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This book examines 'the ways in which people form images of other places and how these images influence many decisions'. Examples are given of how people's mental maps reveal their perceptions and beliefs about the world. Planners asked people in Birmingham, UK, for 'the maps that they had in their heads and which they used in moving around the centre of the city'. The response was very large because 'people seemed to like the idea of helping planners and being involved in some small way with the planning process going on in their town'. As in PRA mapping activities, the maps drawn reflected people's experiences. In another example, a black school boy in Boston drew five educational institutions in the area, 'indicative of his perception of education as an escape route from the segregated life he leads'. Our mental maps are influenced and shaped by information, such as that provided by the media and school text books. School leavers ranked the places where they preferred to live, revealing 'local domes of desirability and a shared national viewpoint' regarding images of certain towns. The book ends by looking at how to change people's mental maps : 'the maps and models of the world we carry around with us need larger and much more relevant information inputs'.

Participatory mapping is used as a way of collecting complex socio- economic and bio-physical data needed to understand the relationships between farming and forests. This has been used in Nepal where there is little other information available to fieldworkers. boundaries, features and uses of forests can be recorded, although field workers have a tendency to construct sketch maps themselves with little consultation with villagers. Participatory mapping overcomes the problem of fieldworker bias and allows a much greater amount of information to be portrayed on the map. Different user groups or key informant can produce different maps depending on their perception and use of the forest. Participatory maps are generally more accurate than fieldworker produced maps. They are considered to be detailed, non threatening, reliable and cost effective.

The first section of this book is an excellent introduction to the findings of research on visual literacy in various parts of the world. The traditional perspective of visual literacy among neo-literate people, that pictures should be designed only in a way that people can already comprehend, is shown to be limiting. By contrast the author shows how visual materials can be liberating, helping to extend people's visual literacy by building on their existing skills. A distinction is made between 'bottom-up, people-centred' approaches and top-down design processes. The book is intended as a practical guide for all those who use or design visual aids.

This paper explores the use of rapid appraisal in defining the health and social needs of a community. The aim is to formulate joint action plans between residents and service providers. Data was collected by an extended primary care team from three sources to build a profile of the community: existing documents about the neighbourhood, interviews with a range of informants, and direct observations. Perceived problems of the community and suggestions for change were used as the main outcome measures of the study. Interviews and focus groups identified six priorities for change, many of which were not health related. These changes have been or are being implemented. The paper concludes that an expanded primary care team can use rapid appraisal as a first step in identifying and meeting local health needs. It facilitates a multi-disciplinary approach and complements quantitative methods of assessing need.

The author identifies the key problem of agricultural research and extension in the Peruvian Andes as the result of a clash of two incompatible knowlege systems: one based on Western science, hegemonic in Peru since the Conquest and actively propagated in the practices of top-down agricultural research institutions, the other based on an Andean world-view in which cosmology, metaphor, and ritual still largely determine the semantic categories used by Andean peasants to explain their agricultural practises. Taking the potato as an example, she contrasts peasant discourse with the Greeen Revolution approach still dominant in potato research and advocated by the International Potato Centre (CIP). Improving the communication skills of researchers by understanding the Andean world-view is posited as the only way agricultural and extension in the Andean region can begin better to address the real needs of Andean peasants. She registers some positive developments in this direction: the emergence of bilingual education programmes, the workshopping boom in which peasant and other experts are increasingly sharing and exchanging knowledge, and the postgraduate course in Andean peasant agriculture at the University of Ayacucho in which professionals learn how to perceive reality in Andean categories with courses such as : Holistic conceptions in Andean agriculture, agrocentric culture, the endogenous vision of Andean culture, the organisation of the peasant community, Andean agro -astronomy, and Andean cosmology and religion.

This report provides an assessment of the extent of and changes in poverty in Kenya during the '80s and early '90s. It uses data from different sources and of different kinds, including was a Participatory Poverty Assessment (PPA) and a Welfare Monitoring Survey (WMS). Interestingly, in three out of five districts the results yielded by the two approaches were almost identical. The PPA provided critical insights on a number of issues - people's perceptions of the extent and causes of poverty, the status of women, the extent of and reasons for low school enrolment, the reasons for not using public health facilities and the ways in which poor people cope with food insecurity and drought. Methods used included social mapping and wealth ranking, interviews and focus groups discussions. The different chapters present the findings of the study, focusing on economic development and poverty; revitalising the rural economy; structural transformation in agriculture; social sector spending (education and health); food security and nutrition; and targeted programmes and institutional factors. A strategy of programmes and policies for poverty reduction is suggested.

This paper examines a participatory procedure of self-assessment of irrigation system performance by farmers in the Philippines. The procedure was aimed at improving system performance through strengthening irrigators associations' (IA) managerial capacity in planning and decision making regarding operation and maintenance, communication and conflict resolution. The assessment was part of a longer intervention to organize farmers in small groups based on water and task distribution. The first phase involved self-assessment by the original groups of the process of organizing smaller groups and catalysing collective action. In one-day workshops, farmers used symbols and maps to assess the situation. The second phase used a self-assessment questionnaire filled out monthly by IA group leaders, to assess their own performance in a range of management tasks. The experiment showed that participatory self-assessment was quite successful in eliciting candid appraisals of the existing situation. Pictorial analysis was a learning experience in which farmers identified unexpected causes of problems. These problems lay within the farmers' ability to resolve them, so the assessment facilitated follow-up actions to address them, which are listed in a table.