Community forest management is a popular concept that can be used to empowering local community while contributing forest management, yet in practice gathering community as a group not easy work. What do you think about Theory of Community Empowerment'? Is it useful for above work?
The farmers cooperative/corporation that owned and manages the pastures in the European Alps also manages the (communal) forest.. It is century old practice and well legislated into modernity.
Article The living commons of West Tyrol, Austria: Lessons for land ...
Chapter Of pastures and tourism. A comparison of Tyrolean and Namibi...
Empowerment as a well established approach for collective action that is useful in almost any context. See the paper on ecotourism in Thailand.
Laverack, G. and Thangphet, S. (2009) Building community capacity for locally managed ecotourism in Northern Thailand. Community Development Journal. 44 (2): 172-185.
Dear Chaminda,
In our paper Citizens, Leaders and the Common Good in a world of Necessity and Scarcity: Machiavelli’s Lessons for Community-Based Natural Resource Management we also reflected on this question, a brought together some pros, cons and considerations. An important finding is that practices largely vary, that empowerment as often works as it fails, and that all depends on context. Don't think too easy about it.
Article Citizens, Leaders and the Common Good in a world of Necessit...
Thanks all for your contribution regarding my question.
I agree with Raoul [An important finding is that practices largely vary, that empowerment as often works as it fails, and that all depends on context. Don't think too easy about it]
. As I alsobelieve gathering community as a group is a not easy work since project planners have to face many practical challenges in the ground. On the other hand challenges also will be different place to place. For an example caste issue will be a one of the great challenges in the Asian context which is not common to the other contexts.
But theoretically (as I understood) community empowerment is one of the major objectives of bottom up development projects and the idea of power is at the core of empowerment. The theory of community empowerment is about ‘giving social and political power to marginalized people to obtain more control over their lives’.
This power can be developed either by particular social groups or by taking help from others. The notion of ‘social empowerment’ can be well used by project planners to prepare a particular social structure before applying a bottom up development approach. especially as Frances Moore Lappé has highlighted the concept of ‘political empowerment’ is another aspect of community empowerment and it is an essential and important part in any bottom-up and community based development . What do you think about those ideas?
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Social Science
- Urban/Rural Sociology