Participatory rural appraisal: principles, methods and application, by N. Narayanasamy, New Delhi, Sage, 2009, 363 pp., £29.99 (pb), ISBN 978-81-7829-885-6.
This book is the outcome of the collective efforts of the Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) team at Gandhigram Rural University (GRU), Tamil Nadu, where the author is Dean of the Faculty of Rural Development. It is based largely on the field experiences of the author and of the PRA team at GRU.
The book comprises 22 chapters. The first two chapters address the origin, concept and principles of PRA. Chapters 3–20 deal with the methods of PRA. With each method essentially allotted its own chapter, Narayanasamy effectively uses sub-headings to delineate and describe each method in detail. He provides instructions on how to identify potential participants; explains the method's procedure; discusses its application, merits, limitations and the precautions that should be taken; and provides an indication of its complementarity with the other methods. Plenty of field-based illustrations are given in order to contextualise each method.
The last two chapters of the book describe the roles and responsibilities of PRA team members (which should include a facilitator, interviewer, content writer, process observer and gatekeeper), and the application of PRA in select fields of development. This last chapter in particular effectively uses tables to address several broad themes in development work (such as participatory poverty assessment, sustainable livelihoods analysis and participatory evaluation). These tables exemplify the combination of methods that can be used for each of these themes, and depicts the flexibility and innovativeness that PRA offers.
Participatory rural appraisal is a very well organised and useful book, and the author has done well on a number of accounts. As the book's content draws on the author's own experiences and those of his colleagues at GRU, it could have been overly-focused on the local, in this case Indian, experience. Refreshingly it is not, and, with the field-based illustrations, Narayanasamy makes this book relevant to a broader audience. I appreciated this, as it enabled me to better envision how I would employ the method in my own research. The author is also clearly conscious and critical of the potential for facilitator dominance in the various PRA methods. As such, he repeatedly makes useful suggestions about increasing local participation and ownership of the process.
For subsequent editions, a number of improvements could be considered. There are several minor spelling errors and a few awkward sentences. Furthermore, different users may varyingly appreciate the informal language used throughout the book. For instance, Narayanasamy notes that ‘others can also be roped in’ (p. 144). NGOs and practitioners may be familiar with this style of language; the academic community, however, may not be as receptive. A few inconsistencies should also be addressed. For instance, when explaining the method for conducting straight transects, the book says they should be started in an upper reach and move downwards towards the village (p. 85). Later on, however, it is stated that transects should start at a low point and move towards a high point (p. 91).
Readers may also benefit from a simplified table summarising and comparing each of the method's key characteristics. These include: ideal group size/number of participants; length of time recommended for the method in question; ‘tactility’ (such as the extent to which the method encouraged use of local materials) versus documentation/note taking by PRA team only; susceptibility to facilitator dominance; compatibility with the other methods; and some sort of indication of a degree of difficulty for employing each method successfully.
Nonetheless, it is difficult to fault this book for its lack of depth as it compensated by providing a breadth of coverage across these methods. However, adding the slightest more detail in some chapters would enhance a greater understanding of how best to employ this method. For example, I was left desperately wanting to know why the author recommended that the maximum timeframe for interviews be 45 minutes (p. 294), when in my experience, interviews often last twice as long. A short explanation here could have provided a bit more context to this issue.
Overall, Participatory rural appraisal is an excellent book and Narayanasamy is to be highly commended for being clearly organised and for providing such a comprehensive background on PRA methods and their application. This book should be of interest to a variety of users, including students, teachers, researchers and, particularly, NGOS. It would also serve as an ideal reference book, as a quick purview of any chapter will provide a solid introduction and overview of the specific method. I suspect I will return to it time and time again in my own work.
Confronting discrimination and inequality in China: Chinese and Canadian perspectives, Edited by Errol P. Mendes and Sakunthala Srighanthan, Ottawa, University of Ottawa Press, 2009, 421 pp., CDN $29.00 (pb), ISBN 978-0-7766-0709-2.
This book breaks new ground in examining the most challenging areas of discrimination and inequality in China. Confronting discrimination and inequality in China examines four vulnerable groups the Chinese government has prioritised: rural and migrant workers; rural women and migrant women workers; disabled persons; and HIV/AIDS-affected individuals. The purpose of the book is to offer international perspectives on the major social challenges currently facing China, while provoking a serious debate on the key issues needing to be tackled. The aim is to provide protection for groups most vulnerable to social challenges and who presently face different forms of discrimination.
