This paper presents conceptual arguments to delineate the methodology of participatory research approach. After presenting an excellent analysis of the social and professional contexts of the origin of PRA, the authors describe various points of view which are broadly subsumed under PRA. The degree of researcher's political activism is seen as the main dimension on which these various points of view differ.
From the days in the 1930s when the University of Bombay first introduced a post-graduate course in sociology, to our days, there has been a gradual change to the professionalization of the social sciences. With professionalization came specialisation and its acceptance as a science that can be considered objective by creating a distance between the researcher and the 'object' of study i.e., the people studied—actors in the social setting.
