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Rethinking participation, rethinkingpower: reflections on local autonomyAriella Orbach aa Montreal, Québec, CanadaPublished online: 23 Aug 2011.
To cite this article: Ariella Orbach (2011) Rethinking participation, rethinking power: reflectionson local autonomy, Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études dudéveloppement, 32:2, 196-209, DOI: 10.1080/02255189.2011.596033
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Rethinking participation, rethinking power: reflections on local autonomy
Ariella Orbach∗
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
ABSTRACT An important paradigm in development thinking, participation remains vaguelyand often contradictorily defined. This has allowed for its integration into a discourse thateffectively disassociates it from deeper and more politicised understandings of power andempowerment. Focusing on indigenous peoples, this article reflects upon local autonomy asa critical and holistic alternative to depoliticised participation, reframing projectdevelopment within a discussion of ‘life projects’ and ontological diversity, locality andglobalisation and the right to self-determination, and contemplating a more profoundengagement by the ‘development’ professional.
RESUME Paradigme important dans la theorie du developpement, la participation demeuretoujours ambigue et mal definie. Cela a facilite son integration dans un discours qui ladissocie des notions plus profondes, notamment celles du pouvoir et de l’autonomisation.Ce travail, en se focalisant sur les peuples indigenes, traite l’autonomie locale comme unealternative critique et holistique a la participation apolitique, tout en replacant la notion dedeveloppement dans le cadre d’une discussion sur “les projets de vie” et la diversiteontologique, la localisation, la mondialisation et le droit a l’autodetermination. Enfin, cetarticle discute d’un profond engagement d’un professionnel du developpement.
Keywords: participation; local autonomy; indigenous community development;empowerment; life project
Introduction
Participatory development came of age in the 1970s, emerging from the ashes of a widespreaddisenchantment with ‘big development’: expensive, large-scale and centralised projects andtheir twin doctrine of trickle-down economics. While trends in community-focused developmentfirst gained importance in the 1950s and 1960s, local participation was largely understood as ameans to encourage the adoption of new technologies (Groot 2002). In the early 1970s, theWorld Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) began empha-sising what came to be known as the McNamara Doctrine, an alternative to the inefficiencies oftop-down, capital-intensive development. The doctrine put forth a new emphasis on the ruralpoor, acknowledging that in order for this neediest sector of the population to benefit from devel-opment projects, rural communities themselves must be actively involved in the design andimplementation of the programs targeting them (Little 1994). Governments and donor agenciesfollowed suit, placing participation on the agenda as they attempted to shift focus from thetop-down infrastructural and technocratic projects they had previously financed (Groot 2002).
ISSN 0225-5189 print/ISSN 2158-9100 online
# 2011 Canadian Association for the Study of International Development (CASID)DOI: 10.1080/02255189.2011.596033
http://www.tandfonline.com
∗Email: [email protected]
Canadian Journal of Development StudiesRevue canadienne d’etudes du developpementVol. 32, No. 2, June 2011, 196–209
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By the 1990s, participation had become a central paradigm of the development field. Its wide-spread and unquestioning acceptance, particularly during that decade, has been described as“almost evangelical” (Little 1994, p. 347); like any article of faith, participation was “somethingwe believe in and rarely question” (Cleaver 2001, p. 36). With the growth of a neoliberal emphasison small government and the free market as the best regulator of human affairs, participation wasconsidered the new road to decentralisation, a means to achieve local control while minimisingthe reach of the state (Groot 2002). Meanwhile, ‘empowerment’ became the word of the day:by liberating the ‘poor’ from the grip of, first, top-down development, and then, big government,the advocates of participation hoped not only to include the poor in the local decision-makingprocess, but to give them control over it (Mansuri and Rao 2004).
By virtue of its popularity, participation has been subject to volumes of discussion, debate andcriticism both by development scholars and practitioners and by those who are critical of devel-opment. Far from reaching a collective understanding of this pervasive paradigm, the literature onparticipation puts forth a disparate array of definitions and guidelines for practice. Participation isseen by some as a useful tool for achieving success in the implementation of development projectsand programs, an argument for efficiency (Cleaver 2001). Desired project results are believed tobe best achieved by allowing for and encouraging local participation throughout the variousstages of project development, enhancing and expediting project implementation and ensuringa project or program’s acceptance by the local population (O’Malley and Veltmeyer 2006,p. 303). It is this approach that allows participation to remain a central paradigm of such hierarch-ical development agencies as the World Bank.
Meanwhile, other practitioners understand participation as a manifestation of our fundamentalhuman right to make the decisions that affect our lives. From this perspective, participation is seenas “a vehicle for radical social transformation” (Mansuri and Rao 2004, p. 7) because itencourages acts of local organising, with the goal of gaining control over one’s life, livelihoodand local environments (Borrini-Feyerabend 1997). In the process, prevailing social relationshipsof power and dominance may be questioned, rejected and, ideally, altered (Groot 2002). Thisapproach to participation has been employed by many grassroots people’s organisationsseeking a “radical alternative” to the hegemony of national and multi-lateral developmentagencies (Mohan and Stokke 2000, p. 247). In between these results-based and rights-basedapproaches lies a range of opinions, perspectives and ideals concerning why and how weshould practice participatory development, making participation a paradigm of choice for prac-titioners from across the political and ideological spectrum.
