Participatory Research Methodologies

Development and Post-Disaster/Conflict Reconstruction

Alpaslan Özerdem, Richard Bowd

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754677352
• eBook ISBN: 9781317083795
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Participatory research methodologies have been used since the 1970s as a tool to garner accurate information about communities in which development practitioners operate. Their usefulness as a collection of research techniques has been evident in academic disciplines such as politics, sociology, anthropology and economics, among others. This informative text assesses the use of participatory methods as a research tool in the contexts of development and reconstruction after conflict and disasters by identifying cross-cutting themes and establishing a comparative lessons-learned framework that can help inform future uses of them, both for practitioners and researchers. More importantly, rather than adopting a prescriptive perspective, this book provides a critical analysis of such methodologies. Specifically, the reader will benefit from the collation of the experiences of those who utilize participatory research methods in different countries and contexts, and from different academic and practitioner perspectives.

Chapter 1
A Theoretical and Practical Exposition of ‘Participatory’ Research Methods

Richard Bowd, Alpaslan Özerdem and Derese Getachew Kassa

Introduction

Participatory research methodologies have, since the 1970s, been used as a tool through which the voices of the most marginalized, impoverished and excluded in society can be heard and thus the garnering of more accurate information about communities in which development practitioners operate can be made possible. In particular the key tenets of participatory research methods, those of participation, teamwork, flexibility and triangulation, make them a valuable set of approaches through which we can better understand communities and therefore design and implement programmes that not only have a more significant impact on those targeted, but that also are locally owned thereby enjoying stronger commitment from these communities.

Whilst participatory research techniques have, in the past, been predominately utilized by development practitioners, their usefulness as a collection of research techniques has been evident in academic disciplines such as politics, sociology, anthropology and economics, among others. Over recent years participatory methods have proven to be advantageous to the researcher and their use for this purpose has increased. However, with its wide range of challenges from accessing populations to the low levels of security and ethical concerns, conducting research in development and post-disaster/conflict environments presents a set of challenges to the beneficial use of participatory research methodologies. More importantly, there lacks any comprehensive study comparing its application in the contexts of development, conflict and disaster.

This gap in the literature represents a particular problem in that the lessons to be learnt for the various applications of participatory research methodologies may be lost. With the increasing use of participatory methodologies as a research toolset it is crucial that the lessons learned and the experiences of researchers using participatory research techniques in different contexts are recorded and, perhaps more importantly, that the methods and processes of participatory approaches evolves as a result of such lessons.

The key objective of this text is, therefore, to assess the use of participatory methods as a research tool in the contexts of development and reconstruction after conflict and disasters through identifying the cross-cutting themes and establishing a comparative lessons learned framework that can help inform future uses of them, both for practitioners and researchers. More importantly, rather than adopting a prescriptive perspective, the aim of this publication is to provide a critical analysis of such methodologies. Specifically, the text benefits from the bringing together of the experiences of those who utilize participatory research methods in different countries and contexts, and from different academic and practitioner perspectives.

This chapter explores the use of the participatory research methodologies by researchers and practitioners. By investigating the theoretical basis of such methodologies, the chapter provides a detailed consideration of the theoretical concepts that underpin participatory methods of research and charts the evolution of these approaches in their use. It addresses the key concepts of participation and power in an attempt to demonstrate ways in which participatory research techniques empower those who engage in them, as well as how they conceal power imbalances and further reinforce the interests of the urban elite in society. It is these contradictions that the chapter aims to tease out, examining both the positive and negative aspects of a much-lauded research approach.

Participatory Methods of Research: An Overview

Unlike most other research techniques, participatory methods place extensive emphasis on the importance of harnessing the non-academic, local knowledge of the people themselves in order to act upon and solve local problems. Power, assumed to rise from the production and control of knowledge, is then transferred from societal elites to those whose voice is often not heard: those on the periphery of decision-making processes. The following definitions of participatory research techniques reinforce these assertions. Chambers (1992: 1) for instance, defines these methods as a ‘family of approaches and methods to enable rural people to share, enhance and analyse their knowledge of life and conditions, to plan and to act’. With a more radical stance, Peter Park (1993: 1) describes participatory research as ‘a self conscious way of empowering people to take effective action toward improving conditions in their lives. It is a research method that puts research skills in the hands of the deprived and disenfranchised people so that they can transform their lives for themselves’.

Accordingly, participatory techniques are designed to enable the disadvantaged and the poor to critically reflect upon their living conditions, learn the causes of their powerlessness and deprivation, and help them act to redress this power imbalance for meaningful outcomes.

The philosophical roots of the participation literature go far to the works of Karl Marx. According to Hall (1981), Marx, a philosopher and political economist, was an active participant in the French Revolution who then interviewed French factory workers to establish his theory about the commune. Selener (1997) also posits the contributions of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian political activist, to participatory research. Gramsci’s tradition is quite distinct from Marx’s original accounts on the role and position of the peasantry in capitalist European societies. The latter viewed peasant societies as reactionary forces unable to readily develop class consciousness and revolutionary zeal. Gramsci, however, looked at the rural peasantry as a living political force able to articulate class interests if they were given close scrutiny and political agitation. Organizing and mobilizing the peasantry as an ideological force, for Gramsci, is the prerogative of the ‘organic intellectual’. By this Gramsci is referring to intellectuals and change agents born and brought up amidst the oppressed and nourished by the reality of the peasants themselves.

