Community Knowledge

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Start date: 1990End date: 1999

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Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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    Action and knowledge: Breaking the monopoly with participatory action research
    (The Apex Press, 1991) Fals Borda, Orlando; Rahman, Mohammed Anisur
    This book is the result of field work and reflection inspired in Participatory Action-Research (PAR) techniques and philosophy during the last twenty years, when this form of study-and-action was first proposed and tried. The book does not attempt the impossible task of covering the entire field. It does try, however, to underline PAR's main features as we have experienced them, illustrating them in Part II through a handful of process studies, or vivencias, from different countries. Such vivencias are expected to show why PAR is a viable ap-proach to face some of the very old problems still experienced in many parts of the world where "development" policies have been tried and found wanting. However, although the crisis of "development" and its discourse is every day more widely felt and discussed, because PAR began much before, the alternative rise of PAR should not be interpreted as a response to it. From the beginning, those who adopted PAR have tried to practice with a radical commitment that has gone beyond usual institutional boundaries, reminiscent of the challenging tradition of Chartists, utopians and other social movements of the nineteenth century. Therefore, while recognizing that ours is an ancient, permanent task, it is our hope to reach social action groups, grassroots animators, intellectuals and government officials with a constructive message adapted to present needs for social and economic change, and conducive to other options for enlightenment and awakening of common peoples-especially those forgotten, despised or left voiceless by the dominant Establishments. We are concerned with such sociopolitical problems as people's power and struggles, and with cognitive issues, such as those implied in the accumulation of different types of knowledge. The pertinent theoretical discussion is found in Parts I and III, written also with a view to undertake a dialogue with academic scholars and in particular those who consider themselves "post-modern." We want to express our appreciation to the collaborators of this book and to the many groups that participated in the experiences. Thanks are due also to the director of the Institute of Political and International Studies of the National University of Colombia, Bogotá, and to the chief of the Rural Employment Policies Branch of the International Labour Office, Geneva, for their institutional support of the present work.
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    Social movements and political power: Evolution in Latin America
    (Sage, 1990-6) Fals Borda, Orlando
    Social movements came to life again in Latin America towards 1964. Working mainly at the local level, they have been undergoing intense evolution by adopting political functions. This has been due to the concatenation of the problems faced by them in existing vacuums of power. Movements have sustained themselves in time and have expanded regionally, to the point of now adopting national stances. This is expressed in autonomous action exemplified in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile and other nations. Prospects are difficult because of repression and co-optation, but unexpected resistance of the movements expresses an intense desire to achieve alternative developments and ways of life in these countries.
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    Building capacity through action learning
    (Institute for Development Research (IDR) Reports, 1993) Leach, Mark
    The ability to learn from experience is critical for individuals and organizations seeking to be effective in rapidly changing and complex situations. Educators, corporate managers, public administrators, and grass roots activists have all been challenged by the dilemmas of learning from action and experience. While using many different terms (including action research, action science, experiential learning, participatory research, organizational learning, learning systems, etc.) these people have developed a rich and varied set of insights into facilitating what might be generally called "action learning." The purpose of this paper is to review several streams of work related to action learning (AL), and to consolidate some of the key principles in an effort to help organizations expand their capacity to develop action learning strategies. Particular attention will be paid to the relevance of action learning principles for non-governmental and community based organizations (NGOs and CBOs).
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    Education for women's empowerment
    (ASPBAE, 1996) Batliwala, Srilatha
    Education for Women’s Empowerment reflects on education as a means to challenge gender inequality and advance women’s empowerment. The paper states that women’s empowerment requires overcoming social, economic, political, and cultural relations and structures that undermine women. Education for literacy, basic and women’s rights, self-reliance, citizenship, reproductive health, critical thinking, and self-determination are presented as pivotal forces for social change. The paper is a call for decentralizing and democratizing education, engaging women and their communities, integrating traditional knowledge, gender-responsive curricula, and training materials, and enhancing the role of NGOs and civil society in education. It also calls for advocacy, networking, monitoring, and evaluation, and participatory approaches to research, as well as strategies for policy implementation at various levels. To advance women’s empowerment, the paper suggests that education can contribute to enhancing women’s participation, voice, resources, and control and promote gender justice and social change.
