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Responding to the continuing separation of participants and researchers in LIS participatory research, a new methodology is proposed: action partnership research design (APRD). It is asserted that APRD can mitigate or remove the hierarchical structures often inherent in the research process, thus allowing for equal contribution from all.

Building on the bonded design (BD) methodology and informed by a scoping literature review conducted by the same authors, APRD is a human-centered research approach with the goal of empowering and valuing community partnerships. APRD originates from research investigating the use of participatory design methods to foster collaboration between two potentially disparate groups, firstly with adult researchers/designers and elementary school children, and secondly with university faculty and IT professionals.

To achieve this goal, in addition to BD techniques, APRD draws inspiration from elements of indigenous and decolonization research methodologies, particularly those with an emphasis on destabilizing power hierarchies and involving research participants as full partners.

APRD, which emerged from findings from previous participatory design studies, especially those of BD, is based on the premise of partnership, recognizing that each member of a design team, whether researcher or participant/user, has unique expertise to contribute. By considering participants/users as full research partners, APRD aims to flatten the hierarchies exhibited in some LIS participatory research methodologies, where participants are treated more like research subjects than partners.

This study aims to understand the utility of personas and illustrate, through a case study, how a persona-building exercise in a Community Based Prevention Marketing (CBPM) training of community leaders elicited important insights that complemented findings from ongoing formative research on vaccine hesitancy in the Hispanic/Latino population in the USA during COVID-19 pandemic.

An exploratory concurrent parallel qualitative study design compared three personas created by community-based organization members (n = 37) to transcripts from five formative research focus groups (n = 30) from the same project. All participants in this study were recruited by the National COVID-19 Resiliency Network as part of their capacity-building and formative research activities. Grounded theory guided the content analysis.

This study found personas and focus groups to be complementary. A high degree of co-occurrence was observed when investigating the uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine under the categories of barriers, culture and communication. Between the two methods, the authors found strong associations between fear, disruption to the value system, work-related barriers, inaccessibility to health care and information sources and misinformation. Areas of divergence were negligible.

While personas provided background information about the population and sharing “how” to reach the priority population, focus groups provided the “why” behind the behavior, followed by “how”.

A community-driven persona-building process built on cultural community knowledge and existing data can build community capacity, provide rich information to assist in the creation of tailored messages, strategies and overall interventions during a public health crisis and provide user-centered, evidence-based information about a priority population while researchers and practitioners wait on the results from formative research.

This case study provided a unique opportunity to analyze the complementary effectiveness of two methods acting in tandem to understand the priority population: stakeholder-informed persona-building and participant-informed focus group interviews. Understanding their complementary nature addresses a time gap that often exists between researchers and practitioners during times of crises and builds on recommendations associated with bringing rigor into practice, promoting academic contribution to real-world issues and building collaborative partnerships. Finally, it supports the utility of a nimble tool that improves social marketers’ ability to know more about their audience for intervention design when time is of the essence and formative research is ongoing.

This study aims at understanding how higher education institutions (HEIs) can contribute to sustainable development, by designing their programmes for bringing about a transformative impact on communities and students, and also to examine what alternative pedagogical approaches could be used for that. In the past decades, HEIs have increasingly created social innovation (SI) programmes, as a way to achieve United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. These community-oriented and field-based programmes are difficult to ally with conventional classroom education. This study explores how these programmes could integrate the participatory approach and what would be the benefits. It also investigates the effectiveness of the experiential learning approach for teaching sustainability.

A case study method is used to document SI projects initiated by an HEI programme in rural India.

It was found that the participatory approach contributes to empowering communities and also benefits the students in terms of academic, professional and personal growth. Empirical findings show that experiential learning is an efficient method to teach sustainability. Ultimately, both pedagogical approaches are found to be mutually beneficial.

This study fills a gap in the literature, by providing empirical evidence on how HEI can implement innovative educational strategies such as participatory approach and experiential learning in their programmes towards teaching sustainability. A conceptual model for HEI interested in developing similar programmes is also proposed. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first studies focusing on the context of Indian HEI.

This chapter explores the principles of community empowerment and active participation in community development, highlighting the importance of inclusive practices for sustainable and equitable outcomes. It draws from diverse strategies and practical examples, showcasing the transformative potential of empowering community members. Through real-world case studies from places like Namibia, Bangladesh, and Brazil, readers gain insights into effective strategies for amplifying marginalized voices and enabling them to shape their destinies. The chapter addresses the challenges and benefits of participatory approaches, helping practitioners tailor strategies to complex community dynamics. It emphasizes the pivotal role of partnerships in strengthening community bonds and fostering collaborations among stakeholders. By embracing empowerment and participation, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers can contribute to a more equitable and sustainable future where communities thrive, and individuals actively shape their paths.

This beginning chapter offers a comprehensive overview of community development, tracing its historical roots and societal implications. It underscores community development’s role in fostering social cohesion and positive change. Beginning with its foundational principles of collective action, participation, and empowerment, the chapter delves into its evolution in response to industrialization and urbanization. It explores diverse scales, contexts, tools, and strategies used in community development and its broader societal impact. The chapter advocates for inclusivity and active engagement of community members, emphasizing tailored solutions that address unique challenges. It acknowledges complexities like ethical dilemmas, power imbalances, and cultural sensitivities, underscoring the importance of integrity and local context understanding in community development.

