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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.