View article

" Participation" has three uses and meanings: cosmetic labelling, to look good, co-opting practice, to secure local action and resources; and empowering process, to enable people to take command and do things themselves. Its new popularity is part of changes in development rhetoric, thinking and practice. These have been shifting from a standardised, top-down paradigm of things towards a diversified, bottom-up paradigm of people. This implies a transfer of power from" uppers"-people, institutions and disciplines which have been dominant, to" lowers"-people, institutions and disciplines which have been subordinate. The many labels and schools of participatory approaches in research and development tend to hide underlying changes in philosophy and practice. Rapid rural appraisal leading to participatory rural appraisal (PRA) is one example ofa shift from data collection to data sharing and empowerment …