Motivations for this article: toward a vision of autonomy
In the absence of a strong and unambiguous theoretical and definitional foundation for participationlies the dangerous tendency to welcome any form of participation as an improvement upontop-down practices. Such an uncritical stance creates an ideal situation for the co-optation of par-ticipation by those with “disempowering agendas” (Hickey and Mohan 2005, p. 238). Despite thebest intentions of participation advocates who share transformative and emancipatory understand-ings of participatory development, one does not get the sense, upon exploring the extensive litera-ture on the subject, that the participation paradigm has succeeded in replacing the even morehegemonic paradigm of depoliticised/universalised development,1 along with its associatednotion of assistance for the disadvantaged. For this reason, it seems only too likely that participatoryprojects that fit neatly into the established development framework are likely to achieve the furthermaintenance of global systems of power, rather than their re-envisioning.
Criticism of participatory development from politicised, emancipatory and anti-colonial pos-itions is not new. The reflection I develop here is anchored in these critical perspectives on
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mainstream development practice. Many of us have come to recognise that development as a disci-pline has deep roots in the colonial project (Keough 1998). In the context of participatory develop-ment, the very act of being “included” or “drawn in” as a participant in such projects can be construedas a symbolic exercise of power and control over individuals and communities (Kothari 2001).
These connections to colonialism – and to the perpetuation of neo-colonialism – resonateexceptionally clearly for indigenous nations, many of which are deeply involved in the strugglefor recognition and the right to self-determination. For these peoples, the nuances of developmentand participation are especially loaded with meaning, and can be more overt – and more violent –in their implications. The intensity of these associations is powerfully expressed by Bruno Barras,a leader of the Yshiro-Ebitoso people of Paraguay:
I wonder, what does ‘development’ mean? For us, it is the same as what we have seen in the Americasfor the last 511 years. We do not see any significant change in the forms in which the offspring of thecolonizers relate to us. After 511 years of ‘civilization’, in Paraguay there is not one university-educated Indigenous individual. After 511 years of ‘civilization’, we are still not allowed to speakfor ourselves (Barras 2004, p. 48).
For this reason, the critical reflections developed in this article focus on the particularity of parti-cipatory development interventions in the context of indigenous peoples and communities as theyincreasingly demand and (re)claim their rights: the right to define one’s own needs and priorities;to determine local understandings of the world and terms of engagement with this world; the rightto speak for oneself. It is this clear and necessarily political desire to (re)gain control over localrealities that I believe extends far beyond what a vaguely and often contradictorily defined para-digm of ‘participation’ can offer.2
This article is the result of an analysis of the participation literature in search of a critique ofdepoliticised and circumscribed participation that also addresses constructive guidelines – andpotential obstacles – for a re-politicised praxis. It is a first attempt to build upon the existing cri-tiques of participation and move beyond them by anchoring such reflections in a concrete andcoherent alternative to the vague language of participation: local autonomy.
I begin by exploring two conceptual frameworks that I believe can contribute much to adiscussion on rethinking participation: empowerment and the ‘life project’. The former appearshabitually in the literature on participatory development but is rarely analysed or even defined;the latter is rarely mentioned yet highly relevant to critiques of development in indigenous con-texts. From these frameworks I attempt to lay the definitional foundation for a clearer, morerelevant concept of autonomous development. I follow with a discussion of some of the complex-ities associated with reflections on autonomy: the relevance of local autonomy in a context ofglobalisation; the political viability of autonomous development; and finally, a reflection onhow we might situate our praxis within an autonomous development framework.
Rethinking participation: two useful conceptual frameworks
In order to move beyond the already extensive critique of participation, I begin by offering twoconceptual frameworks that merit more discussion within the participation debate: (re)politicisedempowerment and the life project.
(Re)Politicised empowerment
The empowerment of some, most of the time, entails the disempowerment of others — usually thecurrent holders of power. (Schuftan 1996, p. 260)
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Empowerment began as a discourse outwardly opposing the existing structures of subordinationwithin society. It was a call to individual and collective action, in order to upset the prevailingbalance of power (Cleaver 2001). Participation was thus seen as an empowering process thatcould well lead to positions – and actions – at odds with the interests of those in power(Mansuri and Rao 2004).
