Are participatory approaches to natural resource management, currently popular, the panacea they are often seen as? What if, for example, only the most visible and powerful ‘participate’? And do ‘local communities’, often invoked in the participation literature, actually exist? Are there clearly defined entities such as villages, with identifiable groups whose strengths and weaknesses can be ranked and compared? In response to the growing popularity of participatory approaches amongst donors, collaborative anthropological research by the University of Sussex and the International Centre for Ethnic Studies in Sri Lanka explores the possibilities of applying them to integrated coastal zone management (ICZM).