This paper aims to highlight a new issue in development studies, an issue that the author terms \u201cirony of facilitation\u201d. We define the term and examine two recent arguments in participatory development studies: the tyranny critique and the post-tyranny approach.<\/p>\n
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These two approaches focus on two questions: first, whether citizens of developing countries can be self-reliant in managing their development organizations; and second, whether development agencies should facilitate local citizen\u2019s organization management. The tyranny critique argues that agencies stifle autonomous participation when they lead development projects.<\/p>\n
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The post-tyranny approach counters this, positing that technocratic facilitation by development agencies encourages people\u2019s sense of citizenship and that this growing citizenship in turn increases individuals\u2019 autonomous participation.<\/p>\n
Here, the author describes the irony of facilitation that underlies the tyranny critique, which holds that all types of facilitation discourage citizenship and lead to non-autonomous governance.<\/p>\n
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To grasp such logic empirically, this paper uses theories and perspectives from development sociology to examine a case study the author found during field work in Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
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A Bangladeshi nongovernmental organization (NGO) faced loan-delinquency among village organization members in the local microcredit program.<\/p>\n
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The reason for their delinquency was found to lie in the NGO workers\u2019 facilitation.<\/p>\n
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From analysis of this case, the author makes the preliminary conclusion that an irony emerges when local people access development programs.<\/p>\n
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Rather than facilitating local development, these programs instead subordinate the people to subsistence ethic, with counterproductive results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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