Browsing by Author "Tandon, Rajesh"

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A note on the Participatory Research Project in the Asian region
(1981) Tandon, Rajesh
This paper traces the rise of participatory research as a response to the limits of conventional social science, linking it to wider struggles for democracy and development. It reflects on both its potential and contradictions, framing it as an ongoing project rather than a finished method.
A Report on the Asian Regional Meeting of Participatory Research
(PRA, 1979) Tandon, Rajesh
A regional (Asian) meeting of participatory research was organized in Bangkok, Thailand with the assistance of ASPBAE during April, 1979. The participants included one representative from Philippines, Korea, Bangladesh, Australia and India, and ten Thais.. There was also a representative from UNESCO, Dr J.R. Kidd also participated in the meeting for a part of the time. Two Qanadian colleagues presently doing fieldwork in Thailand also joined. This was a first meeting of its kind organized in a limited fashion to strengthen Participatory Research in Asia. Specifically, the objectives of the meeting were: (a) to discuss and understand the concept of Participatory Research approach; (b) to share experiences of Participatory Research from various countries in Asia; (c) to develop mechanisms for extending the network of Participatory Research in Asia.
Action-Research: Assumptions and Practice
(Public Enterprises Centre for Continuing Education, 0000) Tandon, Rajesh
This paper discusses the assumptions and practices associated with action-research in social science. It critiques the classical enquiry approach, focusing on its assumptions about knowledge generation, objectivity, and the separation between researcher and subject. It explores the ideological, epistemological, and methodological aspects of action-research, highlighting its cyclical nature and the integration of understanding with change. The paper contrasts the traditional approach to research with action-research, emphasizing the value of subjective experience, experiential learning, and intervention in social systems as legitimate means of knowledge generation.
Adult Education, Culture Development and Social Movements: The Contemporary Challenge
(Society for Participatory Research In Asia, 1993-04-27) Tandon, Rajesh
We are now living in a rapidly changed world. Certain characteristics of the world are specially relevant for our discussion on adult education and cultural development. characteristic of this is the unipolar nature of First the contemporary world scenario. This unipolar nature is not merely in geographical, political or military sense, but it is unipolar in economic and socio-cultural sense as well. It is now being Increasingly assumed that capitalist form of economic organisation as demonstrated in the countries of the North is the only appropriate form of economic organisation in all countries of the world. As a result, there are increasing pressures on Local communities (which have tried to organise their economic and socio-cultural reality through centuries of tradition and experience) to adapt to this singular form of economic organisation.
African Regional Workshop on Participatory Research (1-7 July): "From Clarity to Anarchy – Participatory Research Approach"
(PRIA, 1979-07) Tandon, Rajesh
This paper critiques the lead presentation on the Participatory Research Approach (PRA) presented at the African Regional Workshop. It outlines the origins, varying perspectives, and methodological implications of PRA, highlighting tensions between researcher activism and knowledge generation. The paper examines philosophical roots, such as existentialism, and contrasts PRA’s eclectic, multi-modal methods with the more controlled methodologies of classical research approaches. Tandon addresses PRA’s seeming ‘anarchy’ and its accommodation of activist perspectives, emphasizing the method’s implications for social action in Third World contexts.
African Regional Workshop on Participatory Research, Mzumbe, 2nd - 7th July, 1979
(Botswana Popular Theatre Project, 1979-07-07) Tandon, Rajesh; McKenzie, Bob; Kraai, Ziki
This report covers the African Regional Workshop on Participatory Research held in Mzumbe from 2nd to 7th July, 1979. The workshop brought together participants to discuss and reflect on the application of participatory research and popular theatre as tools for community engagement and education. The report highlights the contributions of Rajesh Tandon, Bob McKenzie, and Ziki Kraai, who presented their thoughts on how popular theatre can be an effective medium for communication, education, and information dissemination within the political and social context of Botswana, particularly in relation to its proximity to South Africa, language divisions, and apathy among the people.
Against Epistemicide: Decolonising Higher Education
(2020) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh
Asian regional participatory research network: A note
(1985) Tandon, Rajesh
ASPBAE and Its Structure: Some Thoughts
(1987-12-01) Tandon, Rajesh
The thrust of the decisions taken last year was to decentralise both programming and management (including financial) activities within each of the four sub-regions of ASPBAE. Decisions were also taken to send to each sub-region directly funds on the basis of proposed programmes for the year. I am sure that other members who have directly handled the responsibility of programming and management at the sub-region level may be in a better position to indicate their experiences during the year. But my sense is that this attempt at decentralisation may perhaps lead to substantial and systematic separation and segregation of sub-regions from each other and weaken the purposes and identity of ASPBAE as a whole.
Beyond partnerships: Embracing complexity to understand and improve research collaboration for global development
(2021) Fransman, Jude; Hall, Budd L; Hayman, Rachel; Narayanan, Pradeep; Newman, Kate; Tandon, Rajesh
While there is a burgeoning literature on the benefits of research collaboration for development, it tends to promote the idea of the ‘partnership’ as a bounded site in which interventions to improve collaborative practice can be made. This article draws on complexity theory and systems thinking to argue that such an assumption is problematic, divorcing collaboration from wider systems of research and practice. Instead, a systemic framework for understanding and evaluating collaboration is proposed. This framework is used to reflect on a set of principles for fair and equitable research collaboration that emerged from a programme of strategic research and capacity strengthening conducted by the Rethinking Research Collaborative (RRC) for the United Kingdom (UK)’s primary research funder: UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The article concludes that a systemic conceptualisation of collaboration is more responsive than a ‘partnership’ approach, both to the principles of fairness and equity and also to uncertain futures.
