When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines I quickly learned that I needed to know the meanings people there attached to words and that I could not assume we assigned the same meanings to the same words. Even something as straightforward as offering a soft drink to someone was subject to misunderstanding and embarrassment, regardless of whether the offer was made in the local language or in English. The offer was made, the response was "Thank you," and my expectation was that the offer had been accepted. I delivered the soft drink to someone who did not want it and discovered that the "Thank you" was gratitude for the offer and not an acceptance of it. Graduate studies at the University of the Philippines and Stanford, including a year of fieldwork in a village in the Philippines, introduced me to the vocabulary and the methodology of anthropology and helped me begin to understand the requirements for successful crosscultural communication.
After graduate school, I joined the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and spent the next eighteen years as a practitioner helping to implement foreign assistance projects. I spent more than fourteen of these years overseas, serving long-term assignments in Sudan, the Philippines, Liberia, and South Africa. These experiences reinforced for me the need to pay attention to the categories used by others and the meanings they attached to the words they used (see emic and etic, p. XX in chapter 2). I soon realized that successful interventions have to be based on genuine partnership between outsiders who often control access to resources and the insiders who will ultimately be responsible for implementing changes. Partnership in designing interventions is critical for their success. The potential for miscommunication is always present when outsiders and insiders attempt to collaborate on the design of an intervention as well as on implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. To minimize miscommunication we need to recognize that categories and meaning are socially constructed. Meanings of words depend upon their cultural context. We ignore the context at our peril. Qualitative, ethnographic research can improve the communication process, but often neither the time nor other resources are available for traditional approaches to this type of research. The need for a qualitative approach that can be done quickly provides the rationale for Rapid Assessment Process (RAP). It is my position that RAP provides an extremely useful tool in many situations, but that there are minimum conditions that must be satisfied before the inquiry is labeled as RAP and that even when RAP is implemented carefully, its limitations must be recognized.
Several events and individuals have contributed significantly to my involvement with RAP and to the development of this book. In 1982, the USAID mission in the Sudan allowed me to experiment with Rapid Appraisal during a two-week visit to a village in the western Sudan. The second of the two examples of RAP at the beginning of chapter 1 is a brief description of this experience. I returned from this experience convinced of the value of even short-term qualitative fieldwork (Beebe 1982). I also returned with numerous questions concerning the process that had produced these results. During the next several years there were reports from sites all over the world where people were implementing Rapid Rural Appraisals.
In 1985 Khon Kaen University in northeast Thailand and the Ford Foundation sponsored my attendance at the International Conference on Rapid Rural Appraisal at Khon Kaen University (Khon Kaen University 1987). During a small group session at this conference, Terry Grandstaff, M.A. Hamid, Neil Jamieson, and I started the process of identifying and labeling the essential principles of Rapid Appraisal. The conceptual framework used in this book originated in these discussions.
While attending the conference, I met Robert Chambers and had the wonderful opportunity of being with him during a visit to a village close to Khon Kaen University. This visit/fieldwork was designed as a practice session to provide an introduction to Rapid Appraisal. Given the constraints of time and the lack of prior preparation, I was very impressed with Chambers’s approach. He started the exchange with a farmer by quickly communicating his respect and defined the role of the farmer as the expert and the role of the visitors as students wanting to learn. The farmer responded by sharing with the team an amazing amount of information in a few minutes. Chambers listened carefully to what the farmer had to say, even while he was observing the environment and using what he saw to direct the conversation. He made a special effort to involve all the other team members in the process.
For more than twenty-five years, Chambers has been a leader in defining and popularizing rapid research techniques. His clear writing, devoid of the jargon of the social sciences, and his use of choice phrases that capture the essence of the approach have helped introduce rapid research methods to people worldwide. During the last decade, Chambers has advocated making the process participatory and shifting the focus away from rapid to "relaxed" (Chambers 1999). I owe Chambers a special thanks for his leadership in developing and popularizing rapid research methods.
Mitch Allen of AltaMira Press first suggested I write this book in 1991. It took me almost ten years of additional experience and a change of careers before I could actually write it. I appreciate Mitch Allen's patience and continued confidence.
By 1993 I had reformulated the basic concepts that define Rapid Appraisal and presented them in a paper at a workshop sponsored by the Washington Association of Professional Anthropologists and the applied anthropology program at the American University. In 1995 an expanded version of that paper was published in Human Organization (Beebe 1995).
In 1996 I joined the faculty of the Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University. Teaching qualitative research forced me to reconsider the relationship between Rapid Appraisal and ethnography as an approach to qualitative research. I started exploring the relationship between the intensive teamwork associated with Rapid Appraisal and the prolonged fieldwork associated with ethnography. My students have not been shy in pointing out the gaps in my work, and they have convinced me of the need to significantly expand the presentation. I owe a special debt to the students in my summer 1999, fall 1999, and summer 2000 qualitative methodology classes, who helped with drafts of the book: Dale Abendroth, Elaine Ackerman, Mary Alberts, Una Alderman, Carol Allen, Denise Arnold, Earl Bartmess, Thomas Camm, Nancy Chase, Debra Clemens, Albert Fein, Steve Finch, Craig Hinnenkamp, Rhonda Horobiowski, Kevin Hoyer, Lori Johnson, Janet Katz, Connie Kliewer, Grace Leaf, Kristine Lesperance, Cherisse Luxa, John Lyons, Robert McCann, Susan McIntyre, Matt Mitchell, Barbara Morrison, LaQuitta Moultrie, Michelle O'Neill, David Perry, Jonathan Reams, Marilyn Reilly, Robert Smart, Sandra Smith, Sharon Wessman, Kathryn Whalen, Nancy Bagley, and Terence Young.
A RAP involving several students from the fall 1999 class provides the other example at the beginning of chapter 1. This RAP was critical for identifying implementation issues, such as the role of the insider on the team, and is discussed in some detail in chapter 4.
I acknowledge the intellectual companionship of my colleagues and their contribution to my thinking about RAP. I especially appreciate the helpful comments on this and earlier versions of this work by Maria Beebe, Andrea Harper, Maria Hizon, Cherisse Luxa, Harold McArthur, Marion McNamara, June Miller, Georgeta Munteah, Perry Phillip, Marleen Ramsey, and Rochelle Rainey. Obviously, any omissions or errors are my responsibility. I look forward to receiving feedback on this book and encourage my readers to share their views, questions, and comments. These can be sent by e-mail to beebe@gonzaga.edu or by regular mail to James Beebe, Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies, Gonzaga University, 502 E. Boone Ave., Spokane, WA 99258-0025.