Debataraja Mamora, Tagor Toman
(2025)
An evaluative study of participatory development: the dynamics of rural community develoment in Sarawak.
PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.
Abstract
Participation and communication are key terms in the study, and they work in tandem. They raise the need for dialogic communication and collaborative activities to foster empowerment and greater interaction for the villagers of Kampung Opar and Sebauh longhouses, the sites of my research, so that they can assert their role in community development planning and decision making. With development policy and implementation generally taking a top-down approach, politics and power relations remain a powerful factor of influence, limiting the social space for freely occurring group or community-initiated participatory activities.
Residents of a longhouse in Bintulu and villagers in Kampong Opar were studied. Online and in-person interviews were also conducted with more than 50 Dayak personalities from the Dayak Iban and Dayak Bidayuh communities. The majority of the latter are professionals or university-educated. They hail from the two villages but have set up their second home in towns where they run their businesses or are in employment. They return home to their villages at least once a month and maintain strong links with their ancestral homes.
Dialogic communication, which is a fundamental component of participatory development, underpins human development by allowing people to access, create, and share information that is critical to their empowerment and participation in development and progress. Paolo Freira's horizontal approach is used to lend credibility and support to a people-centred movement that maximises the use of local resources and talents to motivate and lead the communities of Kampung Opar and Sebauh longhouse on a shared path towards participatory development.
Although there are theories and models in the social science literature on community participation, participatory development, and participatory communication, the majority of them are based on western thinking and ideas that focus mechanistically on the process of information and resource development, information sharing, and knowledge-driven empowerment while excluding elements of culture and religion.
In my research, I extended and adapted existing models of community participation to include religion and culture as important factors in social capital formation because they can be effectively used to create collective identity and drive participatory communication. While participatory development is associated with dialogue, self-sufficiency, and empowerment, the socio-cultural context of communities is equally important and plays a role in the participatory communication and development cycle. Quality research is used primarily in carrying out the study, with emphasis on understanding and explaining the social phenomena, characteristic behaviour, experiences, values, psyche, and relationship behaviour of the people in the two communities (Kampung Opar and Sebauh longhouse). The social dimension is essential in the formulation and development of participatory development policies and frameworks. The government authorities in Sarawak do not deny the importance of people's participation in community development or the critical role that dialogic communication plays in creating a democratic corridor to facilitate the process of negotiation and meaning exchange. The issue is that they see communication primarily as the transmission of messages to the community. This must be corrected. This would entail a review of the current local government structure and accountability pattern, as well as the state ordinance governing the structure and powers of the local government.
In my study, a preferred option is a "integrated participatory innovation platform," which is a process model that integrates the efforts of stakeholders such as local government, community leaders, politicians, NGOs, and the private sector in relation to local development. It would help to break the impasse and lay the groundwork for greater and more effective participation, on which the community and local government could collaborate to improve community-local government relations and empower community members.
It is hoped that the 'integrated participatory innovation platform" will facilitate the creation of a bigger space for power and opportunities for the community and provide the way forward for participatory development for rural communities in Sarawak.
| Item Type: |
Thesis (University of Nottingham only)
(PhD)
|
| Supervisors: |
Lim, Joanne Bee Yin
Nain, Zaharom |
| Keywords: |
participatory development; community empowerment; power relations; community governance; governmentality; community unity and identity |
| Subjects: |
H Social sciences > HM Sociology |
| Faculties/Schools: |
University of Nottingham, Malaysia > Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences > School of Media, Languages and Cultures |
| Item ID: |
81550 |
| Depositing User: |
DEBATARAJA MAMORA, Tagor
|
| Date Deposited: |
26 Jul 2025 04:40 |
| Last Modified: |
26 Jul 2025 04:40 |
| URI: |
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/81550 |
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