The editors are Mendes, a lawyer and professor at the University of Ottawa specialising in constitutional law, international law and human rights law and policy, and Srighanthan, a project officer for the project on Implementation of International Human Rights: Promoting Anti-Discrimination in China, which is based at the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Common Law and funded by the Canadian International Development Agency. Their volume provides a platform for 22 Chinese and Canadian researchers to collaborate in confronting a set of daunting social challenges. Among the contributors are academics, consultants, sociologists from China's Central State Council, dissident activists, radical ecologists and journalists. The chapters by Canadian researchers provide diverse regional, national and international perspectives and offer insight into how constitutions, laws, policies and practices, both in Canada and in other countries, battle discrimination to protect vulnerable groups. How these practices may be applied in a Chinese context is also discussed (for example, in chapter 15). The chapters by Chinese contributors show diverse and independent thought while offering multidisciplinary and critical perspectives on the four identified vulnerable groups in China. Their detailed analysis of constitutions, law, policies and practice is based on a deep understanding of the local situation.
The chapters on discrimination against rural and migrant workers (chapters 1–6) cover a variety of situations faced by the migrants and provide an overview of the causes of such problems. For example, the eco-environmental crisis caused by intensive coal mining and the aggravation of farmers' land rights in the Enclosure Movement are explored in great detail. The book's emphasis on economic development, violation of farmers' rights and damage to ecosystems demonstrates that these are controversial topics in China.
The chapters on discrimination against women (chapters 7–9) focus on the social challenges facing rural and migrant women workers and rural women's entitlement to land and related property from both gender and legal perspectives. Chapter 10 analyses legislation against the discrimination of disabled persons, its causes and its characteristics in the United States, Hong Kong and China, and the author, Zhijiang, recommends the development of a more inclusive concept of discrimination and of a special agency for legal protection. The chapters on discrimination against those living with AIDS (11–14) examine the particular international and regional instruments relevant to HIV/AIDS discrimination, policies and non-discrimination legislation in China and South-east Asia. Contributors Mingrui and Xiaole analyse in chapter 14 the quality of life and survival tactics of the AIDS-infected rural women in Henan.
The findings on the four vulnerable groups have important policy implications and show great clarity of thought. There is a critical need for reform in constitutions, laws, treaties, legislative frameworks, government policies, effective social management systems and the institutional environment so that systemic discrimination may be tackled in both the public and private sectors, and in the family, the workplace and many other societal contexts. Further, a greater focus on the systems, structure, institutional policies and practices contributing to systemic discrimination in China is also needed to alleviate the situation. This is proposed by Sheppard in chapter 9.
The book's contribution to several different fields and to the debate on key controversial issues is excellent and demonstrates great depth of research. The topics are extremely important and timely in an era when the Chinese government has begun to recognise issues of discrimination, of inequality and the necessity of building a harmonious society. This book covers laws, treaties, legislations and policies on discrimination against rural migrants, rural women, disabled persons and HIV/AIDS-affected individuals. However legal instruments and regimes are vastly different from practice. Future research could focus on empirical studies of the living situations and of the discrimination experienced by these or other vulnerable groups. The empirical studies regarding the discrimination experienced by the four vulnerable groups in China are convincing and will be of great value. Root causes of the discrimination experienced by the people living with HIV/AIDS in the highly epidemic areas of the Yunnan, Xinjiang, Guangxi and Sichuan Provinces, based on qualitative and quantitative approaches, could be explored extensively.
In sum, Confronting discrimination and inequality in China is an excellent book. It is a must for anyone interested in vulnerable groups in China. The broad and multidisciplinary perspectives, the wealth of facts and the authors' scholarship make it a pleasure to read. The book will be of interest to researchers, policymakers, legal experts, teachers and students focusing on human rights. Its contributions are relevant to such diverse fields as legal studies, East Asian and Chinese studies, development studies, sociology, anthropology, humanities research, politics, women's studies, disability studies and public health.
SAS 2 : a guide to collaborative inquiry and social engagement,
by Jacques M. Chevalier and Daniel J. Buckles, Ottawa, Sage and International Development Research Centre, 2008, 316 pps., £14.99 (pb), ISBN 978-81-7829-890-0.
