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.

Keywords:

• Collective agency
• Sustainable human development
• Collective capabilities
• Grassroots-led development
• Social innovation

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the opportunity to present earlier versions of this paper at the 2014 HDCA conference and at the symposium at the University of Pavia in January 2015. The collaborative research with Tostan was conducted with Dr Ben Cislaghi. I am also deeply grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for all their valuable comments and to the guest editors of this special issue; Prof. Enrica Chiappero-Martinetti and Dr Rafael Ziegler for all their support with the publication of this article.

About the Author

Solava Ibrahim is senior lecturer in international relations at Anglia Ruskin University and affiliated lecturer at the Centre of Development Studies at University of Cambridge. She was formerly the Director of MSc in Poverty, Inequality and Development and lecturer in International Development at the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester. She was a research fellow in Global Poverty Reduction at the Brooks World Poverty Institute and the Chronic Poverty Research Centre and also worked as Assistant Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo. She holds a PhD and MPhil in Development Studies from Cambridge and an MA and BA in Political Science from the American University in Cairo. She is the co-editor of The Capability Approach from Theory to Practice (2014, Palgrave).

Additional information

Funding

The fieldwork in Egypt and Senegal was funded by the Research Stimulation Fund of the University of Manchester.