Most importantly, the works of Paulo Freire, the Brazilian philosopher and educator, have had a profound influence on the development of participatory research methods. Known for his famous book, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), Freire stages a critique against a lecture form of education on the basis of it being a form of teaching: a learning process where students sit like empty receptacles to receive wisdom and knowledge trickling down from the teacher. He argues that education should rather be a two way traffic between the teacher and the students that involves critical reflection and conscientization. Conscientization, in Freirian terms, refers to the entire gamut of activities where people participate to identify and critically analyse the social, political and economic factors underlying oppression leading into their organized action for change. According to Freire, knowledge gained through conscientization – experiential learning, participation and transformative pedagogy – brings about structural changes in society by way of empowering the oppressed and the poor. The notion of participation as a learning and empowering instrument is therefore strongly hinged on the works of Paulo Freire (Selener 1997).

Participatory methods explicitly recognize that people have their own local, community based, knowledge systems that researchers from universities, institutes or government departments have not fully tapped. Second, proponents of participatory research techniques state that valid and transformative research could be conducted if people are treated as intelligible partners rather than mere respondents to inquiry instruments. Taking off from here, participatory methods advocate reversals of expert-farmer learning and top-down planning. They also set out to offset biases of what Chambers referred to as rural development tourism by being ‘relaxed not rushing, listening not lecturing, probing instead of passing to the next topic, being unimposed than important, and seeking out the poorer people and women, and learning their concerns and priorities’ (Chambers 1992: 14).

Participation, Power and Empowerment: The Basis of Participatory Approaches

As a result of the arguments regarding the generation of knowledge espoused by Freire and others, and the apparent need for conscientization, the development of participatory approaches to learning took place. During this period understanding of participation altered: from traditional perspectives of participation being based around people’s organizations and cooperatives, community development or animation rurale and guided participation in large-scale projects (Thomas-Slayter 2001), to people-centred perspectives in which the focus lies on power and control. This change in understanding of participation was based on the belief that critical reflection and analysis are not skills solely held by the elite and that ordinary people have the capability to engage in such processes through utilizing their unique local knowledge. Participation, therefore, is crucial to the exploitation of this knowledge and the development of research and policy that can effectuate change. However, increasing and widening participation to enhance research or policy is not as simple as it sounds. Within the people-centred perspective ‘inescapably, where development is concerned, participation is about power, an increase in the power of the disadvantaged’ (Coady International Institute 1989: 17).

Participatory methods, through the participation of community members, seek to bridge the power relations that exist between researchers and the researched, between practitioners and beneficiaries. In conventional approaches to research and policy development, those being researched or those receiving the benefit of policy are generally not involved in the design process and have limited involvement in the implementation phase. The power held by the researcher or the policymaker ensures that the researched or the beneficiary remain on the margins of knowledge production and dissemination: at least in terms of knowledge that is regarded as legitimate by the elite. Unlike such conventional approaches, participatory methods transfer much of the power typically held in this relationship from researcher to the researched and, through a flexible approach and constructive communication, the researched community becomes empowered in such as way as to enable them to be owners of the research process (Bar-On and Prinsen 1999: 5). As communities have the power to identify problems affecting them, they become empowered to take steps to find a solution.

Empowerment is, therefore, a key objective of participatory research and policy approaches and, as a result of the shift in power, it is argued that participatory approaches enable such a process to occur, to the benefit of those engaged in the process. Specifically, the shift in power facilitates the amplification of the voices of marginalized people in such a way that they are able to articulate their needs and demands and make their contribution to the construction of knowledge. Traditionally marginalized groups such as children, women and the disabled are given a forum through which they can express their views, needs and opinions based on their unique position on the periphery. Additionally, their involvement in the development of knowledge and the development of solutions to community issues through leading the process has significant positive implications for their empowerment.

The development of participatory methods essentially grew out of the recognition and belief that local voices could and should be heard within the process of policy design and implementation. This belief derived from the coalescence of the participation, power and empowerment discussion. As approaches to education and learning changed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a greater understanding of the power of participation emerged. Participation, seen as a means to a specific end or as an end in itself, grew as a conceptual underpinning of policy development, most fervently in the ‘developing’ countries of the south but also in the ‘developed’ states of the north. Under this approach the process of increasing the participation of local voices, by default drove the devolution of power to the holders of those voices. If the value ascribed to local voices went up as a result in changes in thinking vis-à-vis learning, then automatically the owners of those voices have more power. This change in power relations and increased participation led in turn to empowerment of local people. Communities, affected both by poverty and policy, have more control over the direction of their individual and collective lives as can be seen in the following statement from the World Bank’s webpage on empowerment:

In essence empowerment speaks to self determined change. It implies bringing together the supply and demand sides of development – changing the environment within which poor people live and helping them build and capitalise on their own attributes. Empowerment is a cross-cutting issue. From education and health care to governance and economic policy, activities which seek to empower poor people are expected to increase development opportunities, enhance development outcomes and improve people’s quality of life (World Bank 2009).

