COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse Practicesby bringing its experience into communication, mutual understanding and action. Participatory HP practice(oriented towards Freire) includes people in the critical reflexion of their social & political environment. Therebythey will establish a critical consciousness and learn the skills to voice their opinion (individual empowerment).This makes them also more likely to become agents for change in community affairs (community empowerment).Essential features of a participatory processSome theoretical approaches point to essential features of participatory processes and how these could berealised in the practice of HP. The concept of communicative action as formulated by Habermas is applied in twopapers (Baillie et al. 2000, Ramella/ De La Cruz 2000). A kernel statement here is that HP practice involves thecoming together of diverse people. Thereby, a major challenge is the creation of an open communication. Thepapers then point out that communicative action may be a guideline for the understanding how a participatoryprocess could be realized in HP practice. Communicative action requires the equal distribution of opportunities toact meaningfully in all aspects of the participatory process. Researchers applying that concept are sensitized tothe fact, that primarily vulnerable communities may lack communicative competence to voice their opinion.However, participatory practices oriented towards communicative rationality have to involve values like equality,negotiated content, and inclusion of critique throughout the process.ConclusionFollowing these arguments we suggest a first abstract understanding of participation: Participation could beindicated as a process, which is shaped by community members from the beginning, recruits its strategy fromtheir knowledge and experience, and is governed through their joint decision-making. It has to be seen as an(open) process because the outcome of participation is always unclear, as it emerges form the equal contributionof all its participants.In this paper we presented preliminary results of a review of theoretical developments on the issue of participationwithin the HP discourse. We could work out that more theoretical approaches are used which stimulate a newway of thinking and debate. This may help to overcome the stagnation of conceptual developments (stillorientated towards the late 1960s) and may support HP practice to reframe participation as a strategy and guideits implementation.ReferencesArnstein, S (1969): A ladder of citizen participation. J Am Inst Plann, 35(4), 216-224Baecker, D (2007): Form und Formen der Kommunikation. Frankfurt am MainBaillie, L et al. (2000): Using Communicative Action in the Primary Prevention of Cancer, in: Health Educ Behav,Vol. 27 (4): 442-453Bateson, G (1972): Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New YorkChambers, R (1995): Paradigm shift in the practice of participatory research and development. In: Nelson N,Wright, S (eds). Power and participatory development: theory and practice. LondonCampbell, C/ Jovchelovitch, S (2000): Health Community and Development: Towards a Social Psychology ofParticipation, in: J Community Appl Soc Psychol, 10: 255-27076