How to Build Collective Capabilities: The 3C-Model for Grassroots-Led Development

Abstract

Capabilities need to be built from the bottom-up. Social innovations at the grassroots seek to present new solutions to existing social problems. However, since the poor suffer from limitations on their individual capabilities and agency, they engage in acts of collective agency to generate new collective capabilities that each individual alone would not be able to achieve. The question is: how can these acts of collective agency be initiated, supported and sustained in practice? What roles can development actors (such as the state, donors and NGOs) play in supporting these acts of collective agency? Drawing on the literature on social innovation, the capability approach, participation and empowerment, the paper argues that three crucial C-processes are integral conditions for promoting successful, scalable and sustainable social innovations at the grassroots, namely: (1) Conscientization; (2) Conciliation and (3) Collaboration. By linking the individual, collective and institutional levels of analysis, the paper demonstrates the importance of individual behavioural changes, collective agency and local institutional reforms for the success, sustainability and scalability of social innovations at the grassroots. The paper acknowledges conflict, capture and cooptation as potential limitations and recognizes the role of contextual factors in initiating, implementing and sustaining social innovations at the grassroots.

2. Core Ideas and the Framework

“…If the practitioner has good reasons to suspect that some of the preferences are adapted, she can involve those with the alleged adaptive preference in a discussion and together search for a strategy for change. Note that there is an interesting parallel here with the grassroots-based development model that has been proposed by Solava Ibrahim (2017), in which 'a conscientization process' is an integral part of the development process. In this process, a person reflects critically on her life, develops aspirations for better living conditions, and makes a plan of action to bring about the desired change (Ibrahim 2017, 206).…”

“…Several scholars have proposed the introduction of a category of 'collective capabilities' or 'community capabilities' (Evans 2002;Ibrahim 2006Ibrahim , 2009Ibrahim , 2017Schlosberg and Carruthers 2010;Murphy 2014). The idea of 'collective capabilities' is used in different ways in the literature, and not always spelled out very carefully.…”

“…Here are a few typical examples from the literature. Solava Ibrahim (2006Ibrahim ( , 2009Ibrahim ( , 2017 argues for the importance of collective capabilities from the perspective of the work done by self-help groups of poor people fighting to overcome their poverty, which is an issue also discussed by Stewart (2005). 9 David Schlosberg and David Carruthers (2010) argue for the importance of the idea of collective capabilities to understand the struggles of indigenous peoples for ecological justice.…”

“…Luckily, there are signs that more of these 'on-the-ground applications' are being developed, and that the capability approach is not only of interest to scholars and policy makers, but also for practitioners and citizens. One example is Solava Ibrahim's (2017) recent model for grassroots-led development, which is primarily a conceptual and theoretical framework, yet is also based on ten years of fieldwork. Another example is the practical field of social work in the Netherlands, where social work professionals have recently argued that the field is in need of a new moral compass, in order to counter the technocratic developments that, it is argued, have dominated changes in social work in recent decades.…”

Theory and Practice of Social Norms Interventions: Eight Common Pitfalls

“…The consequences of the new normative equilibrium might be as harmful as the practices it is meant to replace. Practitioners should thus strive to design people-led interventions that help participants develop both internal motivations to change local norms and strategies to do so in ways that are compatible with the local cultural and social context [65,110,111].…”