Communities affected both by poverty and policy, through this process of participation, power transfer and empowerment, are able to define their own futures. At least that is how the argument goes; but is this truly the case? Does participation in the development of knowledge result in voices being heard? Whose voice and to what end? Can real participation ever really be achieved? Whilst the benefits of participatory methods espoused by many may indeed eventuate, it is important to consider the opposite case; not least to identify a framework through which ‘good’ participatory research must be conducted.

Participatory but not Emancipatory

Even though participatory approaches developed as a critique to the formal, expert driven, top-down development projects, the use of participatory techniques has become the new orthodoxy that almost all non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society groups, nation-states, and the World Bank claim to secure in their projects. The participation hype that has spread in almost all spheres of the development industry is criticized as having corrupted the original purpose of participation. For many, the incorporation of the participation ideology by the World Bank has handcuffed its radical and empowering aspects. As such, present day critiques against the widespread exercise of participatory techniques are staged at two levels: those that ‘focus on the technical limitations of the approach and stress the need for a re-examination of the methodological tools used in PRA, and those that pay more attention to the theoretical, political and conceptual limitations of participation’ (Cooke and Khotari et al. 2001: 3). The following section attempts to outline how participation literature has failed to critically discuss power relationships during participatory exercises and the implications this has for participation and empowerment.

A Critique on Binary Models of Power in Participatory Approaches

Power, being the ability to persuade one or more people to comply with one’s own interests, often poses conceptual ambiguity. While emphasizing spatial and professional reversals in a bid to decentralize power, participation literature seems to be infested with binary models of power such as the urban elite and the rural poor, the uppers and lowers, the north and the south, academics and practitioners. Power relationships, however, are fluid and do not usually fall into such rigidly stated categories.

Drawing from the works of Michel Foucault (1977), Uma Khotari, for instance, argues that power must be analysed as something that functions in the form of a circulating entity that ‘is never localized here or there’. It is a dynamic state of influence and control that emanates from social discourse where people create norms and cultural practices. When these cultural practices and norms accumulate in the conscience of individual interactants they become knowledge. Knowledge is therefore a dynamic, powerful instrument – continuously made and unmade in discourse – that governs the individual. Foucault calls this process ‘the subjectification of the self’. Mentioning Foucault’s use of Bentham’s Panopticon, Khotari argues that power as a control instrument was diffused all over the prison cells and in the psyche of the prisoners themselves: that is, even if there was no prison guard in the Panopticon’s control tower. The categorical definition of the poor as resourceless, voiceless and, by extension, powerless by participatory approaches is narrow because it evades the everyday control and power people face in their lives (Cooke and Khotari et al. 2001: 139–53).

Romanticizing ‘Community’, Disguising the Powerful?

Participation literature is also criticized for essentializing the word community as a homogenous entity where people have egalitarian interests to produce knowledge, work with partners and decide on matters of common good in undisputed manners. In reality however, communities are characterized by protracted ethnic, linguistic and professional cliques and interest groups that make their own rationalizations before any development project becomes operational. There are squabbles and struggles amongst the community members to be elected to community development committees, county councils or work teams that NGOs establish to ensure community participation. The ‘myth of community’ (Cleaver 1999: 598), which is ubiquitous in the populist slogans of the participation literature, again conceals the everyday, multifarious forms of power struggle within communities. The whole idea of ‘community-based ness’ to ensure community participation should therefore be contested.

‘Local’ Knowledge: A Construct of the Powerful?

While asserting the link between power and knowledge, the protagonists of the participatory tradition set out to unearth popular knowledge ‘in each individual, collectively reformulated and analysed so that it can be applied in collective actions to benefit a group or community’ (Selener 1997: 25). Local knowledge and participatory planning are therefore contrasted to the experts’ knowledge and bureaucratic planning of development interventions. Criticisms against these assertions begin positing that local knowledge is ‘highly differentiated in terms of who produces it and the different ways of knowing things by rural communities’ (Mosse 2001: 19). In other words, what sort of local knowledge one is talking about gets reduced to whose local knowledge one is referring to.

For Mosse, the local knowledge reported as a result of the application of participatory techniques is constructed when powerful project actors shape and dominate what should be discussed, recorded, censored or highlighted in these sessions. More often than not, such reports end up becoming testimonies used to convince donors about the seriousness of a social problem, the perseverance of community A or B, and therefore the relevance of a project in the pipeline. According to Mosse, what is often displayed as local knowledge is little more than an outsider agenda. In other cases, outsider project interests might collude with immediate community interests. Mosse cites an example from India where farmers presented the seriousness of soil erosion and leaching as a problem – when it was not – in order to get paid employment in a reforestation and soil conservation project (Mosse 2001: 16–32). Participation literature has not fully acknowledged the f...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 A Theoretical and Practical Exposition of ‘Participatory’ Research Methods
• PART I PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH METHODS IN DEVELOPMENT AND POST-DISASTER RECONSTRUCTION
• PART II PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH METHODS IN POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION
• Index