In order to become a buzzword in development circles, empowerment had to shed its radicaland oppositional orientations, as the politics of power were (and still are) a topic to be avoided inmainstream development discourse, seen as inappropriate, divisive and obstructive (Cleaver2001). As a result, empowerment today is a concept used loosely, often left undefined in theliterature referring to it. When it is defined, rarely is it done critically, or in much depth,instead portrayed as a situation in which everybody wins; long forgotten are the implicationsof political struggle, of “communities and individuals negotiat[ing] and wrestl[ing] poweraway from others” (Waisbord 2005, p. 79).
This transformation has required the creation of a whole new vocabulary to accompanythe concepts of empowerment and local participation. Today, we speak of participation as“a crucial means of allowing the poor to have control over decisions” (Mansuri and Rao 2004,p. 5, emphasis added). By implying that local control is granted by the powerful to the disempow-ered, we bring disempowered communities on board a passive, non-confrontational and depoli-ticised interpretation of empowerment and participation, enabling those in power to maintain –consciously or unconsciously – the societal hierarchies and inequalities from which theybenefit (Kothari 2001).
In order to place a discourse of power back at the heart of empowerment, it is relevant to focuson the writings of two influential thinkers, whose interpretations of power, oppression and eman-cipation deeply inform the critical journey undertaken in this article.
Radical and transformative analyses of empowerment are rooted in the vision and philosophyof Paulo Freire, who published the influential Pedagogy of the Oppressed in 1970, just as partici-pation was gaining ground as the new paradigm of the development world. Freire developed hisideas around the notion of oppression, which he defined as:
[a]ny situation in which ‘A’ objectively exploits ‘B’ or hinders his [sic] pursuit of self-affirmation as aresponsible person . . . Such a situation . . . interferes with man’s [sic] ontological and historical voca-tion to be more fully human. (Freire 1970, p. 40)
Freire viewed all attempts to soften the impact of oppression on those who are oppressed – that is,to superficially improve their situation without tackling the root causes of their oppression – as“false generosity”, or “false charity” (1970, p. 29). For this reason, he argued that the emancipa-tion of the oppressed would never be accomplished by those in power who have an obvious inter-est in maintaining existing relations of power and subordination.
Freire’s core argument is for a liberating education that he called “conscientizacao”, orconsciousness-raising. He strongly emphasised the power of reasoning and analysis that isinnate within all of us, including even the most marginalised and disempowered. We allhave the ability to critically reflect, he claimed, and it is only by doing so that thosewho are oppressed can liberate themselves. Although he believed in the importance of cat-alytic individuals who could initiate a process of reflection among those who were taughtthroughout their lives to accept and obey without questioning, he harshly criticised initiativesthat involve the unreflective and uncritical participation of the disempowered as “welfare”and “instruments of manipulation ultimately serv[ing] the end of conquest. They act as ananesthetic, distracting the oppressed from the true causes of their problems” (Freire 1970,p. 149).
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While Freire critically explored oppression and emancipation from a unique pedagogical per-spective, Steven Lukes (1974) proposed that we rethink our very definition of power. Lukesreferred to our traditional interpretation of power as a one-dimensional view: directly observableacts of dominance within situations of policy conflict (1974, p. 15). He likewise referred to atwo-dimensional view, which acknowledges that power is not only exercised overtly, but isalso the ability of certain individuals or groups to “limit the scope of the political process topublic consideration of only those issues which are comparatively innocuous” (Bachrach andBaratz 1970, p. 7, cited Lukes 1974, p. 16). In other words, power is also exercised by thevery act of removing any threatening connotations of political opposition and reducing the discus-sion to one of more superficial issues.
In a critique of the behaviouralist assumptions of the first two dimensions of power, Lukesproposed a three-dimensional view, which focuses on far more pervasive societal structuresand forces. He argued that power is not only expressed when ‘A’ influences ‘B’ to do what shedoes not want to, or to not do what she wants to, but also when ‘A’ shapes or determines ‘B’’svery wants. Lukes’s principal critique is that we disregard the possibility that our very interestsmight remain unarticulated, and worse, that we may not even be aware of our own interests.The three-dimensional view of power highlights the hegemonic (rather than merely situational)nature of dominance: those in power are able to control the very “frameworks through whichwe make sense of and understand ourselves and our world”. In so doing, they remove the possi-bility of alternatives (Reason 1998, p. 4).
Lukes and Freire both argue for a deepening of our understanding of the insidious nature ofthe relationship between the powerful and the powerless. Rather than simply focusing on theremedying of superficial, situational and depoliticised issues among the marginalised ofsociety, we need to turn our attention to the question of their very dignity as individuals whoare “fully human” – that is, responsible, self-aware and reflective. In order to place powerback where it belongs – right at the heart of empowerment – we need to ask ourselves the funda-mental question of “who talks for whom and who constructs representations of whom” (Brosius2000, p. 311, cited Guerron-Montero 2005, p. 369).
