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“What do others think?” An emic approach to participatory action research in Bangladesh

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Abstract

Community informatics and Information and Communications Technology for Development research projects frequently focus on the appropriation of ICTs and the design of information systems to meet the needs of communities. Such projects typically involve a range of participants reflecting different cultures and depend for their success on the ability of the project to bridge differences. Using PROTIC (Participatory Research and Ownership with Technology, Information and Change), a 5-year collaborative project between Monash University, Oxfam Australia and Oxfam in Bangladesh as a case study, this paper reflects on the use of a “mainstream” form of participatory action research (PAR) as a tool capable of engaging in more sustainable projects by helping to identify and to take into account localised or context-specific social and cultural issues in the design of the information system itself, consequently improving the effectiveness and sustainability of the systems developed. The idea of emic understandings of culture have also been used to interpret the project and PAR as an intercultural exchange around developing a community-focussed sociotechnical project.

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Notes

  1. 387 women from four villages completed the survey. The main characteristics of the four samples are similar in terms of age, marital status and occupation: women, aged around 30 years old, married and mainly (> 80%) housewives. Open questions were transcribed and summarised in English. Textual data were submitted to analysis of similarity (ADS) and to content analysis (CA).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sapienza University, Rome, Italy

    Mauro Sarrica

  2. Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

    Tom Denison & Larry Stillman

  3. Oxfam, Dhaka, Bangladesh

    Tapas Chakraborty & Priordarshine Auvi

Authors
  1. Mauro Sarrica
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  2. Tom Denison
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  3. Larry Stillman
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  4. Tapas Chakraborty
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  5. Priordarshine Auvi
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Correspondence to Larry Stillman.

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Sarrica, M., Denison, T., Stillman, L. et al. “What do others think?” An emic approach to participatory action research in Bangladesh. AI & Soc 34, 495–508 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-017-0765-9

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