ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on encounters with Robert Chambers and his work, and on the impact that they have had at a personal level and on ActionAid as an organization. It looks at the way in which Robert’s concern with biases and behaviour, and with power, came to influence the way in which ActionAid and its work evolved. The call for change in Rural Development focused more on our biases and behaviour than on the power of the knowledge and action of the people and communities with whom we worked. Robert is seemingly non-confrontational and appreciative of all ideas. It took well over a decade for the impact of Rural Development on us as individual practitioners in ActionAid to become overtly political. Robert’s other major political influence has been in orchestrating and legitimizing knowledge and actions from the field and of people and communities at the frontline of the fight against poverty and injustice.
