Challenging the Professions: Frontiers for Rural Development

Abstract

Part 1 Normal professionalism, new paradigms and development: the setting development professions and paradigms normal professionalism conservatism defences weaknesses polar paradigms - first and last the new development paradigm. Part 2 Managing rural development - procedure, principles and choices: principles, modes of thought - empirical not perfectionist, systems thinking, administrative capacity as a scarce resource, optimizing, not maximizing, optimal ignorance, opportunity-versus problem-orientation, sophistication in simplicity precepts in procedural design - introduce joint programming and joint target-setting, make meetings few and functional, make reports short and functional, subsume or abolish old procedures, start with a pilot experimental approach, involve participating staff in discussion procedures choices. Part 3 Project selection for poverty-focused rural development - simple is optimal: rural poverty - problems and opportunities problems in project selection - the needs of donors, the big project trap, project appraisal in practice, complexity, dependence and delay, the neglect of administrative capacity solutions - simple is optimal - decentralization, simple procedures - decision matrices, poverty group ranking, checklists, listing costs and benefits, unit costs and cost-effectiveness life-styles, learning and judgement. Part 4 Health, agriculture, and rural poverty - why seasons matters: the argument - professional and personal biases, biases of access and contact, dry season bias, statistical biases practical implications - research, health services, rural planning and action postscript. Part 5 Farmer-first - a practical paradigm for the Third Agriculture: the great challenge of the 1990s normal professionalism, transfer-of-technology and the third agriculture farmer first - the complementary paradigm - analysis, search, choice, experimentation, evaluation and extension challenges for the future - inventiveness, parsimony, spread, embedding. Part 6 Normal professionalism and the early project process - problems and solutions: definitions and scope normal professionalism professions and the early project process bureaucratic and political pressures project process pathology - irreversibility of commitment, the anti-poor bias in methodology, the home economics of cost-benefit analysis, additive procedures large projects - prevention often better than cure the new paradigm and the new professionalism practical implications - calibre, commitment and continuity of field staff, restraint in funding, rapid appraisal learning projects. (Part contents)

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