McCormick+Schmitz Handbook for value chain research on - PACA

own its findings and recommendations. At first glance, it seems that participatory <strong>research</strong>
should be more cost effective because it does not require, <strong>for</strong> example, the paid <strong>research</strong>
assistants usually required to administer a survey. This ‘advantage’, however, is more
apparent than real, because mobilising local people and facilitating their <strong>research</strong> tends
uses a great deal of relatively expensive <strong>research</strong>er time and energy.
Many of the techniques of participatory <strong>research</strong> have been developed <strong>for</strong> use in
connection with development work - by governments and/or NGOs - in rural settings.
These are described in now classic work by Robert Chambers and many others who have
built on his approach. Some techniques are the same as those used in conventional
<strong>research</strong>. Participatory <strong>research</strong> uses review of secondary sources, direct observation,
semi-structured interviews; the difference is that community members rather than
professional <strong>research</strong>ers carry out much of the work. Participatory <strong>research</strong> is probably
best known <strong>for</strong> the techniques that have been specially developed, such as wealth ranking,
matrix scoring, mapping, and diagramming. In some countries, there are organisations
devoted to training and promotion of participatory methods (e.g., PAMFORK in Kenya).
These are valuable resources <strong>for</strong> providing communities and <strong>research</strong>ers with in<strong>for</strong>mation
about specific methods and techniques that have been tried elsewhere. Some of these
techniques can no doubt be adapted to <strong>value</strong> <strong>chain</strong> <strong>research</strong>, but know that in doing so,
you will be charting new ground! For an overview on the <strong>value</strong> of participatory methods
in other fields, see www.ids.ac.uk/ids/particip/<strong>research</strong>/pra.html..
A.8 Feminist <strong>research</strong> methods
Like participatory <strong>research</strong>, feminist <strong>research</strong> rests on a philosophical orientation that is
somewhat different from that of conventional <strong>research</strong>. In the case of feminist <strong>research</strong>,
the starting point is the recognition that a person’s material life (what one does <strong>for</strong> a living
and related facts such as the quality of one’s material surroundings) has a profound effect
on his/her understanding of the world. A street child who picks through garbage every day
sees life very differently from a middle class schoolboy; a sweeper in a factory has a
different world view from the company’s managing director; a woman’s perspective on
life in the family is almost always different from her husband’s. Feminist <strong>research</strong>
methods try to see the reality being studied from the standpoint of the female members of
121