Knowledge Partnering For Community Development

KNOWLEDGE PARTNERING FOR
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
Effective community development means that many different stakeholders have

to work together: governments, development organizations, and NGOs, and most
importantly, the people they serve. Knowledge Partnering for Community Development
teaches community development professionals how to mediate community needs
and development agendas to make community-based solutions for development
challenges.
Based on the newest research in community and global development, Eversole
shows readers a strong research- and theory-based framework for understanding
local development processes and gives them the skills to turn this into cutting-
edge practice. Each chapter features global case studies of innovative community–
state partnerships and practical application exercises and strategies for professionals
looking to bring new approaches to their research and practice. Knowledge Partnering
for Community Development is essential for community workers and students of
community development looking to bridge the gap between research insight and
best practice between community actors.
Dr. Robyn Eversole is the director of the Institute for Regional Development (IRD)
at the University of Tasmania, Australia. She is an anthropologist of development
who has worked extensively with local communities and organizations in Australia
and Latin America on a wide range of development issues over the past eighteen
years. She is author of more than fifty scholarly and practice-focused articles on
community and regional development issues as well as three edited collections includ-
ing Here to Help: NGOs Combating Poverty in Latin America (2003) and Indigenous
Peoples and Poverty in International Perspective (2005).
The community development research and practice series
Volume 5
Series Editor:
RHONDA G. PHILLIPS
Purdue University, USA
Editorial Board
MARK BRENNAN
Pennsylvania State University, USA
JAN FLORA
Iowa State University, USA
GARY P. GREEN
University of Wisconsin, USA
BRIAN MCGRATH
National University of Ireland
NORMAN WALZER
Northern Illinois University, USA
As the series continues to grow with the fifth volume, it is our intent to continue
to serve scholars, community developers, planners, public administrators, and others
involved in research, practice, and policy making in the realm of community
development. The series strives to provide both timely and applied information
for researchers, students, and practitioners. Building on a long history since 1970
of publishing the Community Development Society’s journal, Community Develop-
ment (www.comm-dev.org), the book series contributes to a growing and rapidly
changing knowledge base as a resource for practitioners and researchers alike. For
additional information, please see the series page at www.routledge.com/books/
series/CDRP/.
The evolution of the field of community development continues. As reflected in

both theory and practice, community development is at the forefront of change,
which comes as no surprise to our communities and regions that constantly face
challenges and opportunities. Because it is a practice-focused discipline, change
often seems to be the only constant in the community-development realm. The
need to integrate theory, practice, research, teaching, and training is even more
pressing now than ever given rapidly transforming economic, social, environmental,
political, and cultural climates locally and globally. Current and applicable infor-
mation and insights about effective research and practice are needed.
The Community Development Society, a nonprofit association of those interested
in pushing the discipline forward, is delighted to offer this book series in partner-
ship with Routledge. The series is designed to integrate innovative thinking on
tools, strategies, and experiences as a resource especially well suited for bridging
the gaps between theory, research, and practice. The Community Development
Society actively promotes continued advancement of the discipline and practice.
Fundamental to this mission is adherence to the following core Principles of Good
Practice. This book series is a reflection of many of these principles:
Promote active and representative participation towards enabling all community

members to meaningfully influence the decisions that affect their lives.
Engage community members in learning about and understanding com-
munity issues, and the economic, social, environmental, political, psychologi-
cal, and other impacts associated with alternative courses of action.
Incorporate the diverse interest and cultures of the community in the com-
munity development process; and disengage from support of any effort that is
likely to adversely affect the disadvantaged members of a community.
Work actively to enhance the leadership capacity of community members,
leaders, and groups within the community.
Be open to using the full range of action strategies to work towards the
long-term sustainability and well-being of the community.
We invite you to explore the series and continue to do so as new volumes are
added. We hope you will find it a valuable resource for supporting community-
development research and practice.
Other books in the series
Community Visioning Programs

Processes and Outcomes
Norman Walzer and Gisele Hamm
Catalysts for Change

21st Century Philanthropy and Community Development
Maria Martinez-Cosio and Mirle Rabinowitz Bussell
Theory, Practice, and Community Development

Mark Brennan, Jeffrey Bridger, and Theodore Alter
Schools and Urban Revitalization

Rethinking Institutions and Community Development
Kelly L. Patterson and Robert Mark Silverman
Knowledge Partnering for Community Development

Robyn Eversole
“As Eversole points out, working in true partnership with communities is not easy,
but absolutely necessary to building place based and grassroots routes to meaningful
development out of poverty, injustice and environmental challenges. Here undoubt-
edly is a book which shows practitioners how it might be done through reflexive
community development approaches, avoiding a range of pitfalls and always keeping
the broader development issues that shape local possibilities in mind.”
— Professor Mick Carpenter, Editor,
Community Development Journal
“Grassroots community improvement relies on partnerships. Yet, achieving genuine

lasting partnerships and inclusion is often challenging. Robyn Eversole not only
reaffirms the key role of knowledge partnerships in community development but
explains how to foster and sustain them.”
— Jim Cavaye, Associate Professor of Rural Development,
School of Agriculture and Food Sciences,
University of Queensland
“Eversole refreshingly charts a course between the old binaries of top-down and
bottom-up, towards knowledge partnering in between. This well-researched book will
appeal to frontline practitioners active in brokering new governance arrangements
and cutting-edge innovation at the coalface of community development.”
— Mark Moran, Professor in Development Effectiveness,
Institute for Social Science Research,
University of Queensland
KNOWLEDGE
PARTNERING FOR
COMMUNITY
DEVELOPMENT
Robyn Eversole
First published 2015
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
The right of Robyn Eversole to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without
intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Eversole, Robyn.
Knowledge partnering for community development / Robyn Eversole.
pages cm. — (The community development research and practice series ;
volume 5)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Community development. 2. Knowledge management. I. Title.
HN49.C6.E94 2014
307.1′4—dc23
2014015206
ISBN: 978-1-138-02561-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-02562-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-77498-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
DEDICATION/EPIGRAPH
This book owes a great debt of gratitude to the many people

I have met in my travels who have generously shared their insights,
experiences, and practice knowledge about communities and
development. I cannot begin to name you all, but thank you!
This book is dedicated to my husband, Wayne Oliver, with love.

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CONTENTS
Introduction 1
Communities and development 2
Communities as change agents 4
Place-based development and partnerships 5
The changing face of community development practice 6
Why knowledge partnering 8
Reading this book 9
1 Developing communities 11
The idea of development 11
The practice of development 14
A place-based lens 17
The role of communities 19
Community deficits and community assets 22
Unanswered questions for community development practice 24
Further reading 26
Practical application: local economic development methods 27
Practical application: asset-based community development 28
2 Development methods and measures 30

‘Doing’ development 30
Development policy trends 35
Economic development methods and measures 38
Social development methods and measures 41
Multidimensional development methods and measures 43
Persisting tensions in policy and practice 45
Further reading 47
Practical application: community accounts 48
x Contents
3 Participating in development 50
Participation: A paradigm shift? 50
Seeing community capacity 52
Participation methods and measures 55
Participation and social inclusion 59
Participation critiques 61
The limits of participation 63
Further reading 65
Practical application: participatory rural appraisal (PRA) 65
Practical application: multistakeholder workshops 66
4 The lure and limits of partnerships 69

Partnerships for development 69
Partnership in theory 71
Partnership in practice 74
Partnerships and power 77
Partnerships analysis framework 80
Rethinking community partnerships 83
Further reading 85
Practical application: partnership assessment tools 85
5 Knowledge for development 89

Knowledge for local development 89
Abstract knowledge and local knowledge 92
Unpacking local knowledge 95
From local knowledge to innovation 99
Knowledge partnering 102
Further reading 103
Practical application: farmers’ participatory research 104
6 Knowledge partnerships in practice 107

Case studies of innovative practice 107
Microfinance: small change, big change 108
Community-based learning: knowing places 113
Social enterprises: valuable business 116
Bringing knowledges together 119
Further reading 120
Practical application: village banking 122
Practical application: community study circles 122
Practical application: intermediate labor market organizations 123
7 The innovative practitioner 127

A new framework for development practice 127
Development as a social process 130
Contents xi
The practitioner as partnership broker 133

Communities and their knowledge 136
Innovation in development practice 138
Further reading 141
Practical application: development immersions 141
8 The knowledge partnering approach 144

A methodology for development practice 144
Principles of knowledge partnering 146
Knowledge partnering in practice 152
Knowledge partnering and the community practitioner 158
Further reading 160
Practical application: intervention mapping 161
Conclusion: Future directions for community

development practice 162
A new kind of development practice 162
From the grassroots to the landscape 165
From engagement to knowledge partnerships 166
Twin agendas: innovation and inclusion 167
References 169
Index 177
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INTRODUCTION
What can be done about poverty and disadvantage? Who is to do it? And where
does one start? These are the concerns at the heart of the various areas of research
and practice that are concerned with development.
Community development practitioners have long proposed that the place to
start is on the ground, where poverty and disadvantage are directly experienced.
Community development practice starts with communities themselves. It focuses
on strengthening communities of people and their ability to act together to meet
challenges and grasp opportunities. Ultimately, community development is about
equipping communities with the tools to create change.
Community development is one approach to tackling poverty and disadvantage.
But it is not the only approach. There are many approaches to development
practice, and these approaches are informed by different strands of development
theory. Some development approaches emphasize technological and productive
investments to improve standards of living. Others focus on education and training
to develop human capital and capabilities. Yet others highlight the role of knowl-
edge creation and innovation in generating positive change. The focus varies, and
so does the scale: from the development of local places to regional or national
development. Despite the differences, all development approaches have one core
aim: to create positive change.
For those who are passionate about the need for change – for more equity,
less poverty, less hunger, more opportunity – development offers ideas and practices
that can help. Yet the development landscape is complex. Development can be used
to mean many different things: the development of industries, for instance, or the
development of modern infrastructure; the development of human capacity or
development of solutions to social problems. Development can serve many social
interests, from those of the poor to those of the elite. Positive change for one
social group may not be positive change for another group.
2 Introduction
Increasingly, organizations concerned to find solutions to poverty and disad-

vantage are realizing that development work is not about simple one-size-fits-all
solutions. Rather, development is a complex, negotiated social process. Any change
process will inevitably affect a range of people and their interests. Equally, no two
local contexts are exactly alike: local assets and local constraints matter. For these
reasons, development organizations are now recognizing that it is not enough to
understand big-picture trends and indicators: they also need to understand and
engage with the social contexts in which change happens. This, in turn, has led
to demand for development professionals with the skills to work directly with
communities on the ground.
‘Working with’ communities and engaging them in partnerships for change
are now central to how many development organizations work. Yet this work is
not easy. Even when development professionals recognize the need to work directly
with communities to achieve good outcomes, they often have limited understand-
ing of community development principles. Many still subscribe – consciously or
unconsciously – to development theories that view disadvantaged communities as
receptors rather than creators of development. It is not uncommon to find that
the development agenda for local communities has already been preset by outside
organizations. Despite the language of ‘community partnerships’ and ‘community-
driven processes’, development organizations tend to impose their own processes
and agendas on the communities they work with. To avoid being caught in the
middle, development practitioners who work with local communities need to take
a proactive stance.
This book is designed to help. It is written for those who aim to work with
local communities to create solutions to poverty and disadvantage from the ground
up. This book starts from the core question of development: What drives social and
economic change? It explores how change is ultimately a social process: created by
interactions among people, communities, and organizations, each with different
resources, knowledges, and approaches to development. It then shows how these
interactions can be observed on the ground in the development efforts, achieve-
ments, and failures of local communities and their helpers. Finally, the book
provides an approach that practitioners can use to catalyze innovative community-
driven development solutions by helping diverse communities and support orga-
nizations bring their different kinds of knowledge together.
Communities and development

As a basic definition, communities are groups of people sharing common ties of
residence, identity, and/or interest. Communities may be large or small; they may
be wealthy or poor. Members may have relatively strong or weak ties to each
other and to the community as a whole. Communities are part of the fabric of
society. Yet society is an abstract term, difficult to observe or engage with. Com-
munities can, at least to some extent, be observed and engaged with on the ground
through observing and engaging with their members.
Introduction 3
Development can be defined as the processes through which communities and societies
change. Development practice, in turn, is about intentionally creating or catalyzing
positive change in a particular social context: often, in particular communities. These
may be communities of place, such as rural villages and urban neighborhoods – or
‘developing countries’ as a whole. They may be communities of identity: for
instance, women, indigenous people, or the ill-defined community of those called
‘poor’. Or, development projects or programs may focus on communities of inter-
est, who have some common agenda or goal (e.g., farming families seeking to
grow their markets; recent migrants seeking to improve infrastructure in their
neighborhoods). Typically, development practice responds to situations of poverty
or disadvantage in a community and aims to create an improvement. This is a
broad definition. It does not specify the nature of the desired change or improve-
ment, who drives it, or the kinds of tools they use.
Over the history of development practice, certain approaches to development
have dominated the landscape. In post–World War II international development,
investments in infrastructure and technology transfer were central components of
mainstream development approaches. A set of ideas, grounded in modernization
theory, suggested that development was about acquiring the technology and infra-
structure needed to be productive and modern. Modernization theory proposed
that acquiring the right technology and infrastructure would enable local economies
to be more productive and, in turn, lift standards of living for local people. Devel-
opment was about giving people access to modern lifestyles.
For development practitioners influenced by modernization theory, development
had little or nothing to do with local communities or their characteristics. Rather,
development was something that needed to be brought in to disadvantaged places
from elsewhere, through infusions of certain kinds of resources (primarily economic
investment and external scientific expertise). Development typically happened not
at the local level but at the level of the nation-state: it could be observed by the
quality of the infrastructure (roads, factories, housing) and measured by indicators
of national productivity such as GNP (gross national product). These ideas about
modernization still influence how many people think about ‘development’ today.
Community development, by contrast, focuses on the social drivers of change and
how people can work together to improve their situation. As a development approach,
community development aims to strengthen the local social fabric of communities.
It proposes that if the goal is to create positive change in a particular social context,
then people and their relationships matter. Community development therefore stresses
the importance of working directly with communities of people to address develop-
ment challenges as they play out on the ground in real social settings. In the twentieth
century, community development often provided an important alternative approach
to modernization-focused development. Rather than seeing development as a stan-
dardized, top-down economic process, community development drew attention to
the local, the social, and the possibilities of bottom-up action for change.
Working with communities on the ground, it quickly becomes apparent that
development is a complicated business. On the one hand, people may have a real
4 Introduction
desire for change in at least some aspects of life: for instance, better infrastructure,
more secure resources and income, or greater opportunities for children and young
people. On the other hand, there may be areas where change is not wanted, not
needed, or where locals and outsiders have very different views about what the
real needs and opportunities are. Indeed, members of local communities may
disagree among themselves both about what needs to be done and how to do it.
Finally, most puzzlingly, is the assumption by many development practitioners who
arrive from elsewhere that the communities they work with have never developed
before but have simply sat motionless, waiting for someone or something to appear.
Communities as change agents

Does ‘development’ only happen when development organizations and develop-
ment practitioners work to create it? Or does positive change in societies and
communities happen all the time, created from within as well as stimulated from
without? Looking on the ground in particular places and particular communities,
it is easy to find examples of positive change happening from within communities,
even in the absence of external help and support.
In one place, we can observe a rural indigenous community developing an
eco-tourism enterprise; in another, we see a group of young people working
together to improve their local neighborhood. We are inspired by stories of farm-
ers’ groups collaborating to drive innovative approaches to production and mar-
keting that make their livelihoods more sustainable and their regions more
prosperous. We are encouraged by stories of firms and social enterprises creating
new local jobs and employing people whom no one else would employ. Story
after story demonstrates that communities of people can drive change. Development
need not be brought in from outside; it can be generated from within.
The most inspiring stories come from those places and communities that are
in some way ‘poor’ or ‘disadvantaged’: where local people do not have a lot of
resources but have overcome the odds to achieve something important. Yet in
understanding how development is generated from within communities, we can
also learn from the stories of the ‘wealthy’ and ‘successful’. For instance, a growing
body of research on economically successful regions demonstrates that it is the
social and cultural contexts in these places that create an environment for innova-
tion and, ultimately, economic success. Social capital, trust, and networks that allow
people and organizations to share knowledge have been identified as important
drivers of wealthy regions’ success.
Social and economic change takes many forms and has many catalysts, but in
the end, anyone can drive positive change: the community-minded entrepreneur,
the neighborhood action group, the producers’ association. For poor places and
communities, this challenges the assumption that solutions to poverty and disad-
vantage must necessarily be brought in from outside – in the form of better
technology, external capital investment, expert advice, and superior institutions.
Of course, external support and assistance may well be needed, particularly when
Introduction 5
there are historic and geographic disadvantages that have left communities lacking
resources. But a lack of fuel does not imply an inability to drive. Communities
themselves – even disadvantaged communities – can drive change.
The assertion that communities can drive change opens up exciting possibilities
for those who are used to thinking of development as something that must be
planned and resourced from outside poor communities. It suggests a whole raft
of hitherto-unimagined local resources to support the goals of positive social
change. Local communities are diverse and have diverse local assets and resources.
Building on their unique local attributes and the energy of local people and
organizations, they can potentially come up with new solutions to social and
economic challenges. For these reasons, ideas about ‘bottom-up’, ‘endogenous’, or
‘community-led’ development have attracted a lot of interest from development
policy makers.
At the same time, recognizing that communities can create development for
themselves raises a particular set of challenges and contradictions for development
policy and practice. If communities can drive change, what then is the role of
development organizations and development practitioners? Many practitioners and
organizations have a core assumption: that the ideas, impetus, and resourcing for
development will necessarily come from development experts. As professionals in
development organizations specialized in development assistance, it is their job to
create development. But is this really the case? Or might effective development
action come from nearly anywhere?
Place-based development and partnerships

By recognizing that communities can create change, development organizations
have been forced to rethink their role. They have begun to question the assump-
tion that they are the only, or even the main, drivers of change. Development
organizations, both inside and outside of government, are increasingly repositioning
themselves as enablers, facilitators, and external supporters of community-led
development processes. They see their role is to facilitate and enable rather than
directly create change. This new role involves working with a range of communi-
ties and their organizations on the ground in particular places.
Relationships with communities and organizations on the ground are now seen
to be central to good, effective development practice. Development successes cre-
ated by local communities have drawn attention to local resources and networks
and how communities can drive development outcomes from the ground up. At
the same time, failures of top-down, one-size-fits-all development have stimulated
demands for greater citizen and community participation in development processes.
The result of these two trends – disenchantment with top-down processes and
growing awareness of bottom-up successes – has led to a growing emphasis on
development as something that happens on the ground, in particular places, and in
partnership with communities in those places. This idea can be most succinctly
described by the term place-based development.
6 Introduction
Focusing on development in place emphasizes how social and economic change

happens in particular on-the-ground contexts. Development is not an abstract
process that happens to ‘societies’ or ‘economies’ but a concrete process that can
be observed in real places: regions, towns, neighborhoods. Place-based development
approaches emphasize that local communities and their organizations play important
roles in change processes. They are key players in tackling the big-picture problems
of poverty and disadvantage as they play out in their own local places. Place-based
development leads logically to an interest in how different organizations and com-
munities in and beyond local places can work together – that is, an interest in
development partnerships.
Development partnerships involve different organizations coming together formally
to work together to create positive change. The nature of the partners may vary
enormously, as does the kind of change they seek to create. Development partner-
ships may operate at any scale, from multilateral development organizations to
community groups. A key driver of partnerships at all scales is to mobilize resources
across organizations and sectors to pursue common goals. Sometimes these are
financial resources, but other kinds of resources matter, too. Development orga-
nizations aiming to support development processes in particular local places often
seek to partner with local organizations because they recognize the value of their
human resources, social networks, local knowledge, reputation, and so forth. Equally,
local organizations may seek external partners to access a range of types of
support.
Policy interest in place-based development approaches is opening more oppor-
tunities to work with local communities to tackle complex development issues
from the ground up. For practitioners who subscribe to the principles of sup-
porting and empowering communities to meet their own goals, this opens exciting
opportunities. There is growing interest in partnering with local communities to
create development outcomes together. Yet partnerships in practice are complex.
External development organizations and local communities typically have different
ways of doing things – and different ideas about what needs doing. Development
in real places involves a wide range of social actors with diverse and sometimes
conflicting development agendas, even within the same community. Whose devel-
opment agendas are prioritized in a development partnership? Whose approaches
prevail? And what can practitioners do to facilitate effective development partner-
ships with local communities?
The changing face of community development practice

The theory and practice of development are changing. Modernization theory still
influences how we think about development, but increasingly, development orga-
nizations are focusing on the social contexts of change and the role of communities
as change agents. Recognizing the limits of top-down and one-size-fits-all devel-
opment approaches, development organizations and governments are increasingly
seeking to partner with communities to tackle big economic and social issues
Introduction 7
from the ground up. As policy imperatives shift from ‘doing’ development to
‘enabling’ development by others, there is increasing demand for professionals with
the skills to work with communities on the ground. As the theory and practice
of development are changing, so too are the role and influence of community
development practitioners.
Development organizations want and need people with the skills to work
effectively with local communities. At the same time, they need people who can
also work effectively with development organizations. Community development
practitioners have historically worked at the coalface, at the meeting points of
development organizations and local communities. But they have traditionally
done so from a position of marginality, struggling to advocate community interests
against the force of top-down organizational mandates or, alternatively, attempting
to ‘sell’ organizational agendas into communities that realistically have little interest
in them. The roles of community development practitioners historically have thus
been fraught with tensions: to lead and direct communities or to follow and assist
them (‘directive’ or ‘nondirective’ approaches); to work within the mandates and
agendas of mainstream organizations or to take a radical stance on behalf of local
communities. Nor have community development practitioners traditionally had
a lot of influence in organizational and policy settings. They have often found
themselves occupying marginal roles at the boundaries of local communities and
external development organizations.
Current development trends, however, are creating an opportunity to move com-
munity development work from the margins to the center of development practice.
Community development workers are well positioned to respond to the current
preoccupation of development practice to help local communities realize their potential
as change agents. Working at the coalface, community development practitioners can
understand the way things work in particular places. They often see the disconnects
between top-down planning and local reality. At the same time, they are often aware
of key resources and assets at local level, resources and assets that are not easily visible
to outsiders. And they can see where external support and partnerships are most
needed. When organizations are seeking to create effective place-based development
partnerships, these perspectives are incredibly valuable.
This book argues that community development practice has the potential to
play a central role in twenty-first-century approaches to ending poverty, hunger,
and exclusion. Today’s development approaches recognize that development orga-
nizations need to forge partnerships with local communities to create positive
change on the ground. Arguably, community development practitioners are well
positioned to support and enable place-based development. But what is required
to succeed in this kind of development work? How do practitioners position
themselves to mediate between community interests and other development agen-
das? And how do they work with diverse communities to catalyze solutions and
opportunities from the ground up?
The answer to these questions matters, because the development that happens
on the ground is intricately linked to the ideas about development that we carry
8 Introduction
in our heads. If we believe the role of development practitioners is about getting

poor places to look more like wealthy ones or getting poor people to think more
like us, then our ‘place-based’ or ‘community-driven’ development projects will
look little different than their top-down predecessors. If, on the other hand, we
have an understanding of social and economic change processes as embedded in
relationships and communities, in and across places, then we are in a position not
only to understand how change happens but also to actively enable positive change.
Why knowledge partnering

This book proposes a framework for understanding development processes as they
play out in particular places. It also offers an approach that community development
practitioners can use to facilitate these processes on the ground. The approach is
called knowledge partnering. Knowledge partnering is a way of working with diverse
communities and organizations to identify and pursue their development goals. As
a community development approach, knowledge partnering recognizes that many
different kinds of knowledge are relevant to development decision making. It works
to catalyze innovative solutions to development issues by helping diverse communi-
ties and organizations bring their different kinds of knowledge together.
The knowledge partnering approach is based in a theoretical framework or
set of ideas about development. This framework has four core ideas. The first
idea is that development is ultimately a social process. Development outcomes
are created by people and institutions – and local communities have an important
role to play. Second: External partnerships are important for local communities.
Partnerships can increase the range of resources available to communities and
help them to overcome structural obstacles that cause disadvantage. Nevertheless,
partnerships often work poorly in practice. Third: Local knowledge – including
cultural and experiential forms of knowledge – is important to local develop-
ment. Yet local knowledge is often overlooked in development decision making.
Fourth: Innovative development solutions occur when different kinds of knowledge
come together.
Current development thinking emphasizes the need to grow the knowledge
capabilities of disadvantaged communities to achieve social and economic outcomes.
In today’s ‘knowledge economy’, education and high-level thinking skills matter.
Yet knowledge as it is typically conceptualized brings with it some problematic
assumptions: that knowledge is an elite commodity possessed by some and not by
others; that it can always be measured by credentials; that less-advantaged places
always lack it; and that – in the deepest traditions of modernization theory – it
can be brought in from wealthy places to poor places to help them ‘catch up’.
The next wave of development thinking, already on its way, challenges this assump-
tion that knowledge is singular, codified, and culturally unaligned – or that certain
communities and individuals possess it and others do not. Rather, there is growing
acknowledgement that multiple forms of knowledge are needed to name and
address development challenges.
Introduction 9
Knowledge partnering as a development approach identifies the opportunity

to bring elite, technical, and professional forms of knowledge into dialogue with
local and community-based forms of knowledge to tackle development issues of
common interest. The early chapters of this book highlight how mainstream
development approaches have, over the years, failed to engage with local com-
munities and their local knowledge. As a result, positive ‘development’ by some
measures has increased disadvantage by other measures. With deep disconnects
between the knowledge and practices of development organizations and those of
local communities, even well-intentioned efforts at community participation and
local partnership often fail.
Yet these failures are not inevitable. This book proposes that that there is huge
untapped potential to generate innovative solutions to social and economic chal-
lenges from within communities, via partnerships that leverage multiple kinds of
knowledge. Chapter Six illustrates this proposition by analyzing three case studies
of development innovation. Each case study shows how innovative solutions have
emerged when someone has brought together different kinds of knowledge across
social and cultural divides. Understanding the role of multiple knowledges in
development processes suggests, in turn, that community development practitioners
can play a key role, working across communities and organizations to bring dif-
ferent kinds of knowledge together.
Reading this book

The ideas in this book are drawn from more than fifteen years’ work with devel-
opment organizations and projects in a range of contexts. They have been inspired
and shaped by practice, particularly the wise reflections and shared experiences of
many development practitioners in Australia, South America, and elsewhere in the
world. Equally, the ideas in this book owe a large debt to academics and scholarly
practitioners who have contributed to the literatures of community, regional, and
international development, particularly those authors who have sought to under-
stand how change processes work (or fail to work) on the ground.
The book’s theoretical framework is strongly influenced by ideas from anthro-
pology of development: a branch of socio-cultural anthropology concerned with
understanding development processes and interventions in cross-cultural contexts.
Complementary ideas are drawn from writings about place-based development
and innovation. Readers are not expected to be familiar with the anthropology
of development or the place-based ‘regional and local development’ literatures. But
for those interested in learning more, references for the ideas discussed are included
in each chapter in the section ‘Further Reading’.
This book aims to draw together knowledge from theory and knowledge from
practice. Chapters One and Two start with a discussion of development as an idea,
practice, and social process, one in which local communities are increasingly understood
to play a key role. Chapters Three and Four describe and analyze recent trends toward
participatory and partnership-based development approaches, where development
10 Introduction
organizations seek to work more closely with local communities. These chapters
explain why, despite a strong push for community participation, many communi-
ties still do not have a strong voice in development decision making. From there,
Chapter Five explores the role of multiple knowledges in development processes
and what this means for the theory and practice of development. Chapter Six
then illustrates, through case studies of development innovations, what can happen
when different kinds of knowledge come together across cultural and social divides.
Building on this analysis, Chapters Seven and Eight describe how knowledge
partnering provides a framework of ideas and a practical approach for working
with local communities and development organizations to identify and address
development issues from the ground up. The book concludes with a plea to posi-
tion community development at the center of twenty-first-century development
practice, focusing on the social and community contexts of innovation.
Throughout the discussion, the book profiles a number of practical applications
of the ideas discussed. Each chapter has one or more Practical Applications sidebars
giving examples of the real-world applications of the ideas discussed in that chapter.
These include specific methods like community accounting and community study
circles, and broad approaches like participatory rural appraisal (PRA), local economic
development (LED), and asset-based community development (ABCD). All are
practical ways of working that community development practitioners may encoun-
ter and use in their work. The aim of the Practical Applications is to illustrate
how many of the theoretical ideas in this book are already present, to some extent,
in community development practice. They also aim to encourage practitioners to
think about the practical tools and methods that they use with reference to the
theoretical ideas that inform them.
Overall, this book proposes a bright future for community development. It
argues for the potential of community development practice to play a central role
in helping to create solutions to poverty and disadvantage. The book recognizes
the problematic history of development practice, and it acknowledges the ongoing
contradictions and conflicts in the relationships between development organizations
and communities. But the quest for positive change persists, and countless orga-
nizations around the globe are committed to pursuing it. Knowledge Partnering for
Community Development proposes that it is both possible and necessary to create
a theoretically coherent, practically useful twenty-first-century development prac-
tice: one that is about working with communities to solve their old problems in
new and inclusive ways.
1
DEVELOPING COMMUNITIES
The idea of development

The intentional practice of development is only as old as the post–World War II
international aid-and-development industry. Yet development itself is much older –
arguably as old as society itself. As a basic definition, development is the processes
through which societies change. Societies have always changed – even if very slowly.
No human group has ever done everything in exactly the same way for millennia.
Archaeologists document how societies have changed over time – new tools, new
trade routes, new domesticated animals and crops. Throughout human history,
new connections and interactions – and local innovation – have given communi-
ties access to new ideas and practices. Yet historically, change processes were usually
very slow. Nor was change necessarily understood to be a good thing. Some
change was positive – but was it positive for everyone?
Studies of change in human societies have tended to suggest that change always
moves in a particular direction: from ‘less developed’ to ‘more developed’. Scholars
of human prehistory describe how societies change in what is assumed to be a
largely linear fashion: Societies move from stone tools to metal tools, from hunting
and gathering to agriculture, from simple social arrangements to complex societies.
There is often an assumption that change is not only linear but also essentially
positive: Some societies are more advanced than others. Metal tools are understood
to be more advanced – more ‘developed’ – than stone tools; agriculture is more
advanced than hunting and gathering; societies with cities and complex, hierarchi-
cal social structures are more ‘developed’ than those with scattered villages and
decentralized governance.
Thus, while development is the process through which societies change, strong
intellectual traditions in Western culture define social change as ultimately linear
and essentially positive. As societies change over time, they move along a path from
12 Developing communities
‘primitive’ to ‘advanced’, from ‘less’ to ‘more’ developed. Yet these ideas about
social change are not universally shared. The tendency to think about social change
in this way has roots in particular ideas from Western intellectual tradition. These
ideas influence how people who have been educated in a Western tradition see
and interpret the world. Particularly, thinkers and professionals trained in a Western
tradition are heavily influenced by ideas about progress.
Progress can be defined as the pursuit and achievement of positive change. Western
intellectual tradition posits that positive change – in society and in the physical
environment – can be intentionally pursued and achieved by human effort. Thus,
as societies change over time, they do not simply react to their environment, but
they proactively seek to change their situation: to progress or improve in some
way. Development thus acquires strong overtones of meaning: not just change but
positive change that is intentionally pursued. Societies that have basic technologies
can thus seek to invent or acquire more sophisticated technologies to improve
their livelihoods: moving from stone tools to metal ones or hand plows to tractors.
By doing so, societies with simple subsistence economies can seek to increase their
production and ultimately their wealth.
From these deeply embedded ideas about progress grew an influential theory
of development: modernization theory. According to modernization theory, all soci-
eties pass through the same stages of development, moving from less to more
technologically sophisticated and economically prosperous. For development prac-
titioners influenced by modernization theory in the twentieth century, the process
of social and economic change was relatively simple. ‘Development’ of societies
and economies moved in one direction and followed a single path: from less to
more modern, from poverty to progress. In this view, some societies were poor
because they produced less. It was possible, however, to intentionally stimulate
positive change by modernizing and increasing production. Primitive places could
become modern; less developed places could become more developed. From the
perspective of modernization theory, achieving development or positive change was
relatively simple: It required acquiring the technology and infrastructure needed
to be productive and modern.
Modernization theory was a product not only of its culture but also of its
times. At the dawn of the post–World War II development era, Western nation-
states had passed through decades of rapid technological change: the radio, the
telephone, the airplane, and so forth. These nations had also stimulated a great
deal of change on a global scale through the colonization of other parts of the
world. Those experiences reinforced for many people the idea that technology
drove progress and that Western-style progress could provide a model for societies
everywhere. As former European colonies formed new nation-states, these were
defined as new – even though they contained within them much older societies.
As ‘new’ nations, they were expected to progress along the lines of the Western
model and so ‘catch up’ with established nations to enjoy modern lifestyles. External
investments and technology transfer were proposed as ways to intentionally accel-
erate this change. In this way, modern development practice was born.
Developing communities 13
Modernization theory in the post–World War II setting established development

as an intentional practice and, simultaneously, gave it a new set of meanings.
Development became not just the processes through which societies change but
the practice of intentionally creating or catalyzing Western-style change. The early
development efforts of governments and international agencies focused on trans-
ferring technology and infrastructure from wealthier Western places to poorer,
‘underdeveloped’ places to help them progress. As a result, development came to be
understood as a synonym for achieving modern technology and infrastructure.
High-rise buildings and modern housing suggested development; jumbles of squat-
ter settlements and straw-roofed huts suggested a lack of development. These ideas,
based in modernization theory, are still deeply engrained in the way many people
think about development: not as a process of social change but as the presence
or absence of certain kinds of infrastructure or technologies.
Modernization theory proposed that positive social and economic change –
progress – was possible. At the same time, it presented a simplified view of what
positive change looked like on the ground. Modernization theory assumed that
positive change would always look the same for everyone. ‘Development’ was
theorized as a one-way, one-path process leading toward modern Western lifestyles.
Translated into development practice, modernization theory inspired the idea that
a simple infusion of infrastructure, technology, and resources could solve a range
of problems, real and imagined. It suggested a homogenous view of the world in
which technological solutions would always work the same way no matter where
they were implemented and would always lead to productivity gains and better
standards of living for everyone. Experience has taught, however, that these assump-
tions often do not hold true in practice.
Examples of the negative consequences of modernization-focused development
initiatives abound in the international development literature: when a new dam
raises electricity output but displaces local communities; when a new factory
generates export earnings but puts local firms out of business; when a cutting-edge
agricultural technology raises yields but increases the risk of crop failure and
hunger. Experience teaches that while infusions of external resources and tech-
nologies into local contexts can be useful, they can also be problematic. New
technologies and pieces of infrastructure may not work well in the local context.
They may not be suited to the local environment. They may help some people
while harming others. Skills to use them or inputs to maintain them may not be
available. Technological change never happens in isolation but in interplay with
a range of cultural, social, economic, environmental, and political factors. In some
cases, an infusion of new technology works in synergy with existing systems.
Other times, it throws existing systems out of balance.
The failures of modernization-inspired development approaches documented
in the international development literature teach that development – the processes
through which societies change – is a complex business. Simple recipes like ‘just
add technology’ are unlikely to make poor communities better off. Indeed, the
experience of development practice in the twentieth century calls us to question
what we mean by ‘poor’ and ‘better off ’. Does progress – being ‘better off ’ –
always look the same, regardless of context? Is it always achieved in the same way,
regardless of the diversity of societies? Modernization theory proposed that social
change was a one-path, one-size-fits-all process, and that every society would
‘develop’ in the same way. Yet this did not happen. The failures of modernization
theory taught an important lesson: Development always takes place in particular
contexts, and these contexts matter.
The practice of development

Modernization theory arguably created the conditions for development practice: the
intentional creation of positive change. Modernization theory provided a particular
vision of positive change and a simple road-map for achieving it. As a result,
development practice blossomed. Numerous organizations inside and outside of
government emerged on the landscape seeking to enable positive change for poor
countries and poor communities. While many stuck quite closely to the core
ideas of modernization theory, others did not. They recognized, through their
work on the ground in particular social settings, that positive change required
more than just technology and productivity growth. Development practice thus
became established as the process of intentionally creating or catalyzing positive change –
reflecting a broad range of preoccupations and concerns.
Early development practice took the form of international aid from one
national government to another – a form of practice that is still common today.
Organizations like the United States Agency for International Development
(USAID, formerly the International Cooperation Administration) and the UK
Department for International Development (DFID, formerly the UK Overseas
Development Administration and, earlier, the Ministry of Overseas Development)
were formed in wealthy countries and funded to provide development assistance
to poorer countries. The focus of initial efforts in the 1950s and 1960s was
straightforward: financial assistance combined with technical assistance to achieve
rapid positive change. As the anthropologist Allan Hoben observed for the
United States:
[T]he United States foreign assistance program was launched with naïve
optimism and enthusiasm, reinforced by the political and economic success
of the postwar Marshall Plan in Europe, that the major economic, technical
and social transformation entailed in development could be readily and
quickly achieved. This optimism was generally shared by leaders in develop-
ing countries. It was assumed that the financial resources made available
through the Development Loan Fund would be catalytic and that the
International Cooperation Administration (ICA) would be able to use
American know-how to develop appropriate technical and organizational
solutions for the problems of rural development. These would be accepted,
once their advantages were correctly understood by traditional peoples.1
In this context, development practitioners were typically professionals with

technical skills – engineers, agronomists, and other technical specialists – who
could directly contribute to the technical-change agenda proposed by moderniza-
tion theory. At that stage there was little direct ‘social’ intervention because mod-
ernization theory proposed that technological change would in turn drive social
transformation. Nevertheless, even in the early days of development practice, there
was some recognition that the social context of development mattered. Social
researchers were sometimes hired to assist with understanding local social contexts –
for instance, where communities would be affected by large infrastructure projects.
Community development workers were sometimes hired to work with locals to
help them adapt to the changes being imposed on them. These ‘social’ roles were
at the periphery of international development practice, but through their work
on the ground, they started to call attention to the local contexts and consequences
of development initiatives.
Early efforts to create development generally failed to produce the desired
impacts; the ‘naïve optimism and enthusiasm’ of the early days of development
practice began to fade. On-the-ground poverty increasingly became a topic of
concern, and so ‘alternative’ approaches to development practice started to appear
on the development landscape. These alternatives included nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) with a human or social development agenda. Through the
1970s and 1980s, development-focused NGOs based in both ‘developed’ and
‘developing’ countries became more numerous and influential in development
practice. In many cases, these NGOs positioned themselves as explicit alternatives
to mainstream aid programs. While mainstream international development efforts
typically aimed to generate economic outcomes at macro scale, NGOs promoted
a range of outcomes at more local scales, including improved health and educa-
tion, more secure livelihoods, better institutions, and stronger political voice. Many
NGOs chose to work directly with poor communities on the ground, at the
‘grassroots’.
Alternative approaches to development were not limited to NGOs. In the
United States, the Inter American Foundation (IAF) started work in 1971 as an
agency of the U.S. government that explicitly positioned itself within an alterna-
tive paradigm called grassroots development. The IAF’s philosophical position was
that development did not need to be imposed on poor communities; rather, that
poor communities, with a bit of external support, could create their own develop-
ment outcomes. The IAF posited that ‘people everywhere manifestly know their
own world better than any outsider and their lives should not be controlled,
manipulated or engineered by others’. This was a bold alternative statement for
the time, born of a situation in which ‘taxpayers and developmentalists alike are
troubled by the failures of U.S. aid to reach the poor and to achieve
development.’2
Development practice has therefore never been a single kind of practice; it has
embraced a range of strategies for achieving positive change. As early as the 1970s,
mainstream development policy proposed a focus on ‘basic needs’ of people in poor
places. This focus on basic human needs has persisted as a key theme in develop-
ment practice, through the launch of Human Development Reports in the 1990s
and the establishment of the Millennium Development Goals in the 2000s. Other
influential trends in mainstream development policy and practice have sought to
draw attention to the social contexts of change and the development needs of
particular groups of people such as women, indigenous peoples, rural dwellers, slum
dwellers, and the self-employed. Finally, a few development approaches have focused
explicitly on the physical and environmental contexts of change and the need for
development to be ecologically sustainable – that is, for change processes to remain
within the capacity of the physical environment and not degrade it. Thus, the
visions of social change held by contemporary development practitioners have
diversified far beyond the original propositions of modernization theory.
Nevertheless, modernization theory remains quietly influential in the practice
of development. Its influence persists in how many people think about the desired
outcomes of development – as implying that societies and communities will become
more modern. It also influences how development practitioners think about their
work. Development practice is often about bringing outside solutions in to help
less-advantaged places. Even when development practitioners reject the idea of
homogenous modernization, they tend to retain the core assumption that develop-
ment solutions can be designed by experts and transferred to those in need.
Technology-transfer strategies remain a central feature of development practice.
The ‘technologies’ in question need not be factories or dams; they may be politi-
cal, organizational, educational, or institutional technologies. These technologies
are typically designed in places that are wealthy, politically powerful, and techno-
logically ‘advanced’ and then transferred to places that are poor and disadvantaged –
to help them catch up.
This idea of development as technology transfer is still a central feature of
development practice in the twenty-first century. Sometimes it is consciously
argued that development must, of course, be created by development experts who
have studied what systems work best and can recommend what people need.
Often, however, the need for technology transfer from rich places to poor ones
is unconsciously assumed: part of the unquestioned intellectual heritage of devel-
opment practice. The technology-transfer approach to development practice is,
however, problematic. It imposes one social group’s vision of change on other
social groups, regardless of what the latter want. Some call it ‘top-down’ develop-
ment or ‘paternalistic’ policy; others suggest that it is a form of neocolonialism.
A number of thinkers have argued that the practice of development is always flawed,
because by definition, it necessarily attempts to impose one group’s way of life
on others. This is the postdevelopment argument. The postdevelopment literature
argues that development’s roots in Western ideas of progress and modernization
mean that development practice will always inevitably colonize and disempower
the very communities it aims to help.
Postdevelopment critiques raise uncomfortable questions for development prac-
tice. They cut to the heart of the proposition that it is possible to intentionally
create positive change – by asking who, in the end, is changing whom. Postdevelop-
ment critiques identify, correctly, that development practice is in many ways a
child of modernization theory and that the idea of development has a strong cultural
association with ‘progress’ and being modern. They also recognize that develop-
ment practice is premised upon a relationship between developers and those to
be developed in which the latter are expected to follow where the developer leads.
These insights raise important questions: Is development practice such a child of
modernization theory that it can never escape this tendency to impose a one-way,
one-path, top-down development agenda? Or has development practice, through
years of practical experience in real-world settings, discovered other ways of creat-
ing social and economic change?
A close look at development practice reveals that it has, though not always in
clear or influential ways. Over the years, on-the-ground development practice has
illustrated over and over that it is possible to work with communities to help
them drive their own change agendas from the ground up. Grassroots develop-
ment approaches posited back in the 1970s that ‘local communities know how’
to solve their own development challenges. In grassroots development approaches,
the practitioner’s role was not to impose external visions of development on com-
munities but to provide resources and support for community-driven change.3
Equally,‘bottom-up’ development work and ‘nondirective’ community development
approaches emphasize the importance of ideas and initiatives emerging from com-
munities themselves. Development practitioners enable and support community
action; in theory at least, they are not there to impose outside ideas and agendas.
Working with communities from the ‘bottom up’ or ‘inside out’ is an established
feature of development practice. It illustrates a potential solution to the post-
development challenge. While bottom-up approaches have traditionally sat at the
margins of mainstream development practice, new trends in development policy
and practice are paying much more attention to the ‘grassroots’, in the form of
local places.
A place-based lens
Post–World War II development practice focused on development for nation-states.
This in turn encouraged the idea that development was something that happened
at large scale to societies as a whole. The abstract idea of national development
generated a lot of policy attention and effort, yet on-the-ground results of national-
scale action were hard to see. Indeed, ideas that sounded good for the country as
a whole – like a large hydroelectric dam – could create quite disastrous impacts
on the ground for local communities. Nor was this the only problem. National-
scale development struggled to take into account the diverse range of needs and
opportunities in any particular country: countries that stretched from high mountain
ranges to desert to sea and from areas of extreme wealth to areas of extreme
poverty. Over the years, policy makers started to notice that different places can
have quite different development trajectories. They began to question the extent
to which the national scale was necessarily the best scale at which to create
development impacts.
National-scale development planning creates the illusion of simplicity: the typi-
cal, the average, the shared community that is both everywhere and nowhere.
Historically, governments and aid organizations have managed the difficult task of
development planning at national scale by glossing over the contextual differences
among the diverse geographical and social landscapes of localities and regions.4
Development decision makers may be aware that there are rich places and poor
places within a national landscape, but their macro-scale lenses reveal little about
the dynamics of why or how – or even the details of who and where. For prac-
titioners accustomed to on-the-ground work with communities, this kind of
top-down development work seems very distant from the real needs and oppor-
tunities in diverse local places. Yet for policy makers tasked with ‘development’ of
whole countries, such generalizations are inevitable.
Development at national scale is still highly influential in development practice.
The bulk of bilateral and multilateral development assistance continues to flow to
nation-states, not communities or localities, and development strategies are still
often conceived and delivered at national scale: for instance, the World Bank’s
Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers or national policy statements like ‘Buen Vivir’
in Ecuador or ‘Closing the Gap’ in Australia. At the same time, macro-scale
development has never completely ignored local places. Over the years, govern-
ments have periodically turned their attention to development initiatives for
particular geographical communities. Policy issues and opportunities appear in
particular contexts: Industries emerge or shut down, communities demand assistance,
problems arise that must be dealt with. Nevertheless, occasional policy attention
to the development of particular places has not significantly shifted the overall
focus on large-scale development processes, nor has it usually called attention to
the assets and resources (as opposed to the crises and deficits) of local places.
Decision makers are still often physically far from the places in question. They
usually have little understanding of who the key people and organizations are on
the ground or how things actually work locally. They may talk about a place but
have little or no understanding of it.
In the early years of the twenty-first century, however, this situation seems
to be shifting. Policy makers are increasingly interested in the idea of place-based
development. Place-based development can be defined as development approaches
that focus on small-scale, real-world contexts: local communities and groups of
communities, particular villages or urban areas, and regional clusters of settle-
ments with similar characteristics. Place-based development recognizes that
development is not a one-size-fits-all process. Local context matters. Develop-
ment processes happen differently in different places, depending on the charac-
teristics of those places. Different local regions have different industries, and
their industries may perform differently; different neighborhoods look different,
have different kinds of businesses and infrastructure, and their people may man-
age challenges differently.
Decades of development practice with communities on the ground has illus-

trated that there is no simple recipe for social or economic change. Much depends
on the characteristics of the place in question and the nature of communities in
that place. Places have their own social, economic, environmental, cultural, and
political characteristics, and these characteristics in turn create different develop-
ment trajectories. In place-based development approaches, policy attention focuses
on these distinctive attributes and dynamics of local places. They suggest that the
attributes of local places – their industries, institutions, communities, and physical
and social assets – can be leveraged to achieve development outcomes. Place-based
development approaches also propose that development is ultimately endogenous:
that development cannot simply be done for places from the outside in, but it
must emerge from the inside out.
Place-based development policies are thus challenging old ways of thinking
about development, which assumed that development solutions must necessarily
be brought in from wealthy places to poorer places or imposed by some places
on others. Development is not a homogenous, one-path, one-size-fits-all process.
Different places will develop differently, depending on their own internal
characteristics – and, arguably, their own goals. Place-based development is, how-
ever, still an emerging development paradigm – a new set of ideas, still in forma-
tion. It begins to recognize that development is a process in which organizations
and communities in local places play a role. For instance, firms working together
in a place can generate value for the local economy. It proposes an imperative for
centralized development organizations to work with localities, partnering with
them to achieve change. But its focus is ultimately geographical rather than social:
development as a process that happens differently in different places.
Place-based development approaches are important because they are focusing
policy attention on the real, on-the-ground contexts in which social and economic
change happens. In some areas, such as local economic development, place-based
approaches are making a real difference on the ground (see Practical Application
sidebar). At the same time, place-based development policy has one key weakness.
Place-based development policy focuses on places such as neighborhoods, cities,
and regions rather than on the people and communities in those places. Neigh-
borhoods, cities and regions are the on-the-ground contexts in which development
processes can be observed, but places cannot act. Nor are they internally homog-
enous. It is people, communities, and organizations – in all their variety – located
in those places that actually act. Understanding the development dynamics of
places therefore requires a closer attention to the interactions in these places and
how these interactions create change.5
The role of communities

