A tracing of participatory pathways

This overview paper to the volume of Social Change that focuses on participatory pathways summarises the articles in the collection. The articles featured draw on a diverse geography and situations, ranging from health needs in a deprived urban housing estate in the UK, to how local people prioritised problems and envisaged solutions in a north Indian hill station, to participatory research in Zimbabwe and India. Various methodologies are also explored through how people and professionals might be brought together in a cooperative spirit, and how people's perceptions can form the basis of indicators of food insecurity and malnutrition. One article dwells on the trauma and tragedy of AIDS and on how people and communities can be helped to cope with it. Other articles look not so much on participatory pathways per se, but on participation's behavioural ethos and its seeds and roots. Reminders of participation's downside also feature, drawing on experiences in India and Ghana.