Participatory Methodologies: Frames, Dialogues, and Insights from Alternative Categories and Practices

Abstract

Participatory methodologies in Latin America have undergone multiple transformations. This paper compares the Dialectical Participatory Methodology (DPM) and the Relational Participatory Methodology (RPM), introducing the categories of territory, ritual, and body to foster a plural space.
The first section explains the methodology: an integrative literature review was conducted, establishing selection criteria and defining analytical categories for critical evaluation.
The second section is divided into three parts. First, it describes the DPM, which emerged in the mid-20th century from the Latin American critical perspective, focused on the political-educational organization of popular sectors. Second, it presents the RPM, associated with the “other-perspective” developed at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, which integrates multiple approaches and promotes a vital conception of practice. Third, it analyzes the proximities and distances between DPM and RPM, seeking a respectful dialogue that allows the coexistence of diverse ways of thinking and inhabiting.
The third section addresses the intertwined categories of territory, ritual, and body. These notions challenge dichotomies such as nature/culture and body/reason, inherent to Western Eurocentric logic, and offer a novel perspective on participatory methodology.
It is concluded that participatory methodologies are living fields. Although DPM and RPM have generated diverse developments, their transformative capacity would be enhanced by integrally weaving categories and practices.