CONTENTS
List of Figures ix
List of Tables x
Abbreviations and Addresses xi
Glossary of Meanings xiv
Preface xvii
Acknowledgements xix
1. The Challenge to Change
An overview 1
Accelerating change 3
Polarization: overclass and underclass 5
An evolving consensus 9
The power and will to act 12
The challenge to change 14
2.Normal Error
Errors: embedded or embraced? 15
Macro-policy 16
Integrated Rural Development Projects 17
Beliefs about food and famine 17
Post-harvest losses of grain 19
Animal-drawn wheeled toolcarriers 21
Woodfuel forecasts 22
People and the environment 23
The puzzle: why were we wrong? 29
The puzzle and the challenge 31
3.Professional Realities
Normal professional status 34
Things and people 36
Measurement 38
Reductionism: simplifying the complex 42
Economics: culture and cult 49
The professional prison 54
4.The Transfer of Reality
Realities 56
Top-down: uppers and lowers, North and South 58
Normal teaching 59
Normal (successful) careers 63
Normal.development bureaucracy 63
Model-Ts and the transfer of technology 67
Model-Ts in agriculture 68
The transfer of procedures (TOP) 71
Dominant realities 74
5.All Power Deceives
Power as disability 76
Whose reality? Whose fantasy? 77
Uppers' impediments 78
Lowers' strategies 84
Self-sustaining myth 88
Out-of-touch, out-of-date and wrong 91
Patriarchal prisoners 91
Academic lags 92
Confirmation by questionnaire 93
World Bank and self-deceiving state 97
Whose reality counts? 100
6.Learning to Learn
The challenges 102
Streams of change 103
PPvA: confluence and spread 113
RRA and PRA compared 115
A menu for RRA and PRA 116
Practical applications 119
Participatory alternatives to questionnaire surveys 122
Insights for policy 125
Why did it take us so long? 128
7.What Works and Why
Insights from the PRA experience 130
Capabilities: they can do it 131
Behaviour and rapport 133
Diagramming and visual sharing 134
Expressing and analysing complexity 135
Sequences 136
Validity and reliability 140
Reversals and reality 146
Reversals of power: from extracting to empowering 154
Principles for participatory learning and analysis 156
A rigour of trustworthiness and relevance 158
Concluding 161
8.Poor People's Realities: Local, Complex, Diverse, Dynamic and Unpredictable
Poor people's realities 162
Local livelihood strategies: complex and diverse 163
Complexity and diversity in farming, pastoral and
forest systems 167
Complex and diverse for livelihood flows, security and
well-being 170
Complexity, diversity and dynamism underperceived 172
Whose priorities count? 174
Who takes the long view? 174
Income, wealth and well-being 176
Whose preferences and criteria count? 179
Diversity within the community 183
Reversals for complexity and diversity 187
9 The New High Ground
Paradigms and development 188
The new high ground 190
Parallel evolutions 192
Natural sciences 193
Chaos and complexity theory 194
Social sciences 195
Business management 196
Permanently provisional: the evolving paradigm 197
Diversity and choice: from packages to baskets 201
The fifth D: doubt, and self-critical awareness 201
Practical reflections from PRA 206
Empowerment: lowers can do it 206
Uppers' behaviour and attitudes 207
PRA and development discourse 209
10 Putting the First Last
The challenge 210
Bad practice 211
Synergies 214
Empowerment 216
To change institutions 220
Pressures from below: lowers versus uppers 223
New professionalism 228
The primacy of the personal 231
Putting the first last 234
So what? Start! 236
Postscript: Past and Future 238
PRA Contacts and Sources of Information 240
Notes 241
References 255
Index 284