Places are not homogenous; even in very local places there are differences. Some
neighborhoods are run down and depressed; others are dynamic and full of oppor-
tunities for involvement. Some places thrive and prosper, others struggle – and
some communities struggle in otherwise-thriving places. Place-based development

recognizes that some places are prosperous and other places are poor; but the
landscape is diverse within these places, too. Different people and communities
experience social change differently – some may benefit, some may not – and
they play different roles in stimulating or catalyzing change: active or passive,
leading or resisting. Looking at development processes in particular places raises
the question: How does social and economic change actually happen?
Community development practice has some insights that can help. Community
development practitioners have a long history of on-the-ground work with local
communities. As a result, they have been well placed to observe the processes of
social and economic change playing out in particular places: in a rural village,
an urban neighborhood center, or a range of other local social settings. Com-
munity development practitioners often work with disadvantaged and marginalized
communities; at the same time, they work with other communities, too, such as
communities of political decision makers and communities of professional col-
leagues. Working with a range of diverse communities on the ground gives a
privileged view of social and economic change and how it happens (or fails to
happen) in particular places. Often, community development practitioners and
others who work at the ‘coalface’ can see the flaws and disconnects between big
ideas from elsewhere and local processes playing out on the ground. These
practical experiences suggest a starting point for analyzing development dynamics
in local places.
The first insight from community development practice is that communities
can and do play an important role in social and economic development. Com-
munities are defined as groups of people sharing common ties: Communities may
comprise neighbors, friends, work colleagues, or members of the same organiza-
tions, for instance. People and their social relationships have always been a core
focus of community development practice, and for good reason: Development,
ultimately, is a social process. ‘Development’, ‘progress’, ‘society’, and ‘the economy’
do not exist in a vacuum independent of people. Rather, they are constructed and
reconstructed in people’s conversations about what is good and desirable, and they
are operationalized in organizations and institutions designed and run by people.
Community development practitioners often work in organizations dedicated to
some form of social change. These organizations work with other organizations
and communities to influence change processes. Community development practice
is based on the proposition that people and their relationships matter and that
social and economic change is created in these interactions.
Next, community development practice recognizes that communities are all
different, and as a result, they will change or develop in different ways. On-
the-ground work in local contexts has taught about the diversity of local
communities and their diverse ways of doing things. As one colleague put it after
visiting a number of rural Australian towns and talking with the local people:
‘If you’ve seen one town, you’ve seen one town.’ All are different. Thus, while
modernization theory assumed that development went in one direction and
followed one path, community development practice over the years has dem-
onstrated that different communities create different paths. Even within the
same locality, different communities may have distinct views about what positive
change is, how to go about achieving it – and whether a given development
initiative has actually worked from their perspective. Community development
practitioners working on the ground hear these different views. They come to
recognize that there is no one universally agreeable definition of development
and how to achieve it.
A third core insight from community development practice is that less-
advantaged communities can organize themselves to shift the social and economic
structures that disadvantage them. A central proposition in community develop-
ment practice is that people can work together to change their situation. This is
an important insight. Of course, communities’ ability to create change may be
limited by structural constraints and a lack of resources or influence to challenge
these constraints. Yet community development practice posits that organized com-
munities are powerful – able to gain resources and influence. ‘Grassroots’ move-
ments of communities, including those emerging from very poor and disadvantaged
contexts, can create social change.
These three insights from community development practice reveal a lot about
how social and economic changes are created on the ground in real places, as well
as about the roles local communities might play in creating them. First, community
development practice shows us that development – regardless of its aims – is
ultimately a social process. Development decision making is embedded in social
relations, and development processes take place in real social contexts. Therefore,
communities matter. Next, community development practice reminds us that
‘development’ is not about one path but many. No two communities are alike,
and different communities may pursue different visions of development. Finally,
community development practice emphasizes that communities – even deeply
disadvantaged communities – can drive social and economic change. While struc-
tural obstacles are real, so are the energy and initiative of people working together
to make a difference.
These ideas distilled from community development practice have parallels in
the world of academic theory. The literature on place-based development discussed
previously suggests that places and the organizations in them can drive develop-
ment. Anthropologists and sociologists of development go further: They argue
that development is always a social process, driven by diverse development actors
and their relationships. Development actors are defined as anyone – individuals,
groups, communities, organizations – involved in processes of social change. Anyone
can be a development actor: the World Bank, an industry association, a local firm,
a community organizer, the mayor, a local resident. Development actors have
agency: the ability to act and drive – or resist – a change agenda. Some develop-
ment actors may drive a particular agenda; others may support, resist, or sidetrack
it. Social and economic change happens through the relationships and meeting
points (Norman Long calls them interfaces) among different kinds of development
actors. These insights about development actors and their interactions draw atten-
tion to the social processes of development and how different development actors
drive their different visions of change.
Modernization theorists and many of their descendants in the contemporary
development landscape would suggest that development for disadvantaged com-
munities will always require action from elsewhere, an infusion of external invest-
ment and expertise to make things happen. In this ‘top-down’ view, communities’
role in development becomes a passive one: to accept what is brought in from
outside, adopt it or perhaps adapt it, and change accordingly. Place-based develop-
ment, by contrast, draws attention to the endogenous assets of local places, sug-
gesting that development happens from the inside out, and different local
communities will develop differently. Yet place-based development is unclear on
the role of communities in driving change. Community development practice
provides insights from ground level to suggest that communities – even very
disadvantaged communities – can play an active role in their own development.
These insights can be understood with reference to academic ideas about develop-
ment actors and their relationships. Both practice and theory suggest that develop-
ment is a social process in which different communities interact to pursue their
different visions of development.
Community deficits and community assets

Arguably, bottom-up community-driven change is not a poetic ideal; it is the way
that most social and economic change actually happens. Track any significant
social change back to its roots and these change processes will be grounded in
particular social and geographical settings, in particular historical moments. They
will have been championed by particular people. Whether catalyzed by a visionary
leader, an entrepreneurial group, or an organized community, the drivers of change
are generally to be found in specific geographic and community contexts, in the
interactions and relationships among different development actors.
At the same time, change does not always happen – and change does not
necessarily benefit disadvantaged groups. Indeed, a development initiative may
benefit some people while making others worse off. Some communities are well
equipped to drive their change agendas, with abundant resources and influence;
others are trapped in situations of poverty and disadvantage. They may want things
to change but be unable to see any way to get there from here. They may not
even believe change is possible; in their experience, things have always been like
they are now. On the ground, development problems persist: hunger, preventable
illness, poor housing, lack of education, lack of work – all the trappings of poverty
and disadvantage. If anyone can drive change, then why do some places change
when they don’t want to – and others that want to change can’t?
Development practice is charged with bridging the very real gaps between
places and communities that are ‘successful’ – however defined – and those that
are not. Development practice therefore nearly always begins from a position of
deficit. ‘Fighting poverty’ starts with poverty – a state of disadvantage or deficit,

whether defined simply as lack of money or, more accurately, as lack of key
resources. ‘Building community’ presumes community is incomplete, not yet fully
built. Development practice aims to create positive change; it thus logically starts
with the need for change. A negative situation requires a positive intervention. It
is no accident that the first activity in many development projects and initiatives
is to conduct a needs analysis. Starting with needs is a logical development approach,
but it is also dangerous. Focusing on what a community or locality does not have
can easily paint a one-dimensional picture of impoverishment. Everyone can see
what is missing. But this risks overlooking what is already there: local assets and
attributes, the sources of community strength, the latent opportunities.
The literature of place-based development teaches us that local attributes, assets,
capitals, social networks, and cultural characteristics can be leveraged to create
local development. This is referred to as endogenous development, or development
based on endogenous (local) attributes. A skilled local population, a good transport
infrastructure, an attractive landscape, or a unique traditional product are all
resources that can be leveraged to create local development outcomes. Community
development literature and practice also recognize that community assets and
attributes are important. In the community development field, this is referred to
as assets-based community development (ABCD; see Practical Application sidebar).
It is also sometimes called a strengths-based approach to development. This approach
recognizes that it is important to focus on a community’s assets or strengths rather
than its deficits or weaknesses as the launch pad for change.
Recognizing the value of local and community assets opens up an exciting
development space. It challenges the idea that the resources and assets for develop-
ment must always be brought in from elsewhere. Rather, it focuses on the resources
that communities and localities already have and how they can use their own
resources to create the futures they want. Taking an assets-based approach acknowl-
edges that not all places and communities will follow the same development
trajectory – their assets are, after all, very different. Local skills, knowledge, identity,
heritage, and so forth are assets that communities can mobilize to create futures
grounded in their own distinctiveness, values, and strengths.
Asset-based approaches name and celebrate the central role of local assets in
creating positive change. At the same time, they have less to say about the gaps.
The fact that localities and communities have some assets does not necessarily
imply that they have all the assets they need. Communities at the local level may
lack access to key assets: land, water, cultural assets, political voice. In a particular
community, in a particular place, some assets may simply not be present or may
have been lost. Social patterns like intergenerational poverty may be very hard to
overcome. ‘Structural’ disadvantages such as the way markets work or where
infrastructure is located can reduce communities’ room to maneuver.6 Focusing
on the ability of poor communities to create development for themselves with
their own local assets may be enormously empowering, but it can also be enor-
mously disempowering if the key ingredients they need are missing.
This creates an interesting dual position. On the one hand, there is a basic
proposition that communities can use their own assets to drive change from
within. On the other hand, few would argue that disadvantaged communities and
regions should be left to their own devices to swim or sink. Focusing only on
assets and ignoring deficits can be dangerous. External resources may still be
needed. Nevertheless, as policy attention turns toward place-based development,
local communities are increasingly expected to play a leading role in ensuring
their own development. The implication is that by recognizing and mobilizing
their own internal assets, local communities can and will solve poverty for them-
selves. Yet communities’ room to maneuver may be limited by structural obstacles,
and communities’ own assets alone may not be enough to achieve the development
they want. Top-down, one-size-fits-all development is problematic, but purely
bottom-up development is often simply not feasible. This suggests a need to
reimagine development practice and its role.
Unanswered questions for community development practice

Development, as a process of social and economic change, involves many different
actors: organizations, governments, firms, communities, groups, individuals. Devel-
opment organizations born out of the post–World War II development landscape
assumed that it was their role to create change for poor places, to transfer the
resources and technologies that were lacking. The idea of development practice
as technology transfer persisted for decades. Yet slowly, this attitude is changing.
Development professionals are paying more attention to communities’ own assets
and their potential to drive development from within. New place-based develop-
ment approaches emphasize development from the bottom up or inside out and
place much of the responsibility for change making on local communities them-
selves. Yet these new approaches raise important questions for local communities
and for community development practice.
For local communities, the challenge to solve poverty for themselves is often
simply not practicable. Local communities have important assets and strengths
that can provide building blocks for development strategies, but they also have
deficits and structural obstacles. Few communities want to be the target of top-
down ‘solutions’ that don’t work. Neither, however, do they want to be abandoned
to face structural and practical challenges with no external support. This suggests
that there is still a role for development practice. Yet this development practice
is no longer about driving change from the top down or the outside in. It is a
new kind of development practice that is about working with local communities
in partnerships to help them create their own social and economic development
outcomes.
Organizations concerned with development are increasingly seeking professionals
with the skills to work effectively with local communities on a range of local
development issues. These roles require practitioners to help ‘develop community
capacity’, ‘facilitate’ local change, ‘engage’ communities in planning processes, and
‘enable’ partnerships with local communities. This language signals a policy shift
toward localities and the communities within them as drivers or co-drivers of
development. The words sound wonderful; they resonate with a deep belief that
people and their local organizations are important and that communities can drive
social and economic development from the ground up. But this language also
raises questions about what this new kind of development practice actually looks
like on the ground.
What is actually involved in enabling communities to achieve local development
outcomes? Does it mean guiding communities toward development outcomes that
outsiders want – regardless of community aspirations? Or is it about helping com-
munities pursue the outcomes that they themselves want – regardless of the
opinions of their external helpers? Communities and their helpers do not neces-
sarily share the same agendas. Then, most places contain multiple communities,
so this raises the question: Which communities should community development
practitioners be working with? Different local communities do not necessarily
have the same agendas. Then there is the question of scope: Is development about
helping disadvantaged communities to navigate the status quo or to shift the unfair
structures that create and perpetuate their disadvantage? What, in the end, is
feasible for a development professional to do, and what skills are needed to do it?
Answering these questions requires looking closer at the role of the development
practitioner. It requires developing a theory – a framework of ideas – about the
role of the practitioner in local development.
UK–based community development academic and practitioner Margaret Led-
with has observed that community development practice needs to ‘get better at
weaving theory into our practice’ in order to ‘explain why we are doing what we
are doing at any stage of the community development process’.7 Weaving theory
into practice is important, because theory – the ideas that we carry around with
us about how the world works – deeply influences what we do on the ground,
in practice. Ideas about modernization and top-down change have had a long
influence on development practice, masking the diverse aspirations of local com-
munities. Many practitioners have responded with one-size-fits-all development
agendas deeply disconnected from local contexts. In contrast, attention to local
places and communities draws attention to local assets and resources and the
potential for bottom-up and inside-out change. Nevertheless, practitioners too
often assume that local communities are internally homogenous and overlook the
complex social contexts that create and reproduce disadvantage. Today’s practition-
ers are left with unanswered questions about how to enable and support local
communities to create development outcomes. What framework might a practi-
tioner use to understand social and economic development processes on the ground
and his or her role in them?
This chapter has suggested the first ingredients. It has proposed that development
is a social process and that local communities can and do drive change. Many dif-
ferent development actors – individuals, groups, organizations – are actively involved
in social and economic change processes in and beyond local communities. A
development practitioner working on the ground in a local community quickly

finds him- or herself surrounded by a landscape of people and organizations with
different change agendas and different understandings of what is needed, desirable,
or possible. The development practitioner who enters this diverse development
landscape can go equipped with a key insight: that development is a social process,
and it requires close attention to communities and their relationships.
Further reading
On mainstream development and its failures
Anthropology, Development and the Post-Modern Challenge, by Katy Gardner and David Lewis.
Pluto Press, 1996.
Encountering Development, the Making and Unmaking of the Third World, by Arturo Escobar.
Princeton University Press, 1995.
The Post-Development Reader, edited by Majid Rahnema and Victoria Bawtree. Zed Books,
1997.
The Three Worlds, Culture and World Development, by Peter Worsley. University of Chicago
Press, 1984.
Victims of Progress, third edition, by John H. Bodley. Mayfield Publishing, 1990.
On place-based development theory and practice

The Associational Economy: Firms, Regions and Innovation, by Philip Cooke and Kevin Morgan.
Oxford University Press, 1998.
Local Economic Development: Analysis, Practices, and Globalization, second edition, by John P.
Blair and Michael C. Carroll. Sage Publications, 2008.
Local and Regional Development, by Andy Pike, Andres Rodriguez-Pose, and John Tomaney.
Routledge, 2006.
The New Rural Paradigm: Policies and Governance, OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development), 2006.
The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy, by Michael Storper. Guilford
Press, 1997.
On the anthropology and sociology of development

Anthropology and Development, Culture, Morality and Politics in a Globalised World, by Emma
Crewe and Richard Axelby. Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Anthropology and Development, Understanding Contemporary Social Change, by Jean-Pierre
Olivier de Sardan. Zed Books, 2005.
Cultivating Development, an Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice, by David Mosse. Pluto
Press, 2005.
Development Anthropology, Encounters in the Real World, by Riall Nolan. Westview Press, 2002.
Development from Below: Anthropologists and Development Situations, edited by David C. Pitt.
Moulton and Co., 1976.
Development Sociology, Actor Perspectives, by Norman Long. Routledge, 2001.
Whose Development? An Ethnography of Aid, by Emma Crewe and Elizabeth Harrison. Zed
Books, 1998.
Practical application: local economic

development methods
Local economic development (LED) is the practice of growing economic
opportunities in particular local places. It is an example of a place-based
development approach that has been used in practice to create economic
benefits for local communities around the world. There are a number of
local economic development methods, but all focus on leveraging local
resources to create local economic benefits. Most LED approaches are
concerned with establishing, growing, and supporting local businesses
and jobs for local people. One organization calls this ‘economic garden-
ing’: using the metaphor of a garden to ‘grow’ economic activity from the
ground up.8
Popular LED methods include business development services, local employ-
ment programs, and buy local campaigns.
Business development services work with local people who want to start
or grow a local business to provide skills, mentoring, coaching, or other
kinds of support. A number of organizations around the world run training
and support programs to encourage emerging entrepreneurs, sometimes
with an explicit focus on entrepreneurs from less-advantaged communi-
ties. The United States–based Sirolli Institute’s ‘enterprise facilitation’ is one
of many examples of business development services designed to support
local economic development by growing new businesses.9 In addition to
training and coaching services, local business incubators are sometimes
used to provide infrastructure and support for new local business startups;
they may have free or low-cost office space and shared reception, account-
ing, and other services.
Local employment programs seek to help local people find jobs, often by
providing them with opportunities to gain skills, formal credentials, and
work experience. The most effective local employment programs are gen-
erally those that partner with local businesses that are in a position to hire
program graduates. A local example from Tasmania, Australia, is a partner-
ship between Mission Australia and local manufacturing and engineering
firm Southern Prospect that placed sixteen long-term unemployed locals in
jobs in 2013.10
Buy local campaigns seek to plug economic ‘leakages’ from local com-
munities and support local businesses by encouraging local people to buy
their goods and services locally. One of the largest and best-known exam-
ples of a buy local campaign is UK–based Totally Locally, a social enterprise
and shop-local movement that has run across a number of localities in the
UK, as well as in Australia and New Zealand.11
Practical application: asset-based community

development
Asset-based community development (ABCD) is a well-known community
development approach that focuses on identifying and leveraging commu-
nity assets for community benefit. Assets in this approach are not limited to
physical assets like buildings or equipment; they include locally available
skills, social networks, organizations, and key people – anything that might
be useful in helping a community to achieve its goals. Asset-based com-
munity development recognizes that often, community assets are invis-
ible to outside development workers – and even to community members
themselves.
A number of methods can be used in practice to make community
assets visible. Skills audits, for instance, can be conducted to identify the
skills that are present in a community. Often these take the form of a survey
in which people are asked to communicate what skills they have – either
generally or in a specific area. Visual surveys can be used to identify physi-
cal assets like natural features or buildings. Consultations and workshops
with local people can help to identify other kinds of assets like influential
people, organizations, and networks. These are not necessarily known to
everyone and not necessarily recognized as assets that can be leveraged to
achieve collective goals.
Asset mapping is a method for visually representing the assets of a com-
munity. John McKnight and John Kretzmann developed the idea of assets
maps that show the different assets in a given community and visually
represent the relationships among them.12 These assets maps are typically
drawn as diagrams showing different kinds of assets and their relationships.
Geographical assets maps add an additional dimension by literally map-
ping community or regional assets as they are found in geographical space.
A geographical assets map may use color coding, dots, icons, or three-
dimensional markers to represent where particular assets are located. New
computer-based technologies such as GIS mapping have introduced much
greater flexibility into geographical assets mapping; different maps can be
layered and photos and digital stories linked to particular places on an inter-
active digital map.
Notes
1 Quote from Allan Hoben, ‘Anthropologists and Development’ in Annual Review of
Anthropology, 11 (1982), 353.
2 Quotes from Inter American Foundation (1977) They Know How . . . an Experiment in
Development Assistance. Rosslyn, VA: Inter American Foundation, ix, 1.
3 For an example, see Sheldon Annis and Peter Hakim (eds.) (1988) Direct to the Poor,
Grassroots Development in Latin America. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
4 For discussion of some interesting historical examples, see James Scott (1998) Seeing Like
a State, How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale Agrarian
Studies Series. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
5 The regional and local development literature informing place-based development does
not ignore these interactions, but it does tend to oversimplify them, focusing principally
on firms in particular industries and their interactions with large institutions (e.g., govern-
ment and universities). This is understandable, as this literature has a strong basis in eco-
nomics and economic geography rather than anthropology or sociology.
6 The concept of communities’ ‘room to maneuver’ in the face of structural obstacles is
borrowed from the anthropologist Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan (2005) in Anthropology
and Development, Understanding Contemporary Social Change. London: Zed Books.
7 Margaret Ledwith (2007) ‘Reclaiming the Radical Agenda: A Critical Approach to
Community Development’, Concept, 17(2), 8–12.
8 See the US National Centre for Economic Gardening, http://nceg.edwardlowe.net/.
9 See www.sirolli.com/.
10 See www.southernprospect.com.au/announcements/southern-prospect-named-mission-
australia-2013-employer-of-the-year.
11 See http://totally-locally.co.uk/.
12 John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight (1993) Building Communities from the Inside
Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets. Evanston, IL: The
Asset-Based Community Development Institute. Various other publications are available
via the ABCD Institute’s website: www.abcdinstitute.org/.
2
DEVELOPMENT METHODS
AND MEASURES
‘Doing’ development
Chapter One gave an overview of the theory and practice of development, with
particular attention to the role of local communities in creating change. Chapter
Two turns the spotlight on development practice. It explores how development
practitioners intentionally create or catalyze change in local communities. What do
practitioners do, and how is success measured? What kinds of relationships does
development practice establish between the development practitioner and local
communities? This chapter introduces a range of common development approaches
and methods that development practitioners use in their work. It discusses how
different approaches and methods are underpinned by different ideas about how
social and economic change happens. Current development trends are creating
new opportunities for on-the-ground work with local communities; they are also
creating new challenges in defining and measuring success.
Development approaches and methods are the ways that development practitioners
work: how they ‘do’ development. The approach is the overall strategy that informs
a development initiative. Local economic development (LED), for instance, is a
development approach: it defines the kind of change that is sought (economic
development) and the scope of the initiative (local action; see Practical Application
sidebar, Chapter One). Community capacity building is another development
approach. In this case, the aim is to develop the social and organizational capacities
of communities to act for their common interest. Every development approach
has a range of associated methods or tools that can be used to achieve its aims. In
LED, for instance, methods include buy-local programs and business development
services. Methods may be as specific as a community visioning workshop or as
broad as an ongoing process of community organizing. Methods describe what
development practitioners do; approaches are the underlying strategies that define
why they do it.
Development methods and measures 31
For this reason, it is important to understand not just the methods that will
be used in a given initiative but the overall approach that defines what these
methods are aiming to achieve. Certain methods – such as community workshops
or skills audits – are used frequently in development work with local communities,
but these methods can be used in very different ways depending on the practi-
tioner’s overall approach. For instance, a community skills audit may be used to
map local assets as part of a community capacity building project or alternatively,
as part of a local economic development initiative. In the first case, the audit will
likely be used to identify local leadership and networking skills, while in the
second it will aim to identify skilled workers and local business opportunities.
While the method is the same, the approach creates quite a different result.
Development approaches are in turn influenced by theories of change. Theories
of change are frameworks of ideas about how change happens (see Figure 2.1).
Theories of change are central to development practice, because development
practice seeks to intentionally create or catalyze change. Some development
practitioners are very clear about their theories of change. They can explain what
kind of social or economic change they hope to achieve, the approach they
intend to use, and why they believe that this approach will produce the desired
result. Other practitioners are less clear about their theory of change. They may
be vague about what change they want to achieve or uncertain about their
approach – what they need to do to get there. These practitioners may choose
their approach and methods randomly based on what they know how to do,
what other practitioners are doing, or what is politically popular at the time (‘let’s
call it building capability for climate-change resilience!’). The methods they use
to achieve change may bear little relation to the outcomes they are trying to
create on the ground.
Young people
choosing to
Young people complete high
raising their school and
aspirations for potentially
Career mentors professional/ further
introducing technical education
young people careers
to new careers
Young people
disengaging
from education
FIGURE 2.1 A theory of change

32 Development methods and measures
Measures of
Development
Development Methods outcomes
Approach
Theory of
change
FIGURE 2.2 Visualizing development practice
In development practice, the approach flows from the theory of change, and the
methods are informed by the approach (see Figure 2.2). Practitioners who can
articulate a clear theory of change will choose an approach and methods that are
consistent with the change they are trying to achieve. Take for example a com-
munity development worker who wants to encourage local young people to remain
in high school. His work with local young people to date has taught him that
many young people don’t see the point of remaining in school because they do
not expect to use what they learn. He suspects that keeping young people in school –
the desired change – will only happen when young people believe that staying
in school will actually make a difference to their future. This is his theory of
change: to keep kids in school, show them school matters.
The practitioner then reads about how career mentoring programs have been
used to link young people from rural areas with mentors from different career
backgrounds. Based on what he knows from his work with local young people,
he suspects that a career mentoring approach might work in local high schools. This
approach, which aims to expose young people to different career options and role
models, could lead local young people to believe that staying in school is worth-
while. Having identified an approach that fits with his theory of change, the
community development worker then implements a number of methods to gauge
the interest of local schools, parents, and community groups in establishing such
a program and the most effective way to implement it.
A clear theory of change shows what result is expected and how it is expected
that this result will be achieved. Because it is a theory, it embeds certain ideas: for
instance, the idea that being exposed to career opportunities will lead to aspirations
for similar careers. This is an idea about change, not necessarily a fact. Theories
of change may or may not hold true in a given situation, but they provide a
Activities Outputs Outcomes Overall Goal
Training session 4–5 enthusiastic,

for career confident trained
mentors mentors committed Young Young people
to the program people with choosing to stay
higher career in school
aspirations
seeing the
value of
education
Weekly/fortnightly 8–10 disengaged
meetings with young people
students and developing a
mentors over relationship with
semester 1 mentors
FIGURE 2.3 Basic example of a logframe
starting point; they suggest what might logically be done to achieve the desired
outcome. It is then possible to test whether the theory of change holds true in
practice: through a specific project, program, or other intervention. Applied in
practice, the theory of change becomes a project logic or program logic, the logic
that underpins a particular development initiative. This can be visually represented
using a logical framework or logframe. A logframe is a management tool that
draws the links between project or program activities and their expected outcomes
(see Figure 2.3).
A central question in development practice is how to define the ‘success’ of
development initiatives. Logframes are popular development management tools
because they specify the expected outputs and outcomes of a development initia-
tive and how these contribute to the overall goal for change. Often, logframes
nominate specific indicators that can be measured to determine if this change has
actually happened in practice. This provides a way to test whether and to what
extent the initiative has succeeded. When evaluating an initiative or measuring its
success, it is important to identify outcomes that can be measured or documented
and that actually speak to the kind of change the initiative aimed to create. In
the example, the goal is to keep young people in high school. An appropriate
measure of success would therefore be whether the program had created any
change in high school retention rates for participants. It is also possible to measure
the specific outcome that the project aimed to achieve: finding out whether and
to what extent mentors had influenced the aspirations of young people. If young
people’s attitudes toward careers and education did not change as a result of the
program, the approach (career mentoring) may not have been correct. Or there
could have been an issue with the program methods that meant that the mentor-
ing relationship did not develop as planned. On the other hand, if young people’s
attitudes did change as a result of the program but they still did not stay in
school, then the theory of change is incorrect. Other factors may be influencing
young people’s decision making about school. Clear theories of change and pro-
gram evaluation help practitioners and communities identify whether a desired
change has occurred – and if not, why not.
Metrics, or measures of change, are used to track the changes that result from
development practice. Metrics can be used to demonstrate whether a change has
taken place and the nature and extent of that change. In the example, appropriate
metrics might be the eight program participants who completed high school, the
100-percent retention rate, or the 75 percent of participants that indicated that
their mentor had influenced their thinking about future career choices. Metrics
focus on changes that can be quantified as either numbers or percentages. At the
same time, metrics do not capture all relevant information about change. Some
impacts of a development initiative may not always be strictly ‘measurable’, such
as the value of the mentor relationship in expanding social networks for young
people or the mentors’ reflections on the growth of confidence among program
participants. These kinds of measures of change are ‘qualitative’ (describing the
quality or nature of change) rather than ‘quantitative’ (describing the scale or
extent or change). Indicators is a more general term for measures of change that
may be either quantitative or qualitative. The overall purpose of indicators is to
indicate where and how change has occurred.
Together, theories and indicators of change inform development policy. Devel-
opment policy is strategic decision making about what actions will be taken to
intentionally create or catalyze change. Policy informs day-to-day development
practice; at the same time, policy making itself is a form of development practice.
Development policy makers are simply those people in government and development
organizations who make strategic decisions about development. Governments and
development organizations need to decide what development outcomes they are
aiming to achieve and how to achieve them. To do this, they choose the indica-
tors they would like to influence – such as school retention rates or young people’s
attitudes toward school – and the approaches they will use based on particular
theories of change. Their decisions about what to do and how to do it are their
development policies. Thus, one organization has a policy focus on creating employ-
ment opportunities for women. Another’s policy is to provide community-based
literacy support for migrants. A third prioritizes leadership development for youth.
Each policy is based on a different theory of change and seeks to influence dif-
ferent development indicators.
Within a given development policy framework, on-the-ground development
action may take a number of forms. The most common forms are the development
project, the development program, and the development partnership. Other forms of
development action include advocacy (communicating publically on behalf of a
group or issue), policy intervention (using government policy levers to stimulate
change), or direct funding of various kinds. The development project is the basic
organizing unit of much development work. Projects can be defined as discrete
initiatives with a beginning, middle, and end that aim to create some form of
change. In development work, the project cycle describes the process through which
needs are assessed, initiatives are designed and implemented, and evaluation occurs.
Though projects have a designated end, the cycle of development work continues
as evaluation informs future project design. Development programs are larger
organizing units, often composed of multiple projects. Sometimes, however, the
terms ‘program’ and ‘project’ are used interchangeably. Development partnerships
are umbrella initiatives bringing together different organizations with similar
concerns to work together on projects, programs, and/or other kinds of initiatives.
Development partnerships will be discussed further in Chapter Four.
Today’s development policy and practice are informed by a confluence of ideas
and theories of change from different frameworks and traditions. There is no
single unified framework, no coherent suite of theories of change and associated
approaches and methods that underpin contemporary development policy and
practice. Rather, today’s development practice contains many different and often
contradictory theories of change, operating at a range of scales with a range of
aims. Policy makers do not always state their theories of change explicitly, but
these ideas about change frame how they think about their work, the approaches
and methods they choose (and how they use them), the outcomes they aim to
produce, and how they define and measure success. Some policy makers, for
instance, have theories of change with deep roots in modernization theory (see
Chapter One): They believe that positive change ultimately comes from techno-
logical modernization and raising productivity. Other policy makers have strongly
place-based theories of change (see Chapter One): They believe that positive change
must be driven at the local level, by organizations working together. When theories
of change are not stated explicitly, there is ample room for confusion about the
kinds of approaches and methods that will work and the kinds of outcomes and
indicators that should be measured. This chapter aims to make sense of the complex
landscape of contemporary development practice. It starts by outlining some impor-
tant trends in development policy approaches and then explores how these influence
contemporary development policy and practice across three domains: economic
development, social development, and multidimensional development.
Development policy trends

Over the years, development policy has changed – often dramatically. Since
development became an area of professional practice, ideas and approaches have
come in and out of vogue. A ‘continuously evolving search for ever new terms
and approaches . . . seems endemic in the development industry.’1 Over the
years, trends have come and gone; one colleague in Bolivia observed the detritus
of development trends lining her bookshelf. The sheer number and variety of
terms and approaches can be overwhelming. Nevertheless, it is possible to discern
a pattern in them. Three recurring concerns are consistently at the center of
development policy conversations. These are concerns about the appropriate
scale of development initiatives, concerns about the significance of the context of
development initiatives, and concerns about the ultimate aims of development

initiatives. These concerns are often the basis from which old development
approaches, methods, and measures are critiqued and new ones proposed. Most
development policy trends over the years can be understood with reference to
one or more of these three themes.
The scale of development initiatives refers to whether policy makers seek to
create change at large scale, small scale, or somewhere in between. They may aim
to create change at global scale, in a world region (e.g., sub-Saharan Africa, the
Caribbean), a nation state, a subnational region, or a locality such as a village or
neighborhood. As discussed in Chapter One, national-scale policy approaches have
historically been the most common. However, alternative approaches such as
grassroots development and place-based development have challenged large-scale
approaches and proposed the need to work on the ground at more local scales.
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), for instance, have often focused their
work at the ‘grassroots’, with particular communities in particular places. Other
NGOs, however, propose larger scales of action – for instance, global civil society
movements bring together communities of interest across national boundaries to
work for change. Scale is a persisting concern in development policy: on the one
hand, how to make big-picture policy initiatives work ‘on the ground’ at more
local scales; on the other hand, how to ‘scale up’ local success stories to work
elsewhere.
Scale is related to a second set of concerns: concerns about the importance of
context in development initiatives. Context refers to the perceived relevance of
contextual factors such as rurality, mobility, gender, cultural identity, and so forth
in development initiatives. Over the years, development policy makers have started
to pay greater attention to the diverse contexts in which social and economic
change happens. They increasingly consider the difference between the develop-
ment needs of rural areas versus urban areas, peripheral versus central areas, and
stable versus ‘fragile’ states. They recognize that the development experiences of
women may be different from those of men, those of refugees different from those
of settled populations, and those of indigenous peoples different from those of
mainstream cultural groups. Growing awareness of the contexts of change has
driven a range of new development policy approaches over the years such as
gender and development, rural development, and ecologically sustainable develop-
ment, among many others. Attention to context has also created a large number
of thematic trends and topic specializations in development policy such as ‘women
in forestry’, ‘rural finance’, ‘tropical agriculture’, and ‘indigenous health’. All of
these terms and approaches are ways that development policy makers have sought
to grapple with the diverse contexts of their work.
Concerns about the scale and context of development work sit alongside an
ongoing debate about development’s ultimate aims. While development policies
may have a range of aims and desired outcomes, an underlying pattern can be
observed across both ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ country contexts. This is a
dialogue between productivity aims – often described as ‘economic’ aims – and
well-being aims – often described as ‘social’ aims. The dialogue between produc-
tivity aims and well-being aims sits at the heart of many debates in development
policy. Some policy makers define development first and foremost as the achieve-
ment of increased production, efficiency, employment, enterprise, and economic
growth. Others counter that development is ultimately about achieving well-being
aims such as livelihood security, community resilience, health, and education.
Others seek to reconcile these two positions, pointing out that productivity increases
provide a means to ensure well-being or that ensuring well-being is the best way
to achieve productivity. Yet others have sought to broaden conversations about
development aims to include environmental and cultural aims, illustrated by a
growing interest in ‘triple-bottom-line’ (economic, social, and environmental)
outcomes and ‘quadruple-bottom-line’ (economic, social, environmental, and cul-
tural) outcomes.
Overall, reflecting on development policy trends over the past seventy years
highlights three persisting policy concerns about ‘doing development’. First, what
is the most effective scale for development initiatives? Next, do the diverse physical, social,
and cultural contexts of development matter – and if so, how? And finally, what is the
ultimate aim of development work? In response to these concerns, it is possible to
identify some broad trends over time (see Figure 2.4). The scale of development
initiatives has been moving away from the nation-state as the main focus of
intervention toward smaller scales – localities and regions – and, simultaneously,
global action, as communication tools like websites and social media have made
it easier to mobilize large-scale action even from a very local base. The diverse
contexts of development are increasingly recognized as important as one-size models
Policy Theme Trend
National level Place-based development

Scale of Initiatives
development and global action networks
Development tailored to
One-size-fits-all the needs of women,
Context of Initiatives
development indigenous peoples,
rural places, etc.
Single aim Multiple aims:

Aims of Initiatives (Productivity/ (Economic, social,
modernization) environmental, cultural)
Time
FIGURE 2.4 Development policy trends over time

of change give way to more contextually tailored approaches. In some cases, this
has led development decision makers to seek to involve target groups in decision
making, an approach known as participatory development (see Chapter Three).
Finally, development policy trends increasingly reflect that development has multiple
aims; while productivity aims still occupy a very influential position in develop-
ment policy, other aims are now acknowledged and sometimes, prioritized.
These are broad trends. Yet development in practice is enormously diverse.
Ideas have shifted significantly over the past seventy years, but ideas also have long
lives: National-scale initiatives continue to exist, contextual factors are still regularly
ignored, and many development initiatives still focus narrowly on increasing pro-
ductivity. Today’s development landscape is a complex mix and match of the old
and the new, of large-scale, standardized, productivity-focused development
approaches, methods, and indicators and small-scale, context-sensitive, well-being–
focused approaches, methods, and indicators. This diversity can be seen in practice
in the range of development approaches, methods, and measures available to
development practitioners.
Development work in the twenty-first century is a mix of long-established
practice, edgy new ideas, and many things in between. To illustrate this diverse
landscape, the following sections will provide examples of development approaches,
methods, and measures at different scales with different aims, some of which
demonstrate a strong sensitivity to context and some of which do not. These
examples are organized according to the main domains in which development
policy has sought to create or catalyze change: economic development, social
development, and ‘integrated’ or ‘multidimensional’ development.
Economic development methods and measures

It is not possible to write about development policy and practice without discuss-
ing economic development. Economic development is a dominant concept in
development policy and practice; for some, ‘development’ simply means economic
development. Yet economic development is a specific domain of development work.
It focuses on the economy, defined as the mechanisms for the production and
distribution of goods and services. Economic development is concerned with
improving the production and distribution of goods and services. There are many
different economic development approaches, methods, and measures. These are
applied at different scales, with or without attention to context, and with different
kinds of aims.
In terms of scale, most economic development policy initiatives historically
operated at national scale. They typically focused on enhancing a nation’s produc-
tion and distribution of goods and services, the overall value created by these, and
the nation’s competitiveness vis-à-vis other nations. The development approaches
and methods employed to do this sit in the realm of macroeconomic policy. They
comprise the various approaches (e.g., Keynesian economics, neoliberal economics)
and methods (e.g., government investment programs, interest rate adjustments)
that are used to manage national economies. In recent years, however, there has
been growing interest in smaller-scale, ‘place-based’ regional and local economic
development approaches. Regional and local economic development are also
concerned with the production and distribution of goods and services, but the
approaches and methods used are quite different: They focus on understanding
and leveraging the unique characteristics of particular places. For instance, local
economic development (LED) methods start with local assets and attributes and
develop local economic strategies from the ground up (see Practical Application
sidebar, Chapter One). Regional economic development approaches focus on a
slightly larger geographic scale: regions are areas that share particular physical, social,
and cultural attributes, such as Tuscany in Italy or the Silicon Valley in California.
Regional economic development approaches and methods aim to identify unique
regional attributes and strengthen the networks that link regional businesses with
each other and other organizations.
While national-scale economic development approaches tend to grapple with
‘the economy’ as a whole, other economic development approaches are sensitive
to context. In local and regional economic development for instance, contexts
matter because they contain assets and attributes that can create economic devel-
opment outcomes. For instance, distinctive European regional food traditions create
competitive products for the global market: such as Parma ham or champagne.
These products create significant economic value, but they are also deeply grounded
in cultural traditions, social relationships, and physical landscapes; without these
contextual factors, these important industries would not exist. Indeed, the value
they create cannot be separated from the contexts in which they are created.
Finally, economic development initiatives seek to achieve a range of aims.
Sometimes economic productivity growth is the end goal. Sometimes the aim is
to grow employment opportunities, secure livelihoods, or ensure the sustainability
of local services and infrastructure. At the national scale, economic aims tend to
focus on raising productivity, growing employment, and improving terms of trade.
Regional economic development approaches typically aim to increase the pro-
ductivity and global competitiveness of regions and their firms, while local
economic development may aim to solve locally specific economic challenges
such as unemployment and the loss of local services. Community economic develop-
ment approaches seek to increase collective economic action and create collective
economic benefit – for instance, through establishing community-run enterprises.
Alternative economic development approaches seek to establish alternatives to main-
stream economic institutions – for instance, by creating alternative, community-
based currencies. Different economic development approaches have different aims,
all concerned with improving, in some way, the production and distribution of
goods and services.
The outcomes and achievements of economic development initiatives can be
measured by a range of metrics or indicators. Economists have exercised a strong
influence on development policy over the years, placing certain metrics at the
center of the policy agenda and providing straightforward ways for economic
‘success’ to be understood and measured by policy makers and the general public.
The resulting indicators include national productivity measures (gross national
product, gross domestic product), employment and unemployment rates at national,
regional, or local scales, labor productivity measures, savings and investment rates,
and so forth. These can be useful metrics; ultimately, however, the development
metrics or indicators that are chosen depend upon the nature of the aims and
outcomes to be achieved.
A persistent issue with measuring the success of economic development initia-
tives of all kinds is that many common ‘economic’ indicators are biased toward a
particular approach: a neoliberal market approach. Neoliberal market approaches to
economic development focus exclusively on formal market mechanisms for the
production and distribution of goods and services. In neoliberal market approaches,
formal private enterprises, formal employment, and cash income are always superior
to subsistence activities, informal economic transactions, and in-kind income.
When outcomes and achievements are measured, only the formal metrics matter.
A paying job, for instance, is counted as productive work, but volunteer or house-
hold work is not. A cash crop that brings dollars into a household is counted as
productive, while growing produce for the family is not. Neoliberal economic
development approaches are based in the assumption that productive activities are
always based in formal markets that behave in certain ways. This view overlooks
the fact that important production and distribution activities may be run by
households, informal groups, or community-based enterprises working outside
mainstream markets.
Because many common economic development metrics are influenced by
neoliberal approaches, some development practitioners assume that all ‘economic
development’ work is necessarily pursuing a neoliberal agenda. Yet this is not
necessarily the case. Many economic development initiatives recognize the value
of the production and distribution of goods and services that take place outside
of formal market mechanisms: such as subsistence agriculture, informal exchange,
and volunteer work. Community economic development approaches, for instance,
are not limited to market-mediated relationships; they include economic activities
based in community relationships, such as farmers building and maintaining their
own irrigation system on a cooperative model. Economic development metrics
and measures can be created to capture these kinds of non-market economic
outcomes, from the productivity outputs of volunteer labor and community-based
work to the flow-on impacts of economic activities in the form of increased self-
confidence, community resilience, and so forth.
Overall, the portfolio of economic development approaches, methods, and
measures available to practitioners is diverse. All economic development approaches
are ultimately about improving the production and distribution of goods and
services. However, they vary in terms of scale and sensitivity to context, as well
as in their ultimate aims and philosophical positioning as to what comprises
valid economic activity. Practitioners working with communities on economic
development initiatives need not be limited to neoliberal market approaches,
but can take a broader view of what economic activities will improve produc-
tion, distribution, and access to economic resources for local communities.
Social development methods and measures

Social development policy has emerged in many ways as an intentional counterpoint
to economic development policy, to challenge the dominance of neoliberal economic
metrics in development work. It has been an intentional attempt to reposition the
policy and practice of planned change with reference to social processes and out-
comes and to draw attention to the effect of development processes on people.
Thus, social development has become increasingly important as a domain of devel-
opment work, but often at the cost of aggravating an assumed split between ‘social’
and ‘economic’ development. Proponents of social development emphasize that the
quest for positive change is not about improving the production and distribution
of goods and services but about improving the lives of people. While these aims
are by no means incompatible in practice, social development’s focus on human
and community well-being has often positioned itself in opposition to a neoliberal
economic focus on firms, industries, and economic growth.
Early social development approaches were direct responses to the failure of
modernization-inspired technology-transfer strategies to do away with poverty.
Despite a range of productivity-enhancing investments, many people were still
suffering from hunger and disease. This required a rethink of development strate-
gies to consider the needs of people and how to meet them. The basic needs
approach emerged in development work in the 1970s. It proposed that if the
modernization agenda were to be successful, the basic needs of people – food,
water, shelter, security, and so forth – also needed to be met. The focus was still
on large-scale interventions with little sensitivity to local contexts; basic needs
were defined in terms of universal human needs. Nevertheless, the basic needs
approach laid the groundwork for a growing ‘social’ preoccupation in development
practice. It placed the focus on people and their well-being.
A new terminology evolved to distinguish these concerns about development
of people from concerns about development of economies. The former began to
be called human development. Human development is an umbrella term for devel-
opment approaches that directly focus on meeting human needs. Often the emphasis
is on basic needs such as food, water, shelter, health care, and so forth; but human
development approaches may also take into account higher-level needs such as
educational opportunity and social recognition. Human development approaches
share an overall aim to improve people’s lives by providing resources that are
lacking. The specific methods vary considerably, from direct donations of food or
medicine to installing pumps for clean water, planting gardens for food produc-
tion, building schools, funding hospitals, and the like. Human development
approaches may focus on any scale from the very local (e.g., building a rural
health post or water point) to national or international policies and campaigns
designed to improve education, health, or living standards.
Human development metrics at national scale are now well established through
the Human Development Index (HDI), a set of metrics designed to measure a range
of human development indicators. The HDI was developed in the 1990s as a mecha-
nism to measure human development indicators, as opposed to the then-dominant
measures of development that focused on national productivity. The Human Devel-
opment Index provides a way to compare countries based on the human development
results they generate and to track changes in these indicators over time.2 The existence
of human development indicators has enabled development policy makers to set
specific targets around ‘social’ issues such as women’s health and measure them – for
instance, in national policy documents, or internationally in the Millennium Develop-
ment Goals, which have a strong human development focus.3
In practice, human development approaches seek to improve the lives of people,
but they do not necessarily take into account the social, cultural, or physical contexts
in which people live. Many human development approaches assume one-size-fits-all
solutions that may or may not work in particular local contexts. History is full of
examples of human development efforts gone contextually awry: indigenous children
sent away to mainstream schools and forbidden to speak their own language in the
name of ‘education’; imported food products and medicines promoted as superior
to more nutritious and reliable local products in the name of ‘health’; and European-
style housing and other infrastructure imposed in contexts where these culturally
unfamiliar, physically ill-suited and hard-to-maintain structures made little sense
on the ground. Ignoring local contexts and pursuing one-size-fits-all human devel-
opment can be perilous.
While human development approaches focus on meeting human needs, com-
munity development approaches focus on strengthening the ability of groups and
communities to work together to achieve social change. Like human development,
the focus is on the development of people; unlike human development, the focus
is on helping groups of people to take action together for change. The community
development process can take place at any scale from local neighborhoods and
villages to international civil society organizations and transnational social move-
ments. Community development approaches draw on a range of methods, from
core strategies of community organizing and grassroots advocacy to a range of
other methods and approaches developed in practice or adapted from other domains
of development work.
Community development work arises first and foremost out of a social develop-
ment agenda: to help communities of people take action for change. Nevertheless,
communities’ issues have diverse causes and consequences. Community development
thus has a history of drawing on an eclectic collection of development approaches
and methods, as practitioners borrow ideas from elsewhere in response to the needs
and concerns of the groups they work with. If unemployment or livelihood inse-
curity is identified as an issue, community development practitioners may look to
economic development approaches. If hunger or disease is identified as an issue,
community development practitioners may look to human development approaches.
It is therefore important for community development practitioners to be aware
of the range of potential development approaches and methods that can be used
to support a social development agenda.
While social development work is broadly recognized as an important area
of development practice, in many ways it still stands in the shadow of economic
development. From a policy perspective, a key issue is how to tell when social
development efforts have been successful. Social development programs spend
money but do not usually make money. Economic development has a raft of
established and popularly recognized metrics, while social development has few
metrics. Beyond basic human development indicators, how can the success of an
initiative be measured? In recent years, attempts to measure the impacts of social
development work have become a hot topic among both scholars and practitioners,
but one without an easy resolution. New metrics such as social return on invest-
ment (SROI) are popular in some circles; SROI provides a neat quantitative measure
of the social impact of a development initiative, but it tends to capture only certain
kinds of value while missing others; it can also be costly to calculate. While
organizations committed to social development work are under increasing pressure
to demonstrate that their work provides value for money, there is a lack of effec-
tive and easy-to-implement measurement tools they can use. In some cases, this
has led to social development being dismissed as not valuable – simply because
of the difficulties involved in measuring its outcomes.
Multidimensional development methods and measures