The ‘life project’
[F]or indigenous people who are attempting to address serious social, economic or political problems,development is not separated from everyday life. (Clay 1987)
In reflecting upon ways of moving forth from a critique of participation to a constructive discus-sion of alternatives, I have drawn significant inspiration from the life project. The concept as usedhere appears to have been developed collaboratively by Bruno Barras (2004), the Yshiro leadercited earlier, and Mario Blaser (2004), an Argentinian-Canadian anthropologist. This makes it anever more interesting framework for a discussion of autonomy, as such a process highlights thepotential for co-learning and the co-generation of knowledge between and among indigenousor marginalised individuals and the scholar-practitioners who work with them.
Barras posits the life project as a way out of what he reads as the tutelage and paternalism ofnon-governmental organisations (NGOs). Based on lived experiences, he addresses the problemof “outsiders who . . . speak for us and design projects for us” (Barras 2004, p. 49). When an indi-genous community or nation advances a life project, it is taking charge of its own affairs, activelyplanning and organising with an orientation toward autonomy in deciding its own future andincreasing the capacities of its people to manage and control their own lives (Barras 2004, p. 51).
Life projects are embedded in local histories and contexts; they integrate local ways of under-standing the world and of experiencing place and self. Thus, life projects cannot be generalised
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and they reject any notion of universal applicability. A life project is an alternative that fullyembraces local perspectives and traditions, and is built up with these as its foundation (Blaser2004, p. 26), bringing forth “a multiplicity of local developments which are determined by thelocal people themselves” (Mohan and Stokke 2000, p. 252).
Life projects exist beyond the results-based timeframes typically associated with developmentventures and which often limit and circumscribe the practice of participatory development. A lifeproject is not goal-oriented, because it integrates the much broader endeavour of living a purpo-seful and meaningful life. Blaser (2004, p. 40) thus argues that life projects “have no politicalhorizon; they are the political horizon”.
In conceptualising life projects in place of development projects, we are restoring agency andcontrol at the local level, particularly significant for those who have different ways of being and ofunderstanding being than that which is expressed by dominant society. This local control is notonly control over life (environments, resources and the self) but is also control over the verymeaning attributed to life (Blaser 2004, p. 35). It is reclaiming the third dimension of power –to shape our own wants and desires, and understandings of the world. While the proponents oflife projects acknowledge the importance of involvement by ‘outsiders’, they conceive of thisinvolvement as “alliances and partnerships” (Blaser 2004, p. 35), thereby granting equalagency and empowerment to ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’.
In this way, a life project can never be “a program ‘for’ the Indian [sic] communities designedand planned by outsiders; it is development by the indigenous communities within the guidelinesof their own historical development. The difference is a question of power and who has it” (Smith1987). Given the structures of power exercised over indigenous communities by the state and bystate and non-state corporations operating on indigenous lands across the globe, it can beadvanced that, “more often than not, development is in the way of life projects” (Blaser, 2004,p. 26).
Indeed, Barras and Blaser propose the concept of life projects as an alternative to the powerfuland pervasive development paradigm. The life project thus contributes to the deconstruction ofdevelopment and the search for ‘alternatives to development’, rather than ‘development alterna-tives’ – “that is, the rejection of the entire paradigm altogether” (Escobar 1995, p. 215). AlthoughEscobar and others before him chose the term “post-development” to exemplify the process ofdoing away with the colonising discourse and practice of development, I prefer ‘alternatives todevelopment’, which lends itself better to imagining constructive steps toward new paradigms;paradigms that acknowledge the ontological diversity made explicit by the life project framework.
Autonomy: attempting a definition
What would be properly respectful is that we, Indigenous peoples, become the protagonists of ourown future instead of having someone else speak on our behalf. Any other way of doing thingsdiminishes us. (Barras 2004, p. 48)
The fundamental contradiction of participation discourse is that while we extol grassroots invol-vement, local self-reliance and direct democracy, a great majority of participatory developmentprojects are primarily designed, implemented and managed from ‘above’ – by non-local ornon-representative organisations, including state agencies, international NGOs and urban-basedsouthern NGOs.
A concept of local autonomy implies that communities must no longer be seen as subject tothe decisions of others. Rather, they must (be able to) reposition themselves as actors, with agencyto define their goals, control their resources and environments, and direct the processes that affecttheir lives (Gran 1983). I imagine ‘autonomy’ as a collective phenomenon,3 situated particularly,
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but not exclusively, within the context of marginalised indigenous communities typicallypositioned as the ‘beneficiaries’ of development.
Within this context, I understand autonomy as a state of control, by an indigenous commu-nity or nation, over all aspects of local life, including the initiation, design, implementation,management and evaluation of programs and projects. This state of control should not be inci-dental; it should be viewed as an act of reclaiming what Freire (1970) referred to as the fullhumanity of every individual – an acknowledgement that we are all responsible, self-awareand reflective individuals able to work toward the fulfillment of our personal and collectivewell-being. A situation of autonomy is a situation in which the individual and the collectiveexercise power in the truest sense of the term, that elusive third dimension: power over one’svery understanding of the world, and of what one wants and needs in order to live a satisfyingpersonal and community life. From the perspective of depoliticised development discourse,‘empowerment’ is attained when people are able to take advantage of the “opportunities avail-able to them” (O’Malley and Veltmeyer 2006, p. 303). Autonomy, on the other hand, is the cre-ation of one’s own opportunities, accompanied by an active questioning of the very limitednature of those opportunities ‘made available’ by the dominant economic, political and societalsystems.
