would be amazing.
How has TRUUD supported you?
TRUUD has supported me massively on my PhD so far. Apart from being the reason my PhD has been funded (and providing me with my amazing supervisors – Krista Bondy, Judith de Groot and Mairi Maclean) I think PhDs can be quite a lonely process and TRUUD has just meant that I have had a load of colleagues who are experts in fields similar to what I’m working in. My PhD is in the Bath School of Management so those on my cohort at Bath are all working on projects very different from mine, having TRUUD colleagues has been invaluable in terms of help and support (both in academic expertise but also social spaces).
I think on top of this, TRUUD has given me loads of opportunities to present my work at conferences and speak with people (through its huge network) that I might not have had the chance to do without being part of the project.
