Participation Practice and its Criticism: Can They Be Bridged? A Field Report from the Guyana Hinterland

Abstract

Participation practice and critical theory have coexisted for almost half a century. However, the tenets of practice have experienced little change, regardless of how prescriptive or impassioned the criticism has been. What happens when participation practice fully engages its criticism in the field? This paper reports on the findings from one such project. The Second Low-Income Settlement Program (LISP II) is the first low-income housing program offered by a public institution to Amerindian (indigenous) communities in the Guyana Hinterland. The author, who was involved as the program designer and author of the operating regulations, describes the program’s reexamination of participation throughout the conception and execution phases. Afterwards he reflects upon the outcome—what could be achieved, and what were found to be the limitations of participation practice as well as its academic criticism. The paper focuses on the issue of participation and governmentality raised by the Foucauldian criticism, one of the most popular threads in participation criticism today. It concludes that it is possible to successfully materialize a participatory housing project while taking into account the appeals from critical theory. However, not all the formulations from theory are applicable in the field, and participation is inherently a limited approach. It should be considered an intermediate one; a transitive approach towards community agency.