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    Participatory research in health: Setting the context
    (Zed Books, 1996) De Koning, Korrie; Martin, Marion
    Many contributors to this book assume some familiarity with concepts which may not be familiar to all health professionals. Our aim in this introduction is to set into context those issues and theoretical concepts which are frequently referred to in the text. These include educational processes based on Freire's critical pedagogy (Freire 1972), issues around difference, for example in gender, and contemporary notions of knowledge production.
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    PRA training report-cum-reference manual developed for Purvanchal Gramin Seva Samiti
    (Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group, 1995) Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group
    The PRA Training Report-cum-Reference Manual was developed for Purvanchal Gramin Sewa Samiti (PGSS) as a training and reference resource on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA). The training was held at the PGSS Centre, Padri Bazar, Gorakhpur, from 31 March to 4 April 1995. The manual was prepared by the Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group (GEAG) with assistance from UNICEF, Lucknow. It documents the training programme and serves as a reference manual for the application of PRA approaches in rural development and community-oriented work. The available title page does not provide sufficient information to specify the individual PRA methods or detailed findings covered in the manual.
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    Fifteen years of Participatory-Research-in-Asia
    (Participation & Governance, 1997) Tandon, Rajesh
    We have just completed fifteen years of our experience as PRIA. The seeds of this organisation were sown by the early work on participatory research during the late 70s. That experience provided the philosophical basis for our work: Knowledge is Power. This perspective inspired the early activities we undertook by promoting a number of initiatives which emphasised recognition and articulation of indigenous popular knowledge in the fields of education, health-care, natural resource management etc. Over the years, different ways of expressing that philosophy gained ascendancy in PRIA's work. Today, our work in strengthening Panchayati Raj Institutions as mechanisms of local self-governance is its most explicit expression. We are using methods of organising and promoting the learning of leadership in local bodies to play their rightful role as self-governing institutions. Special emphasis is being placed on learning and empowerment of new leadership in these institutions: women and socioeconomically weaker sections of society.
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    Participatory research for people's empowerment
    (Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 1999) Prasad, B. Devi; Rao, K. Visweswara
    As new ways of linking knowledge with social change were being sought, participatory research emerged as an approach that questioned the distance between academic inquiry and people’s lived realities. This paper examines participatory research as an approach to knowledge creation that is closely tied to community involvement and social change. Drawing from field experiences, the research demonstrates how engaging people directly in the research process challenges traditional academic hierarchies and foregrounds the realities of the marginalized groups. By placing communities at the center, participatory research shifts the role of the researcher from being an external expert to a facilitator of collective inquiry and action. This approach generates new knowledge while building local capacity and solidarity, and identifying and implementing practical, contextualized solutions to pressing issues. At the same time, PR highlights the tensions between academic institutions that emphasize objectivity and technical expertise, and community groups that prioritize lived experience and immediate outcomes. Despite these differences, PR demonstrates its strength in bridging gaps between theory and practice, institutions and communities, and knowledge and action- making research a transformational process.
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    Looking back, looking forward: Reflections on the origins of the international participatory research network and the participatory research group in Toronto, Canada
    (1997) Hall, Budd L
    In this article, Dr. Budd Hall looks back on the early history of the International Participatory Research Network, founded in 1976 in association with the International Council for Adult Education. He traces his own path into the work through years spent in Tanzania, where Julius Nyerere's ideas on self-reliance, Marja Liisa Swantz's participant research, and a 1971 visit from Paulo Freire shaped his understanding of research as an act of solidarity rather than a neutral exercise. He describes the 1975 special issue of Convergence that first drew together scattered efforts around the world, the 1977 Cartagena conference with Orlando Fals Borda and other Latin American scholar-activists, and the network's founding commitment to autonomous, horizontally organised nodes across Toronto, New Delhi, Dar es Salaam, the Netherlands, and Caracas. He then considers what role universities should play in a field built on breaking the academy's monopoly over knowledge production and reflects on the structural pressures that work against genuine collaboration between academics and communities. The article closes by asking whether participatory research might extend further, toward co-creating knowledge with the rest of nature.