Abstract
“Engagement as transformation” describes a participatory action research project aimed at developing eco-tourism in Dunga, on the shores of Lake Victoria, in Kenya. In this response, I address how the article resonates with my own experience in important ways, challenges or questions my experience, and provides actionable knowledge for practitioners.
Resonance
If philosophy is the activity of interrogating the question “how shall I live,” politics is the process of interrogating the question “How shall we live (together).” In this article, the engaged PAR process is described as “learning,” but I see it equally as the political process: “engagement as transformation” describes a process which brings stakeholders together (from both inside and outside the community) to discuss problems, make plans, try things out—and in the process get to know, adapt to and cope with each other's interests.
This resonates with my earliest experience of development, when I lived and worked for five years in the Gavien Resettlement Scheme in the East Sepik. There, most days involved local problem-solving, and making decisions in light of community concerns, aspirations, ideas and culture. This stands in contrast to a common development norm in which interventions are planned from outside.
Challenges to my experience
My 30+ years of development experience since the Gavien has led me to critically examine that early experience, and reading this article brings out many of the same questions. I want to contextualize these questions by saying I support the basic impulse at work here: towards greater engagement, participation, reflective practice, and action-learning, leading to a project developed in partnership with the community, rather than predetermined at a distance.
Three critical questions come to mind in reading the article.
Who owns this project?
When the word “participation” is used to describe local people “participating” in their own learning and development, to what extent is this possible in projects which are being managed by outsiders? In my own experience, I see this participation in reverse: this community has its own development trajectory prior to, greater than, and continuing after the minor intervention that constitutes the project. It is the outsiders are being allowed (and trusted) to participate in the local political and social processes.
Whose learning? And to what end?
In any development intervention, there are at least two groups of people, each with their own cultural background, expectations, interests, and blind-spots. Though we as outside agents can’t be self-aware of all of our own background, we need to be aware where and how we are acting out of our own interests and background. The article highlights multiple decision points where the local and external stakeholders need to make decisions that ultimately show how learning and project control are unfolding. The authors recognize as much in their reflections on “Acknowledging and sharing power.” They show continued efforts to listen to local needs and adapt the project in ways that generated more local ownership (see for example, the decisions on the cultural day and on women tour guides). The authors also show how their outsider status was perceived by local actors as an arbitrating strength in some cases. At the same time, the project encounters the same problems many of us have in our work. Consider the following excerpts:
An important issue in a long-term project is to keep it alive and going. —Whose issue? “Other actions needed to be taken to ensure women’s inclusion.” —Who feels this need to take action? “We also were intent on communicating what was happening to others, in a way that promoted learning.” —Whose learning? And to what end?
Tacit cultural agendas
These questions arise from the irreducible fact that outsiders bring with them tacit expectations, values, and biases of their own culture, of which they cannot be fully aware. For instance, the whole project is framed in terms of “transformative education.” This suggests that the community needs to be educated. The project also assumes “social transformation” to be a given good—but should that not be up to the local people? On the one hand, the value of outsiders is that they bring something new, including new ways of seeing and thinking. The risk is that these outside influences, leveraged by money or power, may be tacitly imposed on local communities, who are then left to live with the effects.
The tension between inside and outside
I see this article as a rich record of a particular attempt at a more engaged, equal, democratic, co-learning process, in which both researchers and community are changed. However, I see also the article as in tension between two opposing forces. The first, which underlies the intent and the detailed reporting of thinking and action, is just that movement towards a more emancipatory, Freirean form of development. This comes from inside the communities. The second comes from the institutions and culture of the outsiders: the need to seek something “transformational” (a Western value), the need to show results (typical donor requirements), the need to be able to file documents acceptable to the academy (Western research culture).
As a practitioner, I experience this tension when I need to justify time spent in conversation with community, against external demands to make pre-specified changes conceived outside the community. The authors also grappled with the tension between the inside dynamics of community, and the imposed expectations of outsiders. This tension lies at the heart of many paradoxes and failures of development. By elucidating these more clearly, the history of this project can help practitioners navigate the tension.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.