Participatory Community Development

SOC 398.015/CRP 470.015
Fall 2002
Instructor: Jason Ben-Meir

Course Description:
Participatory Community Development (PCD) is a consortium of methods that help local communities, in partnership with government and non-government agencies, design, implement and evaluate projects that generate new income, food and services. This course trains students in applying PCD methods and in analytical tools that help us understand the social consequences of this community development approach.

This course is generally composed of three concurrent activities that take place throughout the semester:
1.   As the beneficiaries of a community development process, the participatory methods will be applied to the class (students then design and implement, in reality, projects that address their needs)

2.   The class applies the PCD methods (again, in reality) within the Albuquerque community

3.   An analysis of: a) the properties of PCD, b) the impacts it has when it is applied and c) whether and how PD satisfies the criteria for genuine development put forward by a variety of social theorists and philosophers

Training in applying participatory methods is best achieved by experiencing it as a community member, facilitating its application to a community and analyzing its broader consequences. This three-pronged approach allows us to view PCD from a variety of vantage points (this in itself is a PCD technique).

Course Syllabus

Discussion Topics:

• What is Participatory Development?
• Third Party Facilitation in PCD
• The Societal Consequences of PCD
• Gender and Development
• Community-Based Racial and Ethnic Reconciliation
• PCD and Natural Resource Management
• Action Research
• PCD in a Marxian System
• PCD and "Flexible" Markets
• PCD in a Dependency World System
• PCD and the Socialist Agenda
• Final Thoughts

Participatory Methods:

• Community Mapping
• Daily Activities Schedule
• Weekly Activities Schedule
• Institutional Diagram
• Access to Recources Exercise
• Community Role Playing
• Pairwise Ranking Instructions
• Pairwise Ranking Matrix
• Tree Diagram
• Options Assessment Instructions
• Options Assessment Chart
• Participatory Evaluation

Community Project Documents:

• Informed Consent Agreement
• Description of PCD
• Pairwise Ranking Results
• Agenda for Meeting 1
• Agenda for Meeting 2
• Agenda for Meeting 3
• Agenda for Meeting 4
• Agenda for Meeting 5
• Article Describing the Community Development Experience

A Library of Quotes On/By:

• Participatory Community Development
• Negotiation / Facilitation / Mediation
• Gender and Development
• Race and Ethnicity
• Environmental Protection
• Technology Transfer
• Dependency Theory
• Karl Marx and Marxism
• Market Economics
• Socialism--Anarchism
• Architecture and Planning
• Comparative Development
• Education
• Constructing Social Theory
• Social Theory
• Auguste Comte
• Emile Durkheim
• Max Weber
• Jean-Paul Sartre
• Post-Modernism
• Research Methods
• Student Journals

Community Service Information:

• Non-Profit Organizations that Need Volunteers

Favorite Links:

Contact Information:
Jason Ben-Meir's E-mail address: soc101@unm.edu
Web address: www.unm.edu/~soc101/
Office phone: (505) 277-0471
Address: Department of Sociology, University of New Mexico,

1915 Roma NE, Albuquerque, NM 87131-1166