Sesión 3 Qué dicen los datos

Embracing the people-centeredness of the capability approach, the participatory approach goes a step further and pleads for the inclusion of poor people’s own perceptions. This approach is distinct from the other poverty approaches in the sense that it is predominantly about the methodology of doing poverty research.

According to Robert Chambers, understanding poverty and how to do reduce it can be achieved either through the perceptions of researchers and practitioners or through the perceptions of the poor (Chambers, 1988). The former defined poverty in terms of deprivation, often assessed using so-called money-metric measures discussed earlier. However, measures such as the poverty line do not take social disadvantage, selfrespect, physical weakness, isolation, migration, education and so forth into consideration, despite these being crucial aspects of poverty for the poor (Chambers, 1988, 1992). This is not to say that income and consumption are not important; on the contrary, they are vital, as are the social and psychological aspects of poverty. Thus, including people’s own perceptions means that there is more room for these qualitative social and psychological aspects (Chambers, 1988, 1992). Chambers was inspired by Freire (1970) and his Educação popular programme in Brazil, an education programme intended for poor and (politically) disempowered people. Freire wanted to create awareness amongst those who were socially and politically marginalised that they were facing structural inequalities. He did this through an education method that allowed the marginalised to take charge of their own learning process and allowed them to co-create knowledge. The goal eventually being that the marginalised and become empowered and thus capable of initiating social

534033-L-bw-ASC 534033-L-bw-ASC 534033-L-bw-ASC 534033-L-bw-ASC Processed on: 5-12-2019 Processed on: 5-12-2019 Processed on: 5-12-2019

Processed on: 5-12-2019 PDF page: 56PDF page: 56PDF page: 56PDF page: 56

56

change. Freire explained that in order to accomplish this, active participation of the marginalised is required as owners of their learning process. Chambers used Freire’s ideas of participation and introduced rapid rural appraisal (RRA) and participatory rural appraisal (PRA) (Chambers, 1997) to do poverty research. RRA methods were developed to gather relevant local information in a quick, accurate and less expensive way, rather than doing formal surveys (Ellis, 2000, p. 193). The difference is that RRA analysis is informed by local people, but conducted by outsiders, whereas PRA seeks active participation of local people, empowering them and giving them ownership. The role of outsiders here is to facilitate local people in conducting their analysis, rather than controlling it. Oral communication techniques are important tools for collecting data in these approaches, as they give illiterate people a chance to participate as well.

These participatory approaches are meant to enable research subjects to conduct their own research, rather than being analysed by an outsider. Chambers believes that this is a basic right of the poor (1995, p. 201). It is important as unless the poor themselves are put first, development cannot be achieved (Chambers, 1988). This approach views poverty alleviation as a (participatory) process that should be approached bottom-up, rather than top-down. According to Robb “the moral imperative of giving the poor a voice in the poverty debate is self-evident” (2002, p. 104). Engagement of (extreme) poor people provides better diagnosis of problems, better implementation of solutions, deepens the understanding of poverty and potentially influences policymaking (Robb, 2002).

However, in practice there is still a danger that the most vulnerable, often extreme poor people, in society may not be included in these types of analyses (Kazimierczuk, 2010a, 2010b). Cooke and Kothari (2001, p. 171) add that while participatory interventions are recognized as empowering beneficiaries – as they are bottom-up and planned and implemented by beneficiaries – in practice, participatory interventions tend to be top-down and reproduce existing power structures. It is also difficult to overcome unequal power relations between donors and beneficiaries. This links back to Freire’s idea that people need to become aware of their subordinate position before they can empower themselves and take action. Moreover, participatory interventions are often driven by the expectations and knowledge of donors, when, in fact, they should be driven by local knowledge and respond to local needs (Cooke & Kothari, 2001). Despite good intentions and methodologies, knowledge tends to be constructed by the agenda of the donor and its institutional needs

534033-L-bw-ASC 534033-L-bw-ASC 534033-L-bw-ASC 534033-L-bw-ASC Processed on: 5-12-2019 Processed on: 5-12-2019 Processed on: 5-12-2019

Processed on: 5-12-2019 PDF page: 57PDF page: 57PDF page: 57PDF page: 57

57

are then projected onto recipient communities (Ibid., p. 24). Beneficiaries, in turn, may be inclined to ask for things that they believe they can get (Cooke & Kothari, 2001). Cooke and Kothari, though, do not view themselves as being ‘anti-participation’ (Ibid., p. 13), but point out the pitfalls.

Thus, it is important to consider the set-up when using participatory approaches to ensure participation of vulnerable groups. While participatory approaches were initially developed for rural areas, they can also function in urban contexts (Altaf, 2016d).

This research is very much inspired by the participatory approach, as participatory methods for data collection (see Chapter 1.6.3) form a large part of the research methodology.