Economic development work focuses on the production and distribution of goods
and services. Social development work focuses on the well-being of people and
how people can work together to address their issues. While they may seem very
different preoccupations, social development work and economic development
work share several synergies. A number of the economic development approaches
and methods discussed recognize that economic activity is a highly social process.
Indeed, no economic activity exists completely outside of a social context; even
multinational corporations are forms of social organization. Equally, social devel-
opment approaches often find themselves looking to economic development
approaches for inspiration on how to leverage, create, and distribute resources more
effectively. There is an observable desire in development practice to move beyond
the confines of the categories ‘economic’ and ‘social’ development action – a
distinction that is arguably more historical than practical – to pursue multidimen-
sional development outcomes.
Multidimensional development can be defined as development practice that
seeks to generate multiple kinds of value: economic, social, environmental, and
cultural. Multidimensional approaches recognize that change in one domain
can affect others: Economic initiatives can have social benefits or costs; envi-
ronmental initiatives may have economic benefits or costs, and so forth. Multi-
dimensional development approaches are based in theories of change that
emphasize the interrelationships among economic, social, environmental, and
cultural domains. They posit that poverty and prosperity have multiple dimen-
sions or aspects that cannot be dealt with in isolation from one another or in
isolation from their social context. Multidimensional development approaches
include integrated development, sustainable development, and participatory
development.
Integrated development approaches such as integrated rural development focus
on local livelihoods – thus, their concern is primarily economic – but they
characterize local livelihoods as systems integrated into specific environmental
and social contexts. Integrated approaches aim to move beyond a sector-based
focus on ‘agriculture’, ‘water’, ‘health’, or ‘finance’ to support family farms or
other livelihood ventures as integrated systems. Sustainable development approaches,
by contrast, start with a concern about the survival of environmental systems
over time and then use this time-sensitive, context-sensitive framework to inform
more sustainable approaches to economic and social development work. The
concept of the triple bottom line – economic, social, and environmental – is
central in sustainable development approaches. Participatory development approaches,
for their part, start from the social preoccupation that people should have a say
in the development decisions that affect them. This social argument seeks to
integrate multiple voices and perspectives into development decision making. In
doing so, it draws attention to the interrelationships among not only economic,
social, and environmental factors but also their links to cultural and political fac-
tors that influence change.
Integrated development, sustainable development, and participatory develop-
ment are all multidimensional development approaches. All are distinguished
by their attention to multiple aims, and all are characterized by an explicit sen-
sitivity to real-world contexts and the interrelationships that play out in those
contexts. Regardless of whether the initial preoccupation was economic (inte-
grated development), environmental (sustainable development), or social (par-
ticipatory development), each steps across the assumed divide between economic
and social development work to propose that the drivers of change are to be
found in the relationships among economic, social, and environmental processes
in particular contexts. Participatory development, discussed in the next chapter,
goes even further, to propose that development target groups have the best under-
standing of their own situations and aspirations, and that cultural and political
factors matter, too.
Methods and measures for multidimensional development approaches are still
very much evolving. In many cases, older ways of working have simply been
borrowed and modified, not necessarily achieving the desired effect. For instance,
one reflection from the early days of integrated rural development work observed
that ‘almost all the integrated rural development projects to date have been agri-
cultural development projects of the old type with a social component added to
them, with the result that economic laws and constraints were often overlooked. . . .
[T]he new approach does not differ greatly from the conventional strategies and
programs and therefore cannot be expected to result in a noticeable alleviation of
rural poverty.’4 New approaches cannot be expected to generate new kinds of

outcomes if there is no change in the methods of project design and delivery.
While a range of methods exist to support participatory development processes,
for instance, much depends on the way that these are used in the broader context
of development decision making (see Chapter Three).
In other cases, a hybrid between old ways of doing things and new multidi-
mensional approaches has created interesting new development methods and
measures. Community accounts and community balance sheets, for instance, are a method
for tracking and measuring different kinds of ‘capitals’ present in a local area, from
financial capital and built capital to human and social capital (see Practical Appli-
cation sidebar). As a method, community accounts operationalize the idea that
development should be multidimensional and that it should incorporate multiple
measures and thus multiple ‘bottom lines’ – as many as seven in some frameworks.5
Another interesting measure at national scale has been developed by Bhutan: the
measure of ‘gross national happiness’.6 Named explicitly to contrast with the focus
on national productivity measures such as gross national product, the measure of
gross national happiness is an actual index that can be calculated at national scale.
Overall, multidimensional development approaches signal a growing interest in
‘doing development’ in new ways – ways that move across sector boundaries and
recognize the interrelationships among social, economic, environmental, and cultural
domains. Current policy interest in place-based development, discussed in Chapter
One, is part of this trend: it focuses policy attention on local scales and contexts
of development, where these kinds of interrelationships are most visible. Multi-
dimensional development approaches draw attention to interrelationships; relation-
ships and interconnections are central to their theories of change. They thus lay
the groundwork for development approaches and methods that seek to grow
partnerships among different development actors.
Persisting tensions in policy and practice

This chapter has provided an overview of the range of approaches, methods, and
measures that are used in contemporary development practice. It is clear that
today’s development practice is a collection of many diverse approaches, methods,
and measures, not always well organized or articulated. Yet all of these practices
ultimately aim to create or catalyze positive change. Certain themes are apparent
amid the diversity: Development efforts focus on different scales from the local
to the global, pay more or less attention to the physical and social contexts of
change, and seek to achieve a mix of productivity and well-being aims. Develop-
ment policy makers use a range of approaches and methods to achieve their aims,
based more or less explicitly on different theories of change. For some policy
makers, the focus of change is on improving production and distribution systems
to create prosperity; this is the broad domain of economic development work.
For other development policy makers, the focus is first and foremost on people
and their well-being; they take a social development focus. Increasingly, however,
development policy makers are seeking to work across these categories to under-
stand interrelationships and generate multiple kinds of outcomes.
Community development work has traditionally sat within the social develop-
ment domain, strengthening people’s ability to tackle social issues together. In the
process of working with communities on the ground, however, community devel-
opment workers have often recognized the multidimensional nature of development
work. To help communities reach their goals, they have often had to draw on
approaches and methods beyond the social development domain. They have been
well placed to observe the interrelatedness of economic, social, environmental,
cultural, and political processes as they play out in particular contexts. For instance,
in the example discussed, the community development worker recognized a link
between young people’s ‘social’ decisions about education, a ‘cultural’ context in
which education was not seen as useful, and ‘economic’ considerations about future
employment. Working on the ground in particular places with particular social
groups, community development workers can see how change in one area affects
other areas and how creating change may well require action across multiple
dimensions.
Multidimensional development approaches suggest that development problems
must be understood in this way: in context. Economic activities cannot be separated
from social relationships or environmental characteristics. There is an increasing
awareness that different domains of development work are interrelated and that
attempting to understand the ‘economic’ and the ‘social’ in isolation from each
other and from the physical environment – or the cultural and political context –
is problematic. Development policy makers are increasingly aware that these kinds
of relationships matter.
Nevertheless, while these ideas are broadly accepted in theory, they are not well
translated into practice. Most development practice is still organized according to
sectors: education programs, health programs, employment programs, environment
programs, and so forth. These programs tend to have separate funding arrange-
ments and separate management, and their aims and agendas are separate, too, if
not directly in opposition. While organizations in different sectors are increasingly
encouraged to work with each other in partnership, it is unsurprising that they
struggle to do so; their structures and goals are different. Many development deci-
sions are still made from afar, with little attention to local contexts. And neoliberal
market-based development is still widely influential, privileging quantitative, mar-
ket-based measures of success. Development practice is in transition, but ideas
have long lives – and ideas in practice can nearly live forever. Organizational
structures are slow to shift. Practitioners who make policy are often far removed
from those who work on the ground with local communities. Because of this,
knowledge from the coalface about local contexts and interrelationships seldom
arrives at a level where it can drive policy change.
Decision makers need more knowledge about these contexts. While the impor-
tance of contextual interrelationships is acknowledged in theory, little is known
about how these relationships play out on the ground in practice. Decisions
continue to be made in silos. Development metrics provide only an incomplete

source of information. Not everything can be measured or measured well; in the
end, what is not measured can become invisible. Policy makers’ preferences for
simple, quantitative development metrics can render important social, cultural,
environmental, and political processes invisible. The challenge for the next genera-
tion of development work is to find new approaches and methods for doing
development that integrate knowledge about local contexts. Multidimensional
development approaches propose that cross-sector knowledge is required. Partici-
patory development approaches propose that the perspectives of local people
themselves are also needed: because local people can provide the context that is
lacking when development decisions are made from afar. The next chapter dis-
cusses participatory development approaches in theory and practice.
Further reading
On development approaches, methods, and measures
Regional economic development
‘Clusters and the New Economics of Competition’ by Michael E. Porter, in The Harvard
Business Review, 76(6), November–December, 77–90, 1998.
Regional Economic Development: Analysis and Planning Strategy, second edition, by Robert J.
Stimson, Roger R. Stough, and Brian H. Roberts. Springer, 2006.
Alternatives to neoliberal economic development

Take Back the Economy, an Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities, by J. K. Gibson-
Graham, Jenny Cameron, and Stephen Healy. University of Minnesota Press, 2013.
Community economic development

Community Economic Development, edited by Graham Haughton. Routledge, 1999.
Alternative currencies
‘Community Currencies: Small Change for a Green Economy’ by Gill Seyfang, in Environ-
ment and Planning A, volume 33, 975–996, 2001.
Human development and human needs

Human Scale Development by Manfred A. Max-Neef. Apex Press, 1991.
Human Development Report 2013: The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World.
United Nations Development Program, 2013.
Integrated rural development

Integrated Rural Development, by R. C. Arora. S. Chand Publishers, 1979.
Sustainable development
Understanding Sustainable Development, by John Blewitt. Earthscan, 2008.
Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission for Environment and Development.
(‘Brundtland Report’). United Nations, 1987.
Social return on investment

The Ambitions and Challenges of SROI, by Malin Arvidson, Fergus Lyon, Stephen McKay,
and Domenico Moro. Third Sector Research Centre, 2010.
Gross national happiness

A Short Guide to Gross National Happiness Index, by Karma Ura, Sabina Alkire, Tshoki
Zangmo, and Karma Wangdi. Centre for Bhutan Studies, 2012.
Practical application: community accounts

Community accounts – sometimes called community balance sheets – are
a tool for measuring and monitoring multiple kinds of community assets
or ‘capitals’ over time. While traditional accounts or balance sheets only
record financial resources and values, community accounts record a range
of resources and values and allow communities and decision makers to
track how these are growing or declining.
The Nova Scotia Community Counts website consolidates data from a
number of official sources and presents these in an easy-to-use interactive
format.7 Windsor, Nova Scotia, has used these data to construct a commu-
nity balance sheet that tracks five kinds of community capital: social capital,
built capital, human capital, financial capital, and natural capital. Indicators
are of the kind easily obtainable from government statistics such as house-
hold income, crime severity, and types of land. The simple balance sheet is
organized according to assets and liabilities and color coded to highlight
where there are potential issues that need to be addressed.8
Newfoundland and Labrador have a detailed interactive Community
Accounts website that tracks well-being indicators at different geographical
scales. This site provides ranking of communities on a number of objective
and subjective well-being indicators including self-assessed health status,
an economic self-reliance index, and self-assessed strength of belonging to
a community.9
Community accounts take a multidimensional approach to monitoring
and measuring local development. As expressed on the Newfoundland and
Labrador Community Accounts website, ‘Personal or household income is
generally regarded as the single best measure of the degree to which peo-
ple are “well off.” Our concept of well-being includes more than economic
indicators and takes the approach that other factors such as health and edu-
cation play a part in determining a community’s or region’s well-being’.
Notes
1 Quote from David Lewis and Paul Opoku-Mensah (2006) ‘Moving forward research
agendas on International NGOs: Theory, Agency and Context’, Journal of International
Development, 18, 667.
2 The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) publishes an annual themed Human
Development Report reporting on these indicators. See http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/
hdi.
3 See www.un.org/millenniumgoals/.
4 Alois Basler (1979) ‘The Concept of Integrated Rural Development’, Intereconomics, 14(4)
July/August, 195.
5 Mary Emery and Cornelia Flora’s capitals framework nominates seven capitals: natural,
built, human, financial, social, cultural, and political. M. Emery and C. Flora (2006)
‘Spiraling-Up: Mapping Community Transformation with Community Capitals Frame-
work,’ Community Development, 37(1), 19–35.
6 See www.grossnationalhappiness.com/.
7 See www.novascotia.ca/finance/communitycounts/default.asp.
8 See www.slideshare.net/ryantmacneil/cpo-balance-sheet.
9 See http://nl.communityaccounts.ca/.
3
PARTICIPATING IN DEVELOPMENT
Participation: A paradigm shift?

Most of the development approaches and methods discussed in Chapter Two
assume that development is planned and implemented by development practitioners.
Policy makers and other practitioners develop theories of change; apply approaches
and methods to stimulate change; and use metrics and indicators to measure
whether they have been successful. Less clear, however, is the role that local com-
munities play in planning, implementing, and evaluating development processes.
Chapter One proposed that development is a social process and that a range of
social actors can play a role in driving change. But how can this work within
the contexts of development projects, programs, and partnerships?
Participatory development is an umbrella term for approaches that directly involve
local people in the design and delivery of development initiatives: projects, programs,
and partnerships. This chapter shows how this way of ‘doing development’ with
communities has started to respond to the challenges identified in Chapters One
and Two. Originally, professional development practice was founded on ideas about
the need for top-down, outside-in social change. Yet new theories tell us that places
and communities create change, that change is multidimensional and relational, and
that local contexts matter. This implies in turn a need to rethink development
practice. Participatory development aims to do so. It proposes a significant shift in
the role of the development practitioner: a new way of working, underpinned by
new ideas about the roles of development practitioner and local community.
Participatory development approaches posit a new way of thinking about
development practice, not as something that is done to communities or for com-
munities but rather as something that is done with communities. In participatory
development work, the development practitioner’s role is not to create change
single-handedly but to catalyze change by working with others on the ground.
The relationship between the professional development practitioner and the
Participating in development 51
community is no longer about one-way technology transfer to ‘target groups’; it

is about two-way communication and working together. The framework for
participatory development practice is therefore markedly different from previous
frameworks that placed development practitioners in the driving seat of social
change. Development – positive change – is reframed as a social process rather
than merely a technical one.
Participatory development approaches became popular in the 1990s, drawing
together a number of longstanding concerns about the role of people and com-
munities in the development processes that affect them. There have always been
voices within development practice calling for more attention to local contexts
and to the experiences and voices of local community members. At various times
through the 1960s and 1970s, this resulted in calls for more ‘popular participation’
in development. In 1980, John Cohen and Norman Uphoff were already observ-
ing a widespread trend toward participation in rural development projects; they
flagged the need for greater clarity on who was participating in what and how
participation was taking place.1 Soon thereafter, Robert Chambers published Rural
Development: Putting the Last First, in which he argued in accessible language about
the built-in biases of development practice and the need to pay more attention
to the knowledge and experiences of local, rural people.2 Around the same time,
Michael Cernea, a social scientist working in the World Bank, was urging atten-
tion to the social context of development work and the role of people in projects.3
Growing concerns about sustainable development over the same time period4
reinforced the point that development practice needed to start looking for new
ways of working. By the late 1980s, Andrea Cornwall has observed, ‘a generalised
consensus had taken root that saw participation in development projects as neces-
sary and desirable to ensure their efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability’.5
The rise of participatory development was in many ways a case of development
practitioners rethinking their own practice. Many recognized that top-down
approaches led by professional development experts were still somehow missing
the mark. Regardless of their level of technical expertise, regardless of how well-
thought-out the theory of change, and regardless of their strength of commitment
to fighting poverty, poverty persisted. Few development projects and programs
created sustained change; most ceased to function as soon as development profes-
sionals withdrew. These practical challenges pushed many practitioners to inten-
tionally rethink their role. They reframed their practice as participatory, proposing
to work directly with the ‘beneficiaries’ and ‘target groups’ of development assistance:
to hear their voices, understand their needs, and encourage them to take owner-
ship of their own development processes.
Participatory development became the name for the intentional efforts by
development practitioners to include local people, communities, and organizations
as active players in the design and delivery of development initiatives. It includes
participation of different kinds: in assessing needs; in planning development initia-
tives; in implementing development initiatives on the ground; and in ongoing
decision making or governance processes. By the 1990s, participatory development
52 Participating in development
was well established as an idea and a practice. The World Bank took it up and
for the first time sought to hear the ‘Voices of the Poor’, commissioning a large
international study to seek out the voices and perspectives of poor people around
the world on their circumstances, their needs, and their view of the role of devel-
opment assistance.6 The voices, perspectives, and local knowledge of poor people
were increasingly recognized, valued, and talked about in mainstream development
practice. There was growing attention to their diverse circumstances and aspira-
tions. Development practice was being reimagined as a process more social than
technical.
Participatory development proposes a new kind of practitioner–community
relationship and a more active role for local communities in intentionally driving
development outcomes. It thus proposes a significant shift in the basic paradigm
or framework for development practice. Nevertheless, this paradigm shift is still
incomplete. In theory, development practitioners recognize the need for more
participatory approaches, but in practice, they struggle to implement them. Par-
ticipatory development approaches today raise the same questions posed by Cohen
and Uphoff: Who is participating? What are they participating in? and How much
influence do they have over the outcomes?
This chapter explores the range of ways that participatory development
approaches have been used and misused in development practice across a range
of country contexts. Attention to who is participating, in what, and how reveals
limited participation on the ground. Participatory development can be used to
empower communities to drive their own development agendas, but equally, it
can be used to disguise the fact that important decisions continue to be made
elsewhere. Old paradigms of practitioner-led development assistance persist. More-
over, they often persist wrapped in language and practices of participation so that
with a disturbing sleight of hand, people and communities can be simultaneously
welcomed and dismissed, simultaneously listened to and silenced.
Seeing community capacity

The overall purpose of development practice is to create or catalyze positive
change. Historically, development practitioners have sought to create positive
change for others in poor places or disadvantaged communities. Old paradigms of
development practice, as discussed in Chapter One, defined development as the
practice of technology transfer from wealthy or successful areas to poorer or less-
successful ones. In many ways, this technology-transfer paradigm remains at the
heart of development practice. Development practitioners bring in new technolo-
gies and ways of doing things from elsewhere – projects, programs, and policies –
to create change. Development practitioners are usually qualified technical experts
in one domain or another: in the design of business strategies, or health interven-
tions, or community organizing. Their theories of change and the development
approaches and methods they choose are grounded in their own expertise.
Logically, they want to bring their skills and knowledge in to help poor people
in poor places.
Yet practitioners who start to work in real social settings quickly notice that
their development work does not take place on a blank slate. Things are already
happening on the ground. People, communities, and organizations of various kinds
are already present, creating actions for change. On the ground, practitioners
recognize that their income-generation project or cutting-edge approach to improv-
ing child nutrition enters an existing social landscape. Other people and organiza-
tions also have knowledge or experience in this area. Similar initiatives may already
exist. There are already trained health workers, micro-entrepreneurs, community-
based support organizations, and other knowledgeable people and resources that
can assist. Communities are not blank slates. They have not sat motionless for
years waiting for development to appear.
Participatory development approaches start by forcing development practitioners
to engage in real social settings. They require professionals to leave their desks –
and their desk-level view of development issues – and engage with the on-the-
ground contexts of development work. They propose the need to build a
relationship with the communities that are the target of development efforts. This
is a potentially transformative paradigm shift: from development work for others
to development work with others. Desk-level development work typically starts
with deficits, calling attention to what a community does not have: low education,
poor health, low income. Such metrics make it easy to classify a community as
‘poor’ and ‘disadvantaged’; once thus labeled, it is easy to perpetuate the view of
community-as-still-life, stuck in poverty and disadvantage. Participatory develop-
ment takes this desk-level view of the world and juxtaposes it with a very different
view at ground level. Communities may have problems and deficits, but they also
have resources and assets. On-the-ground work makes assets visible. People and
organizations are there. Things are happening. Communities have capacity: assets,
resources, skills, activities, organizations.
Stereotypes about development target groups at desk level suggest that poor
and disadvantaged communities have poverty and disadvantage, not capacity. As
a result, development must necessarily be brought in from outside. These stereo-
types are hard to challenge from a distance. Capacity on the ground may be
statistically small or hidden: four university graduates, six world travelers, three
businesses making an effort to hire and train local young people, an unincorporated
neighborhood association working for change. Numerically small or hard-to-count
indicators of community capacity do not typically show up at desk level. They
are not visible to decision makers crafting development policy from afar, so it is
easy to assume that they are not there. Participatory development approaches,
however, give development practitioners the opportunity to see community capac-
ity and engage with it. They allow the practitioner to discover that poor com-
munities are neither blank slates nor still lifes: they have resources and skills, and
they may already be involved in actions for change.
This recognition of community capacity opens up important resources for

social and economic change. Yet attention to community capacity does not sit
comfortably with the dominant paradigm of development practice as technology
transfer. This issue was recognized back in the 1960s:
Advocates of peasant participation in decision-making run into the inevitable

objection that there are many decisions peasants are not competent to make.
That is true: if one asks how peasants can run an agricultural research sta-
tion, the answer obviously is that they cannot. . . . Participation simply
means that peasants would take part in the design of agricultural projects
at the local level, where their knowledge in some respects is greater than
that of the technicians . . . .7
For many practitioners, participatory development can be deeply disconcerting.

They are experts in their fields; the would-be participants are not. The participants
do not understand the proper ways of doing things. They are not qualified to
run a research station, for instance. The fact that they do have expertise and skills
to contribute may not be immediately obvious. This is a persisting problem even
now, for much of contemporary development practice still sits firmly within a
technology-transfer paradigm. The development practitioner is the expert – in
health, in education, in good governance – and community members are recipients
of their expert assistance. In a technology-transfer paradigm, it is hard to see
community capacity or recognize its value. Participatory development thus makes
little sense: the participants by definition are recipients of development, not con-
tributors to it. They have little to offer but distraction.
Practitioners and organizations who intentionally adopt a participatory paradigm,
by contrast, move away from this framing of development as a one-way transaction
between experts and recipients. In its place, they propose a two-way relationship
between development practitioners and communities, where both contribute: prac-
titioners can run the research station, farmers can contribute their local knowledge.
Even so, participatory approaches are far from easy to implement in practice. For
practitioners who enthusiastically adopt a participatory approach, the first foray into
the ‘field’ is often confronting. Community capacity is present, but not necessarily
in the positive and mutually supportive ways they anticipated. They may meet
skepticism, lack of interest, even active resistance to their plans for change. Local
people may question the relevance of the project to their needs. They may challenge
the capacity of outside practitioners to understand what the development issues
really are. Other development organizations may already be doing similar work and
express that they do not require help. For overworked and resource-poor community
organizations, other activities or issues are a priority: they do not wish to participate.
At desk level, the development landscape looked simple and straightforward: a set
of deprivations, a clear theory of change, a tested approach, and a project proposal
that would surely be welcomed with open arms. But on the ground, no one comes
to the meeting – or they come and ask difficult questions!
These kinds of on-the-ground experiences highlight a deep contradiction in

participatory development practice: why it is often not very participatory. On the
one hand, participatory development approaches are based upon an understanding
that poor, vulnerable communities have capacities: assets, resources, skills, activities,
organizations. Moving away from the desk and into real social settings makes these
capacities visible. On the other hand, these capacities can make development
practitioners themselves feel vulnerable by pressing at the boundaries of their
professional expertise or questioning the relevance of their well-thought-out pro-
posals. Participatory development thus opens a schism between practitioners’ desire
to engage community capacity and their tendency to privilege their own profes-
sional capacities; between their quest for communities’ participation and their
unwillingness to question what communities are being asked to participate in.
In the end, it is much easier to talk about being participatory than to actually
do it. It is easier to organize community meetings and consultations in which
preplanned initiatives are carefully presented – with limited time for awkward
questions – than to go in with open-ended ideas and conversation and be shot
down in flames: We have tried that before. That will not work. We are already doing
that, but in a very different way – listen! It is easier and more efficient to present
proposals to a community in careful detail, with plenty of technical justification,
than to seek out what local people are already doing and how a new initiative
might help. If the presentation is competent, this strategy usually works well:
Community members sit quietly and listen. They are often impressed by the
technical justification and may be uncomfortable raising too many questions; they
are, after all, not experts and do not speak the same technical language. In many
cases they agree that the clever outsiders have something to offer and agree to
participate in their initiative by doing what they are asked – hoping some benefit
will come of it. These kinds of scenes are common. Yet they perpetuate the myth
of the community as still life. While the community is there, apparently partici-
pating, community capacity remains invisible.
Participation methods and measures

Participatory development approaches raise important challenges for development
practice. On the one hand, they enable practitioners to see community capacity
and leverage it to create more effective development initiatives. On the other, this
community capacity may pose uncomfortable challenges to development practi-
tioners, questioning their framing of the development problem and their proposed
solutions. These tensions create the conditions for a range of ‘participatory devel-
opments’, some more participatory and some less so. Some participatory develop-
ment initiatives place community capacity at the center and become authentic
partnerships between practitioners and communities; others limit community
participation to a tokenistic involvement in which communities have little say on
any decisions that matter. Some explicitly focus on achieving community aims;
others mobilize communities to achieve the aims of others. When considering
‘participatory development’ initiatives, it is necessary to look closer, to see how

participatory they actually are.
A number of scales have been developed over the years that can be used to
describe or measure the level of participation in development initiatives. They
include Sherry Arnstein’s ‘Ladder of Participation’, the IAP2 Public Participation
Spectrum, and Sarah White’s Participatory Development framework. Each of these
scales can be used to describe variants of participatory processes along a scale from
‘less participatory’ to ‘more participatory’. Arnstein’s ladder and the IAP2 spectrum
were both developed with reference to public policy, to measure the extent of
public participation in government-led initiatives. They are, however, highly appli-
cable to describe the relationships between development organizations (governmental
or nongovernmental) and ‘beneficiary’ communities. Sarah White’s framework was
developed specifically with reference to participatory development practice.
All three scales seek to address the question, How much influence do the participants
have over the outcome of a participatory initiative? In all three, the amount of influence
is described in a qualitative way. Arnstein’s ladder has eight rungs describing
levels of participation. They range from ‘manipulation’ of citizens at the bottom
of the ladder to citizen ‘control’ at the top of the ladder.8 According to Arnstein,
based on her observations of participatory community planning processes in the
United States, ‘participatory’ initiatives may in practice be completely nonpartici-
patory, manipulating community members or attempting to reeducate them to
conform with the agendas of dominant groups. Further up the ladder, initiatives
may be ‘tokenistic’: participatory enough for communication to happen (e.g.,
‘informing’, ‘consulting’, or ‘placating’ participants) but not to allow citizens any
real influence over the agenda. The most participatory initiatives, represented at
the top of the ladder, allow for varying degrees of citizen decision making and
control over the outcomes. Thus, Arnstein’s ladder describes how ‘participatory’
an initiative is with reference to the degree of control the participants ultimately
have over the outcome.
The IAP2 Public Participation Spectrum, developed by the International Asso-
ciation for Public Participation, is a similar scale but written from a practitioner’s
perspective for use by practitioners. Thus, the IAP2 spectrum describes participa-
tion in terms of five levels or goals, ranging from least participatory (informing
the public) to most participatory (empowering the public to make decisions).9
The more participatory options are described as having higher levels of public
impact. The IAP2’s five levels of participation (inform, consult, involve, collaborate,
empower) are broadly similar to the top six rungs on Arnstein’s ladder, with some
slight differences of emphasis. Practitioners may choose to inform the public,
simply letting them know what is happening; or they may choose to give partici-
pants progressively greater influence over the outcome. The IAP2 spectrum is
particularly useful in giving examples of specific methods associated with each
level of participation – for instance, ‘public meetings’ as a method for consulting
the public or the establishment of ‘citizen’s advisory committees’ as a method for
collaborating with the public.
With specific reference to participatory development practice, Sarah White’s

framework distinguishes four types or levels of participation, from the merely
nominal to the transformative.10 Her discussion of the ‘uses and abuses of partici-
pation’ argues that the conceptual ambiguity of participation as a concept makes it
easy to misuse in development practice. White raises the important question of
who participates? and emphasizes the need to consider the political dynamics of
participation and the various interest groups involved in a participatory process.
Her framework distinguishes between participatory development processes in which
participants can influence decision making and those in which they can’t. At the
lower end of the scale, participation is merely a ‘nominal’ window dressing used
to legitimize external action or an ‘instrumental’ input to lower the external costs
of a project and raise efficiency. At the upper end, participatory processes involve
participants actively in decision making: ‘representative’ participation permits com-
munity voice to influence the shape of outside agendas, while ‘transformative’
participation privileges the community’s own change agendas.
These three scales all seek to describe or measure the level of influence that
participants have over the ultimate outcome of participatory processes. Sherry
Arnstein draws her examples primarily from participatory planning processes in
urban development and urban renewal programs in the United States. Sarah White
draws her examples from development projects, programs, and planning processes
in a range of ‘developing’ country contexts including Bangladesh, Zambia, and
the Philippines. Despite these very different contexts, Arnstein and White analyze
on-the-ground experiences to arrive at a very similar conclusion: Participatory
processes can be more participatory, less participatory – or not really participatory
at all. The IAP2 spectrum, as a practical tool, proposes that practitioners can choose
the level of participation they wish to achieve and the methods they will use to
achieve it. Some methods they suggest, like surveys and public meetings, provide
a small amount of public participation; other methods such as ballots and citizens’
juries provide a mechanism for more direct influence. The most participatory
processes are those in which the participants have a high level of influence in
decision making; the least participatory are those where participants are there
solely for the purpose of legitimizing external agendas.
Figure 3.1 draws together insights from these three scales to suggest a simple
framework for measuring the level of community participation in a development
initiative. The key variable is the amount of influence that the community
members have on decision making. As a simplified scale, it describes the overall
level of participation of community members vis-à-vis the development orga-
nization that claims to be undertaking participatory initiatives. The scale does
not, however, address the complexities of who, exactly, is participating; these
social intricacies require further analysis. Nor does it address the development
organization’s purpose in seeking participation, as flagged in White’s category
of ‘instrumental’ participation (participation as a means to an end for the devel-
opment organization) and Arnstein’s category of ‘placation’ (participation in
order to placate citizens’ demands for participation). The scale simply describes
“Self-Determination” Community members As per White’s

make the decisions ‘Transformative’ participation,
and control the IAP2’s ‘Empower’ the public,
outcome. and Arnstein’s ‘Delegated
Power’ and ‘Citizen Control’
“Partnership” Community members As per White’s ‘Representative’
and development participation, IAPs’s
organizations make ‘Collaborate’ with the public
decisions about and Arnstein’s ‘Partnership’
outcomes together.
“Consultation” Development As per IAP2’s ‘Consult’ and

organizations make ‘Involve’ the public and
the decisions, but Armstein’s ‘Consultation’.
community members
have some influence.
“Manipulation” Community members As per White’s ‘Nominal’

have no say but their participation and the bottom
presence is used to rungs of Arnstein’s ladder.
justify or promote
others’ agendas.
FIGURE 3.1 Levels of Community Participation
the overall level of community involvement in decision making. It can be applied

across many different kinds of participatory processes, from participatory plan-
ning to participatory project implementation and ongoing processes of participa-
tory governance. ‘Decisions’ should be seen as both operational and strategic
choices: both decisions about processes (what we will do, how we will do it) as well
as decisions about outcomes (what we want to achieve).
Participatory methods may or may not achieve high levels of community
participation; much depends on how they are used and what they aim to achieve.
Methods such as participatory rural appraisal (PRA) are widely used in participatory
planning and have shown good results in practice, involving communities in assess-
ing needs and identifying opportunities on the ground (see Practical Application
sidebar). Nevertheless, they are essentially assessment and planning methods and
are unsuited to ensuring participation in ongoing project or program governance.
Practitioners usually concur that public meetings are not a very effective participa-
tory method; they may be useful to inform groups of people about an initiative
or opportunity at the start of a process, but they are not good mechanisms for
enabling serious input into decision making. Usually only a few people talk, and
most are silent. Workshops, on the other hand, have proven a useful method in a
range of contexts for participatory planning processes and can include a number
of specific participatory methods for visioning, scenario assessment, opportunity
identification, and prioritizing action (see Practical Application sidebar).
Moving beyond planning processes into implementation and governance, the
suite of participatory methods is much more limited. Arnstein discussed a popular
participatory governance method – the creation of citizens’ advisory committees –

and argued that these were often not very effective in practice. In the cases she
analyzed, the committees were established, but their actual role in governance and
decision making was not clear. The methods that both Arnstein and White cited
as generating the most participatory outcomes were actually organizational mecha-
nisms that community members developed for themselves: such as village coopera-
tives and neighborhood corporations. These organizations entered into active
dialogue with development organizations and governments to gain ongoing influ-
ence in decision making.
This observation raises a deeper question for development practice: to what
extent is it possible for practitioners to actually ‘do’ participatory development? Is
it possible to create participation opportunities for others, even with the best
toolbox of methods? Andrea Cornwall has observed that participatory processes
in practice tend to be limited to the spaces that development organizations, gov-
ernments, or other outsiders create for others: such as an advisory committee or
a planning workshop. While communities may be invited to take a role in decision
making, they neither own nor control these ‘invited’ spaces.11 Inevitably, they
participate on other people’s terms. For development practitioners, it makes sense
to ‘frame’ participation in the institutional terrain that is comfortable to them: the
project cycle, the toolbox of methods, the ways of working of development orga-
nizations.12 Yet these ways of working are not necessarily the most comfortable
or convenient for the communities whose participation they seek. Rather than
seeking out new methods for creating participation outcomes, what seems to be
required are new ways of orienting the relationship between communities and
development organizations in spaces that are comfortable for both.
Participation and social inclusion

While the language of participatory development has permeated international
development work since the 1990s, it has been less common in domestic develop-
ment contexts in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. In some
contexts, the policy language of ‘social inclusion’ has been used instead as a way
of talking about the desire to engage with less-advantaged social groups. Participa-
tory development and social inclusion are distinct concepts, but they share similar
concerns about including and working with the poor, the disadvantaged, and the
marginalized. They also share similar issues in terms of how this participation or
inclusion is potentially manipulated by others, particularly professionals who are
not poor or disadvantaged and who may seek ‘participation’ or ‘inclusion’ on their
own terms. Given these similarities, it is useful to consider the extent to which
lessons learned from participatory development work also apply to contemporary
policy concerns with social inclusion.
Social inclusion can be defined as ensuring that all citizens are able to participate in
the normal functionings of society. The opposite of social inclusion is social exclusion:
where some citizens are unable to be active participants in society due to conditions
of disadvantage or deprivation. Social inclusion is usually framed actively as a policy

goal – to achieve the inclusion of all citizens – while social exclusion is used to
describe the state of not being included. Policy makers with a social inclusion agenda
seek to change the situation of socially excluded people, to provide opportunities
and mechanisms for inclusion. In many ways, the policy discourse parallels that of
participatory development. ‘Poor’ and ‘disadvantaged’ communities and places are
reframed as ‘excluded’; the social change agenda is reframed as ‘social inclusion’. In
practice, this means encouraging and enabling excluded groups to participate more
actively in economic, social, civic, or political activities.
Like participatory development, social inclusion policies and strategies seek the
participation of hitherto-excluded groups as a strategy for generating social change.
Social inclusion characterizes this change as happening at a broad societal level:
the creation of an ‘inclusive society’. As one United Nations document put it,
‘Combating poverty and social exclusion through a process of social inclusion is
intended to create a “society for all” ’.13 Thus, while participatory development
seeks to involve local people directly in the design and delivery of development
initiatives on the ground, social inclusion seeks to involve ‘excluded’ people in
society as a whole. Nevertheless, when translated into projects and programs, social
inclusion initiatives to tend to look a lot like participatory development initiatives;
both focus on securing the participation of members of disadvantaged communi-
ties in on-the-ground initiatives to create change.
Practitioners working with local communities may therefore encounter a par-
ticipation agenda in the context of ‘social inclusion’ initiatives. While the language
is different (‘social inclusion’ rather than ‘participatory development’), there is a
common quest for social change, usually operationalized in a relationship between
the excluded community and an external helper. Within that relationship between
disadvantaged community and helper lie a range of possible outcomes. Social
inclusion can be about forcing excluded communities to change in order to
conform to mainstream agendas: for instance, by forcing a shift from community-
based work arrangements to mainstream market employment. Alternatively, social
inclusion can be about including community perspectives in external decisions –
ensuring their voices are heard – or including communities as partners in projects
and programs. Communities can be ‘included’ in a more or less participatory way,
as per the levels of participation in Figure 3.1. Social inclusion initiatives can range
from external manipulation to high levels of participation. The language of social
inclusion suggests, however, that the aim is ultimately to bring the excluded in
to form part of an idealized ‘society for all’.
Social inclusion thus presents a larger version of ‘invited space’: an ideal of
society to which everyone can belong. Yet this ‘society for all’ assumes a set of
homogeneous, shared social goals that may not be present in practice. As one
example, indigenous groups such as the Māori in New Zealand have critiqued
social inclusion initiatives on the basis that they seek to ‘include’ indigenous people
in the institutions and agendas of nonindigenous people.14 Social inclusion translates
as a strategy for mainstreaming culturally distinctive communities and attempting
to erase or ignore cultural differences. Thus, social inclusion is not necessarily a

positive form of participation for everyone; for groups with different social and
cultural priorities, it may look more like manipulation than empowerment.
For local communities suffering from some form of disadvantage or exclusion,
‘social inclusion’ initiatives promise to enhance their ability to participate in society.
But as with all participatory efforts, they raise the questions: Who is participating?
What are they participating in? and How much influence do they have over the outcomes?
Social inclusion initiatives promote the participation of ‘excluded’ groups in a
mainstream society, in mainstream processes and institutions. For some excluded
groups, this kind of participation can be positive; for others, it may represent an
attempt to colonize or erase community-based ways of doing things and replace
them with outsiders’ visions of positive change.
Participation critiques
Participatory development suggests a new way of doing development: it is a frame-
work for development practice based in relationships rather than technical fixes, in
which communities and development organizations propose to relate to one another
in new ways. Yet in practice, participatory development is a broad umbrella for a
diverse range of relationships from manipulative to empowering. While participatory
development seems to offer a very new way of working, in practice it varies, and
there is considerable scope for participatory processes to be manipulated into inef-
fectiveness. Too often,‘participation’ represents an old way of working in new clothes.
Critiques of participatory development emphasize that changing language does
not equate to changing practice. Andy Turner expresses concern at participatory
language being ‘misappropriated by practitioners and policy makers, who while
affirming the value of a bottom-up approach impose policies and strategies developed
from a top-down perspective’.15 A deep divide persists between the language of –
and authentic desire for – participation on one hand and the realities constraining
day-to-day development practice on the other. Critiques of participatory develop-
ment identify this tension between participation language and participatory practice.
They also look deeper to explore why processes that aim to be participatory so
often fail to include disadvantaged groups and meet their needs.
In the first instance, critiques of participatory development highlight the
tendency to oversimplify the social relationships involved in participation. Some
critics have highlighted that participatory methods too often ignore the diversity
within local communities. Participatory development processes tend to portray
the participants – ‘local communities’ or ‘project beneficiaries’ – as homogenous
groups. This oversimplification masks the fact that different people have different
interests and agendas.16 Other critics highlight that participatory development
approaches do not pay enough attention to the larger social contexts in which
the participants live and work. Political manipulation, power relations, and conflict
can characterize social relationships within and beyond local communities, affect-
ing who participates and why. Thus, there is danger in assuming ‘participation’ is
always a good thing; as Sarah White observes, ‘participation may take place for a
whole range of reasons . . . participation, while it has the potential to challenge
patterns of dominance, may also be the means through which existing power
relations are entrenched and reproduced’.17
Asking the question Who is participating? can help overcome this tendency to
oversimplify participatory relationships. Answering the question of who is par-
ticipating requires moving beyond a simplified binary of development organizations
working with local communities, to look more closely at the diverse range of
development actors who are present in the local context and how they relate to
one another. Local communities are not homogenous, and neither are development
organizations; there are a range of individuals, groups, and organizations present
on the ground. They may be involved or not involved in a given ‘participatory’
initiative. Paying attention to development actors and their relationships draws
attention to the social complexities of participation. The question then becomes
not ‘Does the local community participate?’ but rather, ‘Who in the local com-
munity participates, or does not participate, and why?’
Critiques of participatory development also highlight a problem with the nature
of the development institutions that are used to design and deliver participatory
initiatives. Most of these institutions are still very much ‘invited spaces’, organized
according to the professional and cultural requirements of development practitio-
ners. They seldom reflect the organizations and ways of doing things of local
communities.18 For instance, the structure of a ‘development project’ or ‘develop-
ment program’ is a particular institutional form. The kinds of outcomes that
development projects or programs require (e.g., short-term, politically neutral, and
favorable to funders) mean that participatory processes must be structured and
managed in a particular way. Experience has taught that participation framed by
the requirements of external projects or programs is typically limited to the pre-
established parameters that the projects or programs define. This creates the
‘profound internal contradiction’ that has been observed in participatory develop-
ment practice: projects that aim to be highly participatory still demonstrate high
levels of external control by development organizations.19
The question of What are people participating in? is thus important to consider.
Participatory approaches may be used for different purposes at different stages of
development initiatives: in development planning, for instance; or in project or
program implementation. Participation can also be a feature of ongoing decision
making outside of the constraints of specific projects or programs. Asking what
people are participating in requires considering: How much of the project, program,
or decision is predefined and how much is actually open to participation? What
kinds of participation are allowed: for instance, is it possible to change what is
done, how it is done, who is involved? How much does external control limit
participation or constrain local ways of doing things? Because many participatory
development processes are located firmly on the institutional terrain of develop-
ment organizations, these constraints are nearly always real. They limit how much
people are able – or want – to participate.
Critiques of participatory development highlight two problems: oversimplifica-

tion of complex social contexts and a tendency to seat participation on the insti-
tutional turf of development organizations. These can be understood as failures
to look closely at who is participating or consider critically at what they are
participating in. These two observations start to explain why even very well-
meaning participatory processes often fail to be very participatory in practice.
Much participatory development practice still tends to imagine ‘participation’ as
a dualistic relationship between a development organization and its beneficiaries:
the organization engages with communities, who then ‘participate’ in the projects
or processes that development organizations define. Overlooking the complexity
of development actors and their interactions, development organizations often
fail to understand who is participating or what their actual capacities are. By
framing the interactions on their own institutional terrain, development organiza-
tions miss the opportunity to build on the institutions and capacities communities
already have, through which communities could take a stronger role in decision
making.
The limits of participation

Participatory development offers the promise of a new framework for development
practice. It offers an alternative to the established technology-transfer paradigm
with its one-way, top-down relationship between professional and beneficiary. In
its place, participatory development approaches propose a two-way relationship in
which both professionals and communities have something to offer. Here, com-
munity capacities become visible. Local communities have important knowledge
of their own local contexts – know-how, know-who, know-where, and know-
what-needs-doing – that development professionals in far-off offices can never
have. Participatory development approaches seek to include local people as active
participants in the design and delivery of development initiatives. As these ‘bottom-
up’ ideas about participation have moved into mainstream development practice,
a paradigm shift has begun: suggesting a new way of ‘doing development’.
Nevertheless, the paradigm of development work has not truly shifted. Over the
decades that ‘participation’ has been talked about and tried in development policy
and practice, much of the old paradigm remains. Participation makes sense in theory,
but it is difficult to translate into development practice. It is much easier to talk
about it than to actually do it. When practitioners do make the effort to engage
with communities and seek their participation, the results are often disappointing.
Sometimes participants just don’t come. Sometimes they come but are not interested
in participating in the project or process proposed. Sometimes they speak openly,
critiquing the project’s assumptions, challenging the status quo in which the experts
know best. Sometimes people come and participate, but only because they feel
obligated to do so, or because they are afraid not to – or because there is some small
chance that something good will come of it. Engaging communities is not easy
when the impetus or agenda for change is not their own.
On the other hand, sometimes community members are very interested in the
ideas or agendas proposed. They come and participate with good will. Yet even
in such cases, participation often fails. People may soon discover that their par-
ticipation is not really valued – not as they had hoped it would be. They hear
their ideas dismissed, and their own processes and organizations ignored, in favor
of the ideas and processes of outsiders. The complexities and complications they
face in their daily lives are not well understood by outsiders who may make
unwise, unpopular, or even dangerous decisions. Meanwhile, certain people are
always invited to speak; other members of the local community are excluded – or
they exclude themselves because they are afraid, uncertain, or see larger agendas
at play. Local people’s knowledge and agendas are valued in theory, but much of
what they say in practice – clearly relevant from their perspectives – is deemed
irrelevant, out of scope, a distraction from core business. Local community members
may find that they need to know how to speak in a certain way to be understood,
carefully framing what they say in the unfamiliar language of development projects
and organizations. In the end, it is often easier to let the development organization
get on with their project or program alone – because it no longer seems to be
addressing the issue that was originally of common concern.
The promises of participation rarely translate into high levels of participation
in practice: manipulation and basic consultation are much more common than
authentic partnership or self-determination. One issue is a failure to understand
who participates: the complexity of development actors and their interrelationships
on the ground. Another is a failure to recognize that what people are being asked
to participate in is often an externally determined agenda housed in imposed
institutional frameworks. In the end, how much influence different development
actors actually have in decision making depends on whether there is scope in the
process for them to leverage their own capacities – deploying their own knowledge,
insights, and ways of working to influence the direction of change. Too often, the
institutional structures and social naiveté of participatory development initiatives
continue to render these capacities invisible.
It has been observed that ‘participation is not a single thing’20 but a multitude
of practices. Participatory development proposes to replace one-way technology
transfer with a two-way relationship between development organizations and com-
munities. In practice, however, this ‘two-way’ relationship involves a wide range of
actors and relationships. In some cases, the relationships are still very one sided;
development organizations and development practitioners control the process of
participation and make the key decisions. They ignore the social and institutional
landscape in which the participants operate and the knowledge and other capacities
that they bring. It is unsurprising that many people choose not to participate, even
in the most well-meaning of such efforts. In other cases, however, development
organizations are willing to acknowledge and work within the contexts and institu-
tions that participants are familiar with. They are willing to take on board the
comments and insights of local people, to see local capacities, and to share decision-
making power. Rather than asking local communities to participate in predetermined
projects and programs, these practitioners seek to co-construct initiatives that respond
to local needs and opportunities. These kinds of participatory approaches can lay
the groundwork for authentic development partnerships.
Further reading
On participatory development
Assessing Participation, a Debate from South Asia, edited by Sunil Bastian and Nicola Bastian.
Konark Publishers and Intermediate Technology Development Group, 1996.
Participation – from Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in
Development, edited by Samuel Hickey and Giles Mohan. Zed Books, 2004.
Participating in Development, Approaches to Indigenous Knowledge, edited by Paul Sillitoe, Alan
Bicker and Johan Pottier. ASA Monographs 39. Routledge, 2002.
Participation: The New Tyranny?, edited by Bill Cooke and Uma Kothari. Zed Books, 2001.
The Participation Reader, edited by Andrea Cornwall. Zed Books, 2011.
Putting People First: Sociological Variables in Development Projects, edited by Michael Cernea,
second edition. Johns Hopkins Press, 1991.
Practical application: participatory rural appraisal (PRA)

Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) is an approach and suite of methods
commonly used around the world to assess local contexts with local peo-
ple, usually prior to the implementation of a development initiative. PRA
was designed for use in rural contexts specifically, to provide mechanisms
to facilitate communication between local rural people and outside devel-
opment practitioners who often recognized that they themselves had little
understanding of the local area and its dynamics.
PRA tools and methods have their antecedents in a range of traditions
including activist participatory research, applied anthropology, analysis of
farming systems, and ‘rapid rural appraisal’ (RRA) methods.21 All of these
pointed to the complexity of local, rural contexts, and proposed the need
for development practitioners to develop a detailed understanding of these
contexts prior to undertaking work there. Unlike RRA, PRA sought to involve
local people directly in ‘appraising’ or assessing their own local contexts
and developing actions. It thus became an on-the-ground toolbox for
implementing participatory development.
Some of the many specific methods that can be used in PRA include
participatory mapping of social, natural, or other characteristics and
resources;22 groupings or rankings of people by influence, wealth, or well-
being; diagrams showing linkages and social relationships; sharing of sto-
ries and oral histories; and group analysis and brainstorming. Most of these
methods have evolved through practice, and their usefulness is not con-
fined to rural settings. They are particularly suited for contexts in which
people are willing to share knowledge about their local area with outsiders;
some of them are particularly useful in overcoming communication barriers
through the use of visuals, hands-on explanation, and storytelling.
Practical application: multistakeholder workshops

