This paper suggests that current paradigms and world views guiding research for social action are inadequate for directing rural community change in a high-tech, global community. For several generations, the agrarian and industrial paradigms have been accepted as appropriate for guiding social change and development. However, there are problems…

Public deliberation, sometimes called deliberative democracy, offers alternatives to what are often adversarial governmental debates and hearings. This paper provides a case example of applying the deliberative democracy process to development issues and an analysis of data comparing the effectiveness of the process for creating a consensus for…