ABSTRACT
Practitioners of the art of engaged inquiry must learn to choose, mix, adapt or create methods that fit the situation. Designing the right PAR process can never be a mechanical exercise. Each situation calls for skilful means to inquire into a situation and act on it. Equal skill goes into selecting, adjusting and applying more advanced tools to systems thinking and problem solving, with full participation of the parties involved. In either case, purpose comes first, guided by complex reasoning and the exercise of judgement. Chapter 20 provides a full-length illustration of how PAR methods were skilfully combined in a complex setting to fit a purpose – breaking the dependency of Bangladeshi farmers on tobacco production and experimenting with alternative livelihoods. In this story, System Dynamics (Causal Dynamics), two variants of Domain Analysis (Ecological Domain and Social Domain) and the rating tool called The Socratic Wheel combine to unpack and counter the forces that bind tobacco farmers to an industrial mono-crop that depletes soils, denudes forested hillsides and compromises the health of field workers and the women and children curing the leaves.