Multistakeholder workshops are a popular mechanism for bringing different
development actors together to identify issues, agree on desired outcomes,
and plan actions. Workshops are often conducted at the local level as part
of local community strategic planning processes, though they can also be
used in sector-based planning processes or to provide a multistakeholder
response to a specific issue. Multistakeholder workshops are designed to
bring together development actors with diverse perspectives and provide a
venue for communication and, ultimately, joint planning and action.
Multistakeholder workshops are as diverse as the facilitation methods
used and the types of ‘stakeholders’ or participants invited. How ‘partici-
patory’ the workshop ultimately is depends on both. It is possible for a
workshop to convene to discuss priorities for a local town when only a few
participants actually live in that town. Multistakeholder workshops can eas-
ily become dominated by the various levels and departments of govern-
ment who have a ‘stake’ in the outcome and whose representatives are paid
to attend (while local residents are not). Workshops designed to appeal to a
cross-section of different residents and organizations are more likely to pro-
vide a representative range of perspectives. Prospective participants need to
be convinced that the outcomes from the workshop will be worth the time
they invest in attending.
Specific methods used in workshops vary according to the level of stake-
holder input that is actually sought: they vary from open-ended visioning
methods to ranking techniques that ask participants to prioritize a preset
menu of options. The latter can be frustrating for participants if there is
no opportunity to add their own options! The best workshop methods
aid knowledge sharing by making it easy for participants to respond to
prompts: for instance, by using visuals like a ‘gap analysis’ between the
present and desired future or narratives like scenarios that participants
can engage with. Less effective techniques are those in which part of the
response is already predetermined – for instance, asking focus groups to
reflect on: ‘What can my organization do to support local events?’ when
not all participants are part of organizations and not all organizations see
the value of local events. Overall, a large toolbox of methods is available for
facilitating multistakeholder workshops, from initial icebreakers and creativ-
ity prompts to strategic planning and consensus-building tools, many of
which are available online.23
Notes
1 John Cohen and Norman Uphoff (1980) ‘Participation’s Place in Rural Development:
Seeking Clarity through Specificity’, World Development, 8, 213–235.
2 Robert Chambers (1983) Rural Development: Putting the Last First. Harlow, Essex: Pearson
Education Limited.
3 Michael Cernea (1991) ‘Using Knowledge from Social Science in Development Projects’.
World Bank Discussion paper #114. Washington, DC: World Bank. See also Michael
Cernea (Ed.) (1991) Putting People First: Sociological Variables in Development Projects, second
edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press (First edition published 1985).
4 The Brundtland Report on environment and development, Our Common Future, was
published in 1987, and established the concept of sustainable development.
5 Andrea Cornwall (2000) Beneficiary, Consumer, Citizen: Perspectives on Participation for
Poverty Reduction. Sida studies No. 2. Stockholm: Swedish International Development
Cooperation Agency (Sida), 11–12.
6 Deepa Narayan et al. (2000) Voices of the Poor: Volume 1: Can Anyone Hear Us? Wash-
ington, DC: World Bank. This was followed by volumes 2 and 3.
7 David Hapgood 1968, 10, quoted in John Cohen and Norman Uphoff (1980) ‘Par-
ticipation’s Place in Rural Development: Seeking Clarity through Specificity’, World
Development, 8, 213–235.
8 Sherry Arnstein’s ladder (1969) was originally published as ‘A Ladder of Citizen Par-
ticipation’, JAIP, 35(4), July, 216–224. It has been reprinted in various venues; a version
is available online at http://lithgow-schmidt.dk/sherry-arnstein/ladder-of-citizen-
participation.html.
9 The IAP2 spectrum is a widely used practice tool; it can be viewed on the IAP2
website. See www.iap2.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=5.
10 Sarah White (1996) ‘Depoliticising Development: The Uses and Abuses of Participation’,
Development in Practice, 6(1), 6–15. Reprinted in D. Eade (ed.) Development, NGOs and
Civil Society. Available online at www.rrojasdatabank.info/eade142–155.pdf.
11 Andrea Cornwall (2008) ‘Unpacking “Participation”: Models, Meanings and Practices’,
Community Development Journal, 43(3), 269–283.
12 For a discussion of this idea of ‘framing’ participation, see David Craig and Doug Porter
(1997) ‘Framing Participation: Development Projects, Professionals, and Organisations’,
Development in Practice, 7(3), 229–236.
13 United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) (2010) Analysing
and Measuring Social Inclusion in a Global Context. New York: United Nations, 1.
14 See, e.g., Louise Humpage (2005) ‘Tackling Indigenous Disadvantage in the Twenty-
First Century: “Social Inclusion” and Māori in New Zealand’, in Indigenous Peoples
and Poverty, eds. R. Eversole, J. A. McNeish, and A. D. Cimadamore. London: Zed
Books.
15 Andy Turner (2009) ‘Bottom-up community development: reality or rhetoric? The
example of the Kingsmead Kabin in East London’, Community Development Journal, 44
(2), 234.
16 See Irene Guijt and Meera Kaul Shah (1998) The Myth of Community: Gender Issues in
Participatory Development. London: IT Publications.
17 Sarah White (1996) ‘Depoliticising Development: The Uses and Abuses of Participation’,
in Development in Practice, 6(1), 6–15. Reprinted in D. Eade (ed.) Development, NGOs
and Civil Society. Available online at www.rrojasdatabank.info/eade142–155.pdf, 154.
18 See Robyn Eversole (2012) ‘Remaking Participation: Challenges for Community Devel-
opment Practice’, Community Development Journal, 47(1), 29–41.
19 David Mosse (2011) ‘The Making and Marketing of Participatory Development’, in
The Participation Reader, ed. Andrea Cornwall. London: Zed Books, p. 193.
20 John Cohen and Norman Uphoff (1980) ‘Participation’s Place in Rural Development:
Seeking Clarity through Specificity’, World Development, 8, 227.
21 For a history and overview, see Robert Chambers (1994) ‘The Origins and Practice of
Participatory Rural Appraisal’, World Development, 22(7), 953–969.
22 A guide to participatory mapping has been published by the International Fund for
Agricultural Development (IFAD): IFAD (2009) Good Practices in Participatory Mapping,
available online at www.ifad.org/pub/map/PM_web.pdf.
23 See, for instance, Mind Tools (www.mindtools.com) and the International Association
of Facilitators methods database: www.iaf-methods.org/. For consensus-building discus-
sion tools, see e.g., knowledge cafes at www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/
run-kcafe, or fishbowls at www.kstoolkit.org/Fish+Bowl. For group ranking and voting
techniques, see Jason Diceman (2006) Dotmocracy Handbook, available from www.
dotmocracy.ca.
4
THE LURE AND LIMITS OF
PARTNERSHIPS
Partnerships for development

While participatory development proposes a new way of doing development work,
in practice it is a mix of old and new ways of working. Participatory development
contains within it a spectrum of practices from those still embedded in a top-
down technology-transfer paradigm to those that aim to empower communities
to name and create their own development outcomes. The language of participation
resonates strongly with many development practitioners, yet in practice its meaning
is imprecise. Participatory relationships come in many shades and gradations. Inside
participatory development practice, the relationships between local communities
and development organizations are in many ways still a black box. To shed light
on the nature of these relationships among diverse development actors, this chapter
looks closer to explore the concept of development partnerships.
Development partnerships can be defined as formal relationships between two or
more groups or organizations to pursue a common aim for positive change. The
language of development partnerships has become increasingly popular in recent
decades across a range of country contexts. These partnerships may take many forms
such as ‘public–private partnerships’ (partnerships bringing together government and
private-sector organizations),‘cross-sectoral partnerships’ (bringing together organiza-
tions across sector boundaries), ‘intergovernmental partnerships’ (bringing together
different governments or different levels of government, e.g., state and local), ‘local
development partnerships’ (bringing together different kinds of local organizations),
and ‘community partnerships’ (partnerships involving grassroots community organi-
zations or groups) – among others. Development partnerships can operate at different
scales with different aims, and with different numbers and kinds of partners. What
all partnerships for development share is a recognition that organizations working
together are likely to be more effective at mobilizing resources for positive change
than organizations working on their own.
70 The lure and limits of partnerships
Development partnerships often include local community organizations as

partners. These partnerships are a common strategy for operationalizing community
participation in development. Nevertheless, having the structure of a development
partnership does not necessarily imply that the relationship is one of partnership
as defined in Chapter Three. The participation scales in Chapter Three defined
‘partnership’ as a degree of public or community participation located somewhere
between limited consultation and full local control. ‘Partnership’ in that sense
describes the nature of a relationship rather than its structure. The relationship
may be formal or informal, but all partners are actively involved in guiding the
outcomes. In a partnership, participants share control over decision making; citizens
or communities work with development organizations or governments on more
or less equal footing.
The distinction between development partnerships as structural relationships
and partnership as a participatory relationship is an important one. Development
organizations increasingly want to work in partnership with local communities –
often, communities that are poor or disadvantaged in some way. Yet simply estab-
lishing the formal organizational structure partnership does not automatically create
a participatory relationship. While the term partnership has connotations of a
positive and mutually supportive relationship, partnerships between external organi-
zations and local communities may be more or less equal and more or less effective
at sharing control over decision making. A development partnership is, however,
a structural relationship that can be analyzed. “Community partners’ are real
organizations and groups with real leaders and real members – not the ill-defined
categories of ‘local people’, ‘the poor’, or ‘prospective participants’. It is possible
to look closely at the relationship between partners and analyze the actual degree
of participation in practice: in some cases, manipulation and tokenism; in others,
equal partnership or even support for community self-determination.
Analyzing development partnerships opens the black box of participatory
development to consider the extent to which local community partners have a
real say in the processes or outcomes of development initiatives. It draws atten-
tion to communities’ own organizational forms and the extent to which these
groups and organizations enter into partnerships with external helpers. It also
highlights the diversity of local communities, where one organization seldom
speaks for everyone, and multiple organizations may jockey for membership,
influence, and the attention of influential partners. In some cases, external devel-
opment organizations may overlook local communities’ organizations altogether.
They may seek to work directly with individual ‘community representatives’
instead. This can be problematic, as the ‘representative’ has no actual community
mandate and no organizational base from which to draw support or resources.
Attention to development partnerships draws attention to the complex nature
of the relationships between communities and their helpers and the range of
development actors – individuals, groups, organizations – present on the local
stage. It deepens the insight that development is a social process, one in which
relationships matter.
The lure and limits of partnerships 71
This chapter discusses the growing importance of partnerships in development

work with local communities, and it considers the extent to which these rela-
tionships are able to achieve high levels of community participation in practice.
The chapter suggests that focusing on the nature of development partnerships can
help refine participatory development practice. Attention to partnerships draws
attention to local forms of organizing (groups and organizations, formal and
informal) as a key form of community capacity, revealing that participation moves
in multiple directions. Communities participate in partnerships with development
organizations; equally, development organizations participate in partnerships with
communities. A focus on partnership also moves away from the simple binary
of disadvantaged community and development organization to suggest a range
of potential partners that might assist communities to achieve their development
goals.
Partnership in theory
In recent years, development policy makers have become increasingly interested
in the idea of partnerships, primarily because of their practical benefits. While at
one time most organizations tackled development challenges independently, accord-
ing to their own internal policies, priorities, and available resources, it is now
increasingly expected that organizations will work with each other as well as with
‘beneficiaries’ or ‘local communities’ on the ground. There are pragmatic reasons
for this. There are increasingly more development actors on the landscape –
government departments at various levels, nongovernmental organizations, private
firms, community groups. Working independently frequently leads to duplication;
different organizations end up doing, in essence, the same thing. Meanwhile,
resources are tight; there is pressure from funders to do more with less: to find
the most efficient way of delivering services, for instance. Individual organizations
may not have everything they need to do their job well; by pooling resources,
they are in a position to do more. Formal partnerships with other organizations
provide a route to accessing a range of resources that might not otherwise be
available: money, time, skills, expertise, networks, political influence. In the end,
partnerships can provide numerous practical benefits. Precisely for this reason,
however, they may be entered into quickly, in response to a short-term opportunity
or need, without adequate attention to the nature of the relationships among the
partners.
From a policy perspective, development partnerships are driven by a strong
efficiency argument. It is not uncommon to enter a local area and discover mul-
tiple organizations – governmental and/or nongovernmental – running projects
and programs on a single topic such as literacy or small business development, or
working with a single target group such as small farmers or young mothers. These
organizations do not necessarily work together. They might not even know of
each other’s existence. They may be doing the same things, simply duplicating
each other, or they may have complementary activities that they are failing to
leverage. Such duplication and scattering of development efforts is a poor use of

scarce resources. As a result, accessing funding for development work is increas-
ingly tied to the ability to demonstrate partnerships – not only with other devel-
opment organizations but also with grassroots community groups of various kinds.
Partnerships provide a format for pooling resources – including locally available
resources – to avoid duplication, exploit synergies, and ultimately do more with
less. Theorizations of partnerships often emphasize that they are ‘innovative forms
of governance’ that can ‘pool together diverse expertise and resources from civil
society, government and business sectors’.1
Development partnerships promise efficiency gains; they have a strong instru-
mental value for policy makers. At the same time, partnerships have overtones of
something more. Aside from creating efficiencies, partnerships also have normative
weight. Partnering suggests an act of goodwill, a disposition to work together for
mutual benefit. It suggests an arrangement that is by nature good and equitable.
Thus, it is hard to argue with the idea of partnership. It is difficult for an orga-
nization to justify why it would not want to partner with other organizations.
Because of the normative weight of the term, partnerships nearly always sound like
a good idea. Partnering with local community organizations in poor and disad-
vantaged areas has particular normative weight: It suggests a willingness to work
with these communities on equal footing for mutual benefit. How could these
communities fail to value such a partnership?
Nevertheless, successful partnerships require more than goodwill. For organiza-
tions to seriously commit to working together, partnerships need to deliver some
kind of instrumental benefit for everyone concerned. The partnership needs to
speak in some way to each partner organization’s core business: their mission, their
aims and objectives, and/or their indicators of success. Partners may certainly
come together for normative reasons: to demonstrate goodwill, to support the
ideal of collaboration, to get to know each other and explore how they might
achieve something together. But they will stay together for instrumental reasons:
because the partnership benefits them. If partner organizations can help each other
to access the resources and support they need to achieve things that matter to
them, then the partnership has a purpose.
Understanding the instrumental drivers of partnership helps to explain why
partnerships between external development organizations and local community
organizations are often vexed. Analyses of partnerships among diverse stakeholders
have concluded that they tend to be ‘supply driven’ – involving mostly organiza-
tions that have a high level of capacity and fewer local, grassroots organizations.2
For external development organizations, partnerships with local organizations are
often quite valuable for symbolic reasons: illustrating the organization’s commit-
ment to local partnership, engagement, and participation. Often, the partnership
does not need to deliver anything more than that. For local community organiza-
tions, however, which are often resource poor, there are other expectations: that
the partnership will give them access to concrete resources like funding, skills,
political influence, and practical assistance. Thus, community organizations often
express frustration at partnerships that start with promise but fail to deliver. In
fact, the partnership may have already delivered symbolic and legitimizing value
for their partners simply by bringing them to the table.
Effective partnerships can be defined as those that generate value for all partners.
To do this, prospective partners must have two things: compatible goals and comple-
mentary resources. Compatible goals create an alignment of common interest among
partner organizations. Organizations have different missions and goals, but some
goals are compatible – for instance, a producer’s cooperative aims to improve
the incomes of its members while a government development agency aims to
improve the economic performance of the district. These goal are different but not
in conflict; indeed, they could be expected to be mutually supporting. Complementary
resources, in turn, create an instrumental reason for working together. Organizations
with complementary resources can benefit from access to each other’s resources.
They become more effective working together than working separately. For instance,
one organization may have strong political influence but lack technical knowledge,
while another has strong technical knowledge but lacks political influence. These
are complementary resources; each can benefit from working together. It may also
be the case that several small organizations have similar resources, but pooling these
resources can achieve economies of scale, such as rolling out their programs statewide.
The combination of compatible goals and complementary resources lays the ground-
work for mutually beneficial development partnerships.3
Compatible goals and complementary resources are important in building
effective partnerships, but they are not enough. Cultural differences may also
create obstacles to partnership. Writing about community partnerships in the
United Kingdom, Vivien Lowndes and Helen Sullivan have observed that ‘Partners,
by definition, come to the table with different “ways of seeing” ’.4 This is an
insightful comment. Partners, by definition, are from different organizations with
different organizational cultures, different priorities, different ways of doing things,
and even different languages. Their internal decision-making structures, their
guiding frameworks, their key performance indicators, and their motivations and
expectations for the partnership are all likely to be different. The words they
use – even when they speak the same language – may mean quite different things.
Theorized as ‘institutional barriers’, cultural differences among organizations have
been identified as a key obstacle to the development of multistakeholder partner-
ships.5 Even with apparently compatible goals and complementary resources,
effective partnerships need to take into account the fact that all partnerships are,
to a greater or lesser extent, cross-cultural.
When community organizations enter into partnerships with large, bureaucratic
organizations, these cultural differences are often particularly noticeable. Large
bureaucratic organizations tend to use specialized language and lots of acronyms
(‘I’m the GM of the LED unit at DED’.). Bureaucratic organizations also tend to
conduct meetings in particular, formalized ways. Members of community orga-
nizations, in turn, have their own local references and ways of doing things; these
may seem foreign or illogical to outsiders. In conducting development work
overseas or when working with migrant or indigenous communities, the members

of community organizations may literally speak a different language. Their cultural
frameworks and understandings may be very different from those of development
practitioners and their organizations. Strong partnerships can be formed across
these kinds of cultural divides, but they require effort and respect for each orga-
nization’s different ways of working. If one partner dominates, drawing the rela-
tionship into their own language and frameworks, then partnerships become
unequal in practice.
Partnership in practice
In practice, a huge variety of organizational arrangements are contained under the
term ‘partnership’. Formal development partnerships can be established relatively
easily with a signature on a proposal, a funding agreement, or a memorandum of
understanding. On the other hand, development partnerships may take years to
form. Stages of partnership formation include pre-partnership collaboration, part-
nership creation, and, when a relationship has been firmly established, program
delivery.6 The roles of local community organizations in partnerships can vary
enormously. Different kinds of structures may govern how development partners
work together, their level of commitment, and how decisions are made. In some
cases, partners come together into loose ‘committees’ with no formal decision-
making structure and little buy-in from member organizations. In other cases,
partners undertake significant resource sharing and joint investment. They may
even form a new organization owned by the partners. The diverse landscape of
partnerships in practice, combined with confusion between the normative idea of
partnership and the structural nature of partnerships, helps explain why there has
been a tendency to treat ‘partnership’ as just another buzzword rather than as a
potentially significant paradigm shift for development practice.
To understand the complex landscape of development partnerships in practice,
it is useful to distinguish the common types of development partnership and how
the relationships among the partners are structured in each. In development practice,
partnerships can be divided into four broad categories: project partnerships, funding
partnerships, strategic partnerships, and governance partnerships. These categories are
defined by the overall aim and duration of the partnership. Project partnerships are
established to deliver a particular project or one-off initiative; each partner contributes
in some way to the design and delivery of the project. The partnership is for the
duration of the project. Funding partnerships are established between funders and
implementers; they may be short term, medium term, or ongoing, and they fund
the on-the-ground delivery of projects, programs, or services according to particular
funding schemes or policy priorities. Strategic partnerships link organizations in an
ongoing relationship over a period of time, beyond the boundaries of particular
projects, programs, or funding schemes, based on a close alignment of their goals.
Governance partnerships are equally long term, but their specific aim is to enable joint
decision making among the member organizations.
Each category of partnership implies a somewhat different kind of relationship

among the partners concerned and different ways of organizing that relationship.
Project partnerships tend to be short term – from a few months for small projects
to a few years for large projects. The relationship among the partners is based
around the particular project, its timelines and deliverables, and what each agrees
to contribute to achieving these. The organizing and decision-making structures
of project partnerships vary. Some projects have a steering committee or similar
group with representatives from partner organizations who oversee the progress
of the project; others simply convene a project team that works to an agreed-upon
set of documents (e.g., proposal, project logframe, budget). Generally, a coordinator
or project manager role is required to ensure the project does indeed stay on track
and that partners are kept informed. A truism from practice is that if a project
is the responsibility of everyone, it tends to become the responsibility of no one.
In many cases, one organization is the lead partner and takes the ultimate respon-
sibility for the project’s success, drawing on resources and support from other
partners as needed.
Funding partnerships have a somewhat different dynamic, because the relation-
ship is based on a transaction between funding partners who provide financial
resources in exchange for an activity or service, and implementing partners who
deliver the activity or service on the ground. Funding partnerships may be short
term or long term. Development funding partnerships can be structured as con-
tracts for service or program delivery, often awarded via competitive tendering, as
competitive grant programs, or as targeted partnership grants. In funding partner-
ships, there is not necessarily an existing relationship between partners. For instance,
in the case of competitive tendering or grants, funding is awarded to the ‘best’
applicant regardless of whether there is a prior relationship with the funding body.
In other cases, existing relationships (e.g., via project or strategic partnerships) may
lead to the establishment of a funding partnership. Funding partnerships tend to
have reasonably formal structures in the form of contracts, grant deeds, or funding
agreements with details about the funding provided (amount, timing, conditions),
and the activities or deliverables that are expected in exchange, including mecha-
nisms to ensure accountability for the funds spent. In cases where a partnership
is set up to fund a project, it may be both a project partnership and a funding
partnership, but usually there is a distinction between the partners who provide
the funding and those who are directly involved in implementing the project
partnership.7
Strategic partnerships have a much broader aim than either project partnerships
or funding partnerships, and they tend to operate over a longer term. Organizations
that identify a close alignment of their goals and potential complementarity in their
resources may choose to establish a partnership outside of the framework of a par-
ticular project or funding arrangement. The aim is typically to explore opportunities
to leverage resources and opportunities more effectively by working together. In
practice, this could involve an almost limitless array of initiatives from major co-
investments in infrastructure, staff, and programs, to ongoing communication and
exchange of information for mutual benefit. A memorandum of understanding

is often used to specify the terms of a strategic partnership between or among orga-
nizations and what it hopes to achieve. Legally binding contracts may be required
where more significant co-investment is involved; as a first step toward a formal
contractual arrangement, partners will sometimes sign a heads of agreement. A
strategic partnership among multiple organizations may also create a new orga-
nization: an alliance, network, or partnership, for instance. A terms-of-reference
document is often used to define the aims, scope, membership, and decision-making
structure of such a group. Such partnership organizations have varying degrees of
formality in their legal status, organizational buy-in, and resourcing. Many net-
works, for instance, are loose affiliations of organizations with common interest
that primarily share information. In other cases, partners may pool significant invest-
ments to create new, legally recognized organizations.
Project partnerships, funding partnerships, and strategic partnerships are all
ultimately about enabling joint activity: The partners join together in order to
work together or to resource each other’s work. Governance partnerships, however,
have a distinct aim: They are established to bring partners together for joint
decision making. In a governance partnership, decision making is the reason for
the partnership. The partners tend to be organizations (and sometimes ill-defined
‘community representatives’) who are seen to be stakeholders in the decision process:
that is, they have a stake in the outcome of the decisions. Governance partner-
ships may take a range of forms; a popular terminology is that of an interorga-
nizational committee. In Australia, for instance, a number of committees have
been established to oversee natural resource management decision making at
catchment scale.
Distinguishing these four common types of partnerships illustrates that partner-
ships are established with different aims, different scopes, and different structures.
Nevertheless, these types are by no means static. Relationships are ultimately fluid.
Project partnerships may evolve into strategic partnerships; strategic partners may
establish projects, and new partners may join them. Funding partners may establish
governance partnerships to inform significant long-term investments; these gov-
ernance partnerships provide a mechanism for joint decision making by stakeholders
as to how the funder’s investments are best used. Governance partnerships may
evolve into strategic or project partnerships as the partners’ emphasis shifts from
decision making to action. Each type of partnership has its purpose; as needs and
opportunities shift over time, so do the relationships among partners. Thus, over
time, organizations may work with the same partner organizations in different
capacities, in different kinds of partnerships.
In practice, this means that partnerships are not always formed with the most
logical partners (in the sense of compatible goals and complementary resources)
but rather with those partners that are best known and most trusted. Organiza-
tions tend to work with organizations they have worked with before. These
organizations have a degree of common experience, and key people know each
other. They start to evolve common ‘ways of seeing’ and trust by virtue of having
worked together. Equally, organizations without a history of working together are

less likely to partner – even when their goals and resources are highly comple-
mentary. There are several obstacles to new partnerships. Organizations may not
be aware of each other’s existence. They may not know that they have compatible
goals and complementary resources. They may not know how to contact each
other or who to contact, or they may feel uncomfortable initiating the relation-
ship. In practice, most partnerships on the ground are driven by existing relation-
ships or by the personal and professional networks of staff members – who can
use their existing relationships to establish trust with each other across organizational
boundaries. While such networks can establish a good initial basis for partnerships,
partnerships that depend on individual personalities can founder when key staff
leave. In addition, relying on existing networks to drive partnerships means that
potential partner organizations outside those networks are easily overlooked.
It is for this reason that local community organizations have traditionally been
overlooked as potential development partners. Local, often informal organizations
tend to sit outside the networks of development authorities, government ministries,
or international NGOs. The cultural and social distance is most marked when
very poor, disadvantaged, and isolated communities seek to deal with external
organizations. But it can also be observed across a range of civic and community
organizations that are not highly visible beyond their local area; even locals would
struggle to name them all. External development organizations are at even greater
disadvantage in knowing what local organizations are present on the ground. Too
often, external development organizations will simply create a new organization
from scratch rather than finding and seeking to partner with the local organiza-
tions that are already there.
Partnerships and power

Partnerships are formal relationships between or among organizations or groups.
These relationships, in practice, may be more or less equal. In a project partner-
ship, for instance, one partner may do most of the work while another pockets
most of the funds and prestige, and a third gets to set the agenda. In a strategic
partnership, some partners may be dominant voices while others sit quietly in the
background. Partners come from different organizations with different languages
and ways of seeing. Yet when partners come together, certain approaches and
languages tend to come to the fore as the lingua franca of the partnership, while
others are ignored. Certain agendas are prioritized, others not. Even the physical
location where partners meet can be biased toward some partners and disadvantage
others who must travel farther or enter unfamiliar and uncomfortable settings.
Many partnerships contain subtle and not-so-subtle inequities that influence who
benefits from the partnership and who does not. These are often theorized as the
result of the partners having unequal power.8
Power can be understood in a number of ways. Academics who talk about
power generally treat it as a noun: People or organizations ‘have’ or ‘use’ power.
‘Power’ enables people or organizations to do things, to prevent things being done,

or, more subtly, to define the terms of what should or shouldn’t be done. Sociolo-
gist Steven Lukes, for instance, has written about power as having three different
‘faces’. The obvious faces are the power to directly influence decisions and also
the power to exclude others from decision making and influence. The less obvious
‘third face’ is the power to shape the views of others and prevent them from
having a contrary view.9 In a partnership, partners may all have an equal influence;
alternatively, some partners may actively dominate decision making. On the other
hand, as per Lukes’s ‘third face’, everyone in a partnership may appear to have a
say, but some partners may set the agenda in a way that others do not even think
to challenge.
Organizations that directly dominate the agenda or subtly guide it to suit their
own purposes are said to have ‘power’. A partnership with these powerful orga-
nizations is unlikely to benefit other partners equally unless an explicit effort is
made to ‘share power’. Yet this metaphor of ‘power’ can obscure more than it
reveals. Arguably, there is no thing called power that is owned, used, or shared.
The metaphorical language of power is useful insofar as it highlights the existence
of real inequities among people and organizations. Attention to power draws
attention to the fact that different organizations in a partnership do have different
capacities and abilities to achieve their ends, and they have different capacities and
abilities to help or prevent others from achieving theirs; they are differently able
to shape the agenda.10 Yet at the same time, focusing on ‘power’ as a noun tends
to obscure what actually causes power inequities or how they can be overcome.
How does an organization actually ‘share power’, and how can other organizations
gain it (or become ‘empowered’)?
Organizations with unequal power can be understood more simply as organiza-
tions with a lesser amount of resources and influence. Resources and influence are
more concrete concepts than power. Resources are the physical, financial, social,
and cultural resources that an organization possesses. Influence is the organization’s
ability to mobilize these resources or capacities (e.g., its ability to invest, negotiate,
or network) to gain respect from others. As an example, an organization might
have abundant physical resources such as buildings and vehicles, social resources
such as paid staff and strategic partners, and cultural resources such as fluency in
the dominant language. This organization may mobilize these resources capably
to influence others who perceive it as a respectably wealthy, well-networked, and
politically powerful organization. Such an organization will tend to dominate any
partnership; it has the ‘power’ to pursue its own agendas and instrumental goals.
Yet unlike metaphorical power, resources and influence can be shared, and orga-
nizations can help other organizations to acquire them.
Significant differences in resources and influence among partners can quickly
undermine development partnerships. When members of one organization stay
in a four-star hotel and another at a hostel, when volunteers in one organization
are expected to put in as much time and effort as the paid staff in another, these
differences in resourcing send a persistent signal that the partnership is less than
equal. When partnership meetings always happen in the capital city or in the
dominant language, or with the cultural trappings that are more comfortable to
one group than another – their style of dress, their food, their ways of sitting,
their ways of speaking – the cultural resources of one group are clearly valued
above those of another. Those that lack these respected resources or ‘cultural
capital’11 – the campesinos from rural villages, for instance – will feel unequal, less
capable, less powerful. The alternative is to intentionally and consciously aim to
share power. Power sharing is sometimes about sharing resources such as money
or staff time, recognizing that some organizations have more and some less. But
it is also often about sharing influence: actively valuing and respecting the resources
of others, or the practice of what Robert Chambers has called reversals:
For the rural poor to lose less and gain more requires reversals: spatial reversals
in where professionals live and work . . . (and) reversals in professional
values and preferences.12
‘Reversals’ for Chambers means valuing and respecting the resources and ways
of doing things of the rural poor. In a partnership, such a ‘reversal’ could involve
shifting the spatial location of meetings, changing the professional language and
structure of those meetings, or challenging the assumption that time spent by
community members is worth less than the time of paid professionals. ‘Reversals’
increase the influence of less-powerful groups by privileging their own capacities
and resources. Arjun Appadurai has a similar concept: He speaks of shifting the
‘terms of recognition’ for less powerful groups vis-à-vis more powerful or influ-
ential members of society.13 In a partnership, shifting the terms of recognition
might involve drawing attention to smaller, less powerful partners’ resources and
skills, actively acknowledging their contributions, and making a habit of seeking
out and taking on board their opinions. Such strategies for sharing influence can
become a concrete strategy for power sharing.
In the end, most partnerships involve partners with different amounts of power.
These differences can be understood more concretely as differences in their relative
resources and the influence they can exercise through these resources. ‘Power’
sounds impossible to shift, yet resources and influence can be consciously recog-
nized and shared. The extent to which power sharing is possible depends, however,
on the nature of the partnership and the partners concerned. Partners with com-
patible aims who stand to gain considerable instrumental value from the partnership
are likely to invest more in it. They may therefore be willing to share their
resources and influence if that is what is required to get valuable partners to the
table. Equally, organizations and individuals who strongly value ‘partnership’ as a
normative ideal will often aim to establish partnerships on equitable terms. Nev-
ertheless, for many organizations and professionals, partnerships are simply about
organizations working together. They pay little attention to the differences among
organizations or what those differences might mean for the partners and the
ultimate fate of the partnership.
Partnerships analysis framework

When organizations choose to work together in a partnership, a relationship is
established. But the nature of that relationship is difficult to predict: Will it be
participatory? Equitable? Efficient in delivering the desired outcomes? Partnerships
can be enormously beneficial for the organizations involved, but they can also create
significant costs. Partnerships can deliver much more than expected or fail to deliver
any of the benefits promised. This section presents an analytical framework for
understanding what makes an effective partnership and why partnerships often fail.
This framework uses two key concepts from the anthropology and sociology
of development: development actors and development interfaces. Chapter One defined
development actors as individuals, groups, communities, and organizations that are
actively involved in change processes. A key idea in this book is that social and
economic change happens through the interactions and relationships among dif-
ferent kinds of development actors. Different development actors drive change,
support it, resist it, or sidetrack it, according to their own agendas. Development
interfaces are the relationships or meeting points among different development
actors14 – both inside and outside of formal development partnerships. These
relationships among development actors may take different forms. They may be
collaborative or conflictive – or a bit of both. They may involve communication,
noncommunication, or even active silencing. These two concepts, development
actors and development interfaces, focus on the relationships between and among
people and organizations, without any preconceptions about whether these rela-
tionships are good, bad, or indifferent.
In a development partnership, different development actors come together in
a relationship. A partnership among organizations suggests a positive relationship,
but this cannot be assumed. The partner organizations are all by definition dif-
ferent, and all are pursuing some kind of goal. These goals may be compatible,
or they may be in conflict. Within these organizations, individual development
actors may also be pursuing goals; their goals may not be exactly the same as
those of the organization as a whole. Development actors also have different
configurations of resources and different levels of influence both within and beyond
the partnership. The resources of the partner organizations may be more or less
complementary, and the differences in resources, influence, and ‘power’ among the
partners may be more or less marked. Finally, these partners are not the only
development actors on the landscape. There are other organizations or groups that
have not been partnered with, for whatever reason; perhaps they are not known,
not formally constituted, or not in the partners’ networks. There are also individu-
als that do not belong to an organization or group but have an interest in the
work of the partnership. All of these development actors are potentially important
to local development processes. All are part of the larger ‘development landscape’
on which the partnership takes place.
Effective partnerships can be defined as those that generate value for all
partners – in which the benefits of the partnership outweigh the costs for everyone
involved. This does not necessarily mean that the partnership generates value for
everyone on the broader development landscape. One partnership cannot solve

everyone’s problems. From the perspectives of development actors within the
partnership, however, the partnership is effective if the relationship helps them
achieve their aims – which may in turn generate broader community benefit.
Each development actor in a partnership needs to understand the aims of the
partnership from his or her organization’s perspective, and the resources that
they – and others – will invest to achieve their goals. These are what Jean-Pierre
Olivier de Sardan calls the strategic logics of each development actor: what they are
aiming to achieve and how they are aiming to achieve it.15 Thus an organization
will agree to invest physical resources like staff, buildings, and money, or social
resources like time, knowledge, and networks in a partnership in order to achieve
particular outcomes that they value.
Different partners generally have different strategic logics, even when their
goals are ultimately compatible. They may choose to address similar issues in quite
different ways, based on the nature of their organization and its resources; even
having exactly the same goal does not imply agreement about what needs to be
done to achieve it. Different partners also frequently have different notional logics,
or understandings about how the world works.16 Thus, development actors may
come together to form a partnership with similar, compatible goals, only to dis-
cover dissonance in their strategic and/or notional logics. Norman Long’s work
on development interfaces in rural areas has shown how different development
actors – some from the local area and others from further afield – have different
perceptions, interpretations, and visions of what constitutes positive change and
how these differences can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts.17
A partnership is a relationship among organizations. It can be described as a
form of interface among different development actors with different strategic and
notional logics. Figure 4.1 suggest a framework for analyzing a partnership as a
formal interface or meeting point among development actors. This framework
recognizes that each organization comes to the partnership with particular aims,
willingness to invest resources to achieve these aims, and ideas about what needs
to happen to achieve these aims – that is, with a particular strategic logic, includ-
ing particular theories of change (see Chapter Two). Each organization and its
representatives also come with different ways of seeing the central issues and dif-
ferent understandings of why the partnership is important. These are different
notional logics, part of the cultural differences among organizations. Finally,
organizations come together with different amounts of power, which can be
assessed with reference to their relative resources and influence. The partnership
analysis framework asks: What are the strategic logics of the various partners?
What are their notional logics about the purpose of the partnership? Finally, what
resources and influence does each partner bring, and do these create power ineq-
uities that need to be addressed?
The framework suggests that an effective partnership – one that generates
benefits for all partners – will occur when strategic logics, notional logics, and
relative power are aligned. Strategically, the partners will have compatible aims
Organization
1
Organization
1
• Strategic Logic (Aim,
Resourcing)
• Notional Logic (Reason,
Partnership
Theory of Change)
• Relative Power (Resources,
Influence, Roles)
Organization
2 Organization
2
FIGURE 4.1 Partnership Analysis Framework
and complementary resources. Culturally, while they come to the table with dif-
ferent ways of seeing, they are willing to recognize this and take different notional
logics on board. And politically, there is recognition that partners have different
levels of power; thus, partners take on roles that enable them to share resources
and influence. If the various strategic agendas, notional logics, and power differ-
ences of the partners are recognized and aligned, the partnership is established on
firm footing.
This framework in turn suggests that partnerships may fail for any one of these
three reasons. Some partnerships fail on strategic grounds; the instrumental drivers
of the relationship are not strong. The organizations’ goals are not compatible (they
may even potentially be in conflict) and/or resources are simply not made available
to achieve the stated aims. A project partnership, for instance, may quickly disperse
if funds are not obtained to conduct the project or if the partners discover they
do not have the needed skills. Equally, an organization may exit a partnership upon
realizing that the other partners have a different agenda that is not compatible with
their own. While compatible goals and complementary resources are important,
not all partnerships fail on strategic grounds. Some fail on cultural grounds because
the partners’ different notional logics affect how they understand issues and propose
solutions. Partners may conclude that ‘we simply can’t work with each other’ or
‘we don’t understand where they are coming from’. Partnerships that fail on cultural
grounds are typically plagued by communications breakdowns, misunderstandings,
and lack of clarity about what the aims of the partnership actually are. Finally,
some partnerships fail on political grounds because the power differences among
partners are not managed and lead to lack of respect, resentment, and distrust.
Albert Hirschman has observed that those deprived of voice in an organization
will tend to exit it.18 The same can be said for partnerships.
Rethinking community partnerships

Organizations concerned with development are often anxious to partner with
communities to address local socio-economic issues together. They recognize
the instrumental value of local participation as well as the normative value of
local communities having a say in the decisions and actions that affect them.
Partnerships suggest a way of working together in which different organizations
come together on equal footing. The normative ideal of partnership is alluring.
Outside development organizations are often eager to partner with local com-
munity organizations – and community organizations are often equally eager to
partner with outside supporters. Yet in practice, these relationships may be more
or less participatory or effective for the partners concerned. This chapter has
suggested a framework for analyzing the ingredients for an effective partnership,
defined as one that generates benefits for all partners.
Partnerships are not just a normative disposition for organizations to work
together; they are specific kinds of relationships that may deliver or fail to deliver
instrumental benefits. The framework presented in this chapter suggests that pro-
spective partners need to have compatible strategic logics, including alignment of
their overall aims and available resources. They also need to have compatible
notional ideas about the nature and purpose of the partnership. When out-
side development organizations work with local community organizations, these
notional ideas may be very different. Jeanne Simonelli and Duncan Earle give
the example of a partnership to deliver ‘education’ outcomes that involved a
Mexican community organization and a foreign donor organization. Both orga-
nizations agreed education was important and wanted to work together to achieve
it, but their notional logics were very different. For the donor, ‘education’ meant
formal training to get young people jobs; for the community organization, it
meant learning ‘what you need to know to become a contributing member of
the community’.19 Attention to notional logics can reveal very different strategic
goals masquerading under a common language.
Partnerships also bring together organizations with different amounts of relative
power. This is particularly important when community organizations partner with
outside organizations that have significantly more resources and influence than
they do. It is easy for outside organizations to dominate the agenda either directly –
for instance, by predetermining the terms of the partnership – or more subtly, by
imposing dominant norms about what is valuable and worth doing. Mike Geddes
has observed that community partners in the UK ‘are often unused to operating
effectively within bureaucratic processes. They frequently encounter condescension,
ignorance or hostility from other partners’.20 Bureaucratic norms are one example
of how more ‘powerful’ partners with ample bureaucratic resources can dominate
how things are done and what is valued. Community organizations that enter a
partnership with a more powerful external organization may quickly discover that
they are investing their resources in progressing someone else’s agenda – and
receiving little benefit in return. This can be avoided with intentional efforts to
clarify the roles, expectations, and benefits for each partner and to value the
resources that community partners contribute. In the end, the members of the
community organization need to be convinced that their better-resourced partners
still respect them and that they will be able to participate in the partnership on
equal footing.
Managing relative power differences is equally important for partner organiza-
tions seeking to work with local communities. If community partners do not feel
they are benefiting, they may choose to exit the partnership. Alternatively, they
may remain formally involved but functionally disengaged. Even when serious
efforts are made to establish a partnership on equal footing, community organiza-
tions may partner with more powerful outside organizations simply to access
resources and influence. This can create issues for the external partner when a
community partner appears to be ‘on board’ but in the end does not appear very
interested in the goals of the partnership. Community-based partner organizations
may also be quite powerful in their own right, with considerable resources and
influence, but this does not mean they speak for everyone in their local com-
munity. Other community organizations may be very small and informal, lacking
the resources and influence of more formal organizations. Nevertheless, they may
be important potential partners and should not be overlooked.
Development partnerships are a particular kind of relationship, one that has the
potential to bring community organizations and outside development organizations
together to work toward common goals. While partnerships are not necessarily
‘participatory’, they have the potential to be. Partnerships move beyond a one-way
view of a disadvantaged community participating in the projects and programs
of a development organization, to suggest multiple ways that organizations –
including small and informal community organizations in disadvantaged
communities – may ‘participate’ with each other to pursue common goals. Because
development partnerships are by definition neither ‘bottom up’ nor ‘top down’,
they have the potential to resolve the theoretical impasse between the potential
of bottom-up development action and the reality of top-down structural constraints.
Partnerships have the potential to bring together powerful organizations and dis-
advantaged communities in horizontal relationships that ultimately shift the ‘terms
of recognition’ for the latter.
This suggests a possibility: to reposition twenty-first-century development
practice as the practice of partnership building. For partnerships to provide the basis
for a new framework for development practice, however, requires rethinking
‘partnership’ as a normative category. Rather than assuming that a partnership is
necessarily good for everyone concerned, it is necessary to focus instead on the
actual nature of the relationships and the results produced. Development partner-
ships are relationships; they create a formal meeting point among different orga-
nizations with different goals, different cultures, and different kinds of power.
Prospective development partners are located across the development landscape,
including in unexpected places; they include small, hard-to-see local community
organizations in disadvantaged communities. While participation is in many ways
a black box, ‘a way of talking about rather than doing things . . . (with) many
different operational interpretations’21, partnerships are real-world structures that
can be seen, analyzed, and improved upon. Partnerships are ultimately about
relationships, and the nature of these relationships matters.
Further reading
On local partnerships
Global Forum on Local Development Report: Pursuing the MDGs through Local Government, UN
Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), 2010. Available online at www.uncdf.org/sites/
default/files/Documents/gfld_1.pdf.
Local Partnership: A Successful Strategy for Social Cohesion? by Michael Geddes. European
Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 1998.
Local Partnerships and Social Exclusion in the European Union: New Forms of Local Social Gov-
ernance? edited by Mike Geddes and John Benington, Routledge Studies in Governance
and Public Policy, 2001.
Local Partnerships for Better Governance, OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development), 2001.
On cross-sector partnership building

Making Public Private Partnerships Work: Building Relationships and Understanding Cultures, by
Michael Geddes. Gower Publishing, Ltd. 2005.
‘The Dynamics of Multi-Organizational Partnerships: An Analysis of Changing Modes of
Governance’, by Vivien Lowndes and Chris Skelcher. Public Administration, 76(2),
313–333, 1998.
‘Enhanced Learning from Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships: Lessons from the Enabling Rural
Innovation in Africa programme’, by Pascal C. Sanginga, C. A. Chitsike, J. Njuki, S.
Kaaria, and R. Kanzikwera. Natural Resources Forum, 31(4), 273–285, 2007.
On development actors and interfaces

Anthropology and Development, Understanding Contemporary Social Change, by Jean-Pierre
Olivier de Sardan. Zed Books, 2005.
Development Sociology, Actor Perspectives, by Norman Long. Routledge, 2001.
Whose Development? An Ethnography of Aid, by Emma Crewe and Elizabeth Harrison. Zed
Books, 1998.
Practical application: partnership assessment tools

Recognizing the challenge of crafting effective partnerships, practitioners
have designed a number of tools to assist with establishing effective cross-
organizational partnerships. These tools are eminently practical rather than
conceptual: They provide checklists, questions, and activities for potential
partners to use when exploring the potential or relevance of the partnership
to them. Many of the questions and activities are about determining the
purpose or aims of the partnership, assessing the existence of common
goals and interests, and clarifying the roles and resourcing commitments
of the various partners.
The Partnership Analysis Tool originally developed by John McLeod for
VicHealth in Victoria, Australia, is a user-friendly practitioner manual, avail-
able online. It includes a series of activities in which representatives of orga-
nizations define the purpose of their partnership, map the nature of the
relationship among partners, and complete a scored checklist to establish
how successful the partnership is likely to be. The activities provide a good
guide for conversations among prospective and current partners around
aims and, through comparison of different organizations’ views, have the
potential to acknowledge power differences and differences in notional
logics. The tool does not assist to identify potential new partners but to
assess and grow the relationships among organizations that are already
working together.22
The Nuffield Institute for Health at the University of Leeds, UK, has also
developed a Partnership Assessment Tool with a similar mandate: to pro-
vide a ‘rapid assessment’ of new and established partnerships to help
partners improve the effectiveness of the partnership. This tool proposes a
four-stage process: preparation, assessment, analysis/feedback, and action
planning. The assessment of the partnership is in the form of a scored check-
list completed by each organization and structured around six principles
of partnership (the need for the partnership, clear shared purpose of the
partnership, commitment of partners, trust, clear operational and resourc-
ing arrangements, and clear monitoring of outcomes).23 Assessment check-
lists structured around these partnership principles can potentially enable
specific issues – for instance, around different notional understandings of
purpose or inequities in resourcing – to be identified and discussed, so that
action may be taken to resolve them.
Notes
1 Karin Bäckstrand (2006) ‘Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships for Sustainable Development:
Rethinking Legitimacy, Accountability and Effectiveness’, in European Environment 16(5),
303.
2 Ibid., 299.
3 As one example, an analysis of multistakeholder rural development partnerships in Africa
identified the success factors for successful partnerships as ‘shared vision, interdependence
and complementarity’ among the partners; senior leadership support and ‘institutional
benefits’ for participating organizations; and ‘resources sharing and joint resources mobi-
lization’ among partners including opportunities to grow their human and social capital.
Pascal C. Sanginga, C. A. Chitsike, J. Njuki, S. Kaaria, and R. Kanzikwera (2007)
‘Enhanced Learning from Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships: Lessons from the Enabling
Rural Innovation in Africa Programme’, in Natural Resources Forum 31(4), 273–285.
4 Vivien Lowndes and Helen Sullivan (2004) ‘Like a Horse and Carriage or a Fish on a
Bicycle: How Well Do Local Partnerships and Public Participation Go Together?’ in
Local Government Studies 30(1), 65.
5 For instance, see reflections on the CSIRO Sustainable Communities Initiative in Aus-
tralia, a ‘multi-partner program that brings together players from the private, public and
community sectors to develop and deliver innovative solutions to local sustainability
challenges.’ Available at: www.csiro.au/Outcomes/Environment/Biodiversity/Sustainable-
Communities-Initiative/What-have-we-learnt-so-far.aspx.
6 See Vivien Lowndes and Chris Skelcher (1998)’s four-stage life cycle of partnerships
described in ‘The Dynamics of Multi-Organizational Partnerships: An Analysis of
Changing Modes of Governance’, in Public Administration 76(2), 313–333.
7 There are, however, exceptions; in our work in Tasmania, we have actively encouraged
funding partners to have a direct involvement in project implementation. This has in
many cases been a cultural shift for these organizations, but when time resources permit
it, there are benefits to involving funding partners actively in project partnerships.
8 As one example, Emma Crewe and Elizabeth Harrison have observed in their ethnog-
raphy of development aid that ‘The rhetoric of partnership often disguises considerable
inequalities in the power and choices of supposed institutional “partners” ’. E. Crewe
and E. Harrison (1998) Whose Development? An Ethnography of Aid. Zed Books, London,
p. 181.
9 Steven Lukes (1974) Power: A Radical View. New York: Macmillan.
10 In his 2005 revised edition, Lukes discusses power as a ‘capacity or ability’ that comprises
resources that may or may not be used. S. Lukes (2005) Power: A Radical View, second
edition. Basingstoke, UK and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
11 The concept of cultural capital was theorized by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. See,
e.g., P. Bourdieu (1986) ‘The Forms of Capital’, in Handbook of Theory and Research for
the Sociology of Education, ed. J. G. Richardson. New York: Greenwood Press,
pp. 241–258.
Education Limited, p. 168.
13 Arjun Appadurai (2004) ‘The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and the Terms of Recogni-
tion’ in Culture and Public Action, eds. V. Rao and M. Walton. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, pp. 77–78.
14 The concepts of development actors and development interfaces are borrowed from
the work of Norman Long; see Chapter One.
15 Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan (2005) Anthropology and Development, Understanding Con-
temporary Social Change. London: Zed Books, pp. 149–151.
16 The concepts of strategic logics and notional logics are drawn from Olivier de Sardan
2005.
17 See, for instance, the following case study of rural development in Mexico: Alberto
Arce and Norman Long (1993) ‘Bridging Two Worlds: An Ethnography of Bureaucrat–
Peasant Relations in Western Mexico’ in An Anthropological Critique of Development, ed.
M. Hobart. London: Routledge, pp. 205–206.
18 Albert O. Hirschman (1970) Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Responses to Decline in Firms, Orga-
nizations and States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
19 Jeanne Simonelli and Duncan Earle (2003) ‘Disencumbering Development: Alleviating
Poverty through Autonomy in Chiapas’, in Here to Help, NGOs Combating Poverty in
Latin America, ed. R. Eversole. Armonk, NY and London: M. E. Sharpe, p. 196.
20 Mike Geddes (2000) ‘Tackling Social Exclusion in the European Union? The Limits
to the New Orthodoxy of Local Partnership’, International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research 24(4), 793.
21 Quote from David Mosse (2001) ‘ “People’s Knowledge”, Participation and Patronage:
Operations and Representations in Rural Development’, in Participation, The New Tyranny?
ed. B. Cooke and U. Kothari. London: Zed Books, p. 32.
22 Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (2011) The Partnership Analysis Tool for Partners
in Health Promotion. VicHealth. The tool was revised in 2011, and this version is avail-
able online at www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/~/media/ResourceCentre/Publicationsand
Resources/General/Partnerships_Analysis_Tool_2011.ashx.
23 Brian Hardy, Bob Hudson, and Eileen Waddington (2003) Assessing Strategic Partnership,
the Partnership Assessment Tool. UK Government Strategic Partnering Taskforce. Available
online at: www.iape.org.il/upload/AssessingStrategicPartnership.pdf.
5
KNOWLEDGE FOR DEVELOPMENT
Knowledge for local development

