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26 Soc. Change 3 (1996)

handle is hein.journals/sclcnge26 and id is 1 raw text is: 













3-6  Social Change : March 1996: Vol. 26 No. 1


Introduction



Neela   Mukherjee*
Guest  Co-editor



One  major challenge of developmental paradigm lies in showing ways to sustain
human development. Our accumulated experience over long years of
development  shows  that there has been a continuous stream of learning. The
history of science and inquiry reveals that our knowledge ol voth the external
world  and  the ways and means  of human   interaction is always evolving
(Schwandt:  1990). Hence some  paradigms become  old while new paradigms
emerge  and grow. One such recent paradigm is that of constructivist paradigm on
which  is based the participatory approach to human development. This paradigm
is steering the course of today's development thinking and aim at understanding
as much  as possible the following issues:
   *   Aspects of human  experience  as it is lived or felt or undergone by
       participants in that experience
   *   The context of that experience

   *   The naturally occurring context
   *   Procedures for considering the context and the experience as a complex,
       temporal, socio-cultural and geographic whole
      The inquirer employing ordinary field-work methods for understanding
       of that experience
   *   For initiating and sustaining human  development   based on  such
       experience.
The  constructivist methodologies reject the naturalistic interpretation of the
social sciences and aim at inquiring and interpreting the realm ofinter-subjective
meaning  as constituted in culture, language, signs, symbol etc. Approaching
human  development through participation and building upon its sustainability in
a constructivist framework is a major contribution of the constructivist paradigm
to the systems of inquiry.

*  Profcssor of Econoiis, Latalahadiir Shastri National Acadsmy ofAdininistration,
   (Government of India), MUSSOORIE  -4 3179. & External Consultant, Indian
   Council For Research on International Eczrbonmc Relations (ICRIER), India Habitat
   C,t':a, EisI Court, IV Floor, Lodi Road, NEW DEL HI-110003.

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