Development Methods and Approaches : Critical Reflections

Contents: Preface/Deborah Eade. 1. Beyond the comfort zone: some issues, questions, and challenges in thinking about development approaches and methods/Jo Rowlands. 2. Dissolving the difference between humanitarianism and development: the mixing of a rights-based solution/Hugo Slim. 3. Should development agencies have official views?/David Ellerman. 4. Bridging the 'macro'-micro' divide in policy-oriented research: two African experiences/David Booth. 5. Capacity building: shifting the paradigms of practice/Allan Kaplan. 6. Capacity building: the making of a curry/William Postma. 7. Operationalising bottom-up learning in international NGOs: barriers and alternatives/Grant Power, Matthew Maury and Susan Maury. 8. Organisational change from two perspectives: gender and organisational development/Penny Plowman. 9. Beyond the 'grim resisters': towards more effective gender mainstreaming through stakeholder participation/Patricia L. Howard. 10. Sustainable investments: women's contributions to natural resource management projects in Africa/Barbara Thomas-Slayter and Genese Sodikoff. 11. Critical incidents in emergency relief work/Maureen Raymond-Mckay and Malcolm Maclachlan. 12. Tools for project development within a public action framework/David Wield. 13. Ethnicity and participatory development methods in Botswana: some participants are to be seen and not heard/Tlamelo Mompati and Gerard Prinsen. 14. Logical framework approach and PRA -- mutually exclusive or complementary tools for project planning?/Jens B. Aune. 15. Critical reflections on rapid and participatory rural appraisal/Robert Leurs. 16. Participatory methodologies: double-edged swords/Eliud Ngunjiri. 17. The participatory change process: a capacity building model from a US NGO/Paul Castelloe and Thomas Watson. 18. Two approaches to evaluating the outcomes of development projects/Marion Meyer and Naresh Singh. Resources. Addresses of publishers. Index.

"Many aid agencies adopt values-based approaches to development -requiring, for instance, that they should be rights-based, participatory, gender-equitable, and sustainable - but these approaches are often at odds with the methods that the agencies actually adopt. This selection of essays offers critical readings of fashionable tools such as Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and logical frameworks, in addition to presenting less familiar methods. Two central themes emerge: that a project based approach tends to distort rather than illuminate the wider picture; and that whatever the ideology underpinning a given method, its impact will depend on the skills and understanding of those applying it." (jacket)