A common starting point when considering the development trajectories of local
communities is to talk about how they are faring or are likely to fare in the
knowledge economy. Knowledge is a central idea in twenty-first-century develop-
ment practice. It is a key resource and a key capability for organizations and for
communities. Policy makers often talk about the need for communities and the
individuals in them to build their knowledge and learning capacities in order to
survive and prosper in a rapidly changing economy and society. Knowledge is often
portrayed as something that less-advantaged communities lack, something that
they need in order to succeed. But what kind of knowledge do disadvantaged
communities really need? New ideas about the role of knowledge in development
suggest that there are different kinds of knowledge that are relevant to local com-
munities and their development. Some of these, communities may lack; others,
they already have.
Defining knowledge is notoriously difficult. An entire branch of philosophy,
called epistemology, explores how knowledge can be defined. Yet knowledge for the
purposes of development practice is often defined quite narrowly. Early develop-
ment practice, inspired by modernization theory, sought to transfer technologies
and related expertise from wealthy places to poor places to help them ‘catch up’.
Knowledge was the advanced scientific and technical skills and expertise that came
from more ‘developed’ places. Development practice has changed a lot over the
years, but its approach to knowledge has remained essentially the same. Technical
skills and expertise remain central; much development practice still involves trans-
ferring knowledge resources from wealthy places to poorer ones, very much within
a traditional technology-transfer framework. Knowledge transfer has now expanded
beyond traditional development fields such as engineering, agronomy, and medicine
90 Knowledge for development
to include the one-way delivery of managerial, financial, educational, and admin-

istrative skills and expertise from wealthy places to poor ones. Contemporary
development work calls upon a range of areas of professional expertise that are
deployed to support the development of less-advantaged places.1 Thus, ‘knowledge’
for the purposes of development practice is usually assumed to be professional,
scientific and technical knowledge.
This view of knowledge as professional expertise has particular consequences
for disadvantaged communities. It places them at a serious disadvantage in their
relationships with development organizations and development professionals.
Communities that lack native professional expertise, regardless of where they
are located in the world, are generally portrayed by others as deficient in
knowledge capabilities. This may be expressed in many different ways in policy
language: as communities with ‘low levels of human capital’, ‘low educational
levels’, ‘limited educational opportunities’, and so forth. This state of attributed
disadvantage in turn is often extrapolated to imply limited local leadership
capability, lack of marketable skills, and an inability to cope creatively with
change. Too easily, a lack of formal professional skills can be misread as a culture
of ignorance.
The narrow definition of knowledge as professional expertise puts the emphasis
on the type of knowledge that poor communities are most likely to lack while
overlooking the kinds of knowledge that these communities are likely to have:
local knowledge, cultural knowledge, technical knowledge, practical knowledge,
and noncredentialed forms of expertise, for instance. The result of taking a narrow
view of knowledge is that development organizations tend to treat local com-
munity members as less knowledgeable than development professionals – extrapolated
to less capable, less skilled, less creative, and less intelligent. Relationships are
established from the start on unequal footing.
Participatory development approaches, discussed in Chapter Three, have
attempted to mount a challenge to this narrow view of knowledge. They have
drawn attention to the local knowledge that communities have about their local
contexts and have argued that the local knowledge of local people is highly rel-
evant to development processes. Local knowledge reveals things that are not neces-
sarily part of the knowledge set of development professionals: otherwise-unknown
and unrecognized local characteristics, capabilities, opportunities, and needs. Local
knowledge includes technical knowledge, such as knowledge about what farming
techniques work in the local environment. It includes other kinds of socially and
culturally situated knowledge as well: for instance, knowing ‘who’s who’ in the
local community, where to find certain resources, and how to get things done.
Participatory development processes recognize that professional knowledge alone
is insufficient when trying to create positive change; many things about the local
context are only known by local people. Techniques such as participatory rural
appraisal (PRA), for instance, have been developed to provide ways for local people
to articulate their local knowledge and share it with development professionals
(see Practical Application sidebar, Chapter Three).
Knowledge for development 91
In practice, however, local knowledge is difficult to incorporate into the projects

and programs of professional development organizations – even when they aim
to be participatory. First of all, local knowledge is not one single thing that is
easy to identify and obtainable from any local; rather, it is a diversity of knowledges
and practices, often subjective, context sensitive, and even disputed (witness any
local community conversation about whether the ‘great storm’ was in ’68 or ’73,
and whether it was the mayor’s house or the shop that was washed away!). Next,
because it is diverse, context sensitive, and subjective, it is often very difficult for
development professionals trained in a Western scientific tradition to recognize it
as knowledge. It is often not provable, scientific, or precise.
For these reasons, while participatory processes typically encourage local people
to get involved and have a say, these processes most often seek people’s ‘opinions’
and ‘input’ rather than their knowledge. Ultimately, it is the professional planners,
managers, engineers, or other experts who have the knowledge to make the final
decisions about what will or will not be done. The professionals also frequently
set the terms of debate from the start, framing participation in terms of the kinds
of local input that are useful for them and that make sense from within their
disciplinary and organizational frameworks (‘Tell us about the school curriculum’).
Local knowledge often does not fit neatly into those professional frameworks.
Much of it is ‘anecdotal’ – stories told by people from their experience – imprecise,
and even ‘emotional’, tied to the deeper cultural and personal meanings of experi-
ence. It is not often dispassionate, scientific, or rigorously documented, although
it may say a great deal about what people believe to be desirable or possible for
the future, and what they have learned from the past. Local knowledge also tends
not to fit neatly into the scope of existing development projects or organizations –
for instance, when a participatory planning conversation about playground design
raises broader issues about a lack of transport or recreational opportunities for
young people. Those issues are out of scope for the professionals concerned. It is
thus easy for local knowledge to be edited out of participatory processes.
In the end, deep biases remain about what kinds of knowledge are seen as
relevant to local development processes. Professional expertise continues to be
the dominant form of knowledge. And there are other biases, too. Encapsulated
in the language of ‘knowledge economy’, for instance, are a set of premises
about the utility of knowledge as an economic asset: Knowledge becomes a
capability that is needed for competitive industries and employable people.
This in turn leads to a reframing of the idea of participation: participation
becomes reframed in policy language as participation in learning or skilling activi-
ties or participation in employment opportunities. 2 Through learning, skilling, or
formal employment activities, disadvantaged communities are understood to
acquire the knowledge and skills they need to ‘participate’ in society more
broadly. Here, the relevant knowledge is defined as a kind of ‘competency’
that will enable active social and economic participation. Neither professional
knowledge nor local knowledge, this ‘competency’ knowledge includes literacy,
numeracy, and their variants (computer literacy, information literacy, health
literacy), and marketable skills. It is this basic ‘competency’ knowledge that

countless policy documents assume that local communities need in order to
achieve development.
It has been observed variously that knowledge is, confers, or reinforces power.
Development professionals working with local communities need to critically
consider how they understand knowledge and its role in development processes
inside and outside the so-called knowledge economy. What kinds of ‘competen-
cies’ are actually required for local development, and are they necessarily the
same as what external policy makers assume? How relevant are local forms of
knowledge? And what is the role of the professional knowledge of ‘experts’?
This chapter explores the different kinds of knowledge that are relevant to local
development processes. Bringing together insights from the anthropology of
development with ideas from innovation studies, it argues that local communities
and development organizations need multiple forms of knowledge to name and
address development challenges.
Abstract knowledge and local knowledge

Development knowledge can be defined as the knowledge that is needed to name
and address development challenges. As a term, it does not define knowledge
according to whether it is ‘factual’ in a scientific sense or ‘marketable’ in an
economic sense but simply as to whether it is helpful in understanding devel-
opment issues and opportunities and identifying solutions. Expert professional
knowledge is only one kind of development knowledge, though it is a highly
useful and influential one. Local communities may buy it in, partner with those
who have it, receive it via one-way technology transfer, or cultivate it from
within their ranks. Competency knowledge, by contrast, is easier to acquire but
less influential; it is in essence a simplified level of expertise, defined by experts
who provide the mechanisms for recognizing or credentialing it. Local knowledge
is different. It is less visible and more difficult to define. Because it is ‘local’
and not universally applicable, it is generally not influential outside the local
area. Nevertheless, local knowledge has particular advantages in local develop-
ment work. Unlike abstract knowledge, local knowledge is specific, embedded
in the local context.
Abstract knowledge is knowledge that can be generalized to any context. Perhaps
counter-intuitively, abstract knowledge is highly visible. It is easier to see and
recognize than local knowledge. This is why expert professional knowledge and
competency knowledge are the easiest kinds of knowledge to see and work with
in development practice. Both are abstract forms of knowledge; they are applicable
in any setting, from the high Andes to the Florida swamps. They are easy to
recognize and work with because they fit comfortably into popular Western ideas
about what knowledge is. These ideas are based in an influential philosophy of
knowledge called positivism. Positivism states that knowledge is universal, that it is always
the same regardless of context, and that it can be proven or disproven scientifically.
Abstract knowledge fits with a positivist view of knowledge because it can be
generalized to any setting. Abstract knowledge is also usually codified – it has been
written or otherwise documented in some way. This makes it easier to see and
work with. Most abstract knowledge is codified, because only through document-
ing it can it be tested in different contexts, proven universal, and taught to
others.
Local knowledge is, by comparison, seldom codified and thus hard to see.
Because it is specific and contextualized rather than general and universal, it is
not a comfortable fit with positivist ideas about knowledge. This means that it
is harder for development practitioners to recognize that it actually is knowledge,
and it is harder for them to locate even when they look for it. Positivism is
highly influential in Western intellectual traditions; thus, people who train as
development professionals have generally been exposed to this tradition. They
are accustomed to the idea that knowledge is always the same regardless of
context. If something can’t be proven scientifically, if it isn’t universal, then it
is not knowledge. In a purely positivist worldview, local knowledge is not knowl-
edge at all.
In addition, much local knowledge is tacit knowledge, defined as what a person
‘knows’ but cannot easily ‘tell’ or put into words.3 Tacit knowledge is often much
easier to perform or practice than to explain. It is the opposite of codified knowl-
edge, which is documented in reports, libraries, or websites where it is easy for
others to find and reference. Tacit knowledge is not written down. In a meeting
or a consultative forum, local knowledge may not even find its way into spoken
words. If it is tacit, it may require more space, time, tools, or specific settings – like
a field or a workshop – to explain it or demonstrate it in action.
Development practice has a strong bias toward abstract knowledge. Such
knowledge is epistemologically comfortable for development professionals trained
in a Western tradition, and it is easy to identify, teach, and learn. It defines the
domains of professional expertise that make for an effective development profes-
sional, and it identifies domains of competency knowledge that community
members need. Abstract knowledge is generalizable to every setting but specific
to none. Local knowledge, by contrast, is epistemologically uncomfortable and
hard to see, but it is sensitive to the nuances of local context. This is its great
strength. Yet local knowledge does not even have a common term in academic
and practice literatures. It is spoken of in many different ways: as ‘local knowl-
edge’, ‘indigenous knowledge’, ‘local know-how’, ‘rural people’s knowledge’,
‘community knowledge’, and so forth.4 The general consensus is that the
contextualized knowledge of local people is important. It provides different
insights than the abstract knowledge of the ‘experts’. Nevertheless, it is often
overlooked in development practice.
Local knowledge is often invisible in development work because of the kinds
of professional biases Robert Chambers has identified in his writings on rural
development. Encouraging professional development practitioners to recognize

the value of local knowledge is one of the reversals he recommends:
[I]n almost any field of professional concern, the biases are loaded against
the attributes and things that are directly important to poor rural people.
Endless illustrations are possible: colonial and post-colonial prejudices
against small native cattle, small stock, shifting cultivation and inter-
cropping . . . Ironically, in few spheres are such additions to knowledge
so easily, cheaply and simply made as where professionals are most pro-
grammed not to seek them: in learning what rural people know that
researchers do not know.5
Development professionals’ ingrained biases against local knowledge are not

limited to rural areas in poor countries but have been documented in urban set-
tings in wealthy countries, too; for instance, in the following observation by Mike
Geddes on community partnerships in the United Kingdom:
[O]ne leading actor in the North Tyneside partnership in the UK [said]

that: “The community hasn’t got many skills so they don’t bring very much
to the table. They are here to be consulted, negotiated with, but they don’t
help much”. . . . The experiential knowledge of poverty and exclusion
which the excluded can offer is often not valued by partners who recognize
only the ‘expert’ codified knowledge of formal organizations.6
Over the years, a number of people writing on local development processes

have drawn attention to local community knowledge of various kinds and
attempted to make it visible alongside ‘expert’ or ‘scientific’ knowledge in devel-
opment processes. A key area of contribution has been from anthropologists who
have written on ‘indigenous knowledge’7 and its relevance to development work.
In 1980, anthropologist David Brokensha and his colleagues published an edited
book on indigenous knowledge and development. That volume gave numerous
examples of systems and hierarchies of local knowledge, showing how develop-
ment professionals could use these to improve their communication with locals
and to understand local decision-making processes.8 The collection drew special
attention to indigenous technical knowledge, the technical knowledge of local people.
It was followed by a further collection on indigenous knowledge systems, which
provided a wide range of examples of local environmental knowledge, indigenous
decision-making systems and organizational forms, and local-level experimentation
and innovation.9
As a more recent collection on local knowledge in development work, published
in 2004, observes:
Local knowledge reflects many generations of experience and problem solv-

ing by humans around the world. . . . Development agencies are becoming
aware that such knowledge, whether it be of biodiversity and ecology, natural

resources management, health and disease, education and urbanisation, is far
more sophisticated than development previously assumed – although anthro-
pology has long known it.10
Some of the most interesting work on local knowledge in development contexts

has been in the areas of agriculture and natural resource management. Because
both fields are highly dependent on local environments, there has been a greater
readiness to recognize the value of local, contextualized knowledge. Paul Richards,
for instance, was influential in drawing attention to local farmers’ agricultural
knowledge in the context of development work in Africa. He observed that:
Few textbook solutions to agricultural development problems seemed relevant

or feasible given the realities of the farms described. The problems that
farmers themselves listed as priorities were ones on which the textbooks
remained silent. . . . Intellectuals, development agencies and governments
have all pursued environmental management problems at too high a level
of abstraction and generalization. Many environmental problems are, in fact,
localized and specific, and require local, ecologically particular, responses. . . .
The West African environment posed a specific set of challenges well
understood by farmers within the region, but less well understood by
science.11
Richards’ work underlined that abstract knowledge about agriculture was not
as universal as the scientists or professional experts had assumed. It did not neces-
sarily hold true in all contexts – such as West Africa. Local farming practices, on
the other hand, were a form of specific, local knowledge about those contexts.
Richards identified that this ‘local knowledge’, performed by farmers, was, in fact,
real knowledge that was highly relevant to meeting rural development
challenges.
Unpacking local knowledge

Abstract knowledge aims to be universally applicable. This is its great strength but
also its great weakness. It generalizes and categorizes, creating a level of general-
ization that can be applied across different settings but may seem disconnected
from reality on the ground. Generalizing shows what is commonly or generally
true – but not what is specific or unique. Categories of analysis may miss the
connections and interrelationships that play out in specific contexts. It is useful,
for instance, to know at an abstract level that educational opportunities tend to
be associated with future prosperity. On the other hand, it is also useful to under-
stand up close the specific reasons local graduates are struggling to get jobs. Both
abstract knowledge and local knowledge are useful in understanding social and
economic issues.
The key characteristic of local knowledge is that it is contextualized: Local

knowledge is grounded in particular physical, social, and cultural settings. Chris-
toph Antweiler emphasizes that local knowledge is ‘neither indigenous wisdom
nor simply a form of science, but a locally situated form of knowledge and per-
formance found in all societies’.12 Local knowledge is not defined by its ‘tradi-
tionalness’ (as sometimes implied in the language of traditional knowledge or indigenous
knowledge), nor is it defined by a tendency to be more or less ‘scientific’ in ori-
entation. Rather, local knowledge is defined by its location in particular physical
and social settings. Local knowledge is grounded, situated, and ultimately tied to
a particular context. Whether it is cognitively ‘known’ or physically ‘performed’,
whether it can be explained in words or not, whether it is known by the whole
community or only a few individuals, local knowledge is embedded in the local
context.
There are, therefore, different kinds of local knowledge. As one example, quite a
lot has been written about indigenous technical knowledge (ITK). Indigenous techni-
cal knowledge is knowledge about how to make or do things in the local setting:
for instance, how to identify medicinal herbs, cultivate traditional crops, or weave a
textile with local designs. This kind of local technical knowledge, about how to make
or do things, is clearly valuable, but it is not the only kind of local knowledge. Other
authors have referred to local knowledge that is about ‘ways of knowing’, being, and
‘framing reality’.13 This can be described as local cultural knowledge: the symbolic,
social, and organizational knowledge about how things work in a given setting. Local
cultural knowledge is perhaps more difficult to observe than local technical knowledge,
but it is equally important. Local knowledge also includes knowledge that is embodied
or physically experienced in some way, such as the ‘experiential knowledge of poverty
and exclusion’ referred to in the earlier quote.
These are the three broad domains of local knowledge: local technical knowl-
edge, local cultural knowledge, and local experiential knowledge. Each is embedded
in particular local contexts, intertwined with local landscapes and communities.
Local technical knowledge includes, for instance, knowledge about effective fishing
techniques in the local environment or the traditional art of winemaking. This
specific technical knowledge about how to make or do particular things arises
from communities’ shared culture and experiences in specific places. Local cultural
knowledge is broader than technical knowledge. It defines how things work in
the local context and why they work that way: from who does what, to how to
get things done. Cultural knowledge includes shared understandings and meanings
about how the world works. Local experiential knowledge is broader still: It
encompasses the multiple experiences of local individuals, groups, and communi-
ties. Experiential knowledge is particularly relevant to development processes when
experiences of previous development failures (or successes) influence people’s
understandings of what is possible, and where current experiences of suffering or
deprivation are directly relevant to understanding what people desire for the future.
Table 5.1 describes the three domains of local knowledge – technical, cultural,
and experiential – across five dimensions often referred to in the literature.
Codification refers to whether knowledge is codified or tacit. Local knowledge is

usually tacit, but in some cases it can be codified. For instance, producers may
formally document their local technical knowledge in order to protect it, as some
producers of traditional goods have done under the Protected Designation of
Origin legislation in Europe.14 The second dimension of knowledge, specialization,
refers to the extent to which local knowledge is known by all local community
members or only by a few. This dimension recognizes that some local knowledge
may be highly specialized, known only by experts, elite groups, or specific indi-
viduals, while other knowledge may be common to all. The third dimension is
the complexity of local knowledge. It can vary from very simple ‘declarative’
knowledge that can be spoken and explained to others to complex ‘performative’
knowledge about how to respond to complex situations. Performative knowledge
is acted out rather than spoken and explained; it is often based on what the
anthropologist James Scott calls ‘mētis’ or rules of thumb.15 The fourth dimension
is the legitimacy of local knowledge. This acknowledges that the knowledge of
some individuals and groups at the local level may be more influential than others,
and that not all local knowledge is accepted by everyone. Finally, contemporaneity
refers to whether the local knowledge in question is current or historical, recog-
nizing that local knowledge is not necessarily ‘traditional’ but that some local
knowledge does have a deep historical base.
The typology in Table 5.1 illustrates that there is no single ‘local knowledge’ but,
rather, many local knowledges. Local knowledge crosses technical, cultural, and
experiential domains. It is not limited to a single domain such as technical farming
knowledge or local environmental knowledge, although these are the domains that
have most often been of interest to development practitioners. Local knowledge
may be simple or complex, documented or not. It may be widely held knowledge
throughout the community or the very specialized knowledge of a few local experts.
It may enjoy high or low legitimacy with locals and/or outsiders. Table 5.1 gives
numerous examples of local knowledge. It illustrates that there is no single, unified
‘local knowledge’ that can be easily identified and that everyone shares.
Even very rigorous attempts to document local knowledge – such as typologies
of local environmental terms, detailed community histories, or ethnographic
explorations of cultural practices – are only able to document a subset of local
knowledge. Participatory processes are arguably best at identifying general knowledge
(what most people in a community know) and simple declarative knowledge (what
can be easily explained); it is much more difficult to identify complex performa-
tive or highly specialized knowledge. Yet all of these different kinds of local
knowledge are potentially relevant to local development processes. Local
knowledges – in the plural – may also be found in different places across a com-
munity, from the long-time resident who remembers ‘the last time they tried that’
to the organization that knows the locations of entrepreneurial local businesses.
No one community member will have all forms of local knowledge at his or her
disposal – though those with considerable cultural knowledge will likely know
who to ask.
TABLE 5.1 Typology of Local Knowledges
Domain Codification Specialization Complexity Legitimacy Contemporaneity
Tacit Codified General Specialized Simple/ Complex/ Low High Historical Current
knowledge knowledge declarative mētis legitimacy legitimacy
Technical Local ‘know EU Protected Common Local Known Fine Peasants’ Local expert, Traditional Current local
how’, farmer Designation knowledge expert, local facts, local craftwork, knowledge, master practice, practice,
knowledge, of Origin about how to specialist, typologies, creative workers’ craftsperson, traditional use of new
indigenous documentation, make or do artisan, (e.g. local problem knowledge specialist technical technologies,
technical ethnographic things (chop community- soil types, solving, knowledge technical
knowledge accounts of wood, drive a based preferred crop environmental innovation
(ITK) ITK car, hunt) professional varieties) adaptations
Cultural Local ‘know Ethnographic Common Knowledge Easily Mental models Marginal Cultural Traditional Contemporary
who’, informal studies, vision sense, of local explainable of how the sub- knowledge culture, culture,
institutions, and mission acceptable elites, local aspects of world works, cultures of high ‘how it contemporary
appropriate statements of behavior, leaders, cultural ‘the economy’, (‘bogans’, status used to be’, organizations,
behavior, organizations, knowing how women’s practice: ‘the powerful’, ‘hicks’) groups, knowledge ‘how we do
shared values, vision things work knowledge, festivals, belief systems, and other ‘movers and of ancestors, things now’
‘how we statements of here local organizations, symbols low-status shakers’, old founders,
work’ communities subcultures roles groups families origins
Experiential Embodied Documented Knowing Personal Knowledge Accumulated Bodily Local Person Knowledge
knowledge, life histories, ‘what it’s like experience, from the five life experience, ‘success and group of current
‘Knowing organizational to live here’, unique senses: how experience, strong story’, memory, events, current
what it is like’, histories, knowledge experience, a things look, intuition or emotion, significant oral history, experience,
‘knowing journals and of shared person who sound, smell; ‘sixth sense’, ‘biased’ historical historical ‘this is
what it feels reflective logs history, local has ‘done experiences wisdom from personal narrative, narratives happening
like’, ‘being documenting environments that’ or ‘lived that can be experience experience marketable now’
there’ experience through that’ described to ‘experience’
others
From local knowledge to innovation

Development practitioners working closely with local communities soon develop
an awareness of the extent and diversity of local knowledge. On-the-ground work
in any given place shows clearly that there is no single unified local knowledge
but rather that local knowledges are diverse and fragmented. Some groups know
some things. Other groups know other things. Some knowledge is ignored; other
knowledge is accepted unquestioningly as true. Most stories have several different
versions. Common ways of doing things may be broadly accepted, but there are
usually voices that question them and subgroups that do things differently. Opin-
ions and experiences vary. Equally, local knowledge does not operate in isolation.
There is an ongoing dialogue with knowledge from elsewhere – other local
knowledge from other contexts, as well as abstract knowledge. Work on the ground
reveals that multiple forms of knowledge exist in local contexts and that all are
relevant to local development.
On the ground, development knowledge is multiple, fragmented, and socially
dispersed. It is not necessarily easy to identify or bring together the different
kinds of knowledge that communities need to reach their goals. The develop-
ment knowledge that is relevant for local communities includes but goes well
beyond the technical knowledge of experts or the acquisition of basic compe-
tencies by community members. It includes both abstract and local knowledges
and is found across multiple domains: different disciplines, different technical
fields, different cultural or experiential knowledges. The knowledges relevant to
local development are held by different people and groups, in different places,
and in different forms. They are socially dispersed across individuals, communi-
ties, disciplines, and professions; no one organization, reference book, or expert
will have them all.
Recognizing that the knowledge relevant to local development is multiple
and socially dispersed moves away from a purely deficit-based view of knowledge,
in which disadvantaged communities simply lack the knowledge they need for
success. Recognizing that there are multiple kinds of development knowledges
acknowledges that these communities already have important knowledge
resources, even though they may lack others. The knowledge relevant for local
development cannot simply be delivered to communities in a technology-transfer
model; communities must also leverage their own knowledge capacities to create
change.
How are they to do this? Useful insights can be gleaned from current literature
on innovation. Innovation can be defined broadly as the creation of new economic
and social solutions and opportunities.16 Innovation theory traditionally focused on
new economic solutions, particularly in the context of private firms, but there is
now considerable interest in social innovation, or the creation of new social solu-
tions. The aim of innovation – to create new economic and social solutions and
opportunities – thus corresponds with the aims of development practice. Equally,
there is a close relationship between knowledge and innovation. Innovation is
understood to emerge by mobilizing knowledge in new ways. Over the last two
decades, there has been a growing literature on the processes of social and eco-
nomic innovation in local communities. This new body of innovation literature
provides important guidance on how communities can mobilize knowledge to
create positive social and economic change.
First, this literature recognizes that place-based knowledge is an important
ingredient in local innovation processes. Traditionally, innovation was thought
to emerge only from formal research and development (R&D) systems dealing
in abstract, scientific knowledge. Increasing attention to the nature of develop-
ment and innovation processes in particular places has, however, highlighted the
importance of contextualized local knowledge in driving innovation.17 Starting
from a different place, this literature on place-based development and innovation
has arrived at a similar conclusion to the one reached by the anthropologists of
development: local knowledge matters for local development. The literature on
place-based development, however, takes this insight a step further. Not only is
local knowledge an important ingredient in generating new solutions; this lit-
erature also proposes that innovation emerges when different kinds of knowledge come
together.
These insights about the relationship between local knowledge and innovation
can be enormously helpful to development practitioners working with local com-
munities. They highlight a direct link between local knowledge and innovation
– the ability to generate new social and economic solutions. Despite the fact that
local knowledge is fragmented and dispersed within and across localities, it can
‘spill over’ from one group to another and, in doing so, generate innovation.18
While these ideas have been applied primarily at the level of firms and industries,
there is no reason why local knowledge and ‘knowledge spillovers’ should not be
relevant across a range of types of local communities. On-the-ground observations
show that it is not uncommon for all kinds of ideas to be borrowed and adapted
across communities, stimulating new ideas as the knowledge of different groups
comes together.
Networked knowledge can be defined as knowledge that is created and com-
municated through social interaction. When contextualized local knowledge is
shared across different groups in the same locality or across different localities, it
creates networked knowledge. Local people share their local knowledge about an
issue with other groups, or people from one place travel to see how things are
done in another place. New insights may then be absorbed into local practice.
Knowledge created through networking across localities is more broadly applicable
than local knowledge, although it is not, like abstract knowledge, intended to be
generalizable to any context. As an example, farmers’ market committees in dif-
ferent towns may network with each other to share knowledge about how they
organize and promote their markets; this knowledge becomes combined within
the network and is no longer purely ‘local’. Neither, however, is it truly abstract
and generalizable to any context. Figure 5.1 illustrates the relationship among
local, networked, and abstract knowledge. Local knowledge is place based, specific
to local contexts, while networked knowledge is shared across places and potentially
Abstract Knowledge
Generalizable
Place-Based
Knowledge
Specific
Place-Based Networked
Knowledge
Specific Knowledge
Transferable/ Place-Based
adaptable Knowledge
Specific
Place-Based
Knowledge
Specific
FIGURE 5.1 Abstract, Local, and Networked Knowledges
transferable to different contexts. Abstract knowledge is true across any context,

because it exists at a higher level of generalization: something that has been proven
to hold true for any farmers’ market, anywhere.
The proposition that innovation occurs when different kinds of knowledge come
together highlights the importance of networked knowledge. While local knowledge
is valuable in its own right, it can be intentionally mobilized through social networks
to generate new knowledge across groups, localities, and even in dialogue with
abstract knowledge. This networked knowledge is more than the sum of its parts,
because the meeting point among different kinds of knowledge creates something
new. Robert Chambers alludes to this in the earlier quote when he observes that
new knowledge is easily obtained simply by getting experts to pay attention to ‘what
rural people know’ – and then bringing these two knowledge sets together. This
proposition was subsequently explored in the ‘farmer first’ participatory research
movement, which encouraged agricultural researchers and farmers to work together
to develop innovative solutions to agricultural challenges (see Practical Application
sidebar). Arjun Appadurai gives another example of bringing different kinds of
knowledge together to generate innovative development solutions. He describes how
housing exhibitions ‘by and for the poor’ in India and elsewhere mobilize and
showcase the local architectural knowledge of slum dwellers. The housing exhibi-
tions provide a venue for disadvantaged communities to share their knowledge of
basic housing construction with each other and with external experts, networking
to create new knowledge about low-cost housing solutions.19
Knowledge partnering
Chapter Four suggested that development practitioners who work with local com-
munities might theorize their work as the practice of building development
partnerships. Development partnerships bring different development actors together
to work on common goals. They move beyond the ‘black box’ of participatory
development to focus on the nature of the relationships between local community
organizations and those who wish to work with them. Not all such relationships
necessarily bring benefits for the local community; thus, an effective development
partnership can be defined as one that creates benefits for all partners. Chapter
Four described four kinds of partnerships commonly observed in development
work: project partnerships, funding partnerships, strategic partnerships, and gov-
ernance partnerships. Insights from this chapter suggest a fifth kind of potential
partnership for development: the knowledge partnership.
A knowledge partnership can be defined as a relationship in which individuals,
groups, and organizations share their knowledge in order to create innovative
solutions. Knowledge partnering is thus the practice of intentionally bringing dif-
ferent kinds of knowledge into dialogue. It responds to the challenge posed by
rural development theorists to look at knowledge relationally rather than treating
it as a development commodity.20 Recognizing that knowledge is created through
relationships opens up the potential to create new knowledge by bringing devel-
opment actors and their diverse, dispersed knowledges together. As Norman Long
has observed: ‘Knowledge emerges as a product of the interaction and dialogue
between specific actors’.21
The process of coming together to share knowledge is not uncommon in practice.
People join social and business networks and communities of practice with the aim
of learning from others. Groups go on study tours; professionals attend conferences;
project teams visit similar projects elsewhere to share experiences and gain new
ideas. Consultative groups bring different kinds of experts together to share their
insights and advise on new solutions. Yet while knowledge sharing is common in
professional practice, it is seldom considered in the context of local development
strategy. As local knowledge is frequently invisible, the benefits to be gained from
connecting local knowledges with each other and other forms of knowledge are
generally unrecognized. Yet innovation theory tells us that innovative, transformative
solutions can be achieved by bringing different kinds of knowledge together.
For local communities and for development organizations, multiple kinds of
knowledge are needed to name and address development challenges. Some of this
development knowledge is readily available, some is invisible, and some is simply
inaccessible. Some forms of knowledge are held or practiced by certain local groups
or individuals – but not by others. Knowledge is fragmented across different profes-
sional disciplines, siloed in different areas of technical expertise, and dispersed
across different cultural groups. Important development knowledge is bound up in

experiences that are shared by some, but not by others. Knowledge partnering is a
way of working with diverse communities and organizations to intentionally bring
their different kinds of knowledge together. As a community development approach,
knowledge partnering provides a way for development practitioners to work across
communities and organizations to catalyze innovative development solutions.
Knowledge partnering recognizes the existence of local knowledges without
succumbing to a naïve assumption that ‘local knowledge’ is a single, common
thing. It values these local knowledges without subscribing to an idealized view
that local knowledge in its traditional purity is all communities need.22 And
knowledge partnering strengthens knowledge networks within and beyond the
community to stimulate new ideas and new solutions. Knowledge partnering can
create important benefits for disadvantaged communities. It recognizes that the
development knowledge that communities need to name and address their devel-
opment challenges can be accessed through relationships. This may involve creating
new relationships for knowledge sharing at the local level, such as between firms
and community groups; new relationships with external, professional experts; and
new relationships with other local communities in other places.
Current development policy emphasizes the need to grow the knowledge capa-
bilities of disadvantaged communities from the ground up to achieve social and
economic outcomes in today’s knowledge economy. Yet knowledge as typically con-
ceived in these debates is limited to expert, professional knowledge and related
competencies: knowledge that poor communities often lack and that is consequently
brought in from outside to help them ‘catch up’. This deficit-based view perpetu-
ates the technology-transfer paradigm of development practice, and it paints an
incomplete picture of the role of knowledge in local development. The ideas dis-
cussed in this chapter suggest that multiple kinds of knowledge are relevant to local
development processes, and that there is enormous untapped potential to generate
innovative solutions to social and economic challenges from within communities:
by bringing different development actors and their different knowledges together.
Further reading
On local knowledge in development work
An Anthropological Critique of Development, the Growth of Ignorance, edited by Mark Hobart.
Routledge, 1993.
The Cultural Dimension of Development, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, edited by D. Michael
Warren, L. Jan Slikkerveer, and David Brokensha. Intermediate Technology Publications,
1995.
Investigating Local Knowledge: New Directions, New Approaches, edited by Alan Bicker, Paul
Sillitoe, and Johan Pottier. Ashgate, 2004.
Negotiating Local Knowledge: Power and Identity in Development, edited by Johan Pottier, Alan
Bicker, and Paul Sillitoe. Pluto Press, 2003.
Participating in Development, Approaches to Indigenous Knowledge, edited by Paul Sillitoe, Alan
Bicker, and Johan Pottier. ASA Monographs 39. Routledge, 2002.
On place-based knowledge and innovation

Architectures of Knowledge: Firms, Capabilities and Communities, by Ash Amin and Patrick
Cohendet. Oxford University Press, 2004.
The Associational Economy: Firms, Regions, and Innovation, by Philip Cooke and Kevin Morgan.
Oxford University Press, 1998.
Innovation, Networks, and Knowledge Spillover, Selected Essays, by Manfred M. Fischer. Springer,
2006.
‘Knowledge Spillovers, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development’, by David B. Audretsch
and T. Taylor Aldridge, in Handbook of Regional Growth and Development Theories, edited
by Roberta Capello and Peter Nijkamp. Edward Elgar, 2009.
The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy, by Michael Storper. Guilford
Press, 1997.
Practical application: farmers’ participatory research

Farmers’ participatory research is one practical example in which develop-
ment practitioners have brought local, contextualized knowledge together
with ‘expert’ scientific knowledge to generate new solutions. Farmers’
participatory research is an approach to agricultural research that involves
local farmers actively in the identification of problems and the design and
conduct of experiments to find solutions. Based on the insight that every
local environment is different and farmers have extensive ‘practice’ knowl-
edge of this environment, farmers’ participatory research recognizes that
the combination of local knowledge and expert agricultural science will
likely produce better results than either on its own.
The basic proposition of farmers’ participatory research as a new kind of
rural development approach was outlined in the edited volume Farmer First:
Farmer Innovation and Agricultural Research in 1989;23 this volume popular-
ized the insight that farmers could play an active role as co-researchers in the
quest for solutions to rural production challenges. Farmers’ participatory
research became an increasingly common approach in agriculture-focused
rural development projects in the 1980s and 1990s, described for one set-
ting as ‘agricultural research in which farmers take part in making decisions
at nearly all stages of the research cycle: from identifying the problem to
designing the experiment and analysis’.24
A series of follow-up volumes over the years has continued to provide
case studies and analysis of the ‘farmer first’ approach in practice. Beyond
Farmer First: Rural People’s Knowledge, Agricultural Research, and Extension
Practice was published in 199425 and Farmer First Revisited: Innovation for Agri-
cultural Research and Development in 2009;26 each of these edited volumes
provides numerous examples from around the world of the achievements,
limitations, and potential of farmers’ participatory research in practice.
Notes
1 For a nearly endless litany of examples, it suffices to skim any of the popular online
‘development jobs’ listings – such as, for instance, DevNet Jobs (www.devnetjobs.org)
or the Institute of Development Studies’ Yellow Monday newsletter: www.ids.ac.uk/
yellow-monday.
2 For the Australian context, see, for instance the Higher Education Participation and
Partnerships Program at www.innovation.gov.au/highereducation/Equity/Higher
EducationParticipationAndPartnershipsProgram/Pages/default.aspx, the review of Par-
ticipation and Equity by Universities Australia (2008) at www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/
research/equity/docs/EquityReviewReport.pdf, and the Coalition’s Policy to Increase
Employment Participation (2013) at www.nationals.org.au/Portals/0/2013/policy/
The%20Coalition%E2%80%99s%20Policy%20to%20Increase%20Employment%20
Participation.pdf.
3 Michael Polanyi (1966) The Tacit Dimension. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
4 See, for instance, a summary in Christoph Antweiler (2004) ‘Local Knowledge Theory
and Methods: an Urban Model From Indonesia’ in Investigating Local Knowledge: New
Directions, New Approaches, eds. A. Bicker, P. Sillitoe, and J. Pottier. Aldershot, UK:
Ashgate, pp. 3–5.
Education Limited, pp. 176–179.
6 Mike Geddes (2000) ‘Tackling Social Exclusion in the European Union? The Limits
to the New Orthodoxy of Local Partnership’, in International Journal of Urban and
Regional Research 24(4), 793.
7 Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) has observed that: ‘[I]ndigenous Asian, American, Pacific
and African forms of knowledge, systems of classification, technologies and codes of
social life . . . began to be recorded in some detail by the seventeenth century. [These]
were regarded as “new discoveries” by Western science’. She then goes on to critically
observe that ‘These discoveries were commodified as property belonging to the cultural
archive and body of knowledge of the West’. L. Tuhiwai Smith (1999) Decolonizing
Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books, p. 61.
8 David Brokensha, D. M. Warren, and O. Werner (eds.) (1980) Indigenous Knowledge
Systems and Development. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
9 D. Michael Warren, L. J. Slikkerveer, and D. Brokensha (eds.) (1995) The Cultural
Dimension of Development, Indigenous Knowledge Systems. London: Intermediate Technol-
ogy Publications.
10 Alan Bicker, P. Sillitoe, and J. Pottier (2004) Investigating Local Knowledge: New Directions,
New Approaches. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, p. xi.
11 Paul Richards (1985) Indigenous Agricultural Revolution: Ecology and Food Production in
West Africa. London: Hutchinson, pp. 9, 12, 13.
12 Christoph Antweiler (2004) ‘Local Knowledge Theory and Methods, an Urban Model
from Indonesia’, in Investigating Local Knowledge: New Directions, New Approaches, eds.
A. Bicker, P. Sillitoe, and J. Pottier. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, p. 1.
13 Ibid., p. 10.
14 See http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/internal_market/businesses/intellectual_
property/l66044_en.htm.
15 James Scott (1998) Seeing Like a State, How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condi-
tion Have Failed. Yale University: Yale Agrarian Studies Series. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, p. 319.
16 One of the best-known theorists of innovation was Joseph Schumpeter, who defined
innovation as an economic act involving the introduction of a new product, process,
market, input, or strategic organization. See J. A. Schumpeter (1934) The Theory of

Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest and the Business Cycle.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
17 For instance, see Bjørn T. Asheim, R. Boschma, and P. Cooke (2011) ‘Constructing
Regional Advantage: Platform Policies Based on Related Variety and Differentiated
Knowledge Bases’, Regional Studies, 45(7), 893–904; Ash Amin and Patrick Cohendet
(2004) Architectures of Knowledge: Firms, Capabilities and Communities. Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press; and Michael Storper (1995) ‘The Resurgence of Regional
Economies, Ten Years Later: The Region as Nexus of Untraded Interdependencies’,
European Urban and Regional Studies, 2, 191–221.
18 The literature on place-based innovation uses the language of ‘knowledge spillovers’ to
describe how different kinds of knowledge come together across firms and
industries.
19 Arjun Appadurai (2004) ‘The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and the Terms of Recogni-
tion’ in Culture and Public Action, eds. V. Rao and M. Walton. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, pp. 77–78.
20 See, e.g., Norman Long and Magdalena Villarreal (1993) ‘Exploring Development
Interfaces: From Knowledge Transfer to Transformation of Meaning’, in Beyond the
Impasse: New Directions in Development Theory, ed. F. Schuurman. London: Zed, pp.
140–168.
21 Norman Long (1992) ‘Conclusion’, in Battlefields of Knowledge, The Interlocking of Theory
and Practice in Social Research and Development, ed. N. Long and A. Long. London and
New York: Routledge, p. 274.
22 Current interest in indigenous development models in Bolivia has, for instance, encour-
aged a strong emphasis on the value of local cultural knowledge – sometimes to the
extreme of de-valuing all nonindigenous/Western forms of knowledge. A focus on
local knowledge taken to extremes is sometimes termed Pachamamísmo – a modern cult
of the native Pachamama deity in development work.
23 Robert Chambers, Arnold Pacey, and Lori Ann Thrupp (eds.) (1989) Farmer First: Farmer
Innovation and Agricultural Research. London: Intermediate Technology Publications.
24 Kiros Hiruy and Robyn Eversole (2013) ‘Participation at the Coalface: Translating Local
Knowledges and Institutions in Post-War Tigray, North Ethiopia’, in Community Devel-
opment Journal, 48(2), 220.
25 Ian Scoones and John Thompson (eds.) (1994) Beyond Farmer First: Rural People’s
Knowledge, Agricultural Research, and Extension Practice. London: Intermediate Technology
Publications.
26 Ian Scoones, John Thompson, and Robert Chambers (eds.) (2009) Farmer First Revis-
ited: Innovation for Agricultural Research and Development. Oxford: ITDG.
6
KNOWLEDGE PARTNERSHIPS
IN PRACTICE
Case studies of innovative practice

The ideas discussed in Chapter Five suggest that knowledge is central to creating
new development solutions. Yet the knowledge that is needed for local develop-
ment is not just the abstract knowledge of experts. Local knowledge also matters
for development. It includes a range of locally contextualized skills, practices,
understandings, and experiences of individuals, groups, communities, and organiza-
tions located in a particular place. Networked knowledge is the result of relationships
through which this local knowledge is transferred and adapted within and across
local contexts. Chapter Five observed that abstract knowledge, local knowledge,
and networked knowledge are all relevant for local communities and development
organizations as they seek to find new solutions to development issues. Neverthe-
less, no one community or organization has all the knowledge it needs. This
suggests a particular role for development practitioners: to build relationships
among diverse development actors and help them to bring their different kinds
of knowledge together.
Knowledge partnerships were defined in Chapter Five as relationships in which
people and organizations share knowledge to create innovative solutions. Knowledge
partnering, in turn, was defined as the practice of working with diverse communi-
ties and organizations to bring different kinds of knowledge into dialogue. Enabling
knowledge to ‘spill over’ across different communities will, in theory, catalyze new
social and economic solutions. This chapter explores how this theory of knowledge
partnerships works in practice. It gives examples to illustrate how, in a broad range
of contexts across the world, innovative development solutions have emerged when
different kinds of knowledge have come together.
The chapter describes and analyzes three case studies of development innova-
tion. The first is the international microfinance movement. The second is
community-based education and learning approaches. The third is social enterprise.
108 Knowledge partnerships in practice
These three case studies are widely recognized examples of development innova-
tion. Each has proposed a new approach to solving entrenched social or economic
problems. Microfinance, for instance, created a new approach to economic devel-
opment work in poor communities. Community-based learning proposed a new
approach to education. And social enterprises provided a new response to the
challenge of generating resources for social-benefit activities. Each case study
represents innovative development practice: practice that has challenged and
extended accepted ways of doing development in order to solve old problems in
new ways.
Each of these approaches has challenged development practitioners’ accepted
paradigms, frameworks, and ways of working. These approaches were not informed
solely by expert knowledge, nor were they informed solely by local knowledge.
Rather, new approaches to old problems emerged when different kinds of knowl-
edge from different communities came together. All three approaches have been
able to show real, practical results on the ground, to the extent that they have
captured the imagination of development practitioners and communities around
the world and ‘gone global’. There are now examples of these practices in local
communities all around the world. Each has been replicated and extended many
times, into new local settings and in response to different needs. This has created
an enormous amount of networked knowledge as different local experiences are
shared. Rather than a single cohesive practice or approach, each of these case
studies has become a type of global movement, in which different knowledges
continue to dialogue to inform practice.
Microfinance: small change, big change

