Open AccessShirley A. White. Participatory Communication. New Delhi: Sage Publications. 1994.470 pp.Hardbound. Indian Rs 395.00.
Author(s) -
Faiz Bilquees
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
pakistan development review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.154
H-Index - 26
ISSN - 0030-9729
DOI - 10.30541/v34i1pp.86-87
Subject(s) - marketing buzz , grassroots , citizen journalism , participatory development , context (archaeology) , politics , developing country , political science , sociology , economic growth , development economics , social science , public relations , economics , business , geography , law , advertising , archaeology
This book is an extremely valuable addition to a veryimportant topic concerning development issues at the grassroots level.It calls attention to the difficulties related to the participatoryprocess in the absence of effective direct communication with theultimate beneficiaries. It is divided in four parts. The firsthighlights the concept underlying the use of the word "participation", abuzz-word of recent times. The authors of the different articles in thispart emphasise the need to change the current patterns of developmentwhich are completely non-participatory. They relate the failures of theparticipatory approach to misconceiving the notion as capable of auniversal application in the developed and developing countries, withoutdue regard to the absence of some very basic prerequisites in the lattercountries. In other words, the assumptions underlying the theory of theparticipatory approach to development in the less developed countriesare found lacking due to the very different and poor economic andsocio-political infrastructures in these countries. Thus, the first fourchapters suggest that unless the notion of participation issystematically extended to the national and international economic andpolitical spheres, it would fail to be of much help beyond the ruraldevelopment context.