Participation is often seen as fundamental in development studies and for development projects. There are also critical ideas claiming that there are power relations which should be taken into account before embracing participation as good in itself. From the basis of the critical ideas found in the book Participation: The New Tyranny? this paper examines the cases of ‘Integrated Water Resources Management’ and ‘Integrated Approach for Mitigation of Arsenic Contamination of Drinking Water in Bangladesh’ in order to determine whether the critical ideas in the book are applicable when analysing texts about these cases. After determining that there are indications of power imbalances between the facilitators and the local population in the two cases, this paper finally argues that the critical ideas are applicable and that there is a need for more and broader discussions and dialogues between various actors involved in development projects. Also mentioned in this paper is the importance of raising awareness of power relations and incorporating different views when planning and implementing development projects.

Although different studies have been conducted on various aspects of the National Solidarity Program (NSP) in Afghanistan, research on strengthening solidarity and social cohesion through its participatory approach has received little attention. This research used development communication as a theoretical framework to understand the role of participatory communication in strengthening solidarity and social cohesion in Afghanistan. The study employed a qualitative case study. To this end, the study used semi-structured interviews via email and telephone with 10 participants. Thematic analysis was used to code and categorize the data. The study findings show that the NSP appears to promote participation and increase collectiveness among the Afghan people, which, in turn, seem to strengthen solidarity and social cohesion. Finally, future research areas are discussed in the light of these findings.

This thesis assesses the potential of Venezuela’s technical water committees (mesas técnicas de agua, MTAs) to address governance and logistical challenges for improving sanitation in the barrios (low income settlements) of Caracas. The MTAs are a radical experiment in urban planning whereby beneficiary communities map their own water and sanitation needs and help to plan infrastructure development, which is financed by the state. In addition to improving services, the MTAs aim to promote “popular” or “citizen power” as part of a broader political transformation, the Bolivarian Process (1999-present). Based on Hickey and Mohan’s (2005) four criteria for “transformative participation,” the paper argues that the MTAs have opened spaces for citizen empowerment and improved services in the barrios; however, participation at the local scale cannot resolve many of the challenges for improving sanitation such as institutional overlap and the financing gap, especially given that sanitation is the least profitable form of service provision in terms of economic and political payoffs.

This thesis systematically captures participatory video practitioners’ reflections on their role to examine variations in practitioners’ conceptions of participatory video practice by examining the internal coherence and collective learning interaction of the community of practitioners. This is a relevant area of research in the field of development studies because it stimulates reflection and helps the evaluation of prevailing participatory development approaches, allowing for collective practice improvement, maximizing potentials, and minimizing risks. Participatory video (PV) is a facilitated group process of media production. The interest in, funding for and number of PV projects in development is growing, due to its celebrated ideological potential to bring social change, to identify community needs and empower marginalized groups. However, the mainstreaming of participatory approaches to development has triggered a wave of admonitions about ethical, institutional, and personal challenges that these contain. In its wake has a previously uncritical focus on PV’s potentials recently led a group of scholar practitioners to engage in reflecting on their ideology, practice realities and tensions in their role. The thesis contributes original knowledge to the scholarly discourse by collectivizing information on a wider group of PV practitioners. The research drew on existing scholarly work abductively to develop an interview guide, then qualitative data was first collected in semi-structured interviews to gain a fine-grained view on the practitioner community’s reflections. In a second phase of primary data collection, practitioners were given the opportunity to collectively discuss the preliminary findings in an online workshop. The research uses a phenomenographic categorization to group practitioners’ conceptualizations and Wenger’s community of practice concept (1998) as analytical framework. It finds five distinctive practitioner roles; the Activists, Collaborators, Educators, Organizers and Safe-keepers which emphasize different parts of practice to different extents. It further finds that a community of practice does not exist between PV practitioners due to both a lack of quantity and quality of interaction and significant divisions between practitioner subgroups and gives recommendations on how to enhance mutual learning and collective reflection in the future.