From early experiments with microcredit for small enterprise development in the
1970s to the thousands of organizations worldwide that now offer microfinance
services and the millions of people who access them, microfinance has arguably
been one of the world’s biggest development success stories. Though it is far from
a cure-all for the problems of poverty, microfinance has proven a compelling
approach for addressing some of poverty’s financial aspects: namely, poor people’s
lack of access to financial services. These services include small-scale finance for
businesses, safe and accessible savings and at-call bank accounts, and other financial
products intended to expand economic opportunities and safety nets for poor
clients. Microfinance programs are enormously varied and operate in both urban
and rural contexts, in both poor and wealthy countries. What they share is a new
way of thinking about financial services in poor communities.
Microfinance can be defined simply as the provision of financial services for
low-income people. Traditionally, financial services were the provenance of banks
and were available to those with money. The idea of offering financial services
for poor people was counterintuitive. The assumption was that poor people had no
need of financial services and no capacity to pay back loans. Mohammad Yunus,
a Bangladeshi economics professor and the founder of the Grameen Bank, is
Knowledge partnerships in practice 109
credited with challenging this assumption. His work on the ground with com-
munities in Bangladesh in the 1970s showed him that poor people were, in fact,
actively running small-scale businesses. He also observed that these small-scale
businesses were starved for capital. As he later wrote:
I could not believe anybody could suffer a life of bonded labour because
she could not find 20 US cents to carry on her business. . . . When I gave
$27 as loans to forty-two people, I could not believe one could produce so
much happiness in so many people with so little money! There was no way
I could leave this whole episode at that. . . . I wanted a better arrangement –
an institutional arrangement, so that these poor people could find money
whenever they needed it.1
The ‘institutional arrangement’ ultimately became the Grameen Bank, or rural

village bank of Bangladesh. Grameen’s approach and lending methodology – using
the mutual guarantees of lending group members in place of traditional banking
collateral and focusing on women in their local communities – caught the atten-
tion of many and quickly went global, with replication programs in thirty-seven
countries by 2006.2
The Grameen Bank brought microfinance to world attention as a new kind
of antipoverty strategy, but it was not the only microfinance initiative on the
landscape. In the mid-1970s, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on various
continents had started to experiment with lending to small-scale businesses or
‘microenterprises’.3 Maria Otero of the Acción microfinance network has written
of that organization’s early work:
[It was in] 1973 – that ACCION started lending to these tiny businesses
that were selling their wares on the busy streets of the city of Recife, Brazil.
Their owners were poor people, mostly migrants from the rural area, who
were trying to cope in the city. With no jobs available, they relied on their
own creativity and tenacity to build tiny businesses run from their dirt floor
homes or on the streets. Market vendors, bakers, carpenters, seamstresses,
furniture makers – hundreds of thousands of people, later millions, trying
to lift their families out of poverty through their own efforts. . . . ACCION
recognized an entrepreneurial spirit in people who had to rely on themselves
and decided to build on it – to use the energy and drive people exhibited
to help them improve their own condition.4
At about the same time, another major microfinance network, Women’s World
Banking, was founded with the vision to provide financial services to women
microentrepreneurs:
The idea for Women’s World Banking was conceived during the first United
Nations World Conference on Women, held in Mexico City in 1975. At
this meeting, ten visionary women from five continents articulated a simple
but innovative concept: that providing small loans and other financial services
to poor women entrepreneurs could be a major force in the global fight
against poverty.5
Many of these early microfinance models focused on giving loans for micro-
enterprise development. As a result, they were usually referred to as microenterprise
credit programs, or simply ‘microcredit’. However, a number of initiatives also
encouraged savings activities. These drew on an on-the-ground tradition of
community-based ‘revolving’ or ‘rotating’ savings clubs, in which members lever-
aged their savings into larger lump sums. The idea of ROSCAs (rotating savings
and credit associations) emerged from observing this on-the-ground practice in
different parts of the world; the idea was subsequently adapted in various ways
by development organizations. ROSCAs and their variants, some established more
formally as ‘village banks’ (see Practical Application sidebar), provided a way for
local communities to leverage their own savings into capital for members’ business
or household needs. By the 1990s, microfinance became the standard term used to
describe various strategies for providing loans, savings, and other financial services
in poor communities.
Today, microfinance programs around the world provide a range of financial
services in a wide range of contexts. In wealthy countries such as the United
States and Australia, there are typically two broad types of microfinance products.
Microenterprise credit products provide low-interest or no-interest loans for enterprise
startup in disadvantaged communities or for particular target groups: for instance,
low-income women, young people, or Indigenous communities.6 Consumer lending
provides low-interest or no-interest loans to low-income people to cover major
or emergency expenditures such as the purchase of household appliances.7 Con-
sumer lending is not about starting or growing businesses; it is about enabling
poor households to cover a cash-flow shortage without needing to turn to high-
interest private lenders. In addition to these two lending models, there have also
been some interesting experiments with matched savings programs, which provide
poor families with a financial incentive for regular bank saving.8 In wealthy coun-
tries, microfinance is typically provided by not-for-profit and community-based
organizations, although in some cases private banks are involved as part of their
corporate social responsibility initiatives.
In poorer countries, there is a similar focus on financial inclusion and economic
benefits for disadvantaged communities, but microfinance has moved much closer
to mainstream commercial lending. A number of mainstream banks have started
microfinance arms and are active players in the microfinance industry, offering a
range of financial products. In addition, a number of not-for-profit microfinance
organizations have, over time, converted into banks or quasi-bank institutions,
which has enabled them to capture savings and provide a wider range of services
for their clients. In many contexts, banks have realized that while the costs of
providing small-scale banking services to poorer clients are high, the volume of
demand is also high. As a result, providing accessible microfinance services in

some markets can actually be profitable. This is a far cry from the original assump-
tion that the poor were not creditworthy and did not require financial services.
Numerous authors have hailed microfinance as a ground-breaking new idea
in development practice.9 It proposes a different way of thinking about poor
people (as ‘microentrepreneurs’ and ‘microfinance clients’) and a different way of
thinking about banking services (as a right – to be financially ‘included’ – rather
than as a privilege of the wealthy). Reflecting on the history of microfinance
suggests that a number of different kinds of knowledge came together to spark
this innovation. In the early days of microfinance, on-the-ground knowledge from
experience and observation revealed that poor people were actively starting and
running small-scale businesses to employ themselves. These observations, whether
in Bangladesh or Brazil, also revealed that capital access was a key constraint for
these businesses. Microfinance emerged at the meeting point between the local
knowledge of poor business owners and the organizational knowledge of develop-
ment professionals. The latter spotted the opportunity to leverage these tiny local
businesses into a global fight against poverty.
The initial spark of innovation thus came from challenging the prevalent
assumption that poor people didn’t have and couldn’t make money. The micro-
credit approach pioneered by organizations like Grameen and Acción argued that
poor people could and did make money; all that was lacking was a bit of capital
for their microbusiness activities. This knowledge sparked the microcredit move-
ment. It did not, however, create contemporary microfinance. Other kinds of
knowledge were still needed. In the early days, many not-for-profit organizations
attempted to run loan programs for the poor, yet few were successful. Often, these
organizations lacked professional skills in how to run a lending operation: for
instance, how to screen clients, how to monitor repayment rates, and how to keep
the transaction costs of lending down. This lack of banking knowledge created a
plethora of unsustainable financial services, programs that had to continually be
propped up by grant monies to survive because their lending costs were high.
Responding to these issues, microcredit professionals and their organizations
shifted their emphasis in the 1990s to microfinance and the creation of sustainable
financial services. The need for banking knowledge was recognized; microcredit and
microfinance programs started to hire people with banking and client-management
skills in order to make their financial services run well. Financial and operational
sustainability benchmarks were developed and shared among institutions interna-
tionally.10 Microfinance became more efficient and sustainable, particularly in
poorer countries with high-volume markets. As a result, a new knowledge base
began to develop about how to provide small-scale financial services well. This
was highly networked knowledge, as organizations in different places shared their
experiences and benchmarked their performance.
Yet knowledge of good banking practice was not the only kind of knowl-
edge needed for successful microfinance. As microfinance organizations became
more commercially competitive through the 1990s, concerns were increasingly
voiced around the world: Had they forgotten about their aim to fight poverty?
Had they abandoned truly needy clients in favor of wealthier and more profitable
ones?11 The ‘commercialization of microfinance’ had embedded banking knowledge
into microfinance and created financially sustainable banking organizations, but
very little was known about the extent to which these microfinance organizations
were actually making a difference for poor people. Knowledge about the socio-
economic impacts of microfinance was still largely lacking, even as large claims
were being made about its antipoverty benefits.
In the new millennium, more microfinance organizations started to take these
concerns on board. The focus turned to measuring the impacts of microfinance
programs and finding out how well they were actually reaching poor clients, meet-
ing their needs, and making a difference in their lives.12 The Institute of Develop-
ment Studies in the UK, which has led a large international project on microfinance
impact assessment, notes that:
The renewed interest in the social goals of microfinance is part of a histori-

cal shift in industry practice from a near exclusive focus on the financial
performance of institutions to a more active concern for their clients. This
shift is marked by a surge of interest in various types of impact assessment,
market research and product development, all directed to helping us gain a
better understanding of our clients and how we can best serve them.13
Thus, knowledge about clients and their needs was identified as a key missing
ingredient in the microfinance movement. As a result, various efforts have been
made to seek out clients’ knowledge to inform practice.
The history of microfinance demonstrates that this global development innova-
tion has been the result of an extended process of bringing different kinds of
knowledge together. Early proponents of microfinance spoke with the owners of
tiny businesses on the ground and learned that the real constraint facing these
poor people was not an inability to make money but a lack of access to capital.
Subsequently, attempts were made to create organizations and programs that would
provide this capital to those who needed it. These efforts met with uneven suc-
cess, however, until banking expertise came on board, complementing early lending
innovations to create new kinds of sustainable microfinance services. As networks
developed among practitioners and microfinance organizations, they were able to
learn from each other, benchmark their performance, and grow the range of
services they offered. Yet the emphasis on banking performance led many to
overlook the on-the-ground needs and experiences of the poor communities
microfinance was designed to help. Microfinance managers recognized that they
needed to know more about their socio-economic impacts if they were to fulfill
their stated mission. Microfinance clients – and, indeed, nonclients – have impor-
tant knowledge about the real extent of microfinance programs’ impact. Only
with this knowledge can microfinance practitioners be confident that they are
providing a truly effective antipoverty strategy.
Community-based learning: knowing places

Over the years, the microfinance movement has benefited from the support of
organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations. It has been a
high-profile international movement.14 By contrast, the second case study is less
visible as an international movement. Nevertheless, like microfinance, community-
based learning approaches represent a significant development innovation. While
microfinance is concerned with fighting poverty through finance, community-based
learning is concerned with creating educational opportunities for disadvantaged
groups. It proposes a completely new kind of educational approach: redefining
what is meant by education and intentionally connecting it back into local social
and cultural contexts. While microfinance created a new approach to banking for
the poor, community-based learning proposed a new model of educating – by
and for the supposedly ‘uneducated’.
Community-based learning can be defined as educational approaches that are
grounded in local community contexts and that see these local contexts as central
to the process of education and learning. Community-based learning thus stands
in contrast to traditional educational approaches that are focused on the transmis-
sion of standardized curricula from teacher to students. While community-based
learning approaches are not limited to disadvantaged communities, it is in such
contexts that they have historically proven most valuable. Disadvantaged com-
munities have often found traditional educational systems inaccessible to them
due to issues such as cost, distance, language, and social status. In addition, the
education received in these standardized educational institutions has often been
disconnected from their most pressing learning needs. Community-based learning
approaches have provided an important alternative. These educational approaches
are deeply grounded in local contexts and actively incorporate different kinds of
local knowledges into the learning process.
A key thinker and practitioner of community-based learning approaches was
the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. In the 1960s, Freire implemented an innovative
approach to adult literacy education in poor communities in Brazil, an approach
that later spread across Brazil and to numerous other countries. Freire’s educational
work consciously proposed an alternative to the traditional approach of transfer-
ring standardized knowledge from the elite to the poor. Rather, he proposed that
the role of education was to help people reflect upon and change their situation,
a process he called critical consciousness raising, or conscientização in Portuguese.
Specifically, Freire argued that ‘no educational experience takes place in a vacuum’
but in real-world contexts: contexts that have social, historical, and political com-
ponents.15 Freire’s critical stance on education was that education had the potential
to be either an instrument of conformity or ‘the practice of freedom’ – that is,
‘the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality
and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world’.16
Thus, Freire proposed a contextualized, community-based approach to educa-
tion in which knowledge sharing was central. He argued that learning needed to
be much different than the usual process ‘in which the students are the depositories
and the teacher is the depositor’ and in which ‘knowledge is a gift bestowed by
those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider
to know nothing’.17 Rather, Freire took as his starting point local people’s own
knowledge about their local contexts. He argued that this knowledge played a
central role in the process of education. His educational work in local communities –
rural communities and urban slums – in his native Brazil included involved forming
‘culture circles’ of approximately twenty-five to thirty local people. These local
community-based groups ‘combined training in reading and writing with lessons
in self-reflection, cultural identity and political agency’.18 This curriculum was
embedded in the contexts of students’ lives; it started from local reality and through
dialogue, aimed to provoke ‘the discovering of need for knowing’.19
Freire’s work successfully linked knowledge from educational theory and knowl-
edge from community-based practice to propose a new way of ‘educating’ disad-
vantaged communities, one that drew on the diverse local knowledges and practices
of these communities themselves. These ideas became widely known and applied
in a range of community-based learning projects beyond Brazil. While Freire’s
approach is perhaps the best documented, there were similar experiences elsewhere
of working with local communities to build education and learning opportunities
from the ground up. In the United States, for instance, the Highlander Center in
Tennessee has a long tradition of working with rural Appalachian and Southern
communities in popular education and social change initiatives.20 Founded in 1932
as the Highlander Folk School, its approach to adult learning and community
organizing is strongly linked to local knowledge about the local place. One of
Highlander’s founders, Myles Horton, has observed that when he started to work
with rural Appalachian communities,
[T]hey thought I was going to give them the solution to their problems. . . .
I knew more than they did about a lot of these things, because they might
know about the specific situation but they didn’t link it up with other situ-
ations, with general situations. . . . [But I was unable to provide the solu-
tion]. [M]ore in desperation than anything else, I remembered my college
experience about turning to other people and getting ideas from others . . .
So I said . . . Let’s talk about what you know. You know this better than
anybody else. You don’t have any answers, but you know the problems. . . .
That was the beginning of this understanding that there’s knowledge there
that they didn’t recognize. . . . [B]efore the evening was over people began
to feel that from their peers they were beginning to get a lot of answers’.21
Highlander went on to develop popular education approaches with a strong

focus on community-driven social change.
The Highlander Center, as an example of community-based education in the
United States, was itself influenced by the Danish ‘folk school’ movement.22 The
‘folk schools’ started in the mid-1800s to provide popular education in local
languages for the peasantry in rural areas of Denmark; the idea later spread to
other parts of Scandinavia. The folk school movement was an attempt to popular-
ize education and make relevant learning experiences available to non-elites in
rural areas. As an early experience, the folk school movement suggested that
education had a broader role than simply the training of elites or the transmission
of a rigid curriculum. Rather, the folk schools proposed that education should
play a role in growing the confidence and the ‘empowerment’ of local
communities.23
Community-based learning approaches have been applied in a variety of con-
texts to situate learning and education in local community contexts and to build
upon the knowledges and life experiences of local community members. Typically,
they are ‘popular’ education approaches; that is, they focus on the ‘people’, non-
elite and often disadvantaged groups. Local people are often the teachers as well
as the students, learning from each other. Often, as in the Brazilian culture circles
or the work of the Highlander Centre, social change is the ultimate goal.
Community-based learning is thus part of the heritage of contemporary com-
munity development practice. Nevertheless, it started as a new way of doing
education – by recognizing that the expert knowledge of teachers was not the
only knowledge needed for effective learning.
Community-based learning approaches are still actively used today in com-
munity development practice. One form they take is the community study circle.
A study circle can be defined as ‘a small group of people, usually between 5–12
who look at a particular subject in depth and develop some recommendations or
decisions from their study’.24 Community study circles have been used in a number
of contexts internationally to facilitate adult learning and knowledge sharing (see
Practical Application sidebar). Community-based learning approaches have also
been used in school settings to ground aspects of the curriculum in the local
context and culture – for instance, by engaging actively with local industries (e.g.,
school farms), local environments (e.g., school wetlands), and local communities
(e.g., cross-generational learning projects). One well-known example of the latter
is the Foxfire project, a cross-generational oral history project in the Appalachian
Mountains that brought together high school students and local elders to docu-
ment local community culture and history. The Foxfire Project emphasized local
cultural knowledge and encouraged young people to learn from local elders; the
project then shared this knowledge more broadly with the public through the
publication of a series of books.25
At the heart of community-based learning is the recognition that different
kinds of knowledge matter. The knowledge that learners already have about their
local place and experiences is the starting point for education. As Freire has noted:
We cannot educate if we don’t start – and I said start and not stay – from
the levels in which the people perceive themselves, their relationships with
the others and with reality, because that is precisely what makes their
knowledge.26
Community-based learning starts with local people, places, things, and ideas
and builds from there. It challenges the idea that education is about delivering or
‘depositing’ standardized abstract knowledge from teacher to student in accordance
with a preset curriculum. Rather than starting with the assumption that the stu-
dents lack knowledge and need to be taught what outsiders know, community-
based learning puts the emphasis on local knowledges as the starting point for
further learning. People can ‘find their own voice’ while also challenging and
extending their worldviews.27 Especially for students with limited experience of
formal education, community-based learning approaches build confidence as they
realize that they start their learning process from a position of knowledge, not
ignorance.
Social enterprises: valuable business

Community-based learning approaches have been applied in a range of different
contexts, across different countries, and often under different names. The third
case study represents a similarly eclectic practice, yet one that has begun to adopt
a common language and identity on the global stage. Social enterprises take different
forms; their names and specific characteristics vary across enterprises and across
country contexts. Yet in recent years, social enterprises have become visible as a
new global movement attracting considerable interest from academics, practitioners,
and policy makers. Social enterprises are innovative because they propose a sus-
tainable way of resourcing activities for social and community benefit, by creating
income-generating enterprises. Like microfinance and community-based learning,
social enterprises represent a new approach to solving old development issues: they
are an example of development innovation.
Social enterprises can be defined broadly as organizations that use enterprise
activities to fulfill a social mission. On the one hand, social enterprises act like
private-sector businesses: they produce products and/or services to generate
resources – usually, cash income. On the other hand, they act like traditional not-
for-profit community-sector organizations: they are established to accomplish a
social or community mission, such as helping disadvantaged groups or meeting a
gap in services for a local community. Social enterprises are organizations that
bring together the characteristics of both private-sector businesses and not-for-
profit community organizations. They are not either one or the other; rather, they
are designed to create both economic resources and social benefits. Social enterprises
aim to generate multiple forms of value.
Social enterprises challenge the longstanding divide between ‘business-sector’
and ‘community-sector’ activity and show that a single organization can do both.
In doing both, social enterprises offer a potential answer to a longstanding problem
in social development practice: How to resource community-benefit activities
sustainably? Funding, whether from public-sector grants, private philanthropy, or
international aid, is seldom adequate to meet the real needs on the ground. The
not-for-profit sector is caught in a continuous sustainability battle in which
organizations may spend as much time seeking funding as they do delivering

services. It is difficult to ‘scale up’ successful initiatives to help more people or
even to maintain successful initiatives when funding streams dry up. Resourcing
constraints create frustration and instability for not-for-profit organizations and
for the communities they serve.
Social enterprises illustrate a different approach to resourcing: one in which an
organization simultaneously generates both community benefits and the economic
resources to support their work. The community in turn may provide further
resourcing, for instance, through the labor and skills of community volunteers.
Social enterprises are not the answer to all the resourcing challenges facing the
not-for-profit sector, but they propose a provocative model, one in which social-
benefit activities generate community support and business activities generate a
sustainable resource flow in a virtuous circle (see Figure 6.1). For example, a local
organization may seek to provide both employment and social opportunities for
disadvantaged local young people by opening a community café. This social-benefit
activity generates interest and goodwill in the broader community, making a range
of resources available: a low-cost venue, subsidized training, volunteer mentoring.
When it opens, local people support the café. Community goodwill drives a
successful business activity that earns money. The money earned by the café in
turn creates a stable flow of resources to support further initiatives to benefit local
young people. Social enterprises, in theory, create a virtuous flow of resources
across both ‘business’ and ‘community’ domains.
In practice, social enterprises take a range of organizational forms; various pub-
lished case examples give a sense of the broad range of organizations that fit this
category.28 Community-owned businesses often meet the broad definition
Social-benefit
activity
Goodwill,
Financial
community
resources
resources
Business
activity
FIGURE 6.1 Social Enterprise as a Virtuous Resource Circle

of organizations that do business for social benefit; these are often referred to as
‘community enterprises’ or ‘cooperatives’, depending on their context and legal
structure. Such organizations may provide needed services in isolated areas (such as
community banks or community stores). Or they may provide opportunities for
local people – often poor or otherwise disadvantaged – to gain access to markets
for their products (for instance, artisans’ associations or farmers’ cooperatives). Social
enterprises also include the business or trading arms of not-for-profit organizations
(for example, opportunity shops run by charities). Not all of these organizations
necessarily refer to themselves as social enterprises. Nevertheless, they generate a
virtuous flow of resources across business and community activities.
One of the most common forms of social enterprises are businesses that are
set up to provide training and employment opportunities for disadvantaged groups,
such as people with disabilities or others who are facing barriers to employment.
These enterprises may also go by other names, such as ‘disability enterprises’ or
‘training enterprises’. ‘Intermediate labor market organizations’ are enterprises
specifically designed to create pathways into employment for disadvantaged job
seekers (see Practical Application sidebar). They produce products and/or services
to sell while preparing their clients for mainstream employment. In other cases,
social enterprises are designed to provide an ongoing employment opportunity
for particular groups, such as residents of remote communities or people with
disabilities. Gardening and landscaping services, cleaning and recycling services,
printing and design services, and food service are among the popular types of
social enterprises established to create training and employment opportunities.
Another subset of social enterprises is structured as traditional private businesses
but characterized by a core mission to generate social benefit. For such ‘social
businesses’, their social-benefit mission goes much deeper than the peripheral
social-benefit activities that may be undertaken by any company (such as funding
a local sports team or providing a percentage of profits to charity). Rather, for
social businesses, generating social benefit is central to the organization’s mission.
Social businesses are typically established specifically to address a big-picture social
challenge such as supplying energy to poor communities in remote areas; they
have been referred to as ‘cause-driven businesses’.29
While the practice of creating and running these kinds of hybrid organizations
is not new, a new language of ‘social enterprise’ has recently emerged to talk about
it. A key attraction for both policy makers and practitioners is the virtuous circle
of combining income-generating ‘enterprise’ with social-benefit activities of dif-
ferent kinds. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) has released several reports on social enterprise, and national, state, and
local governments in the UK, Australia, and elsewhere have invested in a range of
programs to support social enterprise development. As interest grows, various
national and international social enterprise networks and forums have been estab-
lished. Despite the different forms taken by social enterprises and the different
languages used to describe their work, all are organizations that combine business
enterprises with a mission to create broader social and community benefits.
Social enterprises are innovative because they bring two very different kinds
of knowledge together: the private sector’s ability to generate financial resources
and the social sector’s ability to generate benefits for people and communities.
Each represents a particular knowledge set: on the one hand, how to make money;
on the other, how to work with communities to make a difference. Successful
social enterprises draw on business knowledge about how to mobilize resources
efficiently to generate a profit, and they draw on community knowledge about
available resources and needs within communities. Unsuccessful social enterprises –
and there are many that start and fail, or fail to start – typically lack one or the
other of these knowledge sets. Those who provide advice and support for new
social enterprises frequently emphasize that a good idea is not enough: a sound
business plan is needed, and social enterprises must first and foremost equip
themselves to survive as businesses.30 At the same time, as organizations with a
social purpose, they also need to know how to work effectively with communities.
It is this mix of business and community knowledges that enables social enterprises
to create a virtuous circle of resources for their communities.
Bringing knowledges together

The three case studies presented in this chapter – microfinance, community-based
learning, and social enterprise – are all examples of development innovation. Each
has created a new solution to old issues by challenging mainstream ways of doing-
things. Each has done so by bringing together different kinds of knowledge across
places, communities, and disciplines to tackle old problems in new ways. Each of
these new approaches has been embraced across a broad range of contexts inter-
nationally. These case studies illustrate the kinds of innovative development practices
that can emerge when different kinds of knowledge come together.
Microfinance proposed an innovative approach to fighting poverty by making
financial services available to poor people. As a development innovation, microfinance
challenged a core assumption in the aid industry: that poor people were not capable
of generating income for themselves. It also challenged a core assumption in the
banking industry: that poor people had no money and therefore no use for banking
services. On-the-ground knowledge about the existence of grassroots microenter-
prises and community-based savings groups challenged these assumptions. Combining
this grassroots knowledge with the organizational knowledge and networks of
development workers led to the birth of the microfinance movement. Integrating
banking knowledge in turn enabled microfinance practitioners to create more sus-
tainable financial organizations. Microfinance has consequently gone global. In the
process, it has needed to draw on additional knowledge sets to balance the practi-
calities of good banking with the ultimate aim of fighting poverty.
Community-based learning proposed an innovative approach to education in
disadvantaged communities by embedding the education process in the local
community context. Community-based learning challenged a core assumption
about education: that it was a commodity that could be delivered to disadvantaged
communities by external experts. Educators who worked closely with disadvan-

taged communities on the ground, like Freire and Horton, saw the deep disconnect
between these communities’ preoccupations and the formal education on offer.
They recognized that the abstract, generalized knowledge offered by educators did
not provide direct answers to specific, local concerns – and that local students
knew their own contexts best. The idea to start the education process with people’s
own knowledge and experiences and allow them to learn from one another has
been echoed by educators around the world. It has made education relevant to
local contexts and concerns and has linked the learning process with larger aspira-
tions for social change.
Finally, social enterprise proposed an innovative approach to generating resources
for social-benefit activities. It did so by challenging the assumed divide between
private for-profit and community-focused not-for-profit organizations. Social enter-
prises are hybrid organizations that use enterprise activities to fulfill a social mission.
To accomplish this, they bring together very different knowledge sets: knowledge
about how to run a business and knowledge about how to work with communities.
By crossing over the boundaries of traditional organizational forms, social enterprises
create virtuous resource circles that draw together resources from both communities
and markets to support social and community goals.
These three cases of development innovation illustrate how new solutions
emerge when different kinds of knowledge come together. Mainstream banks,
development organizations, education providers, local residents, and businesses were
not able to provide solutions on their own to the challenges of poverty, illiteracy,
and resourcing social-benefit activity. To find answers, they needed to work together.
Yet this did not necessarily result in formal ‘partnership’ arrangements as discussed
in Chapter Four. In some cases, organizations have created partnerships, but often,
people and organizations have simply shared their knowledge with each other.
Poor microenterprise owners have shared their knowledge with aid workers, and
aid workers have shared their knowledge with banks. Microfinance organizations
have shared knowledge with each other in international networks. Adult and
young learners have shared their knowledge with their teachers, with each other –
and then, sometimes, with a larger audience. Businesses have learned from not-
for-profit organizations, not-for-profit organizations have learned from businesses,
and people with complementary skills have joined together to create new kinds
of organizations. Assumptions have been challenged. Ideas have sparked. And in
different ways, in different places around the world, innovations have emerged,
showing how to tackle old issues in new ways.
Further reading
On microfinance
Banker to the Poor: The Autobiography of Muhammad Yunus, Founder of the Grameen Bank, by
Muhammad Yunus with Alan Jolis. Penguin Books, 2007 (originally published 1998).
A Billion Bootstraps: Microcredit, Barefoot Banking, and the Business Solution for Ending Poverty,
by Phil Smith and Eric Thurman. McGraw-Hill, 2007.
Bootstrap Capital, Microenterprises and the American Poor, by Lisa J. Servon. Brookings Institu-
tion Press, 1999.
Finance Against Poverty, by David Hulme and Paul Mosley. Routledge, 1996.
Mainstreaming Microfinance: How Lending to the Poor Began, Grew, and Came of Age in Bolivia,
by Elisabeth Rhyne. Kumarian Press, 2001.
Measuring the Impact of Microfinance: Taking Stock of What We Know, by Nathanael Goldberg.
Grameen Foundation USA Publication Series. Grameen Foundation USA, 2005.
Microfinance: Evolution, Achievements and Challenges, edited by Malcolm Harper. ITDG Pub-
lishing, 2003.
The Microfinance Revolution (Volume 1), Sustainable Finance for the Poor, by Marguerite S.
Robinson. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank, 2001.
More Pathways Out of Poverty, edited by Sam Daley-Harris and Anna Awimbo. Kumarian Press,
2006.
What’s Wrong with Microfinance? edited by Thomas Dichter and Malcolm Harper. Practical
Action Publishing, 2007.
On community-based learning
The Foxfire Book Series (Books 1–12), Anchor, 1972; see also the Foxfire website: http://
www.foxfire.org/.
Freire, Teaching, and Learning: Culture Circles Across Contexts, by Mariana Souto-Manning.
Peter Lang. 2010.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire. Continuum Press, 2005 (originally published 1970).
The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation, by Paulo Freire. Bergin & Garvey, 1985.
Study Circles: Coming Together for Personal Growth and Social Change, by Leonard P. Oliver.
Seven Locks Press, 1987.
We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change, by Myles Horton
and Paulo Freire. Temple University Press, 1990.
On social enterprise
Australian Stories of Social Enterprises: Stories of Challenge, by Cheryl Kernot and Joanne
McNeill. University of New South Wales, 2011.
Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism That Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing
Needs, by Muhammad Yunus. Perseus Book Group, 2011.
The Changing Boundaries of Social Enterprise, edited by Antonella Noya. Organisation for
Economic Cooperation and Development, 2009.
The Emerging Fourth Sector, by Heerad Sabeti. Report: Program on Philanthropy and Social
Innovation. Aspen Institute, 2009.
The People’s Business: A Report on the State of Social Enterprise Survey 2013, by Social Enter-
prise UK. Social Enterprise UK, 2013.
Social Enterprises, OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), 1999.
Social Enterprise, a Global Comparison, edited by Janelle A. Kerlin. Tufts University Press, 2009.
Social Enterprise. At the Crossroads of Market, Public Policies and Civil Society, edited by
Marthe Nyssens. Routledge, 2006.
‘Social enterprises in rural community development’, by Robyn Eversole, Jo Barraket, and
Belinda Luke. Community Development Journal, 49(2), 245–261, 2014.
Succeeding at Social Enterprise, Hard-Won Lessons for Nonprofits and Social Entrepreneurs, by
Social Enterprise Alliance. Jossey-Bass, 2010.
Understanding Social Enterprise – Theory and Practice, by Rory Ridley-Duff and Mike Bull.
Sage, 2011.
Practical application: village banking

Village banking is a microfinance approach that focuses on building local
community-run microfinance institutions, particularly in rural areas. ‘Vil-
lage banks’ bring together the institutional structure of a bank with the
social structure of a local village: local residents organize themselves into
groups to manage loans and repayments.
FINCA is an international microfinance organization that was founded
on the village banking model and has been working for thirty years. It sup-
ports self-managed groups of local people in poor areas – organized as
village banks – to distribute loans for enterprise purposes, capture savings,
and monitor repayments of capital provided by FINCA.31 Village savings and
lending associations are a similar model of self-managed lending and sav-
ings groups, used by CARE and other development organizations. A differ-
ence is that unlike village banks, they do not receive external capital.32
The various village banking approaches all seek to create self-managed
local microfinance organizations. These are frequently run by women and
have been established in a range of local communities around the world,
providing finance for business investment, emergencies, and other uses.
They are an example of how microfinance practitioners have sought to
catalyze the creation of financial services in new settings, often drawing on
local knowledge and traditional practices alongside formal financial man-
agement approaches.
Practical application: community study circles

Community study circles are a method that has been used around the
world to bring together community members in a small-group setting over
a period of time to learn and share their knowledge and perspectives. Com-
munity study circles are thus very like the ‘culture circles’ used by Freire in
his work in Brazil. They are a method for community-based learning that
intentionally encourages local community members to share knowledge
with one another.
Study circles have a history in Sweden dating from the early twentieth
century and remain popular as an adult learning approach; a recent report
estimates that there are around 300,000 in that country.33 In the United
States, study circles have been referred to as ‘safe spaces for members of the
community to talk across polarized boundaries about difficult issues’; they
have been used as a format for community conversations around sensitive
topics like racism and rural poverty.34 In Australia, the study circle format
has been used to bring together people around issues as diverse as Aborigi-
nal reconciliation, natural resource management, rural community devel-
opment, and the health and well-being of children.35 Helen Sheil and Neil
Smith have described the approach to community study circles taken by the
Centre for Rural Communities in Victoria, Australia:
‘Community members are not told how to think but are encouraged to
find their own voice through strategic questioning. While this degree of
openness is initially challenging, study circle participants come to appreci-
ate an approach that supports local ownership of any future actions. Peo-
ple not only gain confidence in speaking about their own circumstances,
but also the maturity and tolerance to listen and respect the views of
others’.36
Practical application: intermediate

labor market organizations
Intermediate labor market organizations provide a pathway to employment
for disadvantaged job seekers. These organizations are set up to provide
training and paid work experience that will enable job seekers to go on to
mainstream jobs. Many of these organizations are structured as social enter-
prises, running as income-earning businesses while fulfilling their mission
to provide disadvantaged job seekers with a successful transition into work.
A number also aim to generate additional social benefits, such as contribu-
tion to neighborhood regeneration37 or environmental improvement.38
Typically, the work is not highly skilled in order to accommodate job
seekers with little or no formal work experience. In some cases, however,
the enterprise provides an opportunity for job seekers to train in a more
skill-intensive area, such as horticulture or aquaculture. Particularly inter-
esting are examples that allow job seekers to leverage and further develop
their existing skills and knowledge. For instance, in the Community Con-
tact Service run by the Brotherhood of St. Laurence in Victoria, Australia,
disadvantaged job seekers are trained to provide local concierge, informa-
tion, and referral services to fellow residents in the high-rise public housing
buildings where they live.39
While intermediate labor market organizations can provide successful
pathways to employment by combining real work and relevant training
for job seekers, as businesses they are inevitably costlier to run than those
that employ more experienced staff. Thus, while they are of considerable
interest to policy makers for their ability to simultaneously generate mul-
tiple forms of social and economic value, these enterprises can be chal-
lenging to sustain over the long term. Successful intermediate labor market
organizations either tend to be heavily subsidized by government to create
employment outcomes or they successfully capture a unique market niche,
providing a needed service that is not otherwise available. For instance,
the Community Contact Service provides a unique security service to its hous-
ing agency clients: focusing on preventative security for public housing mod-
eled on the concierge services available in private residences.40 In the UK, the
most successful intermediate labor market organizations were found to have
strong local partners that facilitated their access to funding and contracts.41
Notes
1 2006 Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, in Muhammad Yunus with Alan Jolis
(2007) Banker to the Poor: The Autobiography of Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen
Bank. New Delhi: Penguin Books, p. 73.
2 Grameen Dialogue, April 2006, available online at www.grameen.com/dialogue/
dialogue63/specialfeature2.html. See also Yunus and Jolis (ibid.) on the startup of the
Grameen Bank.
3 See, e.g., Anita Campion and Victoria White (1999) ‘Institutional Metamorphosis:
Transformation of Microfinance NGOs into Regulated Financial Institutions’. Microfinance
Network, Occasional Paper No 4, 1.
4 Maria Otero (2005) ‘The Power of Microfinance, The Experience of Acción Interna-
tional’. Speech given at Basle, Switzerland, April 8 and published on the Acción Website
at www.accion.org/micro_speeches_articles.asp, 1–2.
5 WWB (Women’s World Banking) (2007) Our History. Published online at www.swwb.
org/id,103/.
6 Examples include Many Rivers Microfinance in Australia (www.manyrivers.org.au),
Acción USA in the United States (www.accionusa.org/), Canadian Youth Business
Foundation in Canada (www.cybf.ca/entrepreneurs/cybfbdc.php), ADIE in France
(www.adie.org/), and the Maori Women’s Development Inc. in New Zealand (www.
mwdi.co.nz/).
7 For instance, in Australia the No Interest Loan Scheme (NILS) (http://goodshepherd
microfinance.org.au/services/no-interest-loan-scheme-nils).
8 In Australia, these have been developed as partnerships between mainstream banks and
social service organizations, for instance, the Saver Plus program developed by ANZ
Bank and the Brotherhood of St. Laurence (www.anz.com.au/about-us/corporate-
responsibility/framework/financial-capability/saver-plus/) and the AddsUP Savings Plan
developed by the National Australia Bank and Good Shepherd Microfinance (http://
goodshepherdmicrofinance.org.au/services/addsup-matched-savings-plan).
9 See, for instance, Phil Smith and Eric Thurman (2007) A Billion Bootstraps: Microcredit,
Barefoot Banking, and the Business Solution for Ending Poverty. Columbus, OH: McGraw-
Hill; Sam Daley-Harris (2007) State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report 2007.
Washington, DC: Microcredit Summit Campaign; Sam Daley-Harris and Anna Awimbo
(2006) More Pathways Out of Poverty. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.
10 The MIX Market provides a range of indicators and benchmarks for microfinance
institutions. It was established as an initiative of the United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development with CGAP (the Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest):
www.mixmarket.org.
11 See, e.g., Elisabeth Rhyne (1998) ‘The Yin and Yang of Microfinance: Reaching the
Poor and Sustainability’, Microbanking Bulletin, July, 6–8; Sam Daley-Harris (2007) State
of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report 2007. Washington, DC: Microcredit Summit
Campaign, pp. 28–30.
12 See, for instance, the work of the Imp-Act Program on microfinance impact assessment
and promoting social performance management in MFIs. See www.imp-act.org/.
13 IDS (2005) Guidelines for Social performance management in microfinance. Imp-Act Pro-
gramme. Sussex, UK: Institute of Development Studies, p. 1.
14 For instance, the United Nations declared the International Year of Microcredit in 2005.
15 Paulo Freire (1985) The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation. South Hadley,
MA: Bergin & Garvey, p. 12.
16 Paulo Freire (2005) (Originally published 1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York:
Continuum Press, p. 35.
17 Ibid., p. 72.
18 Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner (2007) ‘Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich: Technology,
Politics and the Reconstruction of Education’, in Policy Futures in Education, 5(4), 435.
See also Mariana Souto-Manning (2010) Freire, Teaching, and Learning: Culture Circles
Across Contexts. New York: Peter Lang.
19 Myles Horton and Paulo Freire (1990) We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on
Education and Social Change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, p. 66.
20 See http://highlandercenter.org/.
21 Horton and Freire, pp. 48–49.
22 See http://highlandercenter.org/media/timeline/.
23 For more information, see http://denmark.dk/en/practical-info/study-in-denmark/
folk-high-schools/; www.scandinavianseminar.org/.
24 Australian Study Circles Network (2011); see http://studycircles.net.au/Content/
2011/04/study-circles-1/.
25 See www.foxfire.org/.
26 Horton and Freire, p. 66.
27 See Helen Sheil and Neil Smith (2006) ‘Chapter 5: From the Margins to the Mainstream:
the “Other” Transforming Knowledge and Wisdom’ in The Changing Nature of Australia’s
Country Towns, eds. M. F. Rogers and D. R. Jones. Ballarat, Victoria: VURRN Press.
28 Some examples include: Antonella Noya (ed.) (2009) The Changing Boundaries of Social
Enterprise. Paris: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development; Jo Bar-
raket, Nick Collyer, Matt O’Connor and Heather Anderson. (2010) Finding Australia’s
Social Enterprise Sector: Final Report. Brisbane, Queensland: Australian Centre for Phi-
lanthropy and Nonprofit Studies, Queensland University of Technology and Social
Traders; Social Enterprise UK (2011) Fightback Britain: A Report on the State of Social
Enterprise Survey 2011. London: Social Enterprise UK.
29 Muhammad Yunus (2011) Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism That
Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs. New York: Public Affairs, Perseus Book Group.
30 See, for instance, the Social Enterprise Builder tool developed by Social Traders in
Australia: www.socialtraders.com.au/social-enterprise-business-planning.
31 See www.finca.org.
32 See http://ruralagriculturefoodsecurity.wordpress.com/about/microfinance/.
33 Staffan Larsson and Henrik Nordvall (2010) Study Circles in Sweden: An Overview with
a Bibliography of International Literature. Linköping: Linköping University Electronic
Press.
34 See www.everyday-democracy.org/en/Resource.126.aspx; and also Study Circles
Resource Centre (2007) Focus on Study Circles, 18(1), available online at www.everyday-
democracy.org/en/Resource.109.aspx.
35 See Helen Sheil and Neil Smith (2006) ‘Chapter 5: From the Margins to the Mainstream:
the “Other” Transforming Knowledge and Wisdom’ in The Changing Nature of Australia’s
Also, examples of study circles are available on the website of the Centre for Rural
Communities, Inc. at www.ruralcommunities.com.au/edition.aspx?cid=71.
36 Sheil and Smith, p. 71.
37 See, for instance, Bob Marshall and Richard Macfarlane (2000) The Intermediate Labour
Market: A Tool for Tackling Long-Term Unemployment. York, UK: Joseph Rowntree Foun-
dation, which reports on intermediate labor market programs in England, Scotland, and
Wales.
38 See, for instance, examples in Kylie Eastley (ed.) (2012) Tasmanian Social Enterprises:
Capturing Their Stories. Burnie, Tasmania: Institute for Regional Development.
39 Profiled on the Social Traders website: www.socialtraders.com.au/library/intermediate-
labour-market-companies-0.
40 Ibid.
41 Marshall and Macfarlane, p. 17.
7
THE INNOVATIVE PRACTITIONER
A new framework for development practice

The case studies in Chapter Six are about tackling old development issues in new
ways. Microfinance, community-based learning, and social enterprise each proposed
a new approach to tackling financial poverty, educational disadvantage, and social-
sector resourcing challenges. In each case, development practitioners in different
parts of the world started to question received wisdom about social and economic
change: specifically, about the role of ‘finance’ for poor people, about the nature of
‘education’ in disadvantaged communities, and about the boundaries between ‘not-
for-profit’ activity and ‘enterprise’. These development practitioners drew on multiple
kinds of knowledge, including the on-the-ground knowledge of local communities,
to rethink their understanding of development problems. As their understanding of
the problems changed, they were able to propose innovative new ways of addressing
social and economic needs in the communities where they worked.
The innovative practitioner can be defined as someone who seeks to catalyze new
solutions to development issues. Chapter Five defined innovation as the creation
of new economic and social solutions and opportunities. It also observed that innovation
is sparked when different kinds of knowledge come together. Microfinance,
community-based learning, and social enterprise are examples of development
innovations. None of these solves poverty, but each approach makes an important
contribution to meeting social and economic challenges in communities around
the world. Each one of these innovations emerged from practice. These were
practical ideas in the first instance, coming out of on-the-ground work with
communities at the meeting points of what different people knew: NGO staff
and bankers, business owners and job seekers, teachers and adult learners.
Chapter Five introduced the concept of knowledge partnerships. Knowledge
partnerships are relationships in which people and organizations share knowledge
to create innovative solutions. The case studies in Chapter Six provide real-world
128 The innovative practitioner
examples of knowledge partnerships in practice. In each of these cases, different

kinds of knowledge came together to spark innovation. These knowledge partner-
ships were not, however, always intentional. Practitioners did not necessarily set
out to share knowledge or expect that this would result in innovation. Micro-
finance, community-based learning, and social enterprises all emerged in different
places, driven by different people and organizations with different concerns. In
practice, knowledge sharing often happened accidentally, in an ad hoc way. Muham-
mad Yunus describes how conversations with small business operators revealed the
potential of microenterprise loans. Myles Horton describes how his inability as
an educator to give people solutions to their local problems revealed the impor-
tance of their own knowledge in the learning process. Knowledge partnerships
often arise in these kinds of opportunistic ways. People meet and talk. They share
their knowledge with each other, and their ideas cross-pollinate. Innovative prac-
titioners take the resulting ideas and use them to create something new.
The importance of this knowledge-sharing process is, however, often overlooked.
Because it is often ad hoc and opportunistic, the process of knowledge sharing
among development actors is not necessarily a visible part of the innovation
process. Failing to recognize this leads to some mistaken assumptions about inno-
vation: that it is somehow rare, special, and beyond the abilities of most people
to achieve. The attention given to important innovations creates the impression
that these are rare and extraordinary ‘finds’: for instance, volumes have been writ-
ten about microfinance, and there is a growing body of work on social enterprise.
Too often, it is assumed that innovations require extraordinary innovators, ‘indi-
viduals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems’,1 people
like Muhammad Yunus, who went on to win the Nobel Prize. Focusing on the
innovation and the individual innovator, however, disguises the actual social pro-
cesses that generate innovation. Muhammad Yunus started by talking to owners
of tiny businesses in Bangladesh; John Hatch started by talking to farmers in
Bolivia2; Acción staff started by talking to street vendors in Brazil. Time after
time, ideas emerged from these conversations, as the professional knowledge of
development practitioners came into dialogue with local knowledge. These pro-
cesses do not necessarily require ‘heroic leader’ figures with exceptional abilities;
rather, they simply require someone who is willing and able to bring different
insights and ideas together. This is the role of the innovative practitioner.
The innovative practitioner may be a professional community development
worker or a community-based volunteer; he or she may manage a major national
policy portfolio or simply have a passion for doing something about a develop-
ment issue on the ground in his or her local community. Regardless of role, the
innovative practitioner seeks to catalyze new solutions to development issues. He
or she does not have to be an exceptional leader or expert, and he or she does
not have to think up solutions alone. Innovative practitioners do not need to be
naturally creative or innovative people. What distinguishes them is that they believe
new solutions are possible, and they are willing to listen to different people’s ideas
and insights – even ideas and insights that appear to be in conflict with each
The innovative practitioner 129
other – and see how these suggest new ways of doing things. Nor does an inno-
vative development practitioner need to wait around for knowledge sharing to
emerge in an ad hoc way, when the right people or organizations happen to meet.
He or she can be proactive, seeking to intentionally catalyze innovation by bring-
ing different development actors and their ideas together.
This chapter proposes a new theoretical framework, or set of ideas, about develop-
ment practice. This is not the traditional set of ideas about development practice
as a top-down process of technology transfer, doing to or doing for poor com-
munities with or without their nominal ‘participation’. Nor is it the alternative
set of ideas about bottom-up development practice, which too often shifts respon-
sibility for solving poverty onto communities without acknowledging the structural
obstacles they face. The framework for development practice presented in this
chapter is neither ‘top down’ nor ‘bottom up’. Rather, it describes the importance
of horizontal relationships among multiple communities and their helpers, and
the role that development practitioners can play in brokering these relationships.
It is a framework for innovative practice.
This framework starts with the idea that development is a social process rather
than primarily a technical or managerial one. Creating social and economic change
is a process that involves many different development actors: individuals, com-
munities, and organizations. The relationships among these actors can tell us a lot
about why and how change happens or fails to happen. It can also tell us a lot
about whether change is likely to benefit or harm vulnerable groups. Because
development is a social process, relationships – and ultimately partnerships – are
important for poor and disadvantaged groups to improve their situations. Rela-
tionships and partnerships are also important for development organizations that
aim to enable positive change. Nevertheless, for the reasons discussed in
Chapter Four, these relationships often work poorly in practice. This suggests a
role for development practitioners: to broker relationships and partnerships across
a fragmented development landscape, working to bridge the divides among devel-
opment actors.
The innovative practitioner seeks to catalyze new solutions by bringing the
knowledge and resources of poor communities and their organizations together
with those of other communities and organizations, locally and further afield.
Many of the skills required to do this can already be observed in the on-the-
ground practices of experienced community development workers, described in
what follows as boundary-spanning, translation, and brokerage roles. From long experi-
ence in the field, many community development practitioners become skilled
networkers, able to work across diverse organizations and communities. They learn
from experience that relationships are required to make things happen and that
relationships often need to be intentionally built across social and cultural bound-
aries, among organizations and communities that have different priorities and
speak different languages. This chapter shows where these kinds of networking
activities fit and why the skilled brokering of knowledge partnerships is at the
heart of innovative development practice.
Development as a social process

Chapter One described a major paradigm shift in development theory: from
understanding social and economic change as a top-down process of technology
transfer to understanding it as a deeply social process in which local communities
can play a key role. This shift in development theory has not, however, been
accompanied by a similar paradigm shift in development practice. As discussed in
Chapter Two, mainstream development practice still takes place in institutional
environments that place professional practitioners in the driver’s seat, charged with
designing and operationalizing change processes for communities. While there is
growing interest in the capacity of local communities to drive change for them-
selves, these ideas are difficult to translate into practice. Chapter Three discussed
participatory development approaches, which aim for local communities to play
an active role in development decision making. Nevertheless, experience has shown
that participatory development is difficult to operationalize, frequently constrained
by the established agendas and ways of working of development organizations.
Recognizing that change is a social process – and that communities have a key
role to play – has therefore created a kind of crisis in development practice. If
communities, not development organizations, are expected to drive change, this
implies that development organizations and practitioners are obsolete. If, on the
other hand, disadvantaged communities still need ‘help’ and ‘support’ to overcome
the obstacles they face, then a role remains for development practice. But what
does this role actually look like? How is it different from the traditional process
of designing and operationalizing a program of change? Clearly, helping and sup-
porting community-led initiatives is very different than planning and implementing
programs that have been designed elsewhere. It is about creating change with a
community rather than for it or to it. This suggests a need for practitioners with
community development skills who can be present on the ground working with
local communities, practitioners who are attentive to social dynamics and able to
provide ‘help’ and ‘support’ where needed.
Simply hiring community development professionals to work on the ground
with local communities does not, however, address the question of what these prac-
titioners are to do when they get there. The language of development practice is
increasingly about working with and supporting communities; nevertheless, the underly-
ing expectation is that the practitioner will still drive change. A development
organization is resourcing the community development worker to be there and, in
return, expects to see a result. Development organizations generally have a very clear
mission and agenda: to lift literacy levels, for instance, or improve child health – with
timelines for delivering results. Even when the stated aim is to support local com-
munity processes, the practitioner is under pressure to direct the community in a
way that will secure the desired change. And because communities are not homog-
enous, there is seldom a single shared ‘grassroots’ agenda that can be progressed
quickly. In the end, development organizations continue to work in much the same
way they have always worked: imposing external agendas on local communities,
with or without their nominal participation.
Community development practitioners at the coalface often experience and

recognize these tensions, but they have no framework in which to make sense of
them or communicate them to others. On one hand, they are expected to support
complex community processes, and on the other, to deliver evidence of impact
and outcomes to their organization, generally over a short time frame. Local com-
munity members have multiple agendas, demands, and expectations; these may or
may not coincide with each other, with the agendas of the development organiza-
tion, or with the personal beliefs of the practitioner about what will actually work.
When there is disagreement between the outcomes that community members
want and the outcomes that development organizations want for communities,
how is the development practitioner to respond? Meanwhile, it is reasonably easy
to convene local councilors or business leaders to a meeting; it is much harder to
identify and convene those who are unemployed or socially isolated or hungry –
yet these are most often the ‘communities’ that development organizations are
most interested in. The coalface development practitioner is thus expected to
enable community-driven change on predefined topics by mobilizing communities
that are at best hard to reach and at worst imaginary: ‘communities’ that are
products of other people’s social categories and assumptions.
These kinds of on-the-ground experiences reveal a need for a framework that
practitioners can use to make sense of these tensions and manage them. The first
ingredient in this new practice framework is to recognize that development practice
is a social process – not primarily a technical process or a managerial process but
a social process. It is a process in which different development actors (some of
whom have technical or managerial skills) interact to produce (or resist) different
kinds of change. The nature of development as a social process can be observed
in the on-the-ground tensions of community development practice. The meeting
point of outside organizations and diverse local communities is, in fact, the ideal
vantage point from which to observe the different ‘strategic logics’ and ‘notional
logics’ of different development actors and how their various actions create (or
prevent) different kinds of change on the ground.
Understanding that development is a social process also acknowledges that dif-
ferent development actors have differing amounts of resources and influence. Some
communities and organizations have more resources than others and a greater ability
to influence change; they enjoy more ‘room to maneuver’ to pursue their develop-
ment agendas.3 Others have fewer resources, less influence, and consequently less
room to maneuver. Indeed, their own notional logics about change may suggest
that they cannot change their situation at all. For this reason, in development conflicts,
influential and resource-rich communities and organizations tend to dominate
discussions; less influential and resource-poor communities often remain invisible
or say very little, realizing that they are unlikely to be heard – unless they are
fortunate enough to find an influential spokesperson, or unless special efforts are
made to give them time and space to speak. Whenever there are conflicts over the
direction of desirable change, it becomes easier to observe the different kinds of
development actors on the landscape, their interactions, and how their different
strategies, understandings, and relative power influence the ultimate direction of

change.
Because development is a social process, development outcomes are never preset
or inevitable. There is no grand scheme of one-way, one-path development in
which certain kinds of interests will always dominate and other kinds of interests
will always be silenced. No group or community is ever completely without
recourse to instigate change. At the same time, the playing field is not level. Some
groups and communities have considerably more resources and influence than
others. Dominant development logics – such as capitalism or modernization – may
regularly privilege certain communities and their interests over others. This can
happen over long periods of time, until certain development outcomes start to
look inevitable. People begin to assume that family farms and remote villages will
necessarily disappear, for instance, or that natural landscapes must inevitably go in
favor of corporate-owned high-rises. Despite this, there is evidence that these
dominant development logics can be challenged and that they can ultimately shift
over time. Thus, the longstanding development logic of subduing the wilderness has
slowly given way to a newer logic of sustainable resource use. Indigenous groups,
once portrayed as obstacles to ‘development’, have gained international recognition
for their right to self-determination.4 Social media has rallied international support
for the rights of remote communities and for the preservation of particular land-
scapes. These are examples of significant shifts in mainstream development
logics.
Seeing development as a social process reinforces the message that change is
always possible but that it necessarily involves interactions and negotiations among
different development actors. Communities suffering from poverty and disadvantage
cannot be expected to change their situation on their own; many of the factors
influencing their situation are beyond their direct control. Equally, organizations
seeking to fight poverty cannot fight poverty for others. Poverty is no concrete
target. Rather, it is embedded in social relationships in real, on-the-ground places.
‘Poor’ or ‘disadvantaged’ social actors are not puppets that can be controlled and
changed from the top down. Nor, given their limited resources and influence,
can they necessarily solve their problems from the bottom up. In the end, if the
goal is to fight poverty and disadvantage, then some form of relationship building
is required, linking disparate development actors in coordinated actions for change.
Development partnerships provide a logical framework for these kinds of
relationships. Yet in most experiences to date, the logics of powerful organizations
have dominated partnerships while those of poor communities have largely been
silenced. In such unequal partnerships, the practitioner’s role has been to impose
the development logics of the dominant organizations on partner communities,
either explicitly (mandated from the ‘top down’) or more subtly, to encourage
the adoption of these external logics from the ‘bottom up’. Both approaches
assume that development practice is a technical process in which there are preset
ways of doing things that will always work and will yield the same result regard-
less of context. Equally, these approaches frame development practice as a
managerial process in which good development processes and logics – such as a

sound logframe – will necessarily deliver successful change. Recognizing that
development practice is a social process calls into question these formulaic assump-
tions about change. It recognizes that there are other factors at play beyond the
logics of the development organization and that other social actors on the devel-
opment landscape have logics and agendas, too. Seeing development as a social
process takes the spotlight off the development practitioner as the sole architect
of change and draws attention to a largely untapped resource: other development
actors.
The theoretical insight that development practice is a social process thus reposi-
tions the role of the development practitioner from being the expert architect of
change to being its catalyst, working across a complex social landscape. This insight
provides the basis for a new framework for development practice in which the
practitioner’s role necessarily involves working with a broad range of social actors –
organizations and individuals, local and nonlocal. Practitioners may still be technical
experts, and they may still usefully employ managerial tools. But ultimately, they
must have the skills to work with a broad range of social actors to build relation-
ships and mobilize resources for change.
The practitioner as partnership broker

