The Geography of Participation

Revisiting the critique of participatory development and one of its core political technologies, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), this paper suggests that participation in the form of PRA creates ‘provided spaces’ that dislocate ‘development’ from politics and from political institutions of the postcolonial state. PRA thereby becomes what Chantal Mouffe calls a post-political aspiration through its celebration of deliberative democracy (although this is largely implicit rather than explicit in the PRA literature). What makes this post-political aspiration dangerous is that its provided spaces create a time–space container of a state of exception (the ‘workshop’) wherein a new sovereign is created. In combination with other developmental techniques, PRA has become a place where a new order is being constituted—the state of exception becomes permanent and nurtures the ‘will to improve’ that undergirds ‘development’.