Autonomous project development could thus be understood as a measurable, goal-orientedelement of the larger life project of a people or community, and individual autonomous projectsas concrete manifestations of a people or community’s pursuit of well-being and a meaningfullife. Autonomy therefore requires both consciousness (awareness, conceptual clarity and theintent to be autonomous) and capacity (skills, organisational capacity and resources to planand act autonomously).
Discussion
In exploring local autonomy as a clearer and more coherent ‘alternatives to development’ goalthan participation, several points for discussion arise: How can we define ‘local’ in today’s glo-balised world? How politically viable is autonomous development? How might the reflectionsdeveloped in this article guide the roles and relationships of our praxis?
The meaning of local in a globalised world
Unreflective use of the notion of locality by participatory development theorists and practitionershas been criticised by several authors. Mohan and Stokke (2000, p. 249) point to a tendency to“essentialise and romanticise ‘the local’”, thereby failing to acknowledge and address bothissues of power relations and inequalities within localities and the influence of greater systems,both economic and political, upon localities. The authors question the boundedness of thelocal, referring to the movement of people, information and commodities across and beyondany one locality. They suggest a focus on “‘a global sense of place’ rather than conceptualisationsof the local as discrete communities” (p. 264). Similarly, Hickey and Mohan (2004, p. 17) ques-tion the homogenising practice of treating ‘the local’ and ‘community’ as “self-evident and unpro-blematic social categories”.
These critiques raise several important points for a discussion of local autonomy, both on themicro and macro levels. First, micro-level critiques address the very complexity of communityand the tendency to romanticise the community as peaceful and uncontested. Indeed, anyonewho has spent time working within a community has surely experienced some degree of intra-community power struggle, competing political and economic agendas, factions, wealth dispar-ities and other such complexities which are decidedly not harmonious. We are thus forced to
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recognise that communities themselves are not abstract and idealised entities, but “living andcontested” (Hickey and Mohan 2004, p. 17).
It would be dangerous, however, to do away with the category of ‘community’ within ourwork. Recognition of intra-community diversity, power politics and other such complexitiesneed not imply a negation of the importance of communities for the very people who reside inthem. A more relevant discussion would be one of how communities can create and carry outlife projects within a context of autonomy, if their residents must navigate intra-community div-isions and a diversity of opinions and interests. I do not propose an easy answer here. Negotiatingand addressing local divisions and inequalities should be seen as an integral and necessary part ofthe life project itself; in addressing such issues, a community should be able to increase its abilityto take control of local realities and plan for the future.
Second, with regard to macro trends, how can we define community or the places inhabited bycommunities – localities – if translocal flows of people and resources are breaking down theboundaries traditionally associated with the community as a discrete entity? This discussion ismade especially relevant by the processes of globalisation that undeniably affect – and insome cases shape – localities and their residents.
Addressing the complexities of the local in a globalised world, sociologist Roland Robertson(1995) introduces the hybrid term “glocalisation”, an attempt to address the presumed polarity oflocal versus global, the assumption “that we live in a world of local assertions against globalisingtrends, a world in which the very idea of locality is sometimes cast as a form of opposition orresistance to the hegemonically global” (p. 29). Rather, Robertson contends that processes ofglobalisation or “the compression of the world” lead to both the creation and the incorporationof localities (p. 40): the production or reconstruction of the local or of concepts such as ‘commu-nity’ and ‘home’ and the increasing linking up of localities by supralocal processes. He thereforeconcludes that we cannot speak of the global without integrating the local, and vice versa; the twophenomena are linked and influence one another rather than existing in opposition.
Robertson (1995) likewise asserts that the very notion of locality is relative: what is local isdependent upon to what it is being compared. Indeed, it would seem that whether a place or spaceis considered local is very much the result of how the people residing there understand and defineplace and their relation to it. Escobar describes place as “the experience of, and from, a particularlocation with some sense of boundaries, grounds, and links to everyday practices” (Escobar 2001,p. 152, cited in Blaser 2004, p. 29). This rings especially true in the case of rural indigenous com-munities where ‘local’ culture and ways of being may be markedly different from those of thewider society in which these communities are politically encapsulated. Practices of colonisationand neo-colonisation, which represent important elements of globalisation, can lead to the (re)de-finition of localities and their importance for those who identify with them.