As development organizations have come to realize that development is a social
process, they have sought to build relationships for change with local communities.
In some cases they have led change from the top down; in others, they have
encouraged communities to drive change from the bottom up. The resulting rela-
tionships have been more or less participatory and more or less attuned to com-
munity perspectives and needs. Yet they are also, for the most part, oversimplified
relationships. Contemporary development practice has often been conceptualized
as a kind of two-way transaction between development organizations and the local
communities they seek to help. This oversimplification overlooks the heterogeneity
of the local community and the diversity of development actors that are in a posi-
tion to influence change. Development organizations often work with one or two
local groups and organizations and ignore (or fail to discover) other relevant devel-
opment actors in and across local communities. Many development actors remain
invisible and consequently, potentially valuable resources remain untapped.
Recognizing that development practice is a social process moves beyond the
oversimplified binary of local community and development organization engaging
in a two-way relationship with each other – whether from the top down or from
the bottom up. In place of this two-way relationship, it establishes the potential
for multidirectional relationships among the range of social actors who are in a
position to influence change. The social actors who are relevant to fighting poverty
and disadvantage in a local community are generally diverse, and they are located
both within and beyond the local context. They will include those in a position
to contribute different kinds of assets (time, energy, local knowledge, social
networks) within disadvantaged communities themselves as well as those more

‘powerful’ social actors who are in a position to shift structural obstacles that
diminish local communities’ ‘room to maneuver’. Relevant development actors
may sit in the private sector, community sector, or government. They will have
knowledge, expertise, financial or in-kind resources, networks, influence, ideas, or
insights from similar experiences elsewhere that could support local change pro-
cesses. Nevertheless, one observation generally holds true: they are usually not
working together.
Poor and disadvantaged communities by definition lack resources – and this
includes social resources. Even when these communities are very tight knit inter-
nally, they tend to have few external connections and networks that give them
access to economic, social, or political resources or influence. Physically, those
external resources may be located in the next neighborhood, the capital city, or
the other side of the globe – but they are out of reach. Even wealthier local
communities frequently find that their aspirations for change are blocked by a
lack of connection to others who could help them reach their goal. Development
is a social process, but few communities have all the social resources they need.
This suggests a role for the development practitioner as a broker of relation-
ships among different development actors, with a particular aim to benefit poor
and disadvantaged communities. The basic proposition here is that there are a
range of untapped resources on the social landscape that can be identified and
mobilized to support poor communities and their goals. These resources generally
remain disconnected from poor communities for one of three reasons. The first
is social distance. Social distance refers to the invisibility of poor communities –
they move in different social spaces and so may remain ‘off the radar’ or ‘hard to
reach’ regardless of whether they are physically nearby or far away. The second is
strategic distance. This refers to the distance between the strategic logics of different
social actors – that is, their different agendas and imperatives. Organizations or
individuals may not see that they have anything to gain from working with poor
communities, and poor communities may distrust the agendas of powerful actors.
The third reason is notional distance. Different social actors may have similar con-
cerns but not recognize this because they frame the problem – and each other’s
roles – differently. For instance, a common notional logic is that poor people have
no resources or abilities. This assumption has caused many development organiza-
tions to miss opportunities to work collaboratively with local people.
Social distance, strategic distance, and notional distance maintain a fragmented
development landscape in which certain groups and communities are particularly
disadvantaged. New relationships among disconnected development actors have
the potential to spark new development solutions and reconfigure resources in
favor of these groups. Nevertheless, these kinds of relationships seldom emerge
organically. Building new relationships requires bridging social, strategic, and
notional distance – a difficult task. A brokerage role is often needed to overcome
these distances and build relationships among diverse development actors. Skilled
community development practitioners often adopt this role in practice when they
are faced with the task of creating change on the ground. They become network-
ers and negotiators. They work across local communities and external organizations,
seeking out those who can support a community’s development aspirations, attempt-
ing to mobilize resources and support across boundaries.
Networking and negotiating on behalf of disadvantaged local communities is
an important role, but not an easy one. The relevant development actors are
often socially, strategically, and/or notionally distant from each other. Coalface
development practitioners can usually provide examples of how people and
organizations from different contexts have misunderstood each other or worked
at cross purposes. They describe the unrealistic expectations of the locals, the
silly assumptions of the outsiders, the knowledge sets that were ignored, and the
failure to find ways to work together. At the same time, coalface practitioners
can often provide examples of the synergies and mutual benefits that are created
when outsiders and locals start to understand each other and work together more
effectively.
What such coalface practitioners often fail to understand is that their perspec-
tive is comparatively unique. Colleagues in external organizations understand their
organization’s aims, language, and logics but not those of local communities.
Neighbors on the ground in local communities understand their local community’s
aims, language, and logics but not the mandates and constraints of outside devel-
opment organizations. Members of disadvantaged communities understand their
own issues and challenges but not how to put them in the language of local
bureaucrats; local bureaucrats have resources to support disadvantaged communities
but no real idea of what is needed, or even how to ask. Only someone who regu-
larly crosses into these different social contexts can see how different they are,
how much is misunderstood or missed, and where there are opportunities to bring
different kinds of knowledge together.
The experiences of coalface practitioners on the ground in local communi-
ties illustrate how development practitioners may play a vital role brokering
relationships – and ultimately partnerships – across social and cultural boundaries.
Nevertheless, coalface practitioners often occupy relatively low-ranking positions
in their organizations. They are seldom empowered to explicitly perform a bro-
kerage role. More often they feel frustrated, caught between the varying agendas
and understandings of different development actors: their employer and their
neighbors, powerful local decision makers and marginal communities, well-meaning
bureaucrats and disengaged young people. They can see the fault lines among
socially distant communities and organizations and the disconnects between their
different development logics. But they have no framework to convert this under-
standing into practice.
A new framework for innovative development practice positions practitioners
as brokers of relationships and partnerships among multiple development actors:
both at the coalface and further afield. This framework recognizes that while poor
communities can drive change, they need to link with other social actors to suc-
ceed. It recognizes that while development organizations can champion change,
they cannot achieve it on their own. Building relationships across social, strategic,
and notional distance requires specific strategies and skills. It requires the ability
to cross social boundaries, understand different strategic agendas, and translate
across the different languages and logics of different development actors. These
are the core skills of the innovative practitioner.
Boundary spanning is the practice of intentionally working across organizational,
social, and cultural boundaries. The innovative practitioner needs to be willing to
move across different social spaces – from the street to the boardroom – to make
contact with different communities and organizations. Boundary spanning creates
opportunities for knowledge sharing across boundaries. Negotiation is a second
core skill; it is about understanding – and potentially reconciling – the different
strategic logics of different development actors. The innovative practitioner rec-
ognizes that different development actors have different strategies and agendas.
He or she learns to recognize these agendas and then negotiates in order to identify
the synergies or meeting points between them – shared goals that they may not
have realized they have. Finally, cross-cultural translation involves understanding the
different notional logics of different organizations and communities. Like transla-
tors from a foreign language, the translation agent must be able to navigate different
social and cultural lexicons – from the jargon of one group to the engrained
assumptions of another – to understand what is being said and, ultimately, to
enable communication and mutual understanding.
Beyond the binary of a development organization working with a disadvantaged
community, twenty-first-century development practice is increasingly about creat-
ing relationships among dispersed social actors. Boundary spanning, negotiation,
and cross-cultural translation name the reality of what many skilled community
development practitioners at the coalface already do from necessity: They work
across the boundaries of different organizations and communities, creating networks
and connections. Relationships with other development actors can increase the
range of resources available to communities and help them to overcome structural
obstacles that cause disadvantage. Yet there are social, strategic, and notional divides
that prevent development partnerships from forming – or, once formed, from
creating real benefits for disadvantaged communities. Because of these divides,
local communities and external development organizations often start with an
incomplete understanding of who the relevant development actors are, whether
they have shared goals, and what each may be able to contribute. Brokering
knowledge partnerships, in which development actors share their knowledge across
boundaries, can spark new ideas and new ways of doing things and reveal new
resources to achieve shared goals.
Communities and their knowledge

In this new framework for development practice, development practitioners no
longer impose solutions on local communities or work with communities in isola-
tion from their larger contexts. Rather, development practitioners work with a
range of development actors in and across local communities to build relationships

for change. They recognize the reality of social and power distances and are well
aware of the different strategic and notional logics of different development actors.
But through a conscious process of boundary spanning, negotiation, and transla-
tion, they seek to overcome these divides and build relationships that benefit local
communities – particularly disadvantaged communities.
Nevertheless, for disadvantaged communities to benefit from these relationships,
their own knowledges and logics need to be recognized and valued. Otherwise,
it is too easy for the logics of development organizations and their more influential,
resource-rich partners to dominate and overwhelm the ideas and agendas of less-
powerful groups. As discussed in Chapter Five, the diverse knowledges of local
communities are often overlooked in development processes, but these local
knowledges – technical, cultural, and experiential – are central to understanding
the dynamics of social and economic change on the ground in real, diverse places.
Overlooking local knowledges means decontextualizing development, assuming
that social and economic change always looks the same regardless of context and
that local problems can be addressed by technical experts with one-size-fits-all
solutions. Paying attention to local knowledge re-situates development processes
in their real physical, social, and cultural contexts and gives voice to a range of
local experts who are in a position to inform understanding and action.
Chapter Five observed that multiple knowledges are needed to name and address
development challenges. The development practitioner who works across multiple
communities and organizations necessarily works with many different kinds of
knowledge. Nevertheless, dominant development logics privilege scientific data
and technical expertise and tend to render local knowledge invisible. Even orga-
nizations keen for the ‘opinions’ and ‘input’ of local communities in participatory
processes are often loath to admit the existence of local knowledge. Knowledge is
an influential commodity – several theorists equate it with power (it is, after all,
both a resource and a source of influence). Rather than ignoring what diverse
local communities know, recognizing local knowledge as legitimate knowledge
helps to shift the power balance in favor of disadvantaged communities on
the ground.
Attention to local knowledge of various kinds also opens up a range of previ-
ously unacknowledged resources for social change. As discussed in Chapter Five,
there is no single, homogenous local knowledge in a given place but rather multiple
knowledges. Moreover, local knowledge does not typically exist in a parochial
vacuum, but it dialogues with other local knowledges across space to create net-
worked knowledge (and ultimately, through testing and generalization, it can become
abstract knowledge). This suggests that there are many relevant sources of knowledge
and insight that remain disconnected and invisible on the social landscape. These
are untapped resources that can potentially be leveraged through effective relation-
ships and partnerships. For instance, a local service providers’ network can connect
and leverage the local knowledge of different local organizations; it may also bring
in networked knowledge from colleagues in other places to inform local practice.
Currently, the knowledge landscape in development work is highly fragmented,

and the strategic and notional distances among development actors are often large.
These knowledge disconnects can be easily observed in practice. For instance, a
community group may want their local council to purchase a van because they
know that transport disadvantage is an issue for a number of their neighbors; they
think a community van is an easy solution. The local council, on the other hand,
may be unaware of the transport issue due to social distance (all the council staff
have cars); or they may reject a proposal from the community group because they
are wary of the complexity of managing the costs, risks, and scheduling of such a
service – factors the community group may not have considered. Locally, there is
an impasse, and transport disadvantage continues. Meanwhile, a community group
in the next state has established a successful community-based transport service and
can suggest a way forward, but neither the local group nor the council knows they
exist. In this way, time after time, solutions are missed because the relevant develop-
ment actors and their knowledges are disconnected from each other.
Multiple knowledges are needed to name and address development challenges.
Because these knowledges are fragmented, intentional effort is required to bring
them together. The innovative practitioner brokers relationships among diverse
development actors by enabling them to share what they know about development
issues and opportunities. These include local experiential knowledges – grounded
in particular, subjective experience – and cultural knowledge about how things
work in particular communities, as well as more easily recognized technical and
professional knowledges. Bringing local knowledges into dialogue with each other
and with other kinds of knowledge creates opportunities for mutual learning. It
becomes a starting point for further relationship building among development
actors, helping to overcome entrenched social, strategic, and notional disconnects.
Knowledge partnering can identify resources, influencers, and allies for local com-
munities facing disadvantage. It can spark new ideas and new ways of tackling
challenges together.
Innovation in development practice

Innovation, like development, is ultimately a social process. Contemporary theories
of innovation tell us that new solutions often emerge in particular places when
different kinds of knowledge come together. In the metaphor of the ‘knowledge
spillover’, knowledge ‘spills’ from one firm to another or one industry to another
when people in those firms and industries meet, talk, and start to share what they
know and what they do. Knowledge spillovers can spark innovation when ideas
from one industry are applied to solve problems in another industry and when
insights from different organizations are combined to create something new.
These ideas about the role of knowledge spillovers in innovation provide
useful guidance for development practice. They suggest that development prac-
titioners can catalyze innovative solutions to development issues by bringing the
knowledge of different development actors together. Innovation is a social process.
The process of development innovation is not about a clever, creative practitioner

sitting alone at his or her desk generating new ideas. Rather, it is the result of
different development actors coming into contact with each other, sharing what
they know and what they do, and sparking new ideas: credit for poor businesses,
new ways of educating businesses that serve social goals. The role of the inno-
vative practitioner is to create opportunities for this to happen. He or she works
in and across communities and organizations to create connections and catalyze
innovation.
Increasingly, those concerned with development work are calling for more
innovation at local and national levels. From an economic perspective, business and
industry innovation is needed in order to develop new products, processes, and
markets to compete in a competitive globalized economy. From a social perspec-
tive, social innovation is needed to escape the treadmill of social services that fail
to serve and disadvantage that persists across generations. Everyone agrees innova-
tion – new ways of doing things – is needed. Yet no one knows how to deliver
innovation in practice.
In most places, innovation tends not to emerge organically. Some writers use
the metaphor of ‘path dependence’: societies and economies get set in their ways
of doing things and tend not to change, even when there are problems or inef-
ficiencies. Colloquially, it is observed that communities and organizations are often
disinclined to step outside their ‘comfort zone’. Well-trodden paths are comfort-
able, though they may not be the best paths. Even when people recognize the
need for innovation, it does not happen. Knowledge fails to spill over established
boundaries. It is blocked by the social, strategic, and notional distances among
development actors. Different development actors simply don’t go to the same
places, work in the same organizations, live in the same neighborhoods, or feel
that they have anything in common. They can’t see any reason they would want
to work together. And even if someone convenes them to the same meeting, they
may find it hard to understand each other.
Because social, strategic, and notional distances are real, most development actors
only interact with a limited range of other development actors. Those concerned
with education tend to interact with education professionals. Those concerned with
poverty tend to interact with social service professionals. Those concerned with
local economic development work with local firms and perhaps the local council.
While it is generally recognized that issues like poverty, education, and local eco-
nomic development are interrelated on the ground, it can be difficult for teachers
to talk with local firms or council planners to engage with social service providers.
It can be even more difficult for them to engage with the nonprofessionals on
the development landscape: students, parents, residents, service users. Yet it is in
the unexpected combinations of knowledge among disconnected development
actors that innovative ideas emerge: school–industry partnerships, food-sensitive
urban design, and so forth.
Social, strategic, and notional distances among development actors can be more
or less marked, but they are nearly always present to some degree. These disconnects
are most visible when development practitioners from a large urban development
organization arrive to work with members of a rural, isolated community in
another country. The development actors likely speak a different language, have
different conceptual understandings about development, organize themselves dif-
ferently, and have different ideas about how the world works. While these differ-
ences hold great potential for innovative solutions, social, strategic, and notional
distances mean that this innovative potential is seldom realized.
Even where everyone is from the same country and speaks the same language,
there can still be large social, strategic, and notional distances among development
actors. Research on a local community development project in the UK, for instance,
observed ‘a vast distance between the understanding of professionals and policy
makers and the experience of the local community’, which ultimately resulted in
the project neglecting the interests of local residents.5 An analysis of participatory
agriculture workshops in India documented barriers to interaction and understand-
ing not just between the farmers and the scientists but between the male and
female scientists, the biologists and the social scientists, and the senior scientists
and the extensionists.6 While these projects intended to stimulate innovative practice
by bringing different development actors together, there were clear barriers to
knowledge spilling over among those concerned. Creating connections and knowl-
edge spillovers often requires an active broker to facilitate communication.
This chapter has proposed a new framework for development practice charac-
terized by the innovative practitioner. Innovative practitioners recognize that
development is a social process. They understand that different social actors have
knowledge and resources that can influence positive change but that these actors
are often disconnected from each other: separated by social distance and motivated
by different strategic and notional logics. The innovative practitioner works to
broker connections and build relationships across boundaries. Recognizing that
different kinds of knowledge are needed for effective development and that the
local knowledges of poor communities are important, innovative practitioners
create opportunities for development actors to bring their different kinds of
knowledge together.
By intentionally encouraging flows of knowledge across social and cultural
boundaries, the innovative practitioner answers the central challenge of how to
catalyze innovation in local communities. The answer is not found in the tradi-
tional technology-transfer framework for development practice. A technically
sound top-down agenda will not create innovation, nor will a managerially efficient
implementation of this agenda in local communities. Nor is innovation likely to
emerge from a heroic bottom-up effort of communities working alone from the
grassroots to triumph over adversity. Rather, innovation emerges in the connecting
up of diverse development actors, each with some piece of relevant experience
or expertise. The innovative practitioner brokers relationships among these actors,
overcoming blockages and disconnects to create knowledge spillovers across social
and cultural divides. Through an intentional process of knowledge partnering, he
or she creates the conditions for development innovation.
Further reading
On disconnects among development actors in practice
‘Bottom-Up Community Development: Reality or Rhetoric? The Example of the Kingsmead
Kabin in East London’, by Andy Turner, in Community Development Journal, 44(2),
230–247, 2009.
‘Bridging Two Worlds: An Ethnography of Bureaucrat–Peasant Relations in Western Mexico’,
by Alberto Arce and Norman Long, in An Anthropological Critique of Development, ed.
edited by Mark Hobart. Routledge, 1993.
‘Framing Development: Community and NGO Perspectives in Mali’, by Carol Ward, Yodit
Solomon, Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, and Addie Fuhriman, in Community Development Journal,
44(4), 470–487, 2009.
‘From Seduction to Miscommunication: The Confession and Presentation of Local Knowl-
edge in “Participatory Development”’, by Dario Novellino, in Negotiating Local Knowledge:
Power and Identity in Development, edited by Johan Pottier, Alan Bicker, and Paul Sillitoe.
Pluto Press, 2003.
‘Scientists’ Views of Farmers’ Practices in India: Barriers to Effective Interaction’, by Anil K.
Gupta in Farmer First: Farmer Innovation and Agricultural Research, edited by Robert Cham-
bers, Arnold Pacey, and Lori Ann Thrupp. Intermediate Technology Publications, 1989.
On practices of boundary spanning, translation,

negotiation, and brokerage
‘ “All Has Been Washed Away Now”: Tradition, Change and Indigenous Knowledge in a
Queensland Aboriginal Land Claim’, by Benjamin Richard Smith, in Negotiating Local
Knowledge: Power and Identity in Development, edited by Johan Pottier, Alan Bicker, and
Paul Sillitoe. Pluto Press, 2003.
‘Canadian First Nations’ Experiences with International Development’, by Peter Croal and
Wes Darou, in Participating in Development, Approaches to Indigenous Knowledge, edited by
Paul Sillitoe, Alan Bicker, and Johan Pottier. ASA Monographs 39. Routledge, 2002.
Development Brokers and Translators, the Ethnography of Aid and Agencies, edited by David
Lewis and David Mosse. Kumarian Press, 2006.
‘Knowledge Interfaces and Practices of Negotiation: Cases from a Women’s Group in
Bolivia and an Oil Refinery in Wales’, by Alberto Arce and Eleanor Fisher, in Negotiating
Local Knowledge: Power and Identity in Development, edited by Johan Pottier, Alan Bicker,
and Paul Sillitoe. Pluto Press, 2003.
The New Broker: Brokering Partnerships for Development, by Michael Warner. Overseas Devel-
opment Institute, 2003.
Practical application: development immersions

Development immersions are opportunities for professional development
practitioners with office-based roles to spend time in the field with local
communities. Development immersions recognize that ‘Many development
agency staff . . . frequently lack direct contact with the lives and perspec-
tives of the very people they are employed to help.’7 Immersions provide
an intentional way to overcome this social distance between practitioners

and communities. They ‘have proven to be particularly helpful in trigger-
ing “double-loop learning” . . . (which) provides knowledge that questions
what was previously known and opens possibilities of alternative ways of
tackling a problem.’8
Robert Chambers observes that ‘Immersions can take many forms, but an
almost universal feature is staying in a poor community, as a person, living
with a host family, helping with tasks and sharing in their life. The overnight
stay is vital for relationships, experience, and relaxed conversations after dark
and talking into the night. . . . Agreement seems universal that immersions
give insights and experiences that are not otherwise accessible. Those who
participate learn in a personal way about people’s lives, livelihoods and cul-
tures and the conditions they experience. The world can be seen the other
way round, from the perspective of people living in poverty.’9
A number of development organizations, including the World Bank,
ActionAid, and the Swedish aid agency Sida, have organized immersion
opportunities for their staff. Research on the impacts of development
immersions has suggested that ‘Immersions are a useful means for expe-
riential learning that can lead to a deepening understanding of the reality
of the lives of people living in poverty – and to a process of rethinking pol-
icy and practice to be more effective in supporting their efforts to achieve
better lives.’10 By decreasing social distance between development practi-
tioners and local communities, immersions create opportunities for knowl-
edge sharing and spark new insights for development practice.
Notes
1 www.ashoka.org/social_entrepreneur.
2 John Hatch is the founder of FINCA and is credited with establishing the concept of
Village Banking. See www.finca.org/site/c.6fIGIXMFJnJ0H/b.6088433/k.941D/
Where_Village_Banking_Began.htm#.Uw2U-PmSwsc.
3 The concept of development actors’ ‘room to maneuver’ is borrowed from Jean-Pierre
Olivier de Sardan (2005) Anthropology and Development, Understanding Contemporary Social
Change. London: Zed Books.
4 See United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, published March 2008,
available online at www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf.
5 Andy Turner (2009) ‘Bottom-Up Community Development: Reality or Rhetoric? The
Example of the Kingsmead Kabin in East London’, Community Development Journal,
44(2), 243.
6 Anil K. Gupta (1989) ‘Scientists’ Views of Farmers’ Practices in India: Barriers to Effec-
tive Interaction’, in Farmer First: Farmer Innovation and Agricultural Research, edited by
Robert Chambers, Arnold Pacey, and Lori Ann Thrupp. London: Intermediate Technol-
ogy Publications, p. 30.
7 IDS (2004) ‘Immersions for Policy and Personal Change’, Policy Briefing, Issue 22, July.
Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 1.
8 Renwick Irvine, Robert Chambers, and Rosalind Eyben (2004) Learning from Poor People’s
Experience: Immersions, Lessons for Change. Policy and Organisations series. Brighton, UK:
Institute of Development Studies, p. 5.
9 Robert Chambers (2012) ‘Immersions’ in Provocations for Development, by Robert Cham-
bers. Warwickshire, UK: Practical Action Publishing.
10 Irvine, Chambers, and Eyben, p. 25.
8
THE KNOWLEDGE PARTNERING
APPROACH
A methodology for development practice

The framework for development practice presented in Chapter Seven proposes a
specific role for development practitioners: to broker relationships among diverse
development actors and, in doing so, to catalyze innovation. This framework
recognizes that development practice needs to be understood first and foremost
as a social process rather than primarily a technical or managerial one. It empha-
sizes the importance of local knowledges and highlights the need for disadvantaged
communities and other development actors to form relationships that value and
respect their different knowledges and logics. Finally, it asserts that the coming
together of these different knowledges can spark new solutions. Nevertheless, this
often fails to occur in practice due to social, strategic, and notional distances among
development actors. Innovative practitioners can help to bridge these distances
through an intentional process of knowledge partnering.
Chapter Five defined knowledge partnering as the practice of intentionally bringing
different kinds of knowledge together. Knowledge partnering is an approach, or
methodology, for development practice. Methodologies are ways of working; they
describe what a practitioner does, how he or she will do it, and why that particular
approach is warranted based on underpinning ideas or theories about how the world
works. Knowledge partnering is based on the framework of ideas about development
practice presented in Chapter Seven. They state that development and innovation
are social, relational processes involving multiple development actors with multiple
knowledges. Positive change and new solutions emerge at the meeting points of
these different actors and their knowledges. Distilled into a theory of change, these
ideas suggest that the practitioner who seeks to catalyze new solutions to development issues
will seek to bring the knowledges of different development actors together.
In the knowledge partnering approach, working with communities on the
ground is not an optional extra: it is central to any serious development effort.
The knowledge partnering approach 145
If the aim is to reduce poverty and disadvantage, poor and disadvantaged com-
munities must necessarily play a central role. Yet it is not a solo role. Knowledge
partnering proposes that disadvantaged communities need to build relationships
with other communities and organizations to help them achieve their goals. Too
often, these relationships place them at an immediate disadvantage; the knowledges,
strategies, and resources of ‘poor communities’ are ignored or undervalued by other
development actors. Innovative practitioners can use the knowledge partnering
approach to start to bridge the social, strategic, and notional distances that separate
development actors from each other. They can help cultivate respect for different
knowledges and development logics, particularly the knowledges and logics of less
powerful organizations and communities. By actively brokering knowledge part-
nerships across social and cultural divides, they can create the conditions for
development innovation.
Knowledge partnering responds to two central preoccupations of development
practice: on the one hand, how to do a better job of ‘engaging’ communities and
working with them in participatory and empowering ways; and on the other, how
to tackle entrenched development challenges and find innovative new solutions.
Knowledge partnering proposes that the answer to both questions is the same.
Working with communities on issues that matter to them and linking their local
knowledges and logics with those of other development actors places these com-
munities at the center of change processes. They are engaged, they are included,
and they are empowered to drive change. At the same time, when local com-
munities’ knowledge informs other development actors – and is in turn informed
by them – then better solutions to issues are likely to emerge. When service
providers listen to clients’ concerns, when local people are able to correct the
assumptions of outside helpers, when the outsider’s perspective throws a local
problem into a new light, these insights spark new solutions.
Knowledge partnering is a methodology for ‘doing development’ that flows
logically from the ideas and experiences discussed in this book. Development
practitioners can use the knowledge partnering methodology to guide how they
work with local communities and how they explain their work to others. The
difficulties of participatory development, the pitfalls of development partnerships,
and the observed tensions in coalface community development work highlight
the need for a new methodology to guide development practice. On-the-ground
development work brings practitioners into contact with a range of different
knowledges and logics. Frustrations emerge when local community knowledge is
overlooked and ignored, or when different knowledges and worldviews contradict.
Conflicts result; relationships break down. Yet great things can be achieved when
the knowledge of poor and disadvantaged groups is acknowledged by other
development actors and different kinds of knowledge come together. Worldviews
can change, assumptions shatter, new insights emerge.
Innovative practitioners often share these kinds of success stories. They give
examples of business owners working with disadvantaged young people, farmers
designing research with agricultural scientists, or slum residents’ associations
146 The knowledge partnering approach
informing the strategies and budgets of city councils. New kinds of employment
programs, practical research outcomes, and participatory budgeting innovations
have emerged from these kinds of relationships. These innovations have happened
because disconnected development actors have come together and shared what
they know. The amount of boundary spanning, negotiation, and translation involved
in brokering these kinds of success stories is, however, considerable. Frequently,
someone has had to work hard to overcome the divides among the individuals
and organizations concerned. Reflecting on a farmers’ participatory research project
in Ethiopia, one former community development worker observed:
Although the outcomes were satisfying, the process required hard work, and
it took time before common ground could be established. At the initial
stage, my colleagues and I felt that we were acting as brokers between local
farmers and researchers . . . Only through consistent mediation and transla-
tion of benefits to participating in this project were my colleagues and I able
to bring researchers and agricultural experts on board. . . . Without such
effort and input from the community development practitioners, creating a
long-term collegial working relationship between local farmers and research-
ers and their institutions would have been unthinkable.1
Experienced community development practitioners are often highly skilled

brokers. They have learned the arts of boundary spanning, negotiation, and trans-
lation among different development actors and how to mobilize these skills to
create change.
Knowledge partnering takes this often ad-hoc and unrecognized work of broker-
ing and relationship building among development actors and shows that it is a
legitimate strategy for ‘doing development’. As a development methodology, knowl-
edge partnering provides an answer to the question: How can practitioners ‘support’
and ‘enable’ community-driven change? The answer is by bringing the knowledges of different
development actors together. This process can take a range of forms: from simple facili-
tated conversations to multistakeholder planning meetings and from community-
based research projects to online collaborative platforms. Knowledge partnering is
a way of working, not a particular tool or method. It can employ any method, tool,
or activity that enables different development actors to share what they know, learn
from others, and build relationships for change. A number of examples of different
methods are provided in this chapter. Less important than the specific methods,
however, is the commitment to knowledge partnering principles.
Principles of knowledge partnering

As a development methodology, knowledge partnering is based on three core
principles: that development is a social process, that everyone’s knowledge matters, and that
bringing different kinds of knowledge together can catalyze new solutions to development
issues. These three principles are drawn directly from the framework for innovative
practice presented in Chapter Seven. First, because development is a social process,

practical development initiatives must attend to the full range of relevant social
actors to build relationships and partnerships for change. Next, because there are
multiple kinds of development knowledge, no single development actor, no matter
how expert, will have all the knowledge that is needed. Development actors must
therefore seek out and respect each other’s knowledges and logics. Finally, the aim
of knowledge partnering is not to reproduce the status quo but to catalyze new
solutions to development issues – particularly solutions that benefit disadvantaged
groups. Adopting knowledge partnering as a development methodology involves
putting these three principles into practice.
Principle #1: Development is a social process. The first principle of knowledge
partnering recognizes that anyone can influence change. Creating change is not
the sole province of the development organization or the development practitioner.
It is not ultimately the responsibility of the politician, the planner, or the industry
association alone. While development actors in these roles often have considerable
resources and influence to drive change, they still often struggle to give their ideas
traction. Without buy-in from others, good policy ideas at desk level seldom
translate into real change on the ground. Anyone can support change, and anyone
can resist it. People and organizations that are acknowledged stakeholders –
development actors who are directly involved in or affected by a process – can
create or block change. So can other actors who do not appear to have a stake;
their actions can nevertheless affect what happens. In the end, any development
actor can influence change: grassroots community groups, local businesses, vocal
parents, entrepreneurial young people, anyone.
Because development is a social process, this means that any social change effort
must start from a broad view of the relevant development actors. Some organiza-
tions and communities are clearly ‘stakeholders’ in development initiatives: funders,
partner organizations, local authorities, staff, expected beneficiaries, and so forth.
Others may not be obvious stakeholders, but they are still relevant. Relevant devel-
opment actors are much broader than the usual list of project or program stakehold-
ers. They include a range of resource people and organizations that may not be
immediately obvious – indeed, they may be completely invisible from the perspec-
tives of the project partners. Nevertheless, they have the capacity to influence
change or contribute resources to support it. This list may include local community
organizations, businesses, universities, organizations with similar projects, and so
forth. Relevant development actors also include those in a position to sap resources
or block change, either intentionally or unintentionally.
Because development is a social process, development initiatives employing the
knowledge partnering approach start by trying to identify all of the relevant
development actors on the landscape. Rather than subscribing to a simplistic binary
of ‘development organization’ and ‘community’, or working only with predefined
partner organizations, knowledge partnering seeks to identify who on the landscape
might be in a position to provide help or input. Some of the relevant actors will
be obvious: for instance, an initiative on education will likely benefit from some
kind of involvement from local schools. Others are less obvious; for instance,
schools may also contribute to a local economic development initiative via their
institutional procurement activities or their youth entrepreneurship curriculum.
Relevant development actors are not necessarily located in the same sector or even
in the same place. For instance, local development issues have been solved by using
the Internet to connect and share experiences with people and organizations
overseas. Equally, development issues have been solved by identifying ‘unlikely’
local resource people who have key skills, knowledge, or influence..
Stakeholder mapping is a method sometimes used in development practice to
identify relevant development actors and to assess their influence on the outcome
of a particular project or initiative (see Figure 8.1 for an example). In the knowl-
edge partnering approach, the identification and ‘mapping’ of relevant development
actors should happen as early as possible, before projects and partnerships are
formalized. Relevant development actors are identified not in terms of their rela-
tionship with a preset project or program but according to the level of interest
or knowledge they have about a particular development issue (see Figure 8.2).
Development issues are specific areas where people and organizations want to
create change. Issues may be framed as problems or challenges: unemployment,
homelessness, financial exclusion, environmental degradation, and so on. Or they
may be framed as aspirations: industry growth, livability, skills development, healthy
communities, and so forth. Identifying the development actors who are relevant
to a given development issue requires asking a series of questions:
• Why does this issue matter? To whom does it matter? Why does it matter to
them?
• What is known about this issue? Who knows it? Who deals with this issue or
has dealt with it before?
• What is not known about this issue? Who might know? How might the
unknowns be clarified?
• What is assumed about this issue? Do different people see this issue differently?
Starting with a development issue rather than a project or an organization

makes it possible to identify relevant development actors without being limited
to the boundaries of existing projects and relationships. Relevant actors include
Low Influence High Influence
Low Stake Other local residents Government agencies,

project consultant
High Stake Local organizations, Project funding body,

project beneficiaries project director
FIGURE 8.1 A Project Stakeholder Map

Relevant Why does the issue What do they know What influence and
development matter to them? about the issue? resources might they
actors be able to leverage?
Local authority
Councilor Smith
Central School
Department of
Economic
Development
Local action group
FIGURE 8.2 An Issue Stakeholder Map
people who live the issue firsthand as homeless people, students, environmental
managers, or industry leaders. They include those who conduct research on the
issue, advocate about the issue, write policy about the issue, and grapple with the
issue and its implications in their everyday practice. These development actors can
be described as ‘issue stakeholders’. Issue stakeholders are often overlooked when
the focus is limited to project or organizational stakeholders. Issue stakeholders
can all potentially influence a change process (see Figure 8.2). Not all will become
formal organizational partners. But they are potentially important knowledge
partners.
The first principle of knowledge partnering – that development is a social
process – proposes that a broad range of people and organizations will play a role
in development initiatives. One person, organization, or established partnership may
take a leading role. But the process always involves others, directly or indirectly,
because development is a social process. Importantly, in knowledge partnering, there
is no such thing as a target group. The language of ‘target group’ implies that one
group of development actors is ‘targeting’ another to impose change upon them.
It also assumes that the latter group is standing still. Knowledge partnering proposes
that development actors do not generally stand still. There are multiple change
agents on the development landscape – individuals, groups, and organizations – but
no target groups.
Principle #2: Everyone’s knowledge matters. The second principle of knowledge
partnering is based on the insight that different kinds of knowledge are required
to create positive development outcomes. The knowledge of ‘powerless’ groups is

at least as important as that of ‘powerful’ groups – particularly if the aim is to
overcome poverty and disadvantage. Because development decisions involve choices
about what is valued and desired for the future, cultural and experiential knowl-
edge is important. Because change processes happen in real physical settings and
interact with real local communities, local forms of knowledge are important.
And, because development processes happen all over the world and often tackle
the same issues in different contexts, networked and abstract knowledge can con-
tribute important insights.
The principle that everyone’s knowledge matters challenges the longstanding bias
in development work that renders local knowledges invisible or irrelevant. Empha-
sizing the value of local forms of knowledge grows the power of local communities
in development processes – particularly poor communities, where residents may
have little formal education or recognized qualifications. Instead of being dismissed
as ignorant or undereducated, their tacit, experiential, and subjective forms of
knowing are recognized and valued. This enhances both their resources and influ-
ence vis-à-vis other development actors. Knowledge partnering aims to overcome
the power inequities in development processes that are caused by the privileging
of expert external knowledges over local knowledges. The principle that everyone’s
knowledge matters does not ignore the importance of abstract and scientific
knowledges and external experts, but it seeks to find a balance that recognizes
and respects different kinds of expertise.
The principle that everyone’s knowledge matters suggests some basic guidelines
that can assist practitioners as they work with development actors to broker
knowledge and build relationships:
First – Everyone’s knowledge is recognized as valuable.

Second – Not all knowledge is objective or universal, but it is still knowledge.
Third – Knowledge sharing is always voluntary.
Fourth – Knowledge sharing may require effort.
Fifth – The limits of knowledge sharing are respected.
The first guideline suggests that there is no irrelevant knowledge. Knowledge

that development actors share is nearly always relevant, even when it does not
initially appear to be. This is because different development actors have different
strategic and notional logics; knowledge that makes sense in one logical framework
looks irrelevant from within another. If the strategic aim is to reduce the home-
lessness rate, why is it relevant to understand how homelessness feels? If the notional
understanding of development is that it is driven by high-level policy, then why are
we wasting time talking about lessons from local-level initiatives? Different develop-
ment logics frame different understandings of what is relevant. For an indigenous
community, cultural protocols are highly relevant knowledge; for a government
representative, policy frameworks are highly relevant knowledge; for a neighbor-
hood organizer, local political dynamics are highly relevant knowledge. For those
who have been through hardship or stress, experiential knowledge is highly relevant
knowledge: This is what happened last time. Don’t let it happen again.
The second guideline reinforces the first, by emphasizing that not all knowl-
edge is objective or universal, but it is still knowledge. Knowledge in the knowl-
edge partnering approach is not limited to abstract knowledge. Networked
knowledge and local knowledge are not universally applicable, but they are still
relevant to addressing development issues. Cultural, technical, and experiential
knowledge cannot be reduced to facts; they are context-sensitive knowledges,
often ‘practiced’ rather than ‘possessed’. They may sound ‘anecdotal’ or ‘subjec-
tive’ to those trained in scientific traditions. Yet they provide important insights
on development processes. Knowledge from experience may be shared with tears,
subjective and emotional but no less true. Knowledge from practice may vary
with the weather, the circumstances, and the particular inclinations and beliefs
of the farmer, technician, or teacher in question; this knowledge is subjective
and context specific, but it is still knowledge. Recognizing everyone’s knowledge
as both real and valuable places development actors on equal footing and estab-
lishes the basis for respectful relationships.
The final three guidelines refer specifically to the process of sharing knowledge.
Knowledge partnering as a development methodology involves bringing different
development actors together to share knowledge. Usually, people and organizations
are willing and, indeed, pleased to share what they know with others. Knowledge
is a resource that can be shared without diminishing it. At the same time, there
are various circumstances in which people and organizations are unwilling or
unable to share what they know: for instance, if commercially or culturally valu-
able intellectual property is involved. It may not be in the best interests of a local
community to share their local knowledge if by doing so they risk this knowledge
being taken and exploited by third parties: stolen, misrepresented, or commercial-
ized with no benefit to them. Because everyone’s knowledge matters, knowledge
sharing must respect what can and cannot be shared.
The third guideline, therefore, is that knowledge sharing must always be voluntary.
There are many legitimate reasons people would choose not to share knowledge
or would be legally, socially, or culturally constrained from doing so. Knowledge
partnering respects these constraints.
The fourth guideline warns that even when people very much want to share
what they know, this may not be easy to do. Not all knowledge can be articulated
in words or discussed in the setting of a formal meeting. Extra effort may be
required. It may be necessary to travel to the local area, visit someone in their
own home, or participate in a community activity to communicate particular
kinds of knowledge.
Finally, the fifth guideline states the need to recognize and respect the limits
of knowledge sharing, both in terms of what people and organizations are willing
or able to share and their expectations about how that knowledge will be used.
Thus knowledge may be shared with the understanding that it is not passed on
to others or politicized. It may be shared under conditions of anonymity or on
the basis of explicit attribution and crediting to source. Because everyone’s knowl-
edge matters, knowledge sharing has limits.
Principle #3: The aim is to catalyze solutions to development issues. The final
principle of knowledge partnering is that it focuses on solutions. Knowledge
partnering is not an ad-hoc process of generalized knowledge sharing but a tar-
geted process of solution seeking. As a development methodology, it aims to
leverage the knowledge and resources of different development actors to address
practical development issues. Development issues can be framed as positive oppor-
tunities (how to encourage our local entrepreneurs) or negative challenges (how to reduce
youth unemployment). Regardless of framing, the development issue is the hub
around which development actors share their knowledge about the issue and what
can be done about it.
The development issue is a targeted point from which to mobilize interest
from development actors. While broad consultative processes usually fail to attract
much energy and buy-in, specific issues galvanize interest and action. It is often
much harder to mobilize communities around a broad change agenda (such as
future visioning or community planning) than it is to mobilize them around a
specific issue they are passionate about. Issues create communities of interest.
Knowledge sharing and relationship building require investments of time and
energy; development actors need to have a motivation to make that investment.
Because knowledge partnering aims to catalyze solutions to particular development
issues, it can attract interest and buy-in from across a wide range of individuals,
communities, and organizations.
Knowledge partnering in practice

