Participatory research:

A brief overview

Paul Sillitoe

University of Durham

Expert meeting on participatory agricultural research: Approaches, design

and evaluation, Oxford, 9-13 December 2013

Development as material progress

• Assumes technologically driven change

• Assumes capitalist market political

economy

• Development aims to reduce global poverty

• Material = only legitimate measure of objective progress

• Top-down interventions planned and implemented by agencies

• Theory of modernisation

Development and social change

• Technology not socially neutral

• Natural resources v. social dimensions -

enduring source of confusion about

development

Socio- cultural variation

• Socio-cultural acceptability a

central issue

• Generic solutions v culturally

tailored ones

Unsustainable development

• Sustainable development – today’s buzz

word

• Repeated failure of development

programmes

What is sustainability?

• Sustainability - change is gradual

• Development - change is rapid

• Difficult to square sustainability with

economic growth

• Environmental costs of capitalism potentially

unsupportable long-term

Participation

• Agencies realise human element important

• Precursor = Farming Systems Research

• But participatory approaches have not

enjoyed the success anticipated by

supporters. Why?

Local versus global science

What do you see?

• Duck-rabbit -- questions privileging of

global science

• Focus on the interface where knowledge

negotiation occurs

Hybridisation

Generic development

solutions versus socio-

culturally specific

ones

Soundness of local science

• Idea others’ knowledge can contribute -- even

challenge science – appears preposterous

• Increasingly realised local knowledge of

natural resources and practices integral

aspects of any environment

Local know-how and sustainability

• Much to learn from those we presume to develop regarding sustainability

• Appreciation of local ideas & practices to encourage more sustainable development in both ecological & cultural senses

• Implies undoing much of the change previously imposed on populations to ‘develop’ them?

Interdisciplinarity

• Focussing on identified researchable constraints

• Distorting to divorce knowledge from wider

socio-cultural context

• Problems of reductionism lead to calls for

interdisciplinarity

• Local knowledge interdisciplinary by definition

Tacit knowing

• Challenge documenting tacit knowledge

• We all engage daily in acts not focally aware of

• How can we capture in words?

Variation

• Variation in what people know

• Clustering of certain knowledge within

populations

• Links to political power

Local political issues

• Participation in hierarchical societies?

• Experts know all

• Challenge to devise inclusive approaches

• Problem of short time research frames

Knowing what’s at stake:

education?

• Education a development priority, to inform

people

• But how to avoid brainwashing?

International political issues

• Left wing = appropriate local determination

• Right wing = getting market to work

• Participation as parroting dominant view

• How realistic to expect dominant nations to relinquish power?

• Complexities of democratic government

Manipulation of participation

• Participation a forlorn hope?

• Participatory development subject to

manipulation

• Political pressures for control and ‘results’

• Blueprint v process approaches

Misuse of knowledge

• Agencies may misuse knowledge

• Unfair exploitation as a commodity

• Concerns for intellectual property rights

• Substantial challenges

• Thanks!