Phillips, Louise (2011). The promise of dialogue: The dialogic turn in the production and communication of knowledge. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 198 pages.

The Promise of Dialogue takes its point of departure in the so-called dialogic turn, characterised by a proliferation of dialogue-based approaches across diverse fields of practice including public

engagement with science, local government citizen involvement projects, collaborative research, “bottom-up” organisational change and user-driven social and health care. Communication is conceived as dialogue whereby knowledge is co-produced collaboratively through the participation of different social actors and articulation of multiple knowledge forms. “Dialogue” has become a buzzword with a taken-for-granted positive value.

· But what does “dialogue” actually entail in the fields in which it is practised?

· And how can we analyse those practices in ways that take account of the tensions that arise in the meeting between different knowledge forms and social actors in dialogue-based practices?

"The Promise of Dialogue" presents a novel theoretical framework for understanding and analysing the dialogic turn in the production and communication of knowledge that builds bridges across 3 research traditions - dialogic communication theory, action research, and science and technology studies. It also provides an empirically rich account of the dialogic turn through case studies of how “dialogue” is enacted in the fields of planned communication, public engagement with science and collaborative research. It takes a critical, reflexive approach that, at one and the same time, interrogates the tensions, complexities and dilemmas in play in the enactment of “dialogue” and is oriented towards further developing dialogic practices from a position normatively supportive of dialogue. For further information, please see http://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/ds.12/main or contact louisep(at)ruc.dk.