The Social Shaping of Participatory Spaces

Critical analysis of participatory community development has claimed that such approaches serve as a vehicle for social control and co-option by external actors. Drawing on a case study from Southern Thailand, this article argues that we need to take a less deterministic perspective, and pay more attention to the ways in which community members themselves manipulate or subvert participatory processes. The article shows how this may result in hybrid participatory practices and institutions that contain elements of both local and external interests, and which play a key role in defining the way power is constituted in local participatory spaces.