Gonogobeshona

Gonogobeshona is a Bengali word which means people's research. Generally, it has come to be known as the local nomenclature for Participatory Action Research (PAR) in Bangladesh. The name evolved from a field in Dinajpur, northern Bangladesh, and was coined by the farmers and landless peasants, women and men in rural Bangladesh, and gained popularity in PAR groups generated by Research Initiatives, Bangladesh (RIB). Other organizations working at the grass roots, such as the Hunger Project and Brotee, also use the term, each with their individual interpretation and nature of praxis. RIB has used the term gonogobeshona keeping with the trend of PAR that was started in the 1970s by Md. Anisur Rahman and Orlando Fals Borda.

A central concept in gonogobeshona is the premise that when it comes to knowledge and the ability to think, no group, class or community is more ‘advanced’ than the other. What happens in reality is that due to the turmoil and challenges faced in daily lives, some find less time to think. Such people may submit their thinking to more powerful classes in order to survive. At the same time, the middle class is often regarded as the ‘knowledgeable’ class to the common people. As a result, many among such people start to believe that they do not possess any ability to think like the educated, and they become dependent on the educated classes for thinking. But this does not mean that their ability to think is lost; rather, it just may have lost the edge. The aim of gonogobeshona is to get those edges back to sharpness so that they can engage in deep social analysis themselves. Gonogobeshona enables them to carry out a collective social analysis through which they can work together in improving their standard of life. In addition, the experience thus gathered can be discussed collectively by them so that they can improve their scientific knowledge—in other words, collectively agreed knowledge following collectively agreed methods—and can take newer initiatives, individually and together, to improve their lives. In a nutshell, this process initiates collective praxis among the working class.

Another legacy is intimately connected to gonogobeshona, and that is the legacy of Paulo Freire. He thought that people will understand the reality of a society not through formal knowledge but through collective self-analysis and, in the process, will realize that they can change their reality themselves. This will further encourage them to take newer initiatives. This process of gathering experience and of reanalysis and then taking new initiatives based on those analyses will start the process of praxis. This praxis will enhance their awareness of reality and knowledge and carry the potential to become a self-sustained continuous process. This philosophy of Paulo Freire was used in many countries in the self-development of the common people, such as in adult education in Angola and Guinea Bissau, in the Bhoomisena Movement in India and in Sri Lanka and Nicaragua.

RIB used this methodology mainly in working with the marginalized communities. These communities included Dalits or untouchables, indigenous people and women. Gonogobeshona works through stimulating people's own collective praxis. It brings out the creativity in people in multiple directions and in a holistic way. Spontaneous participation of people lies in the centre of this methodology. Indigenous or local knowledge and self-analysis are given as much importance as knowledge developed by experts and brought to assist people's action when relevant, for example, the knowledge of agricultural experts, but nothing is imposed upon the people. This results in a rise in self-confidence so that development processes remain people-centric.

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