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This paper session aims to peel away the layers of meaning and practice in participatory development in a range of developing areas in order to energize discourse surrounding improved development practices in post-conflict or conflict environments. The session will critically analyze geographies of participatory development and investigate the challenges facing development and civil society in post-conflict or conflict environments existing within the socially or politically constructed spaces of participation. Papers will address complexities in and among issues of power relations, power structures, shifting local governance, conceptions of civil society, citizen identity, representation, and gender in an attempt to link these issues to practical development realities including (but not limited to) land ownership, human rights, displacement, political representation, rural infrastructure development and livelihoods. This call is seeking papers which articulate the complexities of practicing participatory development in environments that are broadly considered post-conflict but that have not fully moved into a post-conflict mode, but will also welcome papers addressing the same issues in current conflict environments. Here, the definition of conflict is broad and encompasses non-violent as well as violent conflict. We also invite papers which address human 'beneficiary' engagement with participation and highlight the intricacies of post-conflict development as experienced by target populations, potentially theorizing the concrete and drawing out the critical geographies of participation in order to expand upon and enhance applications of participatory development.
Please send paper abstracts of up to 250 words to Jennifer McCarthy at [log in to unmask] by February 20th, 2008.