About the author viii; Preface ix; Acknowledgements xi; Acronyms xiv; For starters: assertions to tempt you or turn you off xv; Part One: Word Play; Introduction: words and concepts 3; Words, bingo and reflexivity 6; Simple is sophisticated 9; The power of words in development 15; Words of power 21; Participatory GIS 24; What's in a name? 26; Academic games 28; What words count? The Paris declaration on Aid Effectiveness 31; What words and aspirations now? 33; Part Two: Poverty and Participation; To provoke: poverty and participation 37; What is poverty? Who asks? Who answers? 40; Professionals and the powerless: whose reality counts? 43; Whose Voice? Participatory research and policy change 46; Blind spots: hidden, unseen and sensitive dimensions of deprivation 54; Poverty in diagrams 60; Integrated: seasonal poverty, season blindness 65; Two syndromes of seasonality 72; For professionals, a time to provoke 74; Participation: tyrannical or transformative? 82; Negotiated learning: collaborative monitoring in resource; management 85; Measuring empowerment? Ask them? A win-win in Bangladesh 87; Participatory numbers and statistics 90; PRA: start, stumble, self-correct, share 93; PRA behaviours: 21 do's 96; Part Three: Aid; Provoking aid 99; How development organizations see each other and relate 103; Rugby International: UNHCR vs NGOs 104; My visit to a rural settlement 105; Imposing aid 107; ZOPP marries PRA: whose realities, needs and priorities count? 111; Reversals, realities and rewards 119; On lenders, donors, debt and development 120; On the World Bank 124; The World Bank: what next? 125; Participation and PRA for donors 129; The effectiveness of World Bank support for community-based; and -driven development 132; What DFID should do 137; Aid and the new Bottom Billion: need for a radical rethink? 139; The big push back, and the big push forward 141; Part Four: To provoke: For our future; Introduction 145; Whose priorities? 148; Objectives for outsiders 149; The Myth of Community: gender issues in participatory development 150; Transforming power: from zero-sum to win-win 154; A pedagogy for the powerful 163; 21 ways to move an organization towards participation 167; Livelihoods: sustainable in what sense, and for whom? 169; Oh poverty experts! Time to stand on our heads? 170; Immersions: something is happening 171; The World Development Report: concepts, content and a chapter 12 181; Development paradigms: neo-Newtonian and adaptive pluralism 190; Paradigms, lock-ins and liberations 195; Stepping Forward: children's and young people's participation in; development 200; What would it take to eliminate poverty in the world? 203; References 207; A few useful websites 217; Index 218