Among the supralocal phenomena that characterise current processes of globalisation is thespread of economic ‘development’ as defined within a neoliberal capitalist framework. Acrossthe globe, communities urban and rural, indigenous and non-indigenous, are affected by econ-omic investments and ‘developments’ that transcend not only locality but regional and nationalborders. This phenomenon undeniably affects the forms which localised autonomous develop-ment and the pursuit of life projects (can) take. In some cases, communities – both local andtranslocal – organise to reject imposed economic ‘development’ that does not represent their pri-orities or visions for the future (for some interesting examples see Blaser et al. 2004). In othercases, individuals or entire communities become integrated into global markets, whether bychoice or necessity, as labourers or through trade or production for non-local markets.
Any argument for local autonomy and the pursuit of life projects must take into account theimpossibility of returning to a “potentially romanticised view of pristine, bounded islands ofalternatives” to the elements of occidental modernity (Mohan and Hickey 2004, p. 61) that
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characterise globalised economic ‘development’. Indeed, a fruitful discussion should not befocused on whether indigenous communities can escape globalisation, but of how they areconfronting and reshaping it at the local level.
Pursuing this theme, Wendy Russell (2004) explores economic development as a means to“renew local autonomy” (p. 131); more specifically, “the possibility of economic diversity” isposited as a way out of the depoliticised and assimilating ‘development’ initiatives that sheobserved in the Canadian north, which make little effort to strengthen local economies. ToRussell, economic diversity and the possibility of a multitude of local developments are linkedto self-sufficiency, which in turn is linked to self-determination (p. 132).
A focus on localised economic diversity leaves room for us to imagine economic develop-ments that can be initiated and controlled locally, say an ecological or cultural tourism project.Such income-generation activities are inextricably tied to processes of globalisation and the trans-local movement of people, yet they provide opportunities for conceptualisation, planning,implementation and management at the local level; that is, autonomous development.
In this way, a state of autonomy should not be understood as one of utopian self-sufficiencybut as exercising control over local engagement in global politico-economic processes; a questionof agency and appropriation rather than dependence and subordination. Such a degree of controlwould ensure that, if communities take part in translocal and global economic activities, they doso not because they have no choice, but because such opportunities allow them to work towardlocally defined goals and visions of well-being.
The political viability of autonomous development
An autonomous project put forth by an indigenous nation or community is a political statement initself. It is also an invitation to coexist with others in such a way that all can enjoy fulfilling andmeaningful lives based on mutual respect for different ontologies and ways of being. But asBlaser points out, “these ‘invitations’ to coexist are not readily accepted by states and other inter-ested parties” (2004, p. 38). Those who exercise political or economic power over localities arelikely to have a strong interest in maintaining the status quo.
In imagining autonomous development, we leave no room for apolitical or overly localiseddevelopment interventions. Both community members and their allies should possess an acuteunderstanding of politics and power relations in order to inform the political strategies thatcould be pursued to ensure the viability of an autonomous endeavour or life project. Such ananalysis is particularly relevant for understanding the degree of control communities or indigen-ous peoples have over the political processes affecting their lives, such as their ability to influencepolicy through political parties, unions, organisations or judicial recourse (Blaser et al. 2004).
Arguing for a radicalised redefinition of ‘participation’, Mohan and Hickey suggest that par-ticipation can be transformative if it takes the form of active citizenship, or radical democracy, inwhich “institutions are fundamentally characterised by cooperative effort among equal partners”(Peet and Hartwick 1999, p. 207, cited Mohan and Hickey 2004, p. 65) and people adhere todecisions and share responsibility not because they are bound or obliged by the law butbecause they took part in the initial discussion and definition of these decisions (Mohan andHickey 2004, p. 65). The authors suggest that if participation is brought into the political orgovernance sphere, the very act of participatory development can bring about the structuraland institutional transformations required to return agency to the marginalised (2004, p. 13).
Although Hickey and Mohan cite a “recent move towards participatory governance” in devel-opment thinking (2004, p. 12), I would argue that any such influence upon politics and politicaldecision-making is a distant dream for most indigenous peoples and communities. Even in stateswhich we might say have political systems potentially open to radical or participatory governance
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at some level, indigenous peoples rarely have any political say and tend to remain at the marginsof political processes.
In working toward the viability of autonomy, I argue for a more pragmatic approach that betterrepresents the steps that many indigenous peoples and communities have been taking over recentyears: a rights-based approach. Although perhaps less idealistic, a rights-based approachacknowledges that indigenous communities are and always have been in constant negotiationwith “colonial and national opponents” (Russell 2004, p. 130).
