The Search for Empowerment: Social Capital as Idea and Practice at the World Bank

* Exploration of the nature of bureaucracy and bureaucratic change
* Comprehensive examination of debates about social capital within the World Bank
* Contributors include both long-time Bank insiders as well as external analysts and observers of the Bank’s development policies

The contributors to this collection examine the vast bureaucracy of the World Bank and explore the possibilities of internally generated change. The book focuses on the debates within the Bank about the efficacy of social capital concepts for the encouragement of more participatory and empowering forms of development.

These debates reach to the heart of the bank and its mission. Indeed, the debate over social capital is less an argument about definitions, and more a struggle between competing paradigms of development. The Search for Empowerment is simultaneously a fascinating account of the concept of social capital, a powerful ethnography of a huge development organization, and a profoundly insightful exploration into the nature of