Participatory Action Research

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://knowledgedemocracydspace.com/handle/123456789/1074

Browse

Author: search.filters.author.Tandon, RajeshSubject: search.filters.subject.India

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 16
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Participatory Research in Asia
    (1980) Tandon, Rajesh
    This volume represents a major step in the Participatory Research Project (PRP) in Asia and is the first publication of its kind in the region. It has now been a little over two years since the project was started by the International Council for Adult Education. The PRP has been implemented through the creation and strengthening of five regional networks, and I have been acting as the coordinator of the Asian Regional Network for the past 18 months. A statement of the objectives of the Participatory Research Project and Network is included as an appendix. This volume draws together emergent theoretical concerns of Participatory Research (PR) in Asia, a set of case studies illustrating some of the under-lying principles and methodologies, some short discussion notes, and key reports from regional and sub-regional meetings. The purposes of this volume are manifold: first, this volume will present to the members of the network as well as those interested in PR, the current 'state of the art' in PR: it is intended to initiate a series of such volumes in Asia which will reflect the evolving character of PR as a concept and methodology: second, this volume is intended to stimulate further writing on and documentation of PR. I believe that a significantly greater amount of work is going on in Asia than is represented here. This is a weakness of the present volume: it is heavily biased in favour of some countries, especially India, than others. I do believe that other countries of Asia have a lot of exciting material to contribute to PR. I hope this volume will stimulate a more active circulation of already existing materials. Finally, this volume is intended to be a report on what has been happening in PR in Asia through exchanges across the region. Already four meetings/workshops have been organized on PR in Asia, and it is planned to hold many more within and across the region in the coming years.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Social research for social action: An introduction
    (Indian Social Institute, 1998) Fernandes, W; Tandon, Rajesh
    Though claims are made about the objective and value-free nature of social research, in reality, oftener than not it leads to some form of social action, sometimes aimed at questioning the status quo and usually by maintaining it. In fact, social research and social action are similar and interdependent. Both entail human activity within a given human setting and feed each other. Social research is allied with social action though it may not always lead to it directly while social action is invariably based on some research. One can argue that even coercive and repressive social action entails a certain data-base as is evident from the deeds of investigative and police agencies all over the world. Studies have shown bow aggressive marketing practices of multinational corporations, exploitation of the Third World markets and over-pricing-are based on extensive research of their market potential and methods of making a given product acceptable to the consumer i.e., creating a need that docs not really exist.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Participatory research as a methodology of development
    (Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 0000) Tandon, Rajesh
    This paper questions how development research has usually been done. It points out that classical research keeps a firm line between the researcher and the people being studied, treats the researcher's own values as something to be kept out of the picture, and leaves control of the whole process in the researcher's hands alone. Participatory research is put forward as a way of working that sets these assumptions aside. Here the problem to be studied comes from the community itself, the people affected take an active part in the inquiry, and the researcher works alongside them rather than above them. Three examples from India carry the idea forward. In West Bengal, sharecroppers were registered through village camps under what became known as Operation Barga. In southern Rajasthan, twelve tribal families built a shared irrigation system by reviving an old local practice of water-sharing. In Maharashtra, an organisation called Shramik Sanghatana brought together landless labourers and tribal women around wages, land rights and the effects of alcoholism on their households. Through these cases, the paper highlights some of the more challenging issues that participatory research raises, such as its closeness to political action, the difficulty of applying it in unorganized communities, and the need for a researcher's personal perspective before people are willing to trust the process.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Participatory research in Asia
    (1980) Tandon, Rajesh
    This book, edited by Rajesh Tandon and published in 1980 for the Asian-South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education, gathers the first two years of work under the Participatory Research Project coordinated through the International Council for Adult Education. He opens the collection with his own essay mapping the character of participatory research as it had taken shape across Asia by the late 1970s, tracing its overwhelmingly rural base, its entanglement with social action, and the political risk that came with working alongside landless labourers and tribal groups in states not always tolerant of organising. The theoretical section that follows sets contributors against each other rather than in agreement: Zafrullah Chowdhury reads decades of foreign-funded medical research in Bangladesh as a continuation of colonial control dressed up as philanthropy, while other papers by Banerjee, Ghosh and Das question participatory research's claims to method and rigour from more sceptical angles. The case studies, left largely unedited from their original submissions, cover a literacy programme in Mehrauli, the Shramik Sangathan's organising among agricultural workers, the Gonoshasthaya Kendra health centre in Dacca, and projects in the Philippines and Rajasthan, closing with reports from four regional meetings and a note on the project's founding objectives.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    From clarity to anarchy: Participatory research approach (A critique of "The methodology of the participatory research approach")
    (1979) Tandon, Rajesh
    In this paper, Rajesh Tandon responds to a critique of a paper on the methodology of the participatory research approach, presented at the African Regional Workshop on Participatory Research in Tanzania in 1979. A central fallacy runs through the original argument that the wide range of political activism within PRA produces naive idealism and methodological adhocism. Participatory research is not an invention of the seventies; only its label is new, since people organising the rural poor had long practised its elements without naming them. Two vantage points inform the approach, the activist's and the professional researchers, and reconciling them forms the real challenge. Classical research confines inquiry to thinking alone, while PRA treats feeling and acting as equally valid modes of knowing. A genuine risk of subjective, superficial analysis remains, addressed through joint analysis between researcher and people. PRA's apparent anarchism reflects unfamiliarity and variety rather than incoherence.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    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.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Unity in diversity: The future of adult education in asia and the south-pacific region
    (1991-12) Tandon, Rajesh
    This text by Dr. Rajesh Tandon examines the challenges affecting our world and the role of adult education in response to these challenges, mainly in the Asia and South-Pacific region. Dr. Tandon identifies four major challenges, rapid internationalisation, Global capitalism and modernization on local cultures and knowledge systems, poverty, dislocation, and deprivation in many countries, the concept of common good disappearing from debates on social transformation and being replaced by individualistic well being, and the growing restlessness and associated violence with question of ethnic identities. The text concludes by arguing that adult education serves several roles amidst such challenges such as addressing the concerns, problems, and struggles of the poor, promoting tolerance and mutual appreciation where people learn to respect others' points of view, strengthening the possibility of a sustainable lifestyle, addressing environmental degradation and resource depletion, and finally, helping in gaining indigenous cultural identity.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Participatory evaluation in adult education
    (Society for Participatory Research In Asia, 1994-11) Tandon, Rajesh
    This text by Dr. Rajesh Tandon examines the challenges and issues of promoting participatory evaluation in adult education programmes. It critiques the limited concern with evaluation, which has historically been driven primarily by programme managers seeking to define programmes, assess impact, and justify resource use, and by donors facing increasing pressure to demonstrate effective utilization of aid. The text argues that this narrow focus has failed to translate into genuine concern among field educators or learners, who participate in evaluation exercises largely because they are obligated to do so rather than viewing evaluation as an integral part of their work. It identifies some threats to participatory evaluation like devaluing indigenous capacity, imposing narrow timeframes, discouraging openness, questioning, and reflection, particularly at field levels, and not promoting critical reflection and analysis. The paper concludes by stating how promoting participatory evaluation requires a major effort to demystify the concept of evaluation and create favourable conditions to make evaluation an integral part of adult education programme design and implementation.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The Indian urban elites: An exploratory study
    (0000) De, Nitish R.; Tandon, Rajesh