“Participatory Tracing” – creative methodology of following development’s afterlives narrators

In this paper, I explore how the remnants of international development interventions are spatially experienced and narrated. By focusing on participatory methodological approaches, the project introduces “participatory tracing” as a research method, which integrates audio-visual tools, live location tracking (gis), walking interviews, and oral histories to map the afterlives of development projects.

This methodological approach arose from a desire to highlight the complex meshwork of development through a participatory lens. By directly involving locals as primary stakeholders and active creators, the research seeks to shift the narrative and documentation of development projects from external experts to the local communities, particularly those regarded as the "beneficiaries" of such interventions.

Conducted in three Kenyan contexts—Kakamega, Kibwezi, and Nairobi—the research is centred on workshops designed for young adults, fostering a deeper engagement with tracing and documenting phenomenology within areas of the high density of development interventions. These workshops invited participants to curate guided tours around various development projects within their immediate environments, emphasising the lived experiences, understanding changes in their village, concepts of modernity, and personal narratives regarding the foreign interventions of those who are residing near the remnants of those projects. This paper aims to showcase the tracing methodology process after conducting two rounds of fieldwork.

The paper delves into the methodology’s structure, as it adapts differently to each place/case study, and aspires to challenge the way the histories of progress are told on the ground. Following young adults between remains and traces of various development projects, whether focusing on water, food security or housing respectively, they navigate and narrate a different story than what you typically read from the archive.