A rights-based approach equates poverty with injustice and acknowledges that poverty isdirectly caused by marginalisation, discrimination and exploitation (Kirkemann Boesen andMartin 2007). Kirkemann Boesen and Martin define this approach as:
A framework that integrates the norms, principles, standards and goals of the international human rightssystem into the plans and processes of development. It is characterised by methods and activities that linkthe human rights system and its inherent notion of power and struggle with development. (2007, p. 9)
A rights-based approach to the pursuit of autonomous development follows from the initiatives ofmany indigenous communities and peoples, who, along with their allies, make use of internationaltreaties and conventions and national legislation to attempt to protect their right to self-determi-nation and the pursuit of locally defined development priorities. In the past several years of myown praxis, I have seen international conventions such as the United Nations Declaration onthe Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) and the International Labour Organisation’s ConventionNo. 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries (1989) be harnessedby indigenous peoples as tools for bringing about the political transformations that would allowthem to make the decisions that affect their lives. This makes a rights-based approach an insepar-able partner to autonomous development, as the political viability of an autonomy paradigm canonly exist in the presence of some form of guarantee that local projects will be respected.
Nonetheless, the failure of the rights-based approach to protect communities from state or cor-porate development megaprojects in many countries speaks of the fragility of local autonomy inthe face of powerful politico-economic systems at both national and transnational levels. I do not,however, take this as sufficient reason to deny the possibility of autonomous developmentgrounded in (re)politicised empowerment and the pursuit of life projects. Supporting autonomousdevelopment objectives should be carried out simultaneously with the work of promoting necess-ary political transformations through a rights-based approach. Addressing the often unfavourableconditions with which indigenous life projects are faced, Blaser writes,
Indigenous movements seek autonomy and self-management. These constitute the best conditions inwhich to live life projects. However, . . . when these conditions do not obtain, life projects cannot beput on hold; they have to be lived even in the face of their denial (2004, p. 40).
Practical considerations: autonomy and the role of the ‘development’ professional
A move toward a language and a practice of autonomy should not be seen as a proposal for an endto the role of the ‘development’ professional. A framework of ‘alternatives to development’ lendsitself to a search for new and alternative roles for those of us who locate our praxis within thelarger ‘development’ field. In the following section, I attempt to address the practice-oriented con-cerns of ‘alternatives to development’ practitioners within a context of supporting life projects andautonomous project development.
Autonomy does not imply what Uphoff et al. refer to as “localitis” (1998, p. 9), or the stub-born exclusion of anything and anyone non-local. Autonomy is not synonymous with isolation. It
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proves instructive to look to the concepts used by those advancing the life project, concepts whichare likewise put forth by many proponents of participatory development: partnership and alliance.Partnership should be understood as strategic, allowing for a synergy of “human, financial, tech-nical, and intellectual resources that might otherwise be out of reach for a single organization”(Hatton and Schroeder 2007, p. 158).
Uphoff et al. reconceptualise assistance as the provision of specific support on specific terms,emphasising local control without excluding a particular role for ‘outsiders’:
We should by now be wary of any suggestion that development is something that can be ‘done’,especially by anyone from outside the country or even outside the rural sector. Development is some-thing that must be created and sustained by the people themselves, recognizing that certain kinds ofexternal assistance can spark and nurture this process. (1998, p. 171)
Their proposal is one of partnership, between local people and communities seeking to sustaintheir own goals and projects of self-reliance, and external agents who are able to provide themwith the tools they need. The authors argue that in many cases the most useful tools are ideas,information, inspiration and encouragement (p. 171), rather than pre-planned projects orinfrastructure.
Partnership within an autonomy framework also implies a rich process of co-learning andmutually generating new knowledge out of the distinct knowledge and experiences that eachpartner can contribute. This approach values what each partner has to offer, allowing us tomove forth from the technocratic approach that only values occidental modernist knowing, andlikewise from what Mohan and Stokke term the ‘populist’ approach that “treats all knowledgefrom ‘the West’ as tainted” and, in so doing, prevents us just as much from engaging ingenuine processes of dialogue and co-learning (2000, p. 254).
Notions of partnership, alliance and collaboration thus place the emphasis on an equal andrespectful relationship, a relationship in which one party does not exercise inappropriate powerover the other and where all parties have something to contribute, to gain and to learn. Undeni-ably, this is the working relationship sought by most practitioners of participatory development.How, then, are such practices of partnership, alliance and co-learning any different under a (re)po-liticised focus on local autonomy?
Within a framework of autonomy, disempowered communities and peoples must develop “aclear platform for their own autonomous development and insist on it as a condition for their alli-ance” (Smith 1987, emphasis added) A framework of local autonomy highlights the self-initiationand self-management of initiatives within the holistic vision of the life project. On the other hand,a review of the literature and debate on participation reveals that self-initiation tends to bede-emphasised; it appears to be taken for granted that communities participate in projects thatare initiated and largely designed by their NGO or governmental ‘partners’.4
In an insightful look at the contradictions of partnership theory and practice, Hatton andSchroeder (2007) problematise the fact that, at the end of the day, the funding that developmentprofessionals – and their community partners – rely upon for the implementation of their projectsis circumscribed by the policies and politics of the wealthy countries whose governments controldevelopment donor agencies. In turn, organisations dependent upon donor funding to survivemust alter their programming priorities accordingly. Hatton and Schroeder reflect that nonethe-less, “we continue to label such unequal relationships as partnerships and often use the rhetoricof equal participation, mutual accountability, and valuing southern perspectives. Who couldthink this inconsistency escapes our Southern colleagues?” (2007, p. 159)
Susan Vincent (2004) suggests that in order to “do justice to [people’s] desire to create theirown lives”, professionals who engage in development praxis must “[turn] our gaze upwards”, that
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is, work for change at the policy level so that, in order to access funding, communities are nolonger forced to “intuit what an external agency might be prepared to offer” (p. 119). Vincentis thus calling for an overhaul of the relationships between people, institutions and states andplaces the development professional right at the centre of this political process.
