The recent enthusiasm for “participation” in agricultural development has fueled the development of new approaches to research and extension. The rhetoric of “participation” extends the horizons of agricultural research and extension beyond technical problem-solving. Yet in practice few...

Over the course of the 1990s, donor enthusiasm for participation came to be institutionalized in a variety of ways. One particular methodology—Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA)—came to enjoy phenomenal popularity. New aid modalities may have shifted donor and lender concern away from the...