6.2 Role of practitioner Defining our roles as a development practitioner before, during and after the field work was an important and very challenging experience. Having encountered the reality of field, we believe our positionality is highly dynamic and requires constant re-thinking and re-defining of the principles and ethos that govern it. Placing ourselves in the process of Cambodia’s transformation gave us an insight of both the people’s and our own capabilities and capacities, helping us understand our roles and challenges better. Development practitioner as defined by Hamdi can be seen as someone skilfully making space for change to happen and cultivating choice in a messy and unequal world (Hamdi, 2004). We believe our role extends beyond providing solutions for people and focusses on how to ignite moments within the realm of our capacities and values, while working with the people, to create spaces that generate transformative changes. We 114
think that the success of this process is not measured quantitatively but qualitatively as even small instances of transformative changes in people’s everyday life, if people-driven and increasing their agency, can eventually evolve into significant transformations of people’s lives. Positioning our role in Cambodia’s transformation, as shown in the diagram, the development practitioner can be seen as always operating between the two scales of city and people, connecting and minimising gaps that are created by attitudes and practices of both people and powerful urban actors. In designing strategies for transformative processes our role is also to challenge and change bigger discourses that are shaping the city, by proposing and strengthening people-driven processes. The following paragraphs reflects upon some of the major challenges and themes that we believe shape the understanding
of the our roles as a development practitioner.