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Synopsis
Robert Chambers, one of the critical optimists of international development, returns with a new book that reviews, together for the first time, some of the revolutionary changes in the methodologies and methods of development inquiry that have occurred in the past forty years, and reflects on their transformative potential for the future.
This book breaks new ground by describing and analyzing the evolution of a sequence of approaches. It starts with the provocation of the “dinosaurs” of large-scale multi-subject questionnaire surveys, and the biased visits and perceptions of rural development tourism—the brief rural visits of urban-based professionals. This is followed by the explosive proliferation of methodologies and methods of recent years, especially rapid rural appraisal (RRA) including observation and semi-structured interviews, and participatory rural appraisal (PRA) with its group-visual analysis. Dramatic developments in the still largely unrecognized fields of participatory numbers and statistics, and of participatory mapping including participatory GIS, are described and analyzed, demonstrating their great potential as sources of data and insights. Chambers shows how these can empower local people and at the same time provide rigorous and valid substitutes for some more traditional methods of inquiry. Also presented is a repertoire for offsetting the biases of the urban trap, which has become so serious for officials and aid agency staff. Importantly, he points out that we are now in a different space, methodologically, from a few years ago. He makes the case that participatory methodologies, evolved through creative and eclectic pluralism, can be transformative, and a wave of the future as drivers of personal, professional and institutional change.