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Participation: the ascendancy of a buzzword in the neo-liberal era

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  • Pablo Alejandro Leal

Abstract

Participation was originally conceived as part of a counter-hegemonic approach to radical social transformation and, as such, represented a challenge to the status quo. Paradoxically, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, ‘participation’ gained legitimacy within the institutional development world to the extent of achieving buzzword status. The precise manipulations required to convert a radical proposal into something that could serve the neo-liberal world order led to participation's political decapitation. Reduced to a series of methodological packages and techniques, participation would slowly lose its philosophical and ideological meaning. In order to make the approach and methodology serve counter-hegemonic processes of grassroots resistance and transformation, these meanings desperately need to be recovered. This calls for participation to be re-articulated within broader processes of social and political struggle in order to facilitate the recovery of social transformation in the world of twenty-first century capitalism.

Suggested Citation

  • Pablo Alejandro Leal, 2007. "Participation: the ascendancy of a buzzword in the neo-liberal era," Development in Practice, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4-5), pages 539-548.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:cdipxx:v:17:y:2007:i:4-5:p:539-548
    DOI: 10.1080/09614520701469518
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    Cited by:

    1. Deuer, Sophie Elisabeth, 2022. "Partizipation und Stimme: Reflexionen aus der personellen EZA," ÖFSE-Forum, Austrian Foundation for Development Research (ÖFSE), volume 83, number 83.
    2. Ollendorf, Franziska & Sieber, Stefan & Löhr, Katharina, 2023. "Societal dynamics of sustainability certification in Ghanaian cocoa producing communities: Assessing social cohesion effects and their implications for collective action," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 47(2), pages 212-238.

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