Participation: The New Tyranny?

by Bill Cooke (Editor), Uma Kothari (Editor)

This book is about participatory development's potential for tyranny, showing how it can lead to the unjust and illegitimate exercise of power. It is the first book-length treatment to address the gulf between the almost universally fashionable rhetoric of participation, which promises empowerment and appropriate development on the one hand, and what actually happens when consultants and activists promote and practise participatory development, on the other.

The contributors, all social scientists and development specialists, come from various disciplines and a wide variety of hands on experience. Their aim is to provide a sharp contrast to the seductive claims of participation, and to warn its advocates of the pitfalls and limitations of participatory development. The book also challenges participatory practitioners and theorists to reassess their own role in promoting a set of practices which are at best naive about questions of power, and at worst serve systematically to reinforce, rather than overthrow, existing inequalities.

For the recipients of participatory development this book provides critical insights into the history, institutions, and day-to-day activities through which participation is 'done to' them. It provides them with a range of arguments which support the legitimate decision not to participate on others' terms.

This rigorous and provocative understanding of participatory development is one which donors, academics and practitioners will find hard to ignore.

Genres: Academic, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published June 23, 2001

About the author

Bill Cooke is Professor of Management and Society at Lancaster University Management School. Previously he worked at the Institute for Development Policy and Management, Manchester School of Management, and Manchester Business School, all within what is now the University of Manchester; and at Teesside University.

Reviews

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Kohl Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone even contemplating grassroots development or the study thereof, this is a must-read.

[Farheen Hussain · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of essays that covered the different aspect of the philosophy and implementation of participatory development. Apart from the one by Cooke and Kothari, found the rest semi useful. Also felt the essays were a little disconnected from each other with no flow from chapter to chapter. Would've appreciated more essays on implementation of participatory practices in different third world countries and assessment of their impact. Other than that, an easy and interesting read for the most part and would definetly recommended it to someone looking to familiarize themselves with the participatory development approach and its evolution.