Over the past few decades there has been a concerted effort in southern Africa forcommunity based natural resource management (CBNRM) programs. The generalpremise behind CBNRM allows local communities to be empowered to utilize theirsurrounding natural resources to facilitate socio-economic growth. This is seen as aneffective rural development tool which often takes on the form of eco-tourism inSouth Africa. It creates a link between nature conservation and socio-economicdevelopment needs and is normally built on existing conservation areas such asnational parks (Ezeuduji et al. 2017: 225).“Protected area outreach” is a form ofCBNRM (Chevallier 2016: 6), and this degree project examines how stakeholderparticipation was incorporated into the formulation of Kruger National Park’s (KNP)ten-year management plan. Using KNP’s stakeholder engagement process as anaturalistic case study, the aim is to discover the extent of participation and whethertrue empowerment is facilitated. This was done via document analysis of the 2018KNP Stakeholder Participation Report using the emancipatory approach. Thisapproach is influenced by critical, post-colonial and intersectional theory andemphasizes the attainment of social justice through the unveiling and dismantling ofinvisible oppressive power structures (Wesp et al. 2018: 319). The analysis showsthat KNP uses a systems approach to their stakeholder engagement as opposed toan empowerment one; that participation is limited to consultation and is thereforemerely a form of tokenism; that weaker marginalized stakeholder groups suffer fromsystemic exclusion and underrepresentation; and that there is little to no attentiongiven to empowerment nor structural reform to drive social change.

With the present level of poverty, growing inequality and the inability to provide public goods, some developing countries to an extent have turned to CSOs as an alternative solution for the much-needed sustenance. This study examines the contribution of CSOs in development and is carried out in Cameroon against the backdrop of inadequate infrastructures, low household income, generalized poverty and tense political atmosphere that could trigger inclusive policies and practices to enable peace and development prevail. In as much as the debate on the legitimacy, representativeness and the shrinking spaces of CSOs remains, this research addresses the role of CSOs in the development process of Cameroon and argues that within the context of poverty alleviation, climate change and democracy promotion CSOs can be active partners in development. For, when the state-centred approach to development fails or becomes inadequate, the acknowledgement that non-state actors can play a vital and indispensable role in the development dispensation of countries becomes an option for consideration. In developing my argument, two theories inherent within the Civil society scholarship, political participation and participatory development were applied to demonstrate how CSOs participate, the kind of relationship existing between CSOs, the state and the private sector for meaningful development to prevail was explored and analysed. Findings indicate, CSOs to an extent, significantly participate in enhancing development despite some constraints. The study was carried out as a qualitative abductive case study using remote qualitative interviews. The raison d’etre for the use of remote interviews was as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and has been explained appropriately in the qualitative design method. However, other sources of data explored for the fulfilment of the thesis included documentation from secondary sources, grey literature, CSOs, government and international organisations documentations. Empirically this study draws from existing literature especially from Cameroon and Peace and development studies. / <p>Thesis Presentation </p>

Die Quasselstrippe ist ein Werkzeug, um Dialoge zu unterstützen. Angelehnt an die Idee des Dosentelefons kann es Wünsche, Fragen und Kommentare digital sammeln und verarbeiten. Das Werkzeug ist ein Open-Source-Tool zum Selberbauen für Initiativen, Bildungsinstitutionen, Museen und alle, die es ausprobieren möchten. Wir verstehen unser Dosentelefon zum Selbermachen als eine Gegenposition zu bestehenden Voice Interfaces und als offenes System für nachhaltige Prozesse. Unser Ziel ist es, Menschen zu befähigen, sich Technologie anzueignen und Selbstwirksamkeit zu erleben.

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This study proposes a beyond modernist conceptual model for businesses' social engagement to address social development through public relations. This model is based on the premises that social thinking shifted towards beyond modernist thinking, that the same shift is evident in social development and that businesses' social engagement to address social development through public relations should be aligned with this shift in social thinking and in social development. The social shift towards beyond modernist thinking means that it is assumed that people are interdependent on one another for their future survival on earth, and that people and nature are, in the same way, interdependent. Accepting interdependency implies acceptance of 'multiplicity' and 'reciprocity'. This leads society to increasingly expect that businesses should be socially engaged. In developing countries this implies social development. This shift in society towards beyond modernist thinking is echoed in social development discourse: through an an equal-status relationship between benefactor and beneficiary beyond modernist social development enables members of a developing community to develop themselves. These shifts in social thinking and in the field of social development, has not matured to the same extent in the practice and theory of businesses' social engagement to address social development through public relations. The conceptual model proposed in this study addresses this concern. The proposed conceptual model formalises this shift in thinking on a theoretical/conceptual level, which indicates an ecological business-society relationship where the business regards itself as being part of society, where public relations should have a social orientation and where the businesses' social engagement through public relations should be directed towards the improvement of society. Based on this model, guidelines towards the practice of businesses' social engagement to address social development through public relations are deduced / Communication Science / D.Litt. et Phil. (Communication Science)