Introduction
Participation and empowerment are central concepts in community development policy and practice, yet they remain deeply shaped by colonial legacies, donor-driven agendas, and externally imposed development frameworks. In many Global South contexts, participatory approaches risk becoming technocratic tools that reinforce power asymmetries rather than instruments of genuine community agency, self-determination, and resilience. Thus, Decolonising Participation and Empowerment in Community Development critically examines how participation is conceptualised, operationalised, and experienced across the Global South. The volume foregrounds indigenous knowledge systems, grassroots practices, and community-led epistemologies that challenge Eurocentric development paradigms. It moves beyond instrumental notions of participation to explore transformative empowerment, political agency, and collective resilience.
The book brings together interdisciplinary perspectives and empirically grounded case studies from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and other Global South regions to interrogate: 1) Whose knowledge counts in participatory development; 2) How power operates within participatory frameworks; 3) The role of indigenous, informal, and community-led institutions in resilience building and Pathways toward decolonial, just, and inclusive community development. By advancing critical scholarship and practice-oriented insights, this book contributes to ongoing debates on decoloniality, participatory governance, and community resilience. Unlike existing participatory development literature, this volume explicitly reframes participation as an arena of power, resistance, and transformation. This edited book is grounded on the objectives aimed at: a) Critically examine participatory development through a decolonial lens; b) Challenge dominant, Western-centric models of empowerment; c) Highlight community-led and indigenous practices of participation and resilience; d) Explore how participation intersects with power, inequality, and historical marginalisation; e) Provide actionable insights for scholars, policymakers, practitioners, and development agencies and finally Contribute to Global South–rooted theory building in community development.
Unique Contribution and Significance of This book is distinguishable for its 1) centering Global South epistemologies rather than applying Global North frameworks; 2) Integrating decolonial theory with empirical case studies; 3) treating resilience as a political, cultural, and collective process; 4) critically interrogating participation beyond procedural inclusion and bridging scholarship and practice in community development. Call for Chapters is invited for original, unpublished contributions addressing: Decolonial approaches to participation; Community-led development practices, Indigenous and local knowledge systems, Power, resistance, and agency in participation, and Participatory resilience in Global South contexts.