Introduction to symposium on rethinking farmer participation in agricultural development: development, participation, and the ethnography of ambiguity

Abstract

The topic of participation is not new to efforts to improve agricultural livelihoods and natural resource management in developing countries. Viewed as a means to encourage more democratic decision making and increase ownership and sustainability of development interventions, participation has many advocates as well as critics (see, for example, Cooke and Kothari 2001; Hickey and Mohan 2005; Moore 2000; Peters 2000; Pottier 1997). Proponents argue that a wide range of benefits results from participation, such as improved understanding, ‘‘better’’ decisions in terms of efficiency or quality, greater equity, conflict mitigation, and sustainability (Michener 1998; Brody et al. 2003). The papers in this symposium offer an additional set of perspectives, in the hope of establishing a deeper understanding of what influences participation and how, in turn, this affects who participates, how they participate, and what the outcomes may be. The authors employ a diverse set of methods to explore the multiple ways that participation is subject to manipulation and interpretation, examining microanalyses of behavior within their larger political, economic, and linguistic contexts. Together, the three papers in this symposium challenge us to further broaden our view of what participation does and should achieve, and why. Specifically, Peterson’s study of participatory marine protected area planning in Loreto Bay National Park in Mexico reveals that participation disempowered certain actors who use the park for their livelihoods, but empowered others who did not participate, such as Mexican officials, international experts, and donor organizations. Taddei’s study of water user committees in the Jaguaribe Valley of Northeast Brazil reveals that participation reduced the power of water committees and strengthened the hands of regional and municipal officials, centralizing power within a few groups while claiming decentralization. Paradoxically, while water committees were weakened, the participatory process also challenged long-standing patronclient relationships which were hard to influence in the past. Studying how Ugandan farmer groups discuss uncertain rainfall forecasts, Roncoli et al. suggest that attention to cultural meanings and sociolinguistic strategies brings to light the role of power relations in interpretative and deliberative processes centered on risk communication. All three studies show that the flow of benefits from participation is not easy to foresee or to measure. Moreover, in these studies, the accomplishments of participation often diverge from the actual aims of the intervention, and greatly depend on local history and context. An ethnography of participation calls for more honest and sophisticated dialogues with participants about the very idea of participation, and asks practitioners to think beyond the present temporal and spatial boundaries of their work. Participation is constituted by absent actors and supra-local values, norms, and processes, including national policy and politics and global development and environmental discourses in the Uganda case. Within this context of deterritorialization, Peterson and Taddei insist on focusing more strongly on questions of absence and exclusion. Together, the studies in this symposium reveal K. Glenzer (&) Oxfam America, 226 Causeway St., 5th Floor, Boston, MA 02114, USA e-mail: kglenzer@oxfamamerica.org