Many aid agencies advocate approaches to development which are people-centred, participatory, empowering and gender-fair. This volume of essays explores some of the middle ground between such values-based approaches and the methods and techniques that the agencies adopt.

Many aid agencies advocate approaches to development which are people-centred, participatory, empowering and gender-fair. This volume of essays explores some of the middle ground between such values-based approaches and the methods and techniques that the agencies adopt. The selection offers critical assessments of fashionable tools such as Participatory Rural Appraisal and Logical Framework. It demonstrates how these are linked (conceptually and in practice) to the wider ideological environment in which they are used, and shows how they depend upon the skills of the fieldworker and/or organization applying them. Contributors argue that tools and methods will contribute to a values-based approach only if those using them have a serious commitment to a social agenda which is genuinely transformative.

Introduction: development methods and approaches
should development agencies have official views? Beyond the grim resisters: gender planning
sustainable investments
organizational change from two perspectives
operationalizing bottom-up learning in international NGOs - barriers and alternatives
ethnicity and participation
capacity building - shifting the paradigms
capacity building - the making of a curry
critical incidents
bridging the macro-micro divide
dissolving the difference
logical frameworks assessment and participatory rural appraisal
critical reflections on participatory rural appraisal
tools for project development
participatory methodologies
participatory change process
two approaches
resources - books, journals, organizations, addresses of publishers.