The politics of participation - Rebuilding After Disasters: From Emergency to Sustainability - page 192

There is no one recipe that fits all contexts; successful community par-
ticipation will depend on many factors. As Ian Davis 21 noted some thirty
years ago, post-disaster reconstruction is a fundamentally social process,
conjugating cultural, symbolic, political and economical dimensions. To be
positive, participation must be sensitive to all these specificities and cannot
be applied in a standardized fashion from one disaster to the next across the
globe.
As various chapters in this volume show, many construction methodologies
are available for post-disaster builders. With the growing body of research
on the subject and the increased dialogue between the social and applied
sciences, as well as between the building industry and development organi-
zations, there is real potential for participation to become as empowering
as some had hoped it to be. But for this to happen, participation ought
not to be limited to its technical side alone; an apolitical application of
participation cannot create sustainable livelihoods for the simple reason that
disaster-stricken communities find themselves in highly politically charged
contexts. A humanitarian emergency is not a neutral environment, nor is
reconstruction. To find in participation a vector for social transformation,
enough space and adequate means must be given to those populations so
that they may express their agency as they see fit, which may mean, in cer-
tain cases, their refusal to participate. What Hickey and Mohan say about
participation in development is also valid for reconstruction:
New and promising ways forward are available. What is required is a
greater level of honesty and clarity from both critics and proponents
as to what form of participation is being debated; greater conceptual
and theoretical coherence on participation; and more considered claims
regarding its potential to transform the power relations that underpin
exclusion and subordination. (page 21) 34
Acknowledgement
Thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
(SSHRC) and the Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC) for
their generous funding support for this research project.