How can participation be approached in a way that makes it transformative and empowering for excluded groups? This chapter from the book, ‘Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation?’ outlines a critical modernist approach to capturing the complex and political character of popular agency within the development process. It examines the democratic values underpinning this transformatory politics of difference, and develops a radical notion of citizenship as a form of analysis and guide to strategic action.
The paper tackles responses to criticisms raised against participation, notably those of ‘post-’ and ‘alternative’ development. Post-development sees participation as linked to the dominating and homogenising project of development. This view advocates abandoning modernity in favour of a romanticised vision of pristine alternatives. These seem to bear little relation to the demands of the actual social movements on which these theorists base their work. Alternative development views participation as domesticated away from its radical roots, and seeks a return to radical participation. This approach is not convincing in terms of theory and praxis, underplays the role of the state and glorifies the local. Both concepts caricature rather than engage with ‘development’ as a complex process, and fail to analyse how political economy shapes agency within development.
Critical modernism is a socialist-inspired framework that advocates rethinking development rather than simply rejecting it. It retains faith in central aspects of modernism such as democracy, emancipation, development and progress.
- It entails a belief that modernism is not a singular entity, but that its ideas and practices are appropriated in locally situated practices. This means that modernity is fragmented into many different modernities.
- This does not mean that all identities and rationalities are equally valid: There is an ethics of development, whose starting point is the existence of widespread poverty and the struggle for social justice.
- How can a development tied to a politics of social justice resolve the tension between this universal value and multiple rationalities? Groups can be seen as heterogeneous and constituted in relation to each other. They can be understood as having a stake in one another’s existence, and this opens the possibility that some alliances can exist between them.
- This politics of difference requires not dissolution of difference, but institutions that promote reproduction of, and respect for, difference.
An important conceptual response to the backlash against participation is a focus on ‘citizenship’. This captures the wider sense in which popular agency exists, and broadens the debate to cover aspects of governance.
- Citizenship is the set of practices (juridical, political, economic or cultural) which define a person as a member of society and shape the flow of resources to persons and social groups.
- This means that participatory interventions will have the aim of enhancing the competence of participants to project their agency into broader arenas, thus altering the immanent processes of inclusion and exclusion.
- ‘Civic republican’ rather than liberal theories of citizenship best capture this vision. These are based on collective and participatory engagement of citizens in community affairs, rather than solely narrower forms of engagement, such as voting. It should also consider less ‘public’ participatory arenas relied upon by subordinate groups.
- The realisation of the critical modernist project will require a form of radical democracy that transcends the local and forges alliances with a range of regional, national and global movements.
- Citizenship covers both participatory development and participatory governance, and also links to rights-based approaches since it establishes participation as a political right. Citizenship is an inherently political perspective on participation, perhaps the chief requirement of contemporary approaches to participation.