This paper showcases how the PAR embedded in posthumanist perspectives enabled us to navigate several complexities in the field through methodological situatedness and pluralism. It also attempts to critically outline the drivers and barriers that shaped our capacities to engage with the PAR.

The Tamil Nadu state in the Bay of Bengal along the southeast coast of India is one of the six regions in the world where severe tropical cyclones originate throughout the year. Storm surges in this region are well known for their destructive potential due to strong winds and heavy rainfall. This paper describes our participatory action research (PAR) journey towards strengthening grassroots action by providing access to safe and affordable housing for cyclone-impacted households (CIHs) in the Villupuram district of Tamil Nadu, India. The PAR was guided by an adaptive innovation model (AIM) that draws inspiration from posthumanism, action research and reflective practice traditions.

The insights from the PAR insist that we must recognise and work with diverse knowledge systems and situated practices to develop meaningful disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate adaptation strategies. Our approach has to be rooted in the lived experiences of various vulnerable groups, their entanglements with nature and their everyday struggles of interacting with a complex social-ecological system.

This paper is an outcome of a PAR in a cyclone-impacted village in Tamil Nadu, India. The discussions and findings of the paper are original in nature and have not been published elsewhere.

The study is positioned at the crossroads of transformative social marketing and social innovation literature through the lens of participatory design (PD). This exploratory study aims to explore how social enterprises in India engage economically marginalized people in transformative social marketing and innovation for sustainable development through PD.

The study includes a case study with a matched pairs analysis approach. The data analysis reports three themes depicting the role of PD in different stages of the social innovation process (codiscovery, codesign and scaling-up), the challenges faced in the process and the outcomes of the PD process.

The authors propose that social enterprises can act as sustainable development catalysts for more inclusive sustainable development through their proactive and creative uses of PD. Still, PD also has limitations for addressing the challenges stemming from marginalized contexts, which requires effective social marketing strategies to overcome.

The study contributes to the emerging dialogue on PD with marginalized users and widens the scope of studies on transformative social marketing and innovation. The findings also provide practical insights for PD practitioners on how designers can learn from diverse PD practices in the context of economically marginalized people.

The paper reviews existing literature on South Asian ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (DRR) and identifies how community participation can be used to plan and implement ecosystem-based DRR approaches.

The literature review methodology involved several stages. Firstly, the research objective was determined. Secondly keywords for the literature search were determined. Scopus, Google Scholar, JSTOR and AUT online library were utilized for the literature search. After the search, the literature was screened. The study design, methodology, results and limitations were identified and documented. After data extraction, the literature was analyzed. The patterns, trends and inconsistencies in the literature were identified based on the research question. Later the gaps, controversies and future research needs were identified. Then, a comprehensive and structured literature review that summarizes the relevant literature, synthesizes the findings and provides a critical evaluation of the literature was documented. After writing the document, it was reviewed and edited to ensure its clarity, accuracy and coherence.

The paper identifies four different themes recurrently emerging in literature on the importance of community participation in ecosystem-based DRR in South Asia. The themes are local community participation in ecosystem-based DRR governance, knowledge production, livelihood enhancement and increased public acceptance.

The paper also illustrates the challenges in integrating community participation with the dominant physical scientific approaches ecosystem-based DRR and proposes a five-element framework to facilitate the integration.

In this final chapter, we explore the ever-evolving 21st century landscape where ethics drive community development toward resilience and progress. Drawing inspiration from the subheadings mapping our journey, we traverse international case studies spanning Canada, Brazil, Sweden, Kenya, China, Australia, Antarctica, and India. Through these global insights, we uncover the impacts of dynamic forces on communities worldwide, navigating ethical dilemmas and opportunities. We present strategies tailored to diverse continent-specific needs, explore inclusive governance models, and highlight the transformative power of ethical engagement. This journey underscores the vital role of resilience and concludes with a global call to embrace ethical approaches for inclusive community development and a sustainable future.

Political Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), based on ideas about deliberative democracy, have been criticised for increasing corporate power and democratic deficits. Yet, deliberative ideals are flourishing in the corporate world in the form of dialogues with a broad set of stakeholders and engagement in wider societal issues. Extractive industry areas, with extensive corporate interventions in weak regulatory environments, are particularly vulnerable to asymmetrical power relations when businesses engage with society. This paper aims to illustrate in what way deliberative CSR practices in such contexts risk enhancing corporate power at the expense of community interests.

This paper is based on a retrospective qualitative study of a Canadian oil company, operating in an Albanian oilfield between 2009 and 2016. Through a study of three different deliberative CSR practices – market-based land acquisition, a grievance redress mechanism and dialogue groups – it highlights how these practices in various ways enforced corporate interests and prevented further community mobilisation.

By applying Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony, the analysis highlights how deliberative CSR activities isolated and silenced community demands, moved some community members into the corporate alliance and prevented alternative visions of the area to be articulated. In particular, the close connection between deliberative practices and monetary compensation flows is underlined in this dynamic.

The paper contributes to critical scholarship on political CSR by highlighting in what way deliberative practices, linked to monetary compensation schemes, enforce corporate hegemony by moving community members over to the corporate alliance.