Can Rural Appraisal Really be Rapid? A Critical Assessment by a Group of 'Slow' Researchers and Practitioners

This paper is the outcome of a discussion among a group of researchers, all of whom have 1-2 year's field experience involving the use of 'informal, people-oriented, multi-disciplinary' research, about the relation of RRA methods to their own extended fieldwork experiences. The main source of difference was with the institutional context in which RRA developed. RRA presents itself as sensitive to local issues, but specific methodologies and aspects of the team context in which they are applied are locally impractical and insensitive. The questions asked using these methods are still 'ours', which can result in mutual ignorance. The paper discusses specific methods and looks at the limited view RRA tends to have of the contexts in which these data are collected. These methods are preference ranking in interviews, visual representations (Venn diagrams, bar charts, flow diagrams) secondary data gathering, and semi-structured interviews. Each method is critically discussed. Problems relating to the formation of multi-disciplinary teams and the relationship between a team and the 'target community' are explored in depth. Knowing local categories does not mean that RRA researchers know how they are used in the local context, a problem which can only be resolved by long -term participatory studies. Exploring an 'anthropology of RRA', the relationship between the RRA methodology and the institutional context of development agencies is discussed - a context in which agendas have already been written - and hence RRA is only bottom-up in the context of top-down development.