Reflexivity in Participatory Development: Framing Community-Based Natural Resource Management on the Amazon Frontier

While international development experts increasingly consider participation to be a genuinely transformative approach to development, the process by which this transformation may take place as an outcome of the participatory development is not sufficiently understood. Drawing mainly on the works of Margaret Archer, this article proposes to elaborate a reflexivity-based framework as a tool to follow the potential transformative process taking place outside the original project framework. It is argued that the reflexivity-based framework facilitates the expert to grasp how a development project comes to let its participants reflect on individual experience of routine action such as participation, share the reflection with others, and open new spaces for change. The article applies the reflexivity-based framework to reassess a failed community-based natural resource management project on the Brazilian Amazon frontier to illustrate the discussion.