mtl3p

just seeing the title of this book kinda did it for me. As normal, it’s anne galloway that’s responsable for finding out about it.

Participation: The New Tyranny?

It’s all about international development, but I love it as a phrase to use for what we’re going though online. And the text seems to still apply.

About the Book

This book is about participatory development‘s potential for tyranny, showing how it can lead to the unjust and illegitimate exercise of power. It is the first book-length treatment to address the gulf between the almost universally fashionable rhetoric of participation, which promises empowerment and appropriate development on the one hand, and what actually happens when consultants and activists promote and practice participatory development, on the other.

The contributors, all social scientists and development specialists, come from various disciplines and a wide variety of hands on experience. Their aim is to provide a sharp contrast to the seductive claims of participation, and to warn its advocates of the pitfalls and limitations of participatory development. The book also challenges participatory practitioners and theorists to reassess their own role in promoting a set of practices which are at best naïve about questions of power, and at worst serve to systemically reinforce, rather than overthrow, existing inequalities.

For the recipients of participatory development this book provides critical insights into the history, the institutions, and the day to day activities through which participation is done to them. It provides them with a range of arguments which support the legitimate decision not to participate on others‘ terms, and also with grounds to oppose or negotiate the intervention of participatory development in their lives.

Some contributions in this book seek to learn the lessons of particular examples of failed participatory practiCe. Others present more conceptually oriented analyses, many of which go beyond those conventionally associated with development studies. Together they provide a more rigorous and provocative understanding of participatory development than has hitherto been available, which donors, academics and practitioners will find hard to ignore.

Makes me think of my suggestion to Julien to commit facebook hari-kiri after he was complaining about his popularity.
This guy’s response is better though.

“I think what bothers some people the most about services like Facebook and Classmates is that it makes you accessible to creepy/embarrassing former sex partners and the people from your old high school who knew you when you had a mushroom cut with a bleached rat tail, wore checkered LA Gear bandannas and fluorescent Patrick Ewing high-tops.

You know, before you were kewl…

I don’t really use any of that stuff any more. I killed my linkedin, and I’ve stopped even with flickr. Not as a political statement. Mostly because it’s just not that great. I can do better/more on my own in this space. And I fucking hate advertisements (although I still do use gmail).

This entry was posted on Monday, June 4th, 2007 at 4:05 am and is filed under stuff, personal infrastructure, control. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.