Community Development Approaches; Social Capital & Empowerment

The present Book is an investigation of two approaches of community development; social capital and empowerment. Social capital refers to the accumulation of resources developed through personal and professional relationships. Empowerment means increasing the capacity of individuals or groups to make effective development and life choices and to transform these choices into desired actions and outcomes. This book, aims to determine the relationship between social capital and economic empowerment among the farmers of the agricultural production cooperatives(APCs)in the rural area in Isfahan Province in Iran. Economic empowerment of farmers is a socioeconomic process through which farmers are motivated to enhance their belief in self-efficacy, to improve their abilities to control their own resources, to increase their income and to unleash their creative and productive energies to achieve sustainable improvement in their living standards.