THEME
READ LESS
Participatory development involves including people who are affected by the development process as planners in that process. The conference seeks to explore the challenges associated with this approach.
Participatory development involves including people who are affected by the development process as planners in that process. It became very popular in the 1980s and 1990s as a response to globalization and neoliberal development policies. It is inspired by the work of Robert Chambers as a way of overcoming the shortcomings of top-down development and the limitations of expert research and planning. Participatory development’s catch cry might be ‘ordinary people know best’. It has, however, been criticized for being tokenistic and has not been able to address the issues of top down development and, more recently, results-based planning. This conference will explored these issues from both an academic and practitioner perspectives.
PROGRAM
READ MORE
View the event program and find a selction of published papers from The Challenges for Participatory Development in Contemporary Development Practice.
The program from The Challenges for Participatory Development in Contemporary Development Practice can be downloaded here.
A selection of papers from the program are available in the Development Bulletin Volume 75.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
READ MORE
Find out more about the keynote speakers from the 2012 conference, including Prof. Robert Chambers, Prof. Gita Sen and more...
Prof. Robert Chambers is a Fellow of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. He has worked on rural development in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia and is currently concentrating on the development and spread of the approaches and methods of participatory rural appraisal. He is author of Rural Development: Putting the Last First; and his latest book is: Provocations for Development.
Prof. Gita Sen combines a distinguished academic career with policy advocacy and NGO activism. She is a professor at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, India, and Adjunct Professor of Global Health and Population at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her recent work includes research and policy advocacy on the universal health care, the equity dimensions of health, and the gender dimensions of population policies. She is the author, co-author or co-editor of several books on these gender-related issues. She is a founding member of DAWN (Development Alternatives with Woman for a New Era).
Emele Duituturaga is a Pacific Islands gender and development specialist, academic, consultant and trainer. Emele has served in senior roles including CEO of the Fiji Ministry for Women, Social Welfare and Poverty Alleviation and Head of the Pacific Women’s Resource Bureau for the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.
Dr. Alan Fowler is an Emeritus Professor at the International Institute of Social Studies in the Hague and for more than thirty years an advisor to and writer on civil society organisations involved with international development. Now based in South Africa, his current advisory work focuses on reforms in the governance of international civil society alongside academic initiatives around the theme of Civic Driven Change (CDC), that is civic innovation stemming from citizens and their (in)formal associations.
LINKS
READ MORE
Access video recordings and publications capturing the content from ACFID University Conference 2012.
Conference Keynote Session videos:
Opening Plenary: Gareth Evans and Prof Robert Chambers
Participation for Development: A Good time to be alive?
Plenary 2: Dr Alan Fowler
Spontaneous Participation: Can Development NGOs Engage with Unbounded Activism?
Plenary 3: Prof Gita Sen
Motherhood and apple pie? Being feminist in a development organization
Emele Duituturaga
Whose Development if not mine? A Glass Ceiling look at Participatory Development
Closing Plenary Panel
Alan Fowler; Gita Sen; Robert Chambers; Emele Duituturaga; Elizabeth Reid; Julia Newton-Howes
