Participatory Research
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Item The next gen project: A global study on training, teaching and learning community-based research (CBR)(The Canadia Association for the Study of Adult Education (CASAE), 2016-07) Lepore, Walter; Tandon, Rajesh; Hall, Budd LWhile policies and practices regarding the creation of structures to facilitate community-university research partnerships are emerging and there is a rich literature on methodology of CBR, little research has been done at a global level on the training opportunities for building capacities in CBR within universities and community organisations. This led the UNESCO Chair in CBR and Social Responsibility in Higher Education to undertake the Next Gen project to analyze the current state-of-the art in pedagogies and strategies for building CBR capacities. This paper synthesizes the main findings of the project and proposes a series of pedagogical principles for the training of CBR.Item Participatory research: Where have we been, where are we going? – A dialogue(UCL IOE Press, 2017-07) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, RajeshRajesh Tandon and Budd Hall, the UNESCO Co-Chairs in Community-Based Research, have worked together on the theory and practice of participatory research since they first met in Caracas, Venezuela in 1978. This article is a conversation between the two of them that took place in New Delhi, India in 2015. It covers the creation of the concept of participatory research, a coming to awareness of the importance and power of local knowledge, the creation of the International Participatory Research Network and their thoughts on some of the challenges facing community and academic partners today. Of note is the fact that the early roots of participatory research were found in the global South, specifically in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Of further interest is the fact that for the first 20 to 25 years, participatory research was a discourse located almost entirely outside formal academic circles but rather in social movement structures and civil society circles.Item Understanding design of organisation(Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 2001-08-25) Tandon, RajeshThis text by Dr. Rajesh Tandon presents a comprehensive analysis of the structure and process of understanding organizations and NGOs and navigates strategies to their management. The text describes models as conceptual tools for analyzing organizational behaviour, emphasizing the organization as an open social system and provides a systems theory for it. It explains missions and purposes of an organisation and lists its required inputs and desired outputs. The text further identifies and describes five key components of organizational design, technology, tasks, human resources, formal organizational structure, and informal organization. It analyses the concept of congruence, arguing that organizational effectiveness depends on the degree to which these components fit together and presents the congruence hypothesis arguing that greater the fit between components, the more effective the organization will be in achieving its mission. The text identifies types of NGOs and addresses several critical issues for NGO management such as compatibility with organizing elements, size and informal structure, hierarchy, and organisational changes. It further discusses the differences arising from different ideologies and operational strategies and the need for NGOs to manage relationships with multiple constituencies. The text concludes that organizations are complex social systems requiring analysis at multiple levels and aspects and that a successful organisation requires effective division of work and integration of efforts.Item Participatory research as a methodology of development(Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 0000) Tandon, RajeshThis 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.Item Decolonization of knowledge, epistemicide, participatory research, and higher education(UCL Press, 2017) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, RajeshThis 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.Item Society for participatory research in Asia(1999) Tandon, RajeshThis press release is about the Bhopal Sammelan, a three-day gathering held in November 1999 that brought together about 1400 people from over 400 organisations and elected panchayat leaders across sixteen states. Organised by the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) with its partners, and hosted by Samarthan in Bhopal, the event drew social activists, development workers, trade unionists, tribal and women leaders, students and youth to build solidarity through cross-state exchange. Discussions were held around five themes: citizenship, empowerment, new leadership, accountable local self-governance and participatory social development. The Sammelan planned actions to hold public officials accountable, educate citizens on their rights, recognise emerging leadership among women, dalits and adivasis, and push for local control over land, forests and water. The event also marked the release of the India findings from the global study Citizens and Governance, conducted by PRIA and partners across ten states.Item Participatory research Project: A note on the activities of the Asian region(0000) Tandon, RajeshItem Participatory research in Asia(1980) Tandon, RajeshThis 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.Item Participatory research- An exploratory statement(0000) Tandon, RajeshIn this paper, Dr. Rajesh Tandon examines the limitations of conventional research that contributed to the emergence of Participatory Research. He identifies concerns such as the emphasis on objectivity, limited attention to the use of knowledge, the assumption that research is value-neutral, and the concentration of control over the research process and its outcomes in the hands of researchers. The paper distinguishes Participatory Research from academic, policy, and evaluation research by comparing who influences the selection of research problems, methods, and outcomes at different stages. It outlines an ideal participatory process based on shared decision-making, collaborative research design, and the joint collection and interpretation of data. Tandon also differentiates Participatory Research from Action Research by highlighting the researcher's explicit ideological position and the active involvement and control of participants throughout the inquiry. The paper concludes by identifying questions related to the validation of knowledge beyond conventional standards, the broader outcomes of participatory inquiry, and the political nature of research in social settings; presenting these as issues to be explored through participatory practice rather than resolved conceptually.Item Participatory research as a contribution to cultural reconstruction(1980) Tandon, RajeshIn this paper, Rajesh Tandon outlines the key characteristics of participatory research and discusses its contribution to cultural reconstruction, drawing on the case of the Commune of Pozzuoli, Italy, where a prolonged state of emergency had disrupted social, economic and cultural life. The paper examines how participatory research counters the dominance of expert-controlled knowledge by linking the acquisition of knowledge to community action, encouraging collective reflection and analysis, and recognizing the validity of ordinary people's experience alongside scientific expertise. Empowerment, understood as a shift from dependence to collective self-confidence, is identified as the central outcome of this methodology. In the context of Pozzuoli, the paper considers how participatory research can help stakeholders build a shared understanding of the crisis, recover historical and cultural roots through methods such as oral histories and personal narratives, and work toward a desirable cultural future. The paper closes by describing participatory research as a modest but useful contribution to cultural reconstruction, dependent on ownership and control remaining with ordinary people rather than experts or administrators, and not intended as a complete solution on its own.