As a development methodology, knowledge partnering is based on the three prin-
ciples discussed in the previous section. Applied in practice, it becomes a process of
working across different communities and organizations to catalyze solutions to
development issues. The approach can be visually represented as a process in which
multiple development actors with multiple knowledges engage around a develop-
ment issue of common concern (Figure 8.3). The role of the development practitioner
is to catalyze this process of knowledge sharing, using knowledge partnering prin-
ciples and his or her skills in boundary spanning, translation, and negotiation.
A knowledge partnering process can start with any development actor or group
of actors who are concerned about a particular development issue. The issue may
be as narrow as ‘planning a new neighborhood playground’ or as broad as ‘increas-
ing job opportunities for single mothers’. The process can start at the grassroots
with a community group seeking to tackle a local issue or at the ‘top’ with a
large development organization addressing a major policy preoccupation. Regard-
less of the starting point, other development actors (individuals, groups, organiza-
tions) will necessarily become involved in the knowledge partnering process.
Figure 8.3 is a somewhat simplified illustration of this process. The starting
point is for the actors concerned to scope their issue – What is the issue and
Development Development
Actors Issue Actors
Scoping
Knowledge
Action Plan Scan
Development
Issue
Development
Knowledges Development
Knowledges
Knowledge Knowledge
Map Brokering
FIGURE 8.3 The Knowledge Partnering Process
why does it matter? – and conduct a scan of what is known about it. As part of
the knowledge scan, relevant development actors or issue stakeholders are identi-
fied and listed as per Figure 8.2; this will not be an exhaustive list, but it is a
starting point. The practitioner’s role is then to broker knowledge-sharing oppor-
tunities between and among issue stakeholders, using a range of methods as
appropriate. This knowledge partnering process identifies additional issue stake-
holders and knowledge sources. The coming together of knowledge leads to new
insights. As different actors share their knowledge, they create a shared knowledge
‘map’ about the issue and its various dimensions. They are able to identify previ-
ously unrecognized resources and opportunities that lead to specific actions for
change.
Issue scoping is the first step in the process. Issue scoping encourages develop-
ment actors to define the specific nature of the development issue that interests
them and why and where it matters (see Figure 8.4). The definition of the issue
is important to establish at the start because a development issue like ‘microen-
terprise development’, ‘maternal health’, or ‘improving living standards’ can mean
quite different things to different people. It is not uncommon to bring prospective
partners around the table to discuss a development issue of common concern,
only to discover that they have very different ideas about what the issue actually
is. People use the same words to mean very different things and can find them-
selves talking at cross purposes. Are microenterprises the subsistence economic
activities of the poor or are they any business, no matter how wealthy, that has
fewer than five employees? Is maternal health about the survival rate of babies, the
number of mothers who attend medical clinics, or something else? Are living
standards about housing quality, food availability, accessibility of services, social
status, security, income? Scoping the development issue does not require definitive
answers to these questions, but it does require that the people and organizations
concerned about the issue spend time focusing on what the issue actually is. Dif-
ferent development logics often come to the surface throughout the process of
issue scoping.
Issue scoping asks the question: Why does this issue matter? Exploring why an
issue matters can reveal hitherto-unrecognized assumptions and biases. It can
preempt hasty proposals for development initiatives that may or may not address
the root concern. For instance, asking why ‘planning a local playground’ matters
can reveal that the underlying issue is that young families need somewhere to go;
a playground may or may not be the answer. Asking why ‘jobs for single mothers’
matter can reveal a strong bias toward ‘employment’ as the only mechanism for
productive social engagement. Redefining the issue – as ‘productive social engage-
ment for single mothers’ – opens the conversation to include other ways to achieve
this (such as volunteering, microenterprise ownership, etc.). Asking Why does this
issue matter? helps to identify what the root concern really is. The development
issue may be revised and restated as a result.
Issue scoping also asks the question: Where does this issue matter? – that is, what
is the geographic scope of the immediate concern? When the geographic focus is
large, for instance, at regional, national, or even international scale, it is important
to consider how the issue is different in different local contexts. Issues can be non-
issues in certain places; for instance, farmers’ skill levels are a non-issue in a region
without agriculture. Issues can also look very different in different places: in cities
as compared with remote villages, or in postdisaster settings as compared with stable
environments. A common mistake in policy making is to assume that issues always
look the same and can be solved in the same way regardless of the local context.
But it is not just high-level policy makers that make this mistake. Even local com-
munities are often guilty of assuming that different places are the same: they import
ideas from elsewhere with little attention to whether they really respond to local
issues, and ignore the differences among neighborhoods or localities.
Issue scoping thus establishes what the issue is, and why and where this issue
matters for the development actors concerned. The next step is the knowledge scan.
Knowledge scan is the process of identifying what is known about the develop-
ment issue. This involves a scan of available data and published reports. But it
also involves identifying the broad range of development actors who have knowl-
edge or other resources relevant to the issue. These issue stakeholders will include
those with personal interest in the issue, those with a professional interest, and
those organizations and groups whose role is related to the issue. The knowledge
scan asks: What is known about this issue? Who knows something about it? To whom
does it matter and why? And Who may have resources – time, money, skills, knowledge,
influence – that can help address this issue? The knowledge scan thus identifies and
describes the various kinds of ‘issue stakeholders’ as per Figure 8.2.
A number of tools and methods can be used to conduct the knowledge scan.
Applied research methods such as desktop reviews and expert interviews are particularly
Issue Scoping Exercise
o What is the development issue of concern?
o Define the key terms. What do they mean?
o Why does this issue matter?
o Where does this issue matter?
FIGURE 8.4 Issue Scoping
useful, as are community development methods such as asset mapping and participa-
tory appraisal tools. A desktop review (also called a ‘desktop audit’) involves seeking
out and reviewing available documents, websites, and other published resources to
gather information. Desktop reviews can be used to identify organizations, groups,
and individuals who are engaged with a particular issue: service providers, research-
ers, advocacy groups, policy bodies, and so forth, as well as what they have found
out and published about the issue. Expert interviews are a method for formally
requesting information and insight from someone who knows a lot about the
issue and is well placed to identify other relevant development actors and knowl-
edge sources. Often, when an issue is mentioned, certain names come up. These
recognized ‘experts’ are often a good starting point in a knowledge scan – and
because they are passionate about an issue, they are often more than happy to
share what they know. Asset mapping and participatory appraisals can be conducted
with different local groups to identify other issue stakeholders and resources. By
tapping into different networks, these methods can reveal less-visible development
actors and hitherto-unknown resources.
The knowledge scan may generate important insights about a development
issue, overturning assumptions, highlighting opportunities, even redefining the issue
in light of what is learned. One of its key functions is, however, to identify the
range of issue stakeholders on the development landscape. These are the other
development actors who have interest in and knowledge of the issue. Once a list
has been assembled, the next step is to broker opportunities for knowledge sharing
among these stakeholders.
Knowledge brokering is an iterative and often extended process of bringing
relevant development actors together to share what they know about the develop-
ment issue and to identify potential solutions. It is here that the practitioner’s skills
in boundary spanning, translation, and negotiation come to the fore. Facilitating
a conversation among people with different development logics representing dif-
ferent organizations or groups with different agendas, who may or may not
know (or like) each other, is always a challenge. While there are no hard-and-fast
rules about methods, it is generally not a good idea to simply invite a wide cross-
section of people to a meeting unless they have existing working relationships.
The dynamics of large meetings are typically that a few speak and most stay quiet.
Knowledge brokering is seldom as simple as inviting all the relevant issue
stakeholders to a workshop and letting them ‘work it out’ with butchers’ paper
or electronic whiteboards while the facilitator circulates and checks the coffee
urn. This method is commonly used in consultation processes, but it tends to be
very hit and miss in its effectiveness. Simply bringing people into the same room
and asking them to talk is no guarantee that they will communicate, understand
each other, or focus on constructive solutions to particular issues. For this reason,
an active brokerage role is often required: someone to intentionally mediate and
even translate across different languages and logics.
Less important than the particular method used to share knowledge among
stakeholders, is the commitment to knowledge partnering principles. Regardless of
whether the method is a two-way meeting between stakeholders or a multistake-
holder gathering, the ground rules are the same: everyone potentially has a role to
play, everyone’s knowledge matters, and the aim is to generate solutions. These three
principles can avoid many of the headaches that often plague multistakeholder
development processes.
First, recognizing that everyone has a role to play prevents a single organization
from dominating the process. As discussed in Chapter Three, many processes that
aim to be ‘participatory’ are actually venues for a single organization or interest
group to push its agenda. Stakeholder meetings in which one or two organizations
do all the talking and the rest are asked Do you have any questions? fail to recognize
the roles other people and organizations could play in reframing the issue or sug-
gesting alternative solutions. While one organization may need to take leadership
on an issue – calling the meeting, hosting the venue, making resources available –
the ‘lead organization’ must always be careful that it does not become the dominant
organization, silencing other social actors and their ideas in the process. Methods
such as ‘information sessions’ for stakeholders are too often strategies for dominat-
ing the knowledge landscape rather than venues for knowledge sharing. Methods
like World Café, on the other hand, are designed to allow participants to set the
agenda.2
Next, recognizing that everyone’s knowledge matters establishes a respectful
and inclusive process of knowledge sharing. In some cases, this is as simple as
moving a meeting onto mutually comfortable turf, such as a local café rather than
an intimidating boardroom. In other cases, it may require asking hard questions
about how to ‘engage’ less powerful people and organizations in ways that are
seriously respectful of their knowledge and their motivations for sharing it. In
rural Australia, community groups often complain of suffering from ‘consultation
fatigue’ after years of being invited to meetings with government representatives
who are always keen to get their ‘input’ yet never appear to take it seriously. Other
communities are ‘overresearched’; their initial willingness to share knowledge about
their community with outside researchers can turn to frustration when they find
themselves repeatedly answering the same questions and still nothing changes –
particularly when their knowledge is misused or misrepresented. Research and
consultation methods – even the most ‘participatory’ methods, such as those used
in PRA – are typically designed so that one group can obtain information and
insights from another group. They can be used effectively as part of a larger
process of knowledge sharing, but only if they start from the principle that every-
one’s knowledge matters.
Finally, knowledge partnering aims to generate solutions to issues. This is
important because people and organizations are generally unwilling to invest much
time in meetings and activities that do not yield results. It is often common
practice to call a stakeholder meeting to discuss an issue of common concern. In
Australia, these meetings have obtained a less-than-complimentary name: talkfest.
The problem with a talkfest is that nothing happens but the talk; there is no
strategy for translating talk into action. Often, this is because there is no broker
who can help everyone make sense of the different perspectives around the table
and highlight where there are synergies and opportunities. People attend, talk, and
go home again, sometimes with a new insight or two, sometimes even the spark
of an idea, but more often with the suspicion that they have just wasted their
time. Prioritizing solutions to issues keeps conversations focused on what we can
do together or separately (rather than what others are doing or not doing). It is
therefore more likely to spark interest, commitment, and follow-up action by those
involved.
The most effective methods for knowledge brokering tend to be those that
start off by bringing together smaller, like-minded groups in exploratory conversa-
tions about the development issue, often on their own turf. Once these relation-
ships have been established and the development practitioner understands where
different development actors are ‘coming from’ – and they in turn trust the
practitioner – it is much easier to broker targeted multistakeholder meetings that
respond to the particular interests and concerns of those invited. This is not to
say that opportunistic get-togethers and open-invitation workshops cannot be
equally effective strategies, but they may need clever brokering in order to arrive
at an outcome. Still, it is worth remembering that knowledge sharing can emerge
opportunistically in unexpected places. Certain kinds of social spaces can encour-
age opportunistic knowledge-sharing – for instance, the ‘tea room effect’, in which
different organizations enhance their communication and collaboration with each
other by sharing the same tea room.
The knowledge brokering process may directly spark ideas for action. Or
alternatively, it may lead those involved to revisit their original issue and rethink
it in the light of new knowledge. One result of the knowledge brokering process
is to create a shared understanding or ‘knowledge map’ of the development issue
across diverse issue stakeholders.
Knowledge map is a metaphor for the shared understanding of a development
issue that arises from a process of knowledge sharing. It does not necessarily
imply agreement or consensus among development actors, but rather, a shared

understanding of the contours of the issue, the relevant actors, and their perspec-
tives – some of which may be quite different from others. The shared knowledge
map can be stated in words (e.g., summary dot points from a workshop), drawn
as a diagram (e.g., illustrating three different positions vis-à-vis an issue and the
development actors who hold each), or simply internalized as a nuanced under-
standing of the development issue. The knowledge map captures the key under-
standings and insights that have emerged as a result of sharing knowledge with
others.
The final step of a knowledge partnering process is the action plan: the deci-
sion of one or more development actors to ‘do something’ on the basis of what
they have learned.
Action plans, like knowledge maps, are not necessarily formal written documents,
though they can be. They are decision points about actions to be taken based on
the findings of a knowledge partnering process. In some cases, the action brings
together two or more development actors in a collaborative effort to address the
issue; knowledge partnering establishes the relationship and the basis for joint action.
Such relationships may evolve into formal development partnerships; if so, these
partnerships will be based on a shared understanding of the issue and a respect for
each other’s knowledge. In other cases, action may be undertaken by a single person,
group, or organization based on what they have learned and the resources they have
identified to help them. There are no hard-and-fast rules about development action.
Multistakeholder collaborative actions are not necessarily ‘better’ than solo action. It
is a case of what action is needed and who has the resources to accomplish it. Some
actions, like large community projects, need multiple partners; other actions, such
as internal policy changes or practical inventions, may be accomplished by a single
organization or individual.
Issue scoping, knowledge scanning, knowledge brokering, knowledge mapping,
and action planning are not linear processes. There are multiple feedback loops as
the original proponents learn more about their issue and discover new issue stake-
holders to engage with. As they create knowledge partnerships with others, entrenched
assumptions are overturned. The issue is redefined, important resources are discovered,
new ideas are sparked, and opportunities to act are identified. While the focus is
ultimately on action – and ideas for action may spark at any point in the process –
the learning process is ongoing. For this reason, the knowledge partnering process
is portrayed in Figure 8.3 as circular. As development actors create knowledge
partnerships, they continue to generate new ideas and identify new issue stakehold-
ers, new resources, and new relationships to help them address the development
issue they care about.
Knowledge partnering and the community practitioner

Development practitioners can use the knowledge partnering approach to manage
a number of challenges commonly faced when undertaking development work
with local communities. Common challenges include lack of resources, lack of
leadership, low legitimacy, and organizational politics. Practitioners working at the

coalface with communities seldom have large budgets; resources are typically scarce
while expectations for their work are high. Leadership is also a challenge: there
is often a need to engage communities and their local leadership in a change
agenda, but it can be hard to engage and mobilize community-based leadership.
Legitimacy is a related issue: community development workers often have limited
influence or clout; they are typically not directors of organizations, local politicians,
or others with high perceived legitimacy to drive a change agenda. In some cases
they are also from other places, which can diminish their legitimacy in the local
community. Finally, coalface community practitioners are particularly susceptible
to the impact of organizational politics as they attempt to create connections
among organizations on a politically complex landscape.
The knowledge partnering approach does not solve all these challenges, but
it provides a way for community-based development practitioners to navigate
them confidently. Knowledge partnering gives the practitioner a framework for
identifying and accessing different kinds of resources, engaging diverse develop-
ment actors, and establishing their own legitimacy as a particular kind of change
agent with the ability to bring different groups into dialogue. Community devel-
opment practitioners are often adept at moving across organizational boundaries
and translating between different social groups. Nevertheless, it is often hard to
justify this kind of ‘networking’ and ‘engagement’ work to their employers; these
activities take time and don’t seem directly connected to organizational core busi-
ness. The knowledge partnering methodology explains why this kind of brokerage
work is not just useful but central to effective development practice with local
communities.
On the ground in local communities, the development landscape is complex.
There are typically lots of ideas, lots of projects, lots of initiatives. Some come
from local people and organizations, some from further afield. Many duplicate
each other. Some don’t entirely understand the core issue they are attempting to
address, and some are not clear about their scope. Others perpetuate assumptions
about poverty, social change, or particular social groups that may not, in fact, be
true. Many do fantastic work on a shoestring and believe they are working in
isolation without resources or support. Most miss opportunities. Very few have
a good understanding of the development landscape – the range of other orga-
nizations and groups that are engaged with similar or related issues. It is common
to find a number of organizations working on the same issue, in the same geo-
graphic area, that are unaware of each other’s existence. Each of these organiza-
tions may be struggling for resources, yet one of their biggest potential
resources – each other – remains untapped. Equally, it is surprising how seldom
organizations share knowledge with those in other places that are engaged in
similar work. Knowledge partnering is a structured way to identify others who
can help.
Innovative development practitioners work with local communities to broker
relationships for change. Knowledge partnering provides a way to bring diverse
development actors together, not necessarily into formal partnerships but into
knowledge partnerships in which they can share what they know and learn from
each other. Of course, politics and power differentials still inhibit communication
and relationship building. Yet recognizing that different social actors have different
strategic and notional logics can explain many conflicts previously glossed as
‘political’. For instance, it is not surprising that policy makers value rigorous,
codified knowledge that can be generalized, while community members value
knowledge that is culturally and socially situated. It is not unexpected that seem-
ingly unresolvable ‘political’ arguments should erupt around one-size policy solu-
tions that are not attuned to local context. At the root of development conflicts
is often a failure by development actors to understand each other’s knowledges
and logics. Of all the development practitioner’s skills, the ability to translate across
different development logics is perhaps most vital. This is a skill that has tradition-
ally been learned in practice through experiences of working with a range of
organizations and communities.
Community development practitioners often already possess a certain ability to
broker relationships across organizational and community boundaries. Knowledge
partnering provides a framework for mobilizing these skills intentionally to catalyze
social and economic change. In principle, knowledge partnering proposes that
development is a social process and that respectful knowledge sharing can spark
new ideas and mobilize new resources for change – often from unexpected quar-
ters. In practice, knowledge partnering starts from a development issue and those
who are passionate about it, then draws people into a process of knowledge sharing
to inform action. The knowledge partnering methodology recognizes that many
different development actors – from poor local residents to the directors of large
companies – have the knowledge and resources needed to create social and eco-
nomic change. Yet these resources are disconnected on the development landscape.
By sharing knowledge about issues of common interest, organizations and com-
munities learn more about each other. Knowledge ‘spills over’ boundaries: revealing
new actors and resources, suggesting new ways of solving old problems, and laying
the groundwork for new relationships.
Further reading
On knowledge partnering
Knowledge partnering in agricultural extension work
‘The Use of Knowledge Partnering as an Extension Strategy in Adaptation to Climate
Variability’, by Marion Titterton, Robyn Eversole, and Jo Lyall, in Extension Farming
Systems Journal 7(2), 1–6, 2011.
Knowledge partnering in forestry industry policy

Exploring the Intent of Tasmanian Non-Industrial Private Forest Owners Toward Forest Certification,
by Melanie (Lain) Dare and Robyn Eversole, Report. The Institute for Regional Devel-
opment and Private Forests Tasmania, 2012.
Knowledge partnering in regional development work

‘Constructing Advantage in the Cradle Coast Region, Tasmania: Knowledge Partnering as
a Regional Development Platform Approach’, by Robyn Eversole and Tony McCall,
Regional Science Policy and Practice, 6(3), 251–264, 2014.
Practical application: intervention mapping

Intervention mapping is a method that can be used to identify what differ-
ent organizations or groups are already doing to address a local develop-
ment issue. It can thus be used to identify those ‘issue stakeholders’ who
are already taking some kind of action for change. Intervention mapping
recognizes that many organizations and communities are already working
to create positive change on the ground, but they do not necessarily know
about each other. As a result, some initiatives and services may duplicate
others, while opportunities for different groups to leverage their comple-
mentary activities are missed.
Intervention mapping starts with a development issue and a defined
geographical scope and asks: Who in this place is working to address this
issue? The definition of an intervention is broad – it may be a formal orga-
nizational program, a discrete project, an ongoing service, or a grassroots
community initiative. It does not matter whether the ‘intervention’ is formal
or informal or who runs it – government, committee, development orga-
nization, private enterprise – the question is: Who is already undertaking
some form of action for change?
Like asset mapping, intervention mapping reveals a range of assets
for change that are already present in the local area but that may not be
immediately visible. Knowledge partnering can be used to identify these
interventions and who is running them, and understand the nature of each
activity, its aims, and its scope. ‘Mapping’ these initiatives reveals overlaps
and potential synergies, opportunities and gaps. It provides an understand-
ing of the current landscape prior to launching a new initiative – and it may
itself spark opportunities for coordination and collaboration.
Notes
1 Kiros Hiruy, in Kiros Hiruy and Robyn Eversole (2013) ‘Participation at the Coalface:
Translating Local Knowledges and Institutions in Post-war Tigray, North Ethiopia’,
Community Development Journal, 48(2), 222–223.
2 For information on the World Café method, see www.kstoolkit.org/The+World+Cafe
and www.theworldcafe.com/method.html.
CONCLUSION
Future directions for community
development practice
A new kind of development practice

Community development practice has a long history of working on the ground
with local communities, but arguably never before has it had such an opportunity
to influence the larger landscape of development work. Community development
has historically focused on the grassroots contexts of social and economic change,
often positioning itself in opposition to mainstream, top-down development prac-
tice. Its proposition that local communities matter has generally met with little argu-
ment from policy makers but also little enthusiasm – and no real policy change.
Community development practitioners typically occupy marginal roles at the
boundaries of local communities and more powerful development organizations,
with limited ability to influence either one. Community-based practitioners’
strategic and notional logics about development – as bottom-up change processes
grounded in social contexts – have generally been miles away from the top-down
logics of mainstream development practice.
In recent years, however, these development logics have been moving closer together.
Mainstream development organizations are recognizing that local communities play
an important role in change processes. The participation of local people and orga-
nizations and the crafting of partnerships with them is now a common feature of
development policy language internationally. Policy makers are also increasingly aware
that development is not just about the performance of economies but that it has
social, environmental, and cultural dimensions: they recognize that development is
multidimensional. These trends are creating a need for development practitioners
with the skills to work with local communities to solve social and economic chal-
lenges from the ground up. This is opening an opportunity for community develop-
ment work to move from the margins to the center of development practice.
There is an enormous opportunity for the community development field in
the twenty-first century to take the lessons learned from decades of on-the-ground
Conclusion 163
work with communities and mobilize these to create a new kind of development
practice. This new kind of development practice focuses on communities and
seeks to work with them on their own terms. It breaks with the traditional top-
down approach to development in which experts transfer scientific and organi-
zational technologies to poor communities to help them catch up. Instead, it
recognizes the value of communities’ own agendas and knowledges and the
opportunity to drive new kinds of change trajectories. At the same time, it does
not suggest a purely bottom-up process in which disadvantaged communities are
expected to create positive change on their own, in isolation from other resources
and support. Rather, it proposes that effective development requires forging hori-
zontal relationships among multiple development actors – actors with different
agendas, resources, knowledges, and logics.
The history of participatory development and partnership-based approaches to
date has demonstrated much enthusiasm but little real success. Relationships between
poor communities and development organizations often fail to meet the real needs
of these communities – or to deliver the outcomes that development organizations
seek. This is because the dominant paradigm of expert-led technology transfer
continues to underpin most development work today, even development work that
aims to be participatory. Development practitioners make an effort to engage com-
munities – especially disadvantaged communities – but these communities are gener-
ally cast as junior partners, pressured to participate in the agendas of others. The
complexity of local communities and the existence of local knowledges and logics
are regularly overlooked. Engagement usually takes place within the contexts and
languages that are comfortable to development professionals, and communities have
little real voice in decision making, which is ultimately driven by experts. This
suggests a need for a new approach to development work in which partnerships
between communities and their helpers can be established on more equal footing
and extended to include the range of social actors who can help create positive
change.
Starting from the core question of development: What drives social and economic
change? and the practical question: How can practitioners ‘support’ and’ enable’ effective,
community-driven change? this book has proposed a framework of ideas and a
practical approach that development practitioners can use in their social and
economic development work with local communities. It starts from the insight
that development is a social process. Development processes involve a broad range
of social actors (individuals, communities, organizations) with different knowledges,
logics, agendas, and power to effect change. For the development practitioner,
this implies a need to respect different knowledges and bring disconnected
development actors together. Brokering knowledge partnerships across complex
social landscapes requires particular skill sets: the ability to translate across different
notional logics, boundary span across social distances, and negotiate across differ-
ent agendas and underlying strategic logics. These skills in translation, boundary
spanning, and negotiation are the same skills that are often present in the work
of experienced community development practitioners.
164 Conclusion
Community development practice thus has the potential to play a central role
in twenty-first-century approaches to ending poverty and exclusion. Knowledge
partnering articulates an approach to development practice that privileges the per-
spectives and goals of local communities while enabling innovative partnerships
with other communities and support organizations. It provides a framework for
understanding development as a social process in which different actors have dif-
ferent knowledges, and in which bringing these knowledges together can spark
new solutions. In the knowledge partnering approach, the innovative practitioner
is a knowledge broker whose role is to catalyze new solutions to social and eco-
nomic issues. He or she is not an extraordinarily gifted or creative individual but
simply someone who has the skills to work in and across communities and orga-
nizations to bring disconnected development actors together.
Many of the tools and methods for knowledge sharing discussed here are already
being used by innovative practitioners working at the coalface with local com-
munities. Some of these methods, such as those used in participatory rural appraisal
and asset mapping, are particularly effective at capturing local and tacit forms of
knowledge. In the knowledge partnering approach, what matters is how this
knowledge is used. The focus of knowledge partnering is not on professional
practitioners sourcing local knowledge so that they can continue to impose their
externally crafted solutions more efficiently. Nor is the focus on poor communi-
ties gathering knowledge only to inform themselves, without in turn informing
others whose actions affect them. Knowledge partnering principles emphasize that
everyone’s knowledge matters, and that the aim is to bring different kinds of
knowledge together to catalyze action for change. In knowledge partnering,
knowledge is neither imposed on others nor harvested from them, but shared in
a respectful process of multidirectional learning.
Such a process is not easy and does not often ‘just happen’ without effort; there
are very real social, notional, and strategic distances among development actors
that prevent it. These distances are most noticeable when poor communities in
isolated settings attempt to work with foreign development organizations. The
logics, languages, and understandings of the different development actors are often
vastly different. But these distances are still there even when the differences among
development actors are less marked – in the engagements between local com-
munities and their own governments, for instance. Social, strategic, and notional
distances among development actors make knowledge spillovers and development
innovations the exception rather than the rule. Development innovations do
sometimes emerge, as illustrated in Chapter Six, but they are rare and notable
because these challenges are real.
Community development as a field is uniquely specialized in understanding the
social contexts of change. Future community development practice has the potential
to take a leading role in catalyzing innovative solutions to today’s social and eco-
nomic challenges. The skills required to broker knowledge partnerships are already
present in the skills and experience of many on-the-ground community develop-
ment practitioners. They simply require a framework within which to position their
work at the center of twenty-first-century development practice.
Conclusion 165
From the grassroots to the landscape

From its long experience of championing the needs and assets of disadvantaged
communities, community development practice has positioned itself firmly at the
‘grassroots’. It enjoys an up-close, in-depth understanding of the social processes
of change as they play out on the ground in real local places. Community devel-
opment practice is characterized by a commitment to understanding and acting
upon the particular situations of particular communities of people. This is its great
strength. At the same time, this close-up view of local communities has led to a
tendency to see local communities as things in themselves rather than as part of
a complex landscape of development actors. In the future, generating innovative
development solutions from the grassroots will also require creating relationships
across this broader landscape. It will require active engagement with a broad range
of development actors, both in and beyond local communities.
Over the years, community development practice has been consciously and
persistently ‘bottom up’ – working with communities on the ground to generate
change from within. Community development work at the grassroots has posi-
tioned itself in contrast to mainstream ‘top-down’ development practice. While
mainstream development work has portrayed communities as the objects of devel-
opment, community development work has seen communities as subjects and key
actors in their own right. Community development workers have aimed to
incorporate local people’s logics and visions of the future and have argued that
communities can rally their internal resources to drive positive change. In these
processes of community organizing, advocacy, and problem solving, the dynamics
of local communities have been clearly visible. However, those of development
actors farther afield have remained largely invisible.
Practitioners at the grassroots often speak passionately of the community and its
know-how: the base in Spanish, the real people on the ground. They often speak
disparagingly of the ‘top’ – the government machinery, the wealthy entrepreneurs,
the ineffectual development organizations – the whole ‘system’ that oppresses the
poor. The ‘top’ and the ‘bottom’ become stereotypes, confirmed in practice when
professionals in suits are whisked away in fast cars and the dust settles back on an
unchanged landscape of disadvantage. It is easy to believe that development is just a
show designed to disguise the intentional and calculated perpetuation of inequity.
Yet the story from colleagues working in development organizations is a notably
different one. It is a story of serious desire to engage with poor communities and
create real change, an unquestioning belief in their own development logics and what
they see as necessary to ending poverty, and a more-or-less disguised frustration that
nothing they try seems to work. While they miss the perspectives of local communi-
ties, local communities in turn miss the perspectives of outsiders. Focusing too closely
on the grassroots obscures the broader relationships that are needed for change.
In the end, neither bottom-up nor top-down development is enough. Local
communities and their resources are needed to drive positive change; so are policy
makers and their resources. Beyond the simplistic binary of the top (development
organization) and the bottom (local community), there is a complex landscape of
166 Conclusion
development actors with the knowledge and resources to support (or resist) change
processes. In this complex landscape, partnerships are essential. For local communities,
partnerships can help them access the resources and influence they need to overcome
power differentials and realize their own visions of change. For development orga-
nizations, partnerships with local communities are a way for them to enable change
in real, diverse, on-the-ground places. Partnerships are by definition neither top down
or bottom up. They are horizontal relationships, and they can link multiple develop-
ment actors. But because partnerships often work poorly in practice, practitioners
with the skills to broker effective, respectful relationships are vital.
In the future, community development work may still start at the grassroots
with local communities, but it will go on to engage across the development
landscape – with the broad range of social actors in a position to support or resist
communities’ own change agendas. These social actors may be local or further
afield; they may include high-level decision makers, industry partners, and other
communities. The role of the community-based practitioner is neither to advocate
uncritically for grassroots agendas from the bottom up nor to make local com-
munities more amenable to agendas imposed from the top down. Rather, it is to
broker knowledge partnerships across a diverse social landscape, creating multi-
directional learning and stimulating new relationships and new ideas for change.
From engagement to knowledge partnerships

Mainstream development policy has recognized the need to secure the participa-
tion of poor communities in the design and delivery of development initiatives.
Yet as Chapter Three discussed, participatory development is often not very
participatory in practice. Policy makers are increasingly keen to partner with poor
communities, but as seen in Chapter Four, these partnerships are often far from
equal. Development organizations want to engage with poor communities and
work with them, yet in the end, these relationships often fail to deliver benefits.
The problem with ‘engaging’ communities – poor or otherwise – is that the
terms of engagement are generally preset by the organization that is doing the
engaging. Whatever the issue or topic of interest – such as ‘women’s health’ or
‘microenterprise development’ – it typically comes with a set of preestablished
agendas and logics that may or may not be shared by the community that is being
engaged. In addition, the organization seeking to engage the local community will
generally have its own processes and ways of working – for instance, via consultative
meetings, formal project proposals, establishment of a steering committee, and so
forth. These logics and processes may or may not make much sense from the per-
spectives of local community members.
Knowledge partnering, by contrast, starts by recognizing that a given develop-
ment issue means different things to different development actors. It seeks to
engage a range of stakeholders, poor and nonpoor, in a process of respectful
knowledge sharing. As a result, the development organization’s initial assumptions
about the issue are likely to be challenged before any particular project, program,
Conclusion 167
or partnership gets underway. This process of knowledge sharing enables develop-

ment organizations to learn from other organizations and communities and for
local communities to learn, too. Rather than poor communities being ‘engaged’ by
development organizations, development actors engage with one another to share
what they know. The knowledge partnering process aims to catalyze new relation-
ships and new solutions, moving beyond everyone’s preconceived ideas about what
needs to be done.
Poverty, in the end, is a relationship. Relationships among development actors
enable or prevent access to resources – financial, physical, social. Institutionalized
in powerful organizations, some kinds of relationships become ‘structural’ and look
impossible to shift. Yet organizations are run by people. They are based on certain
logics about how things work and what the organization is aiming to achieve.
Bringing these logics into dialogue across organizations and communities can
cause decision makers to question their assumptions and rethink their logics.
Hearing how a certain policy has had a negative effect on poor communities – an
effect that may never have been intended – can lead to policy change. Under-
standing that certain practices are harmful to others may start to call these practices
into question – even if they do not immediately shift. Overcoming stereotypes
about poor communities can reveal opportunities to work with these communities
in ways that create mutual benefits. In a range of ways, bringing knowledges into
dialogue can spark new ideas and shift relationships.
Social and economic issues are generally complex; they cannot be solved by a
single type of knowledge. While development organizations are right to seek to
engage with local communities, they must also seek to engage with the knowledges
present in those communities – and to be engaged in return. For this reason,
knowledge partnering can be understood as a process of multidirectional learning
and engagement in which different development actors engage with one another
to share knowledge and, ultimately, to forge relationships for change.
In some cases, these relationships will be informal, characterized by a process
of communication and knowledge sharing. In other cases, development actors may
identify a compatible aim and complementary resources, and their relationship
may solidify into a formal development partnership. Knowledge partnering lays
the groundwork for other kinds of relationships. It enables prospective develop-
ment partners to recognize that each has different but relevant knowledge and
resources. In a formal development partnership, it is not necessary for partners to
reach a complete consensus about the issue or what is required. The partners’
aims need only to be compatible and the relationship based on the principle that
everyone’s knowledge matters.
Twin agendas: innovation and inclusion

The new framework for development practice presented in this book draws on
many of the ideas, skills, and methods already present to some extent in com-
munity development practice. It links these ideas from practice together with
168 Conclusion
theoretical ideas about economic and social change to propose that development
is a social process in which everyone’s knowledge matters, and that new solutions
can occur by bringing different actors and their knowledges together. The knowl-
edge partnering approach proposes that innovative practitioners will work across
the development landscape, brokering a process of knowledge sharing among
diverse and often disconnected development actors. Through knowledge partner-
ing, the relationships that create and perpetuate poverty and disadvantage can be
reworked, and new kinds of relationships can emerge.
Traditional development practice contained within it a number of oppositions:
between top-down and bottom-up action, between development organizations and
local communities, and between the economic and social aims of development work.
Today’s development practice is starting to overcome these assumed binaries. Increas-
ingly, policy makers recognize that development is multidimensional and that
development organizations need to forge partnerships with local communities –
especially poor and disadvantaged communities – to create positive change on the
ground. Yet attempts to make these changes from within old frameworks of
development practice consistently fail.
This book has suggested a new framework for development practice in which
the innovative practitioner becomes a catalyst for community-driven innovation.
This is not just economic innovation but also social innovation that benefits poor
communities and individuals and creates new solutions to social issues. Knowledge
partnering is based on the insight that innovation occurs in social and community
contexts, when different kinds of knowledge come together. New solutions to
entrenched development issues do not emerge from the desktop ideas of profes-
sional experts alone. Local, contextualized knowledge is also required – including
the contextualized knowledge of ‘poor’ and ‘disadvantaged’ communities themselves.
The participation and inclusion of poor communities in development processes
is not just an end in itself; if local knowledges are taken seriously, their inclusion
can drive innovation. Inclusion and innovation thus become twin agendas, each
reinforcing the other.
In the future, community development work has the potential to move from
the margins to the center of development practice. Community development
practice can help to answer the most pressing issue facing mainstream development
practice today: how to work effectively with local communities to catalyze new
solutions to entrenched social and economic issues. Community development
practitioners have long recognized that communities of people can drive change.
They have developed skills in spanning boundaries, translating, and negotiating
across complex social terrain. They can – and often do – use these skills to bring
disconnected development actors together. Today’s community development prac-
titioners are thus well placed to become tomorrow’s innovative practitioners,
bringing development actors and their knowledges into dialogue to forge new
relationships for change.
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INDEX
Acción microfinance network 109, cause-driven businesses 118

111, 128 Cernea, Michael 51
action plans 86, 153, 158 Chambers, Robert 51, 79, 93–4, 101, 142;
ActionAid 142 Rural Development: Putting the Last First 51
aid, international 11, 14, 116 change: community-driven 1, 3–7, 146;
aims: of development initiatives 36–8; social and development 3; drivers of 2, 3–5;
37; see also goals historical 11–12; social and economic
alternative economic development 2, 4, 12, 15–16, 19, 159, 163; as social
approaches 39 process 2–3, 6, 146; theories of 31–3, 35,
anthropology of development 9, 26, 92 52, 81; varying receptivity to 3–4
Antweiler, Christoph 96 checklists 86
Appadurai, Arjun 79 citizens’ advisory committees 59
appraisal see participatory appraisals; ‘Closing the Gap’ 18
participatory rural appraisal (PRA) coalface 7, 20, 46, 145, 163, 164
Arnstein, Sherry 56, 57, 59 coalface practitioners 135, 136, 159
asset mapping 28, 155 Cohen, John 51, 52
asset-based community development collaboration 72, 74, 157, 161
(ABCD) 23–4, 28 colonization 12
comfort zones 139
boundary spanning 129, 136–7, 141, 146, communication: enabling/enhancing 65,
152, 155, 163 66, 94, 136, 157; inhibiting/preventing
Brokensha, David 94 82, 160; overcoming barriers to 65; in
brokerage 129, 138–40; of knowledge relationships 56, 75, 80, 167; tools for 37;
partnerships 136, 143, 163; see also two-way 51
development brokers; knowledge community/communities: accounts and
brokering balance sheets 45, 48; aspirations of 25;
‘Buen Vivir’ 18 building 23; capacity of 30, 52–5, 63;
business development services 27, 30 as change agents 4–5; deficits and assets
buy local campaigns 27, 30 22–4, 28, 48, 53; defined 20; development
of 1–6; disadvantaged 2, 5–6, 16, 21, 22,
capital: community 48; cultural 87n11; 24, 25, 52, 53, 60–1, 70–1, 84, 89, 90,
financial 4, 45, 48, 109–12, 122; human 1, 91, 99, 101, 103, 110, 113–20, 127, 129,
45, 48; local 23, 45, 49n5; social 4, 45, 48 130, 132, 135–8, 145, 147, 163, 165, 168;
career mentoring approach 31 engagement of 145, 166–7; having room
178 Index
to maneuver 23, 29n6; interests of 7; and 130–3; sustainable 36, 44, 51; see also
their knowledge, 136; local 26, 50–1, 64, community development; economic
66, 90–1, 96, 97, 102, 116, 128, 133, 145, development; development practice
147, 151, 168; participation of 57–8, 62, development actors 21, 62, 80; distances
71; resilience of 37; role of 10, 19–22, between 139–40; having room to
130–3; shared 18; see also community maneuver 131, 142n3; influence of 64;
development; community organizations relationships among 163; relevant 147;
and groups; community partnerships and the social process 131
Community Contact Service 123–4 development approaches: alternative
community development 1–2, 19–22, 39; community capacity building 30;
162, 164; assets-based (ABCD) 23–4, community
28; economic 39; focus of 3, 42–3; as development brokers 129, 133–6, 144–6,
grassroots activity 165; unanswered 152, 159–60, 166; see also brokerage;
questions regarding 24–6; see also knowledge brokering
development development immersions 141–2
community organizations and groups 6, development initiatives: aims of 36–8;
32, 53, 54, 69, 70, 72–4, 77, 83–4, 102, context of 35–6, 37, 39; scale of 36, 37
116, 147 development interfaces 80, 81, 85
community partnerships 9, 69, 70, 73, 94; development issues 148, 152
rethinking 83–5 development knowledges 92, 99, 103, 147
community practitioners see development development logics 132, 135, 137, 145,
practitioners 150, 154, 155, 160, 162, 165, 167; see also
community study circles 122–3 notional logics; strategic logics
community-based learning 107–8, 113–16, development methods 30–8; asset mapping
119–20, 127 28, 155; desktop appraisal tools 154–5;
competency 91–3 economic 38–41; information sessions
consciousness raising 113 156; intervention mapping 161; local
consensus-building tools 66, 68n23 economic development (LED) 27;
consultation fatigue 156 multidimensional 43–5; participatory
consultations 28 appraisal tools 155; participatory rural
consumer lending 110 appraisal (PRA) 58, 65, 90, 157; social
context: of development initiatives 36, 37, 41–4; World Café 156, 161n2; see also
39; of development problems 46 knowledge partnering
contracts 76 development organizations 7, 168
Cornwall, Andrea 51, 59; cross-cultural development partnerships 6, 34–5, 65,
translation 136, 163 69–74, 78, 80, 84, 86n3, 102, 132–3, 136,
CSIRO Sustainable Communities Initiative 145, 158; local 69
87n5 development policy 34, 45; trends in 35–8
culture circles 114, 115, 122 development policy makers 34
development practice 14–17, 22–6;
desktop reviews (desktop audits) 154–5 compartmentalization of 46, 71–2,
development: definition 3; bottom up vs. 139; defined 3, 11; innovative 101–3,
top down 3, 5, 6–8, 16–18, 22, 24, 25, 50, 107–20, 138–40, 147, 165; methodology
51, 62, 63, 69, 84, 129, 130, 132, 133, 140, for 144–5; new kind of 162–4; new
162, 163, 165–166, 168; challenges to theoretical framework for 129
159; endogenous 5, 19, 22, 23; grassroots development practitioners 50; innovative
15, 17, 21, 36; idea of 11–14; human 127–40, 144–5, 164, 168; as partnership
41–2, 47; integrated (multidimensional) brokers 129, 133–6, 138, 140, 144–6,
35, 38, 43–5, 47; LED 27, 30, 39; for 152–3, 155, 163–4, 166, 168
nation-states 17–19, 36, 39; negative development programs and projects
consequences of 13; participation in 34–5, 62
50–2; partnership-based approaches to development solutions, innovative 8
163; place-based 5–6, 17–19, 26, 29n5; disability enterprises 118
postdevelopment critiques of 16–17; disadvantage: causes of, 8; educational
social 35, 38, 41–3; as social process 8, 127; increased by development 9;
Index 179
overcoming 145, 150; relationships that economic 40, 48; human development
perpetuate 168; solutions to 1–4, 10, 61; 42–3; of national productivity 3, 40;
structural 23, 136; see also community/ performance 73; well-being 48
communities, disadvantaged indigenous technical knowledge (ITK) 94, 96
information sessions 156
Earle, Duncan 83 infrastructure 1, 3, 4, 12, 13, 15, 18, 23, 27,
economic development 10, 19, 20, 24, 39, 42, 75
25, 31, 35, 42, 43, 47; methods and innovation 99–102, 105–6n16, 168;
measures 38–41; regional 39; see also local community-driven 168; defined 127; in
economic development (LED) development practice 138–40, 164; social
education: community-based 107–8, 99–100
113–16, 119–20; development and 37, Institute of Development Studies (UK) 112
41, 48, 54, 95; focus on 15, 31–3, 83; institutional barriers 73
importance of 8, 95; knowledge sharing integrated development approaches 44
in 113–14; lack of 22, 53, 90 Inter American Foundation (IAF) 15
enterprise facilitation 27 interfaces 21; development 80–1, 85
evaluation 33–5 intergovernmental 69
exclusion: and community development 164; intermediate labor market organizations
ending 7, 164; financial 148; social 59–60 118, 123–4
expert interviews 154–5 International Cooperation Administration
(ICA) 14
Farmer First 101, 104 intervention mapping 161
farmers’ participatory research 104 issue scoping 153–4, 155
FINCA 122 issue stakeholders 149, 158, 161; see also
folk school movement 114–15 stakeholders
Foxfire project 115
Freire, Paulo 113–15, 120, 122 knowledge: abstract 92–3, 95, 101;
funding partners 75 agricultural 195; as catalyst 146–7, 152;
funding partnerships 74–6, 102 combining 119–20; in communities
136–8; competency 91–2; cultural
Geddes, Mike 83, 94 knowledge 90, 96, 97, 115, 138;
geographical assets maps 28 development 92; different kinds of 89,
goals, compatible 73, 83 92, 160; experiential 151; expert 92;
goodwill 72, 117 flows of 140; general 97; indigenous 96,
governance partnerships 74, 76, 102 105n7; for local development 89–92;
Grameen Bank 108–9, 111 multiple kinds of 8–9, 147, 149–52;
grassroots development 15, 17, 21, 36, 69, 165 networked 100–101, 107, 151; place-
gross national happiness 45 based 100–101; as professional expertise
90; sharing of 151–2; simple declarative
Hatch, John 128 97; tacit 93; technical 73, 90, 94, 96, 97,
Highlander Center 114, 115 99, 150; traditional 96; see also indigenous
Highlander Folk School 114 technical knowledge (ITK); local
Hirschman, Albert 82 knowledge
Hoben, Allan 14 knowledge brokering 145, 153, 155–8, 163,
Horton, Myles 114, 120, 128 164, 168; see also brokerage; development
Human Development Index (HDI) 42 brokers
Human Development Reports 16 knowledge map 157, 158
knowledge partnering 8–9, 102–3; and
IAP2 Public Participation Spectrum 56, 57, the community practitioner 158–60; as
67n9 methodology for development practice
immersions 141–2 144–5; in practice 152; principles of
inclusion 60–1, 167–8; financial 110; social 146–52, 164; process of 153–8; see also
59–60 knowledge partnerships
indicators: big-picture 2; of change 34–5, knowledge partnerships 102–3, 107, 127–8;
38, 48, 50; of community capacity 53; brokering 136, 143, 163; and community
180 Index
engagement 166–7; see also community- Newfoundland, community accounts in 48

based learning; knowledge partnering; nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
microfinance; social enterprise 15, 36; international 77; involved in
knowledge scan 154–5 microfinance 109–10
knowledge spillovers 100, 106n18, 138, notional distance 134, 136, 138, 139–40,
140, 160 144, 145, 164
knowledge transfer 89–90 notional logics 81–3, 86, 131, 136, 137, 140,
Kretzmann, John 28 150, 160, 162, 163
Nova Scotia, community accounts in 48
Labrador, community accounts in 48 Nuffield Institute for Health 86
‘Ladder of Participation’ 56
leadership 156; development of 34; lack of Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre 81
159; local 31, 90, 159; support from 86n3 Organisation for Economic Co-operation
Ledwith, Margaret 25 and Development (OECD) 118
legitimacy: and community development organizational politics 159
159; and local knowledge 97
local communities see communities, local participation: analysis of 61–3; critiques of
local economic development (LED) 27, 61–5; framing 59, 67n12; instrumental
30, 39 57; levels of 56–7, 58; limits of 63–5; and
local employment programs 27 social inclusion 59–61
local knowledge 8, 90–5, 101, 107, 137, 151, participatory appraisals 155; see also
163; cultural 96, 98, 106n22; experiential participatory rural appraisal (PRA)
96, 98, 138; linked with innovation 99– participatory development 50–2, 53, 163;
102; technical 96, 98; typology of 97–9; approaches to 44; and community
unpacking 95–8; see also knowledge, for capacity 52–5; methods and measures
local development 55–9
logframes 33, 133 Participatory Development framework
Long, Norman 21 56, 57
Lowndes, Vivien 73 participatory mapping 65, 68n22
participatory rural appraisal (PRA) 58, 65,
matched savings programs 110 90, 157
McKnight, John 28 partners: communities as 60; funding 75;
McLeod, John 86 implementing 75; junior 163; multiple
memorandum of understanding 86 158; prospective 153; relationship
methods and measures: of economic between 70–1; as stakeholders 76; see also
development 38–41; of multidimensional knowledge partnering; partnerships
development 43–5; of participatory Partnership Analysis Tool 86
development 55–9; of social development partnerships: analysis of 80–2; assessment
41–3; see also development approaches; tools for 85–6; cross-sectional 69; defined
development measures 70; external 8; framework for analysis
metrics 34; for economic development 40 80–2; funding 74–6, 102; governance
microcredit 110 74, 76, 102; instrumental drivers of
microenterprise credit 110 72; intergovernmental 69; as level of
microfinance 107–12, 113, 119, 122, 127; participation 58; life cycle of 74, 87n6;
socioeconomic impacts of 112 need for in local communities 8; place-
Millennium Development Goals 16, 42 based 5–6; in practice 74–7; project
Ministry of Overseas Development 14 74–7, 82, 102, 147; reasons for failure
Mission Australia 27 82; rethinking 83–5; strategic 44–5,
MIX Market 124n10 74–7, 102; success factors for 73, 86n3;
modernization theory 3, 12–14, 16, 20, 22 in theory 71–4; types of 74–6, see also
development partnerships; knowledge
national development 17–19, 36, 39 partnerships
negotiating 135, 163 path dependence 139
neoliberal market approaches 40 placation 57
networking 4, 135, 159 politics, organizational 159
Index 181
positivism 92–3 Southern Prospect 27

postdevelopment 16–17 spillover 100, 106n18, 107, 138, 140, 160
poverty 167; and community development stakeholder mapping 148–9
164; effect of microfinance on 108; stakeholders 147–9; as participants 66;
fighting 23; ways to address 1–2; see partners as 76
also communities, disadvantaged; strategic distance 134
microfinance strategic logics 81, 83, 131, 134, 136, 163
Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers 18 Sullivan, Helen 73
power 77–9; differences in 84; effect of on surveys, visual 28
resources 87n10; inequalities in 87n8 sustainability 16, 44, 67n4, 111, 132; see also
practitioners, innovative 127–9; 164, 168 development, sustainable
program logic 33
programs see development programs and talkfests 157
projects tea room effect 157
progress: of projects and agendas 75, 83, technology transfer 3, 16, 54
130; Western idea of 12–14, 16, 17, 20 theories of change 31–3, 35, 52, 81
project cycle 35 thinking skills, high-level 8
project logic 33 Totally Locally 27
projects see development programs and training enterprises 118
projects translation 129, 137, 146, 152, 155, 163;
public meetings 58 cross-cultural 136
public-private partnerships 69 translation agents 136
triple-bottom-line outcomes 37
quadruple-bottom-line outcomes 37 trust and distrust 4, 76–7, 82, 86, 134, 157
Turner, Andy 61
rapid rural appraisal (RRA) 65 typology of local knowledge 97–9
regions: assets in 28; development in 4, 9,
19, 24, 36–7, 39–40, 47; focus on 1, 4, UK Department for International
154; well-being of 48 Development (DFID) 14
resources 78; complementary 73; lack UK Overseas Development
of 158 Administration 14
reversals 79, 94 United Nations 60, 109, 113
Richards, Paul 95 United States Agency for International
rotating savings and credit associations Development (USAID) 14
(ROSCAs) 110 Uphoff, Norman 51, 52
savings clubs 110 VicHealth 86

scale, of development initiatives 36, 37 village banking 110, 122, 142
Sheil, Helen 122 virtuous resource circles 117
Sida 142 visual surveys 28
Simonelli, Jeanne 83
Sirolli Institute 27 White, Sarah 56, 59, 62
skills audits 28, 31 Women’s World Banking 109–19
Smith, Neil 122–3 workshops 28, 31, 58, 157;
social businesses 118 multistakeholder 66
social change 4, 15–16, 159, 163 World Bank 18, 51, 52, 113, 142
social distance 77, 134 World Café 156, 161n2
social enterprise 107–8, 116–19, 120, 127
social return on investment (SROI) 43 Yunus, Mohammad 108, 128

Knowledge Partnering For Community Development

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Knowledge Partnering For Community Development

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KNOWLEDGE PARTNERING FOR

Effective community development means that many different stakeholders have

The evolution of the ﬁeld of community development continues. As reﬂected in

Promote active and representative participation towards enabling all community

Other books in the series

Community Visioning Programs

Catalysts for Change

Theory, Practice, and Community Development

Schools and Urban Revitalization

Knowledge Partnering for Community Development

“Grassroots community improvement relies on partnerships. Yet, achieving genuine

This book owes a great debt of gratitude to the many people

This book is dedicated to my husband, Wayne Oliver, with love.

2 Development methods and measures 30

4 The lure and limits of partnerships 69

5 Knowledge for development 89

6 Knowledge partnerships in practice 107

7 The innovative practitioner 127

The practitioner as partnership broker 133

8 The knowledge partnering approach 144

Conclusion: Future directions for community

Increasingly, organizations concerned to ﬁnd solutions to poverty and disad-

Communities and development

Communities as change agents

Place-based development and partnerships

Focusing on development in place emphasizes how social and economic change

The changing face of community development practice

in our heads. If we believe the role of development practitioners is about getting

Why knowledge partnering

Knowledge partnering as a development approach identiﬁes the opportunity

Reading this book

The idea of development

Modernization theory in the post–World War II setting established development

The practice of development

In this context, development practitioners were typically professionals with

Decades of development practice with communities on the ground has illus-

The role of communities

some communities struggle in otherwise-thriving places. Place-based development

Community deficits and community assets

deﬁcit. ‘Fighting poverty’ starts with poverty – a state of disadvantage or deﬁcit,

Unanswered questions for community development practice

development practitioner working on the ground in a local community quickly

On place-based development theory and practice

On the anthropology and sociology of development

Practical application: local economic

Practical application: asset-based community

FIGURE 2.1 A theory of change

FIGURE 2.2 Visualizing development practice

Activities Outputs Outcomes Overall Goal

Training session 4–5 enthusiastic,

FIGURE 2.3 Basic example of a logframe

Development policy trends

development initiatives, and concerns about the ultimate aims of development

Policy Theme Trend

National level Place-based development

Single aim Multiple aims:

FIGURE 2.4 Development policy trends over time

Economic development methods and measures

Social development methods and measures

Multidimensional development methods and measures

rural poverty.’4 New approaches cannot be expected to generate new kinds of

Persisting tensions in policy and practice

continue to be made in silos. Development metrics provide only an incomplete