Brazil's Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS), a universal, publicly-funded, rights-based health system, designed and put in place in an era where neo-liberal reforms elsewhere in the world have driven the marketization of health services, offers important lessons for future health systems. In this...

This paper proposes a consideration on an experience of access to land developed in Zona da Mata region, Minas Gerais state, since the 80’s by familiar farmers, a Labor Union of Farmers and a Non-Governmental Organization that were acting in the area. The research used qualitative...

Focus on Africa: Making South-South Cooperation on Agricultural development more inclusive and sustainable With Rio+20 only a week away, the theme of this Poverty in Focus resonates clearly with the broader discourse on sustainable development, in particular the expanded efforts to mainstream...

The recent enthusiasm for “participation” in agricultural development has fueled the development of new approaches to research and extension. The rhetoric of “participation” extends the horizons of agricultural research and extension beyond technical problem-solving. Yet in practice few...

Over the course of the 1990s, donor enthusiasm for participation came to be institutionalized in a variety of ways. One particular methodology—Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA)—came to enjoy phenomenal popularity. New aid modalities may have shifted donor and lender concern away from the...

Research strategies which emphasize participation are increasingly used in health research. Breaking the linear mould of conventional research, participatory research focuses on a process of sequential reflection and action, carried out with and by local people rather than on them. Local...

Andrea Cornwall and Nana Akua Anyidoho critically examine empowerment in an introduction to how to go beyond mainstream interpretations of empowerment to discover what is happening in women's lives that is bringing about positive change.