The SAS in the book's title stands for ‘Social Analysis Systems’ and the superscript ‘2’, in the words of the authors, stands for raising ‘all forms of inquiry to the power of two: making the inquiry both socially relevant and doing it collaboratively and socially’ (p. 11). The technical-sounding name hints at a core problem of the book.
Chevalier and Buckles explain that SAS2 (Social Analysis Systems to the power of two) is an international initiative co-ordinated by Carleton University, Canada, that ‘offers a new approach to creating and using knowledge for the common good’ (p. 11). According to the authors, the purpose is ‘to broaden and deepen the range of concepts, tools, and transferable skills we can use to mobilise the power of human intelligence and creativity and to act on our world’ (p. 11). The book is presented as a guide that ‘introduces the social analysis and all-purpose techniques as well as the Process Management (PMt) approach embedded in SAS2 … to help people develop the skills they need to inquire into situations that do not lend themselves to easy solutions designed by experts alone’ (p. 15).
The book consists of two sections. Part I outlines the concepts that form the basis for the SAS2 approach. Its seven chapters include: conceptual foundations and skilful means; social analysis and all-purpose techniques; process management; guidelines for SAS2 events and process design; monitoring and evaluation; SAS2 facilitation and active listening; and writing guidelines. Part II presents a selection of 18 SAS2 techniques drawn from more than 50 tools and software developed by the initiative. A brief description of each technique is followed by a real-life application in South Asia and Latin America, with a focus on land issues, local economic development and natural resource management.
The SAS2 approach seeks to address a number of issues such as: the understanding of diverse forms of knowledge; the co-generation of knowledge; the working with a less idealised idea of community in the form of communities of interest; the overcoming limitations of Results Based Management (RBM) with Process Management; the consideration of participation as the interactive engagement of stakeholder groups; and the acknowledgement of power differentials. Above all, it seeks to achieve collaborative thinking and social engagement, and to eliminate extractive and socially irrelevant inquiry managed from outside. On the plus side, SAS2 as an approach offers numerous tangible, and potentially useful, techniques.
However, SAS 2 as a book does a poor job of explaining the conceptual roots of the approach and of conveying its applicability. Chevalier and Buckles' critique of other approaches that SAS2 has benefitted from and seeks to surpass lacks reference to major works on the subjects. One of their central arguments is that SAS2 offers a holistic approach that overcomes the tendency of participatory action research (PAR) ‘to impose participatory structures and pre-defined goals’ (p. 20), as well as PAR's lack of practical tools and other limitations. The authors' interpretation of PAR is not substantiated by literature or research. Similarly, they allude to stakeholder theory and stakeholder analysis, and discuss Result-Based Management (RBM) without outside references.
While many of Chevalier and Buckles' observations may be correct, the authors do not offer a clear rationale or evidence for why SAS2 may be different from other approaches. For example, a central argument of the book is that SAS2 techniques ‘do not propose any particular version of what a complete or harmonious system should look like [and that from a SAS2 perspective] no complete theory or model applies to all situations’ (p. 25). A central debate about social science research is whether its mandate is to achieve universal knowledge or if such research should be mostly context specific. This relates to the longstanding dispute of whether the natural sciences model is applicable to the social sciences. As Flyvbjerg (Citation2001, p. 25) asks: ‘is theory possible in social science?’; that is, can key concepts of explanation and prediction in social science research be based on context-independent theories as they are in the natural sciences.
This may be what Chevalier and Buckles have in mind. However, as Bourdieu Citation(1990) has argued, context cannot be excluded from theory because it defines the type of phenomenon which theory encompasses. While Chevalier and Buckles' intent is laudable, this reviewer was left with the impression that, underneath a veneer of collaborative social inquiry, SAS2 merely provides technocratic machinery that practitioners should apply step-by-step. But due to its complexity, it is difficult to imagine a development practitioner or community organiser, member, leader or researcher using SAS2.
The real-life application of the 18 techniques provided in the second section of the book is of most value in this guide. However, the lack of critiques based on more solid evidence seems to limit the usefulness of the book to those readers already initiated in SAS2 through other means.
References
- Bourdieu , P. 1990 . The logic of practice, trans. R. Nice , Stanford , CA : Stanford University Press .
- Flyvbjerg , B. 2001 . Making social science matter: why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .