What can we do for Iran?
1. Social, political and legal frameworks for fostering ICT diffusion.
2. Networks and computer applications for e-Governance and e-Inclusion.
3. Education; content provision and delivery; developing ICT skills.
4. Support NGOs, Parties, Communities and CSOs by ICT.
5. Empowerment of poor people (in social and rights-based terms).
6. …
Is there any conceptual framework for them?*
1. Empowerment is fundamentally a relational concept, emerging out of the interaction between poor people and their environment. This tasks place through the rights, rules, resources, and incentives as well as the norms, behaviors, and processes governing the interactions between poor people and more powerful actors.
2. Poor people’s assets and capabilities are usually conceptualized as individual attributes. However, poor people’s collective capabilities and organizations are often critical in helping them break through constrains of powerlessness and voicelessness.
A conceptual framework for analyzing processes of empowerment is expanded in the “measuring Empowerment” book. This framework contains four building blocks. The concepts of opportunity structure and agency development are superimposed on these four building blocks:
| 1.Opportunity Structure |
• Institutional climate |
| |
• Social and political structures |
| 2.Agency of the poor |
• Poor people’s individual assets and capabilities |
| |
• Poor people’s collective assets and capabilities |
In this framework there are relations and multiple interactions between individual assets and capabilities and the capability to act collectively, Institutional climate and Social and Political structures. So I think we could deal with: (Because only these are available for us)
A-the relation between ‘Poor people’s individual assets and capabilities’ and ‘Poor people’s collective assets and capabilities’
B- Collective assets and capabilities
Collective assets and capabilities:“Given their lack of voice and power, and given the deeply enriched social barriers that exit even in many formal democracies, poor people are unable take advantage of opportunities to effectively utilize or expand their assets or to exercise their individual rights. To overcome problems of marginalization in society, poor people critically depend on their collective capability to organize and mobilize so as to be recognized on their own terms, to be representation, collective identity, solidarity, and terms of recognition help overcome the deep external social and psychological barriers that are internalized by poor people”
Social capital, the norms and networks that enable collective action, allows poor people to increase their access to resources and economic opportunities. Poor people are often high in ‘bonding’ social capital – close ties and high levels of trust with others like themselves. Given limited resources, these ties help them cope with their poverty.
Bonding social capital is not enough, however; it must be accompanied by ‘bridging’ social capital in order to generate social movement that can bring about structural change. This can happen when small groups of people federate, gaining strength in numbers, or when their leaders take advantage of political opportunities to from alliances with powerful actors.
As previously exclude groups organize, this organizing may serve to change political structures through the political parties whose presence and interests are felt as national levels, as has happened in Bolivia, Peru, and India. Gandhi’s peaceful salt march in defiance of British, which mobilized an entire nation, is one powerful example.
*Reference: Narayan. Deep (2005), Measuring Empowerment: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives, Oxford University Press.
