ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the engagement with Robert Chambers over a period of intense experimentation and learning, as Rapid Rural Appraisal became Participatory Rural Appraisal. 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. Acceptance of participatory methodology in development research and practice spread like wildfire during the 1990s. The methodology was adapted and used for implementing development projects in fields as diverse as natural resources management, health care, education, post-natural disaster rehabilitation and resettlement, and livelihood security. Robert emphasized the importance of the behaviour and attitudes of development professionals that inhibited learning from and with the people for whom development was intended. Another area of Robert’s singular contribution is in enabling a better understanding of the complexity and diversity within a farming system.
