Rural poverty is often unseen or misperceived by outsiders. Dr Chambers contends that researchers, scientists, administrators and fieldworkers rarely appreciate the richness and validity of rural people's knowledge or the hidden nature of rural poverty. This is a challenging book for all concerned with rural development, as practitioners, academics, students or researchers.

Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) methods, now known as Participatory Learning and Action (PLA), have been extensively used in development research, action and evaluation. This book is based on the author’s decade-long intensive field experience—each method is explained by drawing on field-based illustrations. The book vividly describes the methods of PRA, highlighting the essential features as well as the application, merits and limitations of each method. Participatory Rural Appraisal: Principles, Methods and Application outlines the application of PRA methodology in areas like participatory poverty assessment, sustainable livelihood analysis, assessment of hunger, vulnerability analysis, organizational analysis, monitoring and evaluation. Separate sections on SWOT analysis and on the method of interview and dialogue are also included in the book. Besides, the author has provided guidelines for sector-wise application of PRA, which would serve as a ready reference for students and practitioners alike. A chapter on the roles of members of a PRA team is another key feature of this book, which would be immensely valuable for students, researchers and academicians working in the areas of social work, rural development, agriculture, and environmental science, and also for NGO workers and trainers and researchers in the development field.

Participatory techniques have established themselves in both project implementation in developing countries and community interventions in industrial countries. Recently, participation has been fashionably dismissed as more rhetoric than substance, and subject to manipulation by agents pursuing their own agendas under cover of community consent. In this important new volume, development and other social policy scholars and practitioners seek to rebut this simplistic conclusion. They show how participation can help produce genuine transformation for marginalized communities. This volume is the first comprehensive attempt to evaluate the state of participatory approaches in the aftermath of the "Tyranny" critique. It captures the recent convergence between participatory development and participatory governance. It revisits the question of popular agency, as well as spanning the range of institutional actors involved--the state, civil society and donor agencies. The volume embeds participation within contemporary advances in development theory.

Rich with insights from the field, Methods for Community Participation provides a comprehensive understanding of the concept, practice and methodology of Participatory Rural Appraisal.

People's participation has begun to influence the practice of development substantially. This study provides an interpretation of how participation occurs, uses case studies to highlight various approaches, and develops elements of a strategy and a methodology.

This book is based on the findings of a long-term (2000-2014) interdisciplinary research project of the University of Hohenheim in collaboration with several universities in Thailand and Vietnam. Titled Sustainable Land Use and Rural Development in Mountainous Areas in Southeast Asia, or the Uplands Program, the project aims to contribute through agricultural research to the conservation of natural resources and the improvement of living conditions of the rural population in the mountainous regions of Southeast Asia. Having three objectives the book first aims to give an interdisciplinary account of the drivers, consequences and challenges of ongoing changes in mountainous areas of Southeast Asia. Second, the book describes how innovation processes can contribute to addressing these challenges and third, how knowledge creation to support change in policies and institutions can assist in sustainably develop mountain areas and people’s livelihoods.