Understanding Participation

Abstract

While it is impossible to pinpoint changes in development thinking with any historical accuracy, there is no doubt that the mid-1970s saw the start of a fundamental shift away from the domination of the modernisation paradigm of development thinking and intervention and a move towards a systematic search for alternatives. The past 15 years have witnessed a searching re-examination of the nature and purpose of development, and this re-examination has correspondingly influenced practice. The literature which has recorded this re-examination is prodigious, and many academics have immersed themselves in the new theoretical and conceptual horizons that have been provided. The re-examination threw up a whole new form of analysis dependency theory -that has steadily influenced the different dimensions of development intervention. The work of Haque and his colleagues (1977) was instrumental in giving structure to this re-thinking and their efforts have been built upon by successive researchers (Pearse and Stiefel, 1979; Galjart, 1981; Bhasin, 1985; Verhagen, 1985).