A project’s social acceptability isn’t measured solely by the number of public consultations held, but by a fine-grained understanding of the social relations, collective imaginaries and authority structures specific to each community.
Beyond formal consultation
A community may approve a project in a public meeting while maintaining deep reservations that surface elsewhere: slowed construction, intergenerational tensions, challenges to the legitimacy of designated spokespeople. Cultural intelligence means mapping these dynamics upstream rather than discovering them mid-project.
A stakeholder mapping, combined with an analysis of local practices and power relations, makes it possible to design a community engagement strategy genuinely suited to the context, rather than a procedural compliance exercise.