Harina o harinilla
2.6 LA LANGOSTA Y LA LUCHA DE CLASES: UNA PLAGA DE LANGOSTA EN EXTREMADURA
Cooke and Kothari (2001); Mohan and Stockke (2000); Mohan (2001); Kapoor (2002) and Parfitt (2004) have published critiques of participatory development approaches and highlighted the risks of adopting a binary approach as it reinforces practices of othering (Said, 2003). A superficial application of participatory development could also set up the oppressive Manichean structures (Fanon, 1963) that the approach seeks to eliminate. In instances where the approach is seen as a means to gain legitimacy or funding, it can result in tokenism or manipulation of communities (Mohan, 2001).
“…participation without redistribution of power is an empty and frustrating process for the powerless. It allows the powerholders to claim that all sides were considered but makes it possible for only some of those sides to benefit.” Arnstein, 1969 p2
Sherry Arnstein developed a typology of citizen participation following on from her study of over 1000 American community action organisations while working in the Department of Housing in the 1960’s. Arnstein’s Ladder of participation presents a range of eight levels of participation ranging from non-participation to citizen power as illustrated in Figure 6.
70 Figure 6 - Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation (1969)
She also highlights some critical issues relating to achieving true participation. Firstly, the simplicity of the typology can mislead people into thinking that various groups in a social system are identical when each group has its own layers of complexity similar to the fractals discussed by Moore (1963) and Spivak (2010). Therefore, it is more likely there might be differing points of view and priorities within each group. A second point raised by Arnstein (1969) is the challenge of navigating what she calls the ‘roadblocks’ on either side be it paternalism or limited skills and knowledge. A review of the literature on participatory event planning and production activities in Chapter 3, notes that the events industry has mainly adopted approaches that would fall into the 3rd and 4th rungs of Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation. Innes and Booher (2004) propose an enhancement on Arnstein’s model which focuses on implementing transparent and porous systems of working based on regular dialogue which make decision making accessible to all participants in the process.
Citizen Control
Delegated Power
Partnership
Placation
Consultation
Informing
Therapy
Manipualtion
Authentic Participation
Degrees of citizen power
Degrees of tokenism
No Power
71 2.6.3 Options For Transformation Recommended In Participatory Development
Studies
More recently Robert Chambers has published a new body of work that provides an updated critique of participatory development and in this work he focuses on the mistakes and false truths in the international development sector. Chambers (2017) focuses on providing learning points and recommendations for those in the societal structures that might be considered the
‘uppers’ – those with access to the resources and power. He prescribes a set of new principles for those working on social change projects to consider, which he refers to as a ‘Pedagogy for the Non-oppressed’ (Chambers, 2006; 2017). Based on the errors and failures from previous participatory development initiatives, the following 3 elements are recommended as key areas of focus:
1. The need to develop methodologies that facilitate personal and epistemological awareness with those leading development projects – There is a need for increased praxis and reflexivity. Time to be self- critical must be carefully planned into future projects. Chambers (2017) notes that to date, there is still very limited literature on this issue. This would be useful in supporting those leading development projects to critically examine how their worldviews influence the decisions they make as well as highlight any default technologies of power that they rely on such as manipulation and seduction to coerce communities of interest into making decisions that might not necessarily be for their good.
2. The development of mechanisms that reduce the distance between the decision makers and the communities of interest. Chambers (2017) notes that the current practice in participatory international development is that those who fund and oversee projects are usually working in remote offices far away from the communities of interest. This can result in an inadvertent silencing of communities of interest, as systems of governmentality focus on production of required statistics and evaluation metrics that reduce community issues to numbers and targets. Mechanisms need to be established in projects that require resource holders to recognise the true effects of
72 their decisions and actions. Decision makers and resource holders need to trace the causal links between their actions and the long-term impact on the communities of interest.
3. The last one is the most difficult to pursue, Chambers (2017) recommends that future development projects find a way to enable resource holders to stop believing the myth that empowerment is a zero-sum game where one group must lose for another to gain resources; in other words, the myth that resource holders must be encouraged to be satisfied with less. This non-zero-sum principle will be the hardest to establish in future development projects as all stakeholders within societal structures are manipulated to believe in the binarism of empowerment discussed in section 2.3. Developing projects that can help resource holders to unlearn this and learn a new way to approach participatory development will be the biggest challenge.
Conclusion
This chapter highlighted the power structures embedded by colonialism and discussed how the terms ‘power’, ‘influence’, ‘control’ and ‘domination’ can be related or interchangeable. The ideology of the dominating group governs the actions of that societal structure and thus each group then behaves in the manner they have learnt is expected of them per the hegemonic structures in place (Gramsci, 1976). A specific focus was given on the articulation or mediation of power in built form using the analogy of the veranda and will be developed further in Chapter 7 (Myers, 2003; Njoh, 2009 and Glover, 2004). The review of these colonial structures highlights the processes within the statutory, educational, and religious structures that reinforced the message that the Europeans were superior and the colonised did not have the agency to help themselves. Educational colonisation resulted in a focus on the histories and cultural successes of the colonisers being celebrated (Thiong’o, 1986). One of the key legacies of colonialism discussed by Thiong’o (1986); Said (1993) and Fanon (1961) is the resultant identity crisis which is manifested in a distorted sense of self and low self-esteem
73 amongst the colonised. The setup of societal structures that explicitly separated the colonised and the colonisers, with an intermediate group of native overseers that served as gatekeepers imposed a new culture of individualism in societal structures that were previously built around a sense of community. This process of compartmentalisation as discussed by Fanon (1963) ensured colonial structures were set up to enable one group to take a higher position while monitoring and managing the lower group. The attack on language and oral tradition was central to the eradication of the cultural identity of the indigenous population. Colonialism marginalised local languages, culture, history, art and literature in order to elevate the language of the colonisers and establish a mental dominance. Colonising cultural spaces changed how people met and communed. The new colonial halls, buildings and theatre spaces were used for colonial activities. National theatres produced works focused on promoting classical western culture while local culture was side-lined and denied a platform in these spaces. The legacy of this strategy still lives on in Kenya as well as in Zimbabwe. Very little has changed as the focus of national theatres and galleries is to highlight Western culture.
Using the critical lens of post-colonial theory to highlight these power structures provided a framework I can use to make sense of current practice within the events industry sector in the next chapter (Chapter 3) and then examine the specific societal structure of the Zimbabwean cultural sector that makes up the research context for this project (Chapter 4). Chapter 3 will now go on to review the literature within event studies to understand how the events industry has approached the topic of social change and then to focus in on how events created in the Third Sector have been designed and produced to achieve the social aims they pursue.
The latter half of this chapter reviewed the key aspects of critical pedagogy and highlighted the work of Paulo Freire in order to understand how his ideas led the movement to decolonise Third Sector development initiatives and became the foundations of the participatory development sector. Freire (1996) advocated for the oppressed communities to liberate themselves through a process of ‘conscientisation’, which encouraged problem posing and
74 critical reflection to challenge existing perceptions, thus creating a space for true dialogue which would then prompt the action that brought about transformation. Freire’s approach has been applied in educational, political and theatre for development situations since the 1960’s when he first published Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Establishing the major debates around participatory development and highlighting the sectors where emancipatory and participatory approaches have been the recurring theme to social change projects within the Third Sector shows that there is much to learn from these projects – whether successful or not – in understanding how we can effect social change. The learnings and principles from the participatory development sector have also been key to developing a robust participatory action research strategy for this project as discussed in Chapter 5.
75