IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/cdipxx/v34y2024i8p1058-1070.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Involvement: A bidirectional perspective on participatory approaches for development and social change

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Koomson

Abstract

Empirical evidence supports local participation in improving the attainment of development and social change goals for communities. Nevertheless, debates about whether participation should aim to create access and interaction among participants or redistribute power through local empowerment remain unsettled. The current disciplinary and context-informed typologies of participation, with varying conceptions of participation, create a possible theoretical confusion. Hence, this paper labels desirable participation as involvement. Involvement reflects a two-way endeavour of (i) project initiators’ willingness to make space for local participants, and (ii) local participants’ efforts to gain control and leverage their influence as equal decision-making partners. Partial involvement and pseudo-involvement represent less desirable forms of participation. These uniform labels reflect a conception of the forms of participation as a continuum in which local influence improves progressively. Thus, the involvement continuum model is offered as an organising framework that synthesises and harmonises the diverse but complementary conceptions of participatory development.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Koomson, 2024. "Involvement: A bidirectional perspective on participatory approaches for development and social change," Development in Practice, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(8), pages 1058-1070, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:cdipxx:v:34:y:2024:i:8:p:1058-1070
    DOI: 10.1080/09614524.2024.2354473
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09614524.2024.2354473
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09614524.2024.2354473?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:cdipxx:v:34:y:2024:i:8:p:1058-1070. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/cdip .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.