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mburnamfink 's review for:
An edited volume broadly critical of Participatory Rural Appraisal and related "bottom-up" methods for involving marginalized communities in development projects, this book extends a multi-pronged Foucauldian analysis that shows both the utility and limits of this type of critique. The short version is that rather than being "localized", "community-driven", or whatever other buzzword PRA planners use to describe their work as superior to older top-down state and World Bank development models, PRA actually has embedded within it a host of assumptions about the boundaries of communities, the ability of the essentially performative nature of PRA exercises to produce knowledge, and represent another model of modernity and outsider NGOs values, rather than the community itself.
These are good critiques, but the limits, as with much Foucauldian analysis, fall in the "so what" question: Power circulates at a micro-capilarily level; the discourse of empowerment fails to match the material facts of being empowered; PRA constructs its own set of beneficiaries of development, which may not match the local's models; so what? If we care to act in the world, we perforce become involved in instruments of power. Pointing out their existence does not actually make a statement about them. As the introduction points out, the editors chose the deliberately provocative word TYRANNY because they believe that the basically unverified and unaccountable distribution of power engendered by participatory methods is unjust, but they have little vision of what justice actually looks like in their world. There's are interesting perspectives here about how PRA fails, or merely reinscribes modernity, from a variety of scholars and disciplines, but ultimately it fails to make a statement beyond 'thing bad'.
I will note that it is funny that in 2013, 12 years after this book was published, a new edited volume came out titled Participation - From Tyranny to Transformation: Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development. The revolt against orthodoxy becomes the new orthodoxy becomes the revolt, and on and on.
These are good critiques, but the limits, as with much Foucauldian analysis, fall in the "so what" question: Power circulates at a micro-capilarily level; the discourse of empowerment fails to match the material facts of being empowered; PRA constructs its own set of beneficiaries of development, which may not match the local's models; so what? If we care to act in the world, we perforce become involved in instruments of power. Pointing out their existence does not actually make a statement about them. As the introduction points out, the editors chose the deliberately provocative word TYRANNY because they believe that the basically unverified and unaccountable distribution of power engendered by participatory methods is unjust, but they have little vision of what justice actually looks like in their world. There's are interesting perspectives here about how PRA fails, or merely reinscribes modernity, from a variety of scholars and disciplines, but ultimately it fails to make a statement beyond 'thing bad'.
I will note that it is funny that in 2013, 12 years after this book was published, a new edited volume came out titled Participation - From Tyranny to Transformation: Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development. The revolt against orthodoxy becomes the new orthodoxy becomes the revolt, and on and on.