ABSTRACT
We have had a long association with Robert Chambers, spanning a good part of our professional lives. It has been a period of much learning – and indeed much unlearning – for us. It has been a period of collaboration with many practitioners of participatory approaches across the globe, in a spirit of learning, discovery and sharing. As Robert himself has often put it: ‘We live in exciting times.’ In this chapter, we reflect on our engagement with Robert over a period of intense experimentation and learning, as Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) became Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), and the focus shifted from innovation in methods to an emphasis on attitudes, behaviour and participatory processes, and from localized experiments to the use of participatory methodology for national-level poverty policy research.
