What do buzzwords do for development policy? a critical look at ‘participation’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘poverty reduction’

By Andrea Cornwall, K. Brock. 2005

784 citations recorded by the source corpus.

How researchers see this paper

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Buzzwords and fuzzwords: deconstructing development discourse (2007, background): “The moral unassailability of the development enterprise is secured by copious references to that nebulous, but emotive, category ‘the poor and marginalised’ (Cornwall and Brock 2005).”
Inclusive Growth in cities: a sympathetic critique (2018, methodology): “Like other buzzwords used in similar situations, it has multiple meanings and can be used to justify different types of policy intervention (Cornwall & Brock, 2005).”
Sport and Development (2011, background): “…must be carefully defined and theorized, as they can be easily co-opted into a benign methodology that legitimizes a neoliberalist agenda to train the disenfranchised and the disempowered in the logics of free markets (Cornwall & Brock, 2005; Crewe & Harrison, 1999; Rahnema, 1992; Sharma, 2008).”
A systematic review of success factors in the community management of rural water supplies over the past 30 years (2015, background): “The research is reflective about criticisms of participation as a vague “buzzword” (Cornwall & Brock, 2005) which becomes materialised largely as a “managerial exercise” (Cleaver, 1999) and, equally, the problematic nature of speaking of a single “community” when participation is likely to vary…”