AUTHORITY, GENDER AND KNOWLEDGE - THEORETICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE PRACTICE OF PARTICIPATORY RURAL APPRAISAL

Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) methods are increasingly taken up by public sector organizations as well as NGOs among whom they have be en pioneered. While PRA methods are successfully employed in a variety of project planning situations, and with increasing sophistication, i n some contexts the practice of PRA faces constraints. This article ex amines the constraints as experienced in the early stages of one proje ct, and suggests some more general issues to which these point. In par ticular, it is suggested that, as participatory exercises, PRAs involv e 'public' social events which construct 'local knowledge' in ways tha t are strongly influenced by existing social relationships. It suggest s that information for planning is shaped by relations of power and ge nder, and by the investigators themselves; and that certain kinds of k nowledge are often excluded. Finally, the paper suggests that as a met hod for articulating existing local knowledge, PRA needs to be complem ented by other methods of 'participation' which generate the changed a wareness and new ways of knowing, which are necessary to locally-contr olled innovation and change.