Case Study on the Role of Adult Education in Community Involvement for Primary Health Care
(1983-05) Tandon, Rajesh
Challenges in the co-construction of knowledge: A global study on strengthening structures for community university research partnerships
(0000) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh; Tremblay, Crystal; Singh, Wafa
Collaborative participatory research in gender mainstreaming in social change organizations
(Participatory research in Asia (PRIA), 2006-11-19) Tandon, Rajesh; Farrell, Martha
Unequal gender relations in societies, specially developing countries, have been focus of development programmes for decades. Much of this focus has been on changing gender relations in communities. However, organisations - governmental and private also reflect similar patterns of gender relations. Advocacy for gender mainstreaming in organisations has had limited success due to prescriptive approach. PRIA has adopted a learning process approach to gender mainstreaming in development NGOs in India. Collaborative Research methodology has been utilized towards this end. This paper describes one such case and draws implications for future research and practice.
Community based participatory research & sustainable development goals
(2017) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh
Community Participation
(2000) Tandon, Rajesh
The decade of the seventies began to generate a critique of the dominant development paradigm which was practiced in the countries of the North after the second World War and adopted in the newly independent countries of the South in the fifties and the sixties. The experiences of the fifties and the sixties has demonstrated the fundamental weakness of the top-down, GNP-focused, growth-centred strategy of development based on professional expertise and modernising technologies. The critique of this strategy of development was developed from the experiences in a variety of sectors in the countries of the South in general, and in India in particular. The critique was applied to education, social welfare, health, agriculture, etc. With the convening of the 'Health for All by the Year 2000 in the mid seventies the focus of health care delivery shifted from expertise and high technology to what came to be known as primary health care. The cornerstone of this approach of primary health care, according to the declarations of Alma Atal and subsequent reports of a variety of committees and studies, was proclaimed as community participation.
Decolonisation of knowledge, epistemicide, participatory research and higher education
(2017) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh
This article raises questions about what the word 'knowledge' refers to. Drawn from some 40 years of collaborative work on knowledge democracy, the authors suggest that higher education institutions today are working with a very small part of the extensive and diverse knowledge systems in the world. Following from de Sousa Santos, they illustrate how Western knowledge has been engaged in epistemicide, or the killing of other knowledge systems. Community-based participatory research is about knowledge as an action strategy for change and about the rendering visible of the excluded knowledges of our remarkable planet. Knowledge stories, theoretical dimensions of knowledge democracy and the evolution of community-based participatory research partnerships are highlighted.
Development Training of Marginal Farmers in India
(1980) Tandon, Rajesh
THE last three decades have been characterised by the search for strategies of development in all parts of the world. Various theories and models of development have been propounded; various programmes and projects of development have been attempted. In the developing countries, search for developmental approaches has become more intense. Both the developed as well as the developing countries are engaged in large scale experimentation in this direction. To the extent that bulk of the developing countries are still, by and large, rural societies, most of the resources have flown into the area of rural development.
Dialogue as inquiry and intervention
(1981) Tandon, Rajesh
The notion of inquiry as intervention in social systems has emerged only recently in the respectable academic circles. Action research has been the forerunner of such an approach to integrate inquiry and intervention (Lewin, 1947b). However, there is beginning to emerge some consensus among the action researchers (L. D. Brown, 1972) and participatory researchers (Hall, 1975; Tandon, 1979) that inquiry can be conceptualized and practised as an intervention process. Some illustrations of such a perspective have also appeared in recent years (Brown and Tandon, 1978). Dialogue as inquiry and intervention was first described by Freire (1970) and it has since been used by Freire himself and his colleagues. Dialogue presents a potent method of integrating inquiry and intervention, and it can contribute to the intermingled processes of knowing and changing. This chapter presents a case from the two-year field work by the author where dialogue was used as inquiry and intervention simultaneously. Small and marginal farmers in a region of Western India were the participants in this effort. The next section presents an account of this inquiry.
Editorial: Knowledge democracy for a transforming world
(UTS ePress, 2020) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh
The past five decades have seen enormous, worldwide growth in, and appreciation of, knowledge democracy - the discourse which we have found best contains the various theoretical approaches, values and practices within which participatory research exists. This Introduction outlines our understanding of knowledge democracy, which can be expressed by a number of principles: (1) Recognition of a multiplicity of epistemologies and ways of knowing; (2) Openness to assembling, representing and sharing knowledge in multiple forms (including traditional academic formats and all manner of social and arts-based approaches); (3) Recognition that knowledge emerging from the daily lives of excluded persons is an essential tool for social movements and other transformational strategies; and the (4) Requirement to carefully balance the need to protect the ownership of communities' knowledge with the need to share knowledge in a free and open access manner. We are pleased to present five articles from around the world that broaden and deepen our understanding of knowledge democracy -from a theoretical perspective, a practice perspective, an ontological perspective, and an action or political perspective.
Education for All as Determined by the Few?
(Society for Participatory Research in Asia, 1989-12) Tandon, Rajesh
In this brief, note based on our experiences in examining these documents, debating and discussing them in several forums, the issues raised by many independent educationists, researchers and non-governmental organisations have been briefly outlined.