John Gaventa, Professor, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex
Visiting Fellow, Ash Center
A light lunch will be served.
RSVP: jesse_ledin@hks.harvard.edu
About the Seminar
Over the last decade citizen participation has often been seen as a panacea both for deepening democracy as well as for achieving international development goals. But under what circumstances does participation change or challenge power relations? In a rapidly changing world, how do we understand and analyze power in order to build more effective strategies for citizen engagement?
In this seminar, John Gaventa, the author of the award-winning book Power and Powerlessness (1980), will share his more recent approaches to understanding power, and discuss their implications for civic engagement (www.powercube.net). To illustrate his arguments, Gaventa will draw upon recent work of the Development Research Center on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability, a 10-year research program on how citizens mobilize to claim their rights, which has produced over 150 case studies of citizen engagement in 20 countries, largely in the global south (www.drc-citizenship.org).... Read more about ’Seeing like a Citizen’: Power, Participation, and Strategies for Citizen Engagement