Participatory Action Research

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

Browse

Filters

1978 - 19792

Settings

End date: 1979Subject: search.filters.subject.SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 11
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Participatory training and self development
    (0000) Acharya, Binoy; Verma, Shalini
    How should training be undertaken to encourage critical thinking and instill confidence in people? In this article, Binoy Acharya and Shalini Verma discuss the growing emphasis on training within the development sector while questioning approaches that reduce training to the mere transfer of information or techniques. They argue that many people, especially the poor and marginalised, experience the systematic devaluation of their own knowledge and capacities which weakens self confidence and participation. For this reason, simply providing more skills cannot by itself lead to empowerment, though external knowledge may still be useful. The focus of training, they argue, must be to foster critical thinking so that people can analyse their own realities, articulate their experiences, and identify what they need to learn further. Participatory training is highlighted as a process that breaks the culture of silence, restores faith in people’s own knowledge, and builds confidence for collective action. Social development, the authors emphasise, begins with the development of the self.
  • 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
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Participatory training: Philosophy and perspective
    (0000) Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA)
    The paper examines the assumptions underlying participatory training as a response to systems of inequality that concentrate power and control over the minds of ordinary people. Education, media and institutional knowledge production have historically devalued popular knowledge and eroded the self-confidence of ordinary people to think, act and transform their own realities. The paper proposes a set of guiding beliefs, termed articles of faith, centred on the capacity of ordinary people to learn, change and grow, as the basis for translating these ideas into practice. Conditions required for this translation include respecting learners and their experience, creating structured opportunities for sharing and critical reflection, strengthening self-esteem, and establishing mutuality between learner and trainer within a learner-centred and learner-controlled process. Training is presented as an ongoing, long-term intervention rather than an isolated event, directed toward generating new knowledge and countering hegemonic control. The paper closes by stating that trainers must first clarify their own assessment of reality, their vision of a better world, and their guiding articles of faith before designing training programmes.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
  • 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
    The Indian urban elites: An exploratory study
    (0000) De, Nitish R.; Tandon, Rajesh
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Participatory research: An alternative
    (0000)
    This paper by Dr. Rajesh Tandon examines the evolution of the knowledge industry and its impact on the interconnected domains of social science research and social development. He argues that the growing monopoly of knowledge production is controlled by professionals and experts who determine what constitutes ‘legitimate knowledge’ and ‘subjective opinion,’ which is built upon a top-down approach similar to the natural sciences. The paper identifies three salient features of social science research methodology that perpetuate this monopoly and thus require critical assessment. Subsequently, participatory research is presented as an alternative to conventional social science methodology. He traces the historical roots of participatory research and presents several characteristics that distinguish it from conventional inquiry. The chapter further compares the two research methodologies across three critical dimensions of problem definition, data collection and analysis, and utilization of results. It also presents some ambiguities about participatory research around its objectives, roles of researchers and participants, its methods, and its results. The paper concludes by emphasizing its link to contemporary social movements and the importance of strengthening them.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Towards an epistemology of participatory research
    (Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) , 0000) Chaudhary, Anil
    In this article, Dr. Anil Chaudhary examines the epistemological foundations of participatory research, arguing that its roots lie in the age-old traditions of knowledge production that have existed alongside the elite-controlled, formal knowledge frameworks throughout history. Drawing upon historical analysis, he demonstrates how control over knowledge production and utilisation has been an effective instrument of rule in all stratified societies. He divides them into three categories: structural control, linguistic control, and thematic control. The article thus talks about the parallel existence of two contrasting modes of knowledge production- the dominant mode and the popular mode. It presents participatory research as an attempt to refine the popular mode of knowledge in the contemporary context. Dr Chaudhary concludes the paper by suggesting some challenges for the future of participatory research.