Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
more recent interpretations of participation see the concept firmly
embedded within more ambitious global goals of good governance, citi-
zenship, human rights (see Chapter 5.1) and civil society. Participatory
development is now widely used in a broad range of development
projects worldwide but, despite widespread adoption by multilateral
agencies and NGOs alike, there have been a number of problems associ-
ated with participatory approaches.
The term 'participation' is rather ambiguous, and it is open to a wide
range of different interpretations and definitions. While some commen-
tators focus on the importance of power sharing and cooperation, others
take a more epistemological approach that advocates mutual learning
as a way of understanding the issues that impact upon people's lives
(Chambers, 1997) or a more transformative agenda that produces last-
ing social change (Hickey and Mohan, 2005). In reality, many develop-
ment projects never exceed tokenism or what has been called 'co-option',
whereby members of a community are enlisted onto expert-led commit-
tees but fail to make a substantial contribution to key decision making.
Other critics have argued that participation has been used to justify the
predetermined actions of external agencies like the World Bank and
IMF in order to give legitimacy to their programmes. As such, the
extent to which the development process has become truly participatory
is contested as policies often lack the power fundamentally to change
inequitable and unjust power relations at the global level (Mohan,
2008). Furthermore, the communities that engage in participatory
projects are often seen as socially homogeneous, and agencies can easily
bypass intra-community conflict and listen to the voices of the powerful
minority over the majority. As discussed in Section Four, issues relat-
ing to gender, ethnicity, generation or disability may be paramount in
deciding whose voices are heard. Despite these criticisms, there has
still been widespread adoption of participation in grassroots develop-
ment policy and praxis, due to the overriding consensus that it has the
capacity to empower communities to play a role in their own develop-
ment trajectories.
As mentioned earlier, fundamentally, participatory development is
about facilitating the empowerment of marginalized communities. At
its simplest, empowerment refers to any process by which people's con-
trol over their lives in increased. Back in the 1990s, empowerment was
largely focused around enabling poor communities to claim their own
political and economic spaces at the local level, and it was a particularly
important component of gender and development programmes (see
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