Following Vincent’s call to action, I suggest that at the heart of autonomous development liesan argument for a deeper form of engagement by the development professional, however wechoose to (re)define ourselves. Drawing on the themes I have explored throughout this discussion,I propose that our praxis should be two-fold: first, we must engage critically in the political arena,working alongside community partners to push for legal recognition of the right to self-determi-nation (particularly relevant for indigenous partners) and working alongside fellow professionalsto transform the ‘development’ paradigm into one that respects and encourages local autonomy;second, we must collaborate in an open, humble and dialogical manner with local partners as theyadvance their autonomous life projects, contributing our vision, knowledge, resources and tech-nical skills by offering ourselves as strategic allies, rather than taking on the role of their ‘trustee’(Vincent 2004, p. 113). Such a stance places the emphasis on co-learning, where each partnerlearns from and with the other(s) and where all emerge enriched from the experience.
Concluding remarks
The concept of local participation in project development represents a significant shift in devel-opment thinking. The value of this concept is evident, as it is founded upon the ideal that individ-uals, groups and communities can act collectively and develop capacity to make decisions andmanage projects that meet their self-defined needs and priorities. Its widespread and enthusiasticadoption by the development world brought with it hope for changing times in a disciplinetraditionally dominated by hegemonic and top-down agencies and institutions.
However, the transformation of participatory development into a paradigm of mainstreamdevelopment discourse has successfully erased any notions of a deeper, politicised participation.The concept of local autonomy can provide a much needed alternative to the depoliticising anduniversalising narrative of the development mainstream. Such an alternative is becoming morenecessary than ever, as we move into what Nietschmann (1988) calls “a second wave of self-determination”. The first wave of self-determination led to the decolonisation and independenceof nation-states across the globe; the second is now being advanced by indigenous and tribalpeoples seeking an end to the neo-colonialism that denies them nationhood (p. 280). Such mar-ginalised communities and peoples are increasingly engaging in a struggle for the right todefine and create their own future – by gaining control of what Lukes (1974) suggests isthe most fundamental level of power: the ability to determine one’s own wants and needs,and thus, one’s very understanding of the world (Reason 1998). Can the ambiguous notionof ‘participating’ remain relevant to the communities and peoples engaged in this very clearstruggle for self-determination?
Reflecting on the extensive and often contradictory discussion and debate on the subject ofparticipation, I feel that it is time we seek a new paradigm to guide our work; a paradigm thatwould once again remove the power to define and determine from third parties. By proposing aframework of local autonomy, based on the dual foundations of (re)politicised empowermentand the life project, I hope to contribute to a much-needed critical discussion of alternatives toone of the more powerful paradigms that has taken root in our discipline. Such a discussion requiresopenness to rethinking and restructuring our relationships with our partners and how we define ourvery praxis. It requires that we work collectively to do away with the depoliticisation of our field,and assume our role as transformative political actors alongside our community partners.
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Biographical notes
Ariella Orbach holds an MSc in Rural Planning and Development (University of Guelph). Herinterests include local autonomous project development, capacity building and co-learning inrural contexts, and rural indigenous communication(s). Since 2009, she has been working withindigenous communities in southern Chile, building organisational and community capacity instrategic communication through locally appropriated audiovisual technologies. She is currentlyco-coordinating a pilot project with indigenous communities working to create a mobile ruralcommunity television channel.
Notes1. In suggesting that the dominant paradigm depoliticises processes of development, I refer to the isolation
or removal of issues of ‘development’ from wider contexts of dominance, marginalisation, dissent andpower struggle and the focus on superficial project related remedies (Ferguson 1994); in suggesting thatit universalises, I refer to the application of ‘Western reason’ and ways of knowing to a diversity of localsituations lived by a diversity of cultures and societies (Watts 2000).
2. By concentrating my arguments on the particular context of indigenous peoples, I also make the con-scious decision to focus on my area of praxis, indigenous communities on the American continent.While I do not negate the relevance of my reflections to communities and peoples situated in other geo-graphical and political contexts, I do not have the academic or professional experience to reflect on suchcontexts.
3. Arguments in favour of the individualised autonomy of each human being beyond the constraints of thesociety of which she or he is part constitute an entirely different, yet equally interesting debate.
4. I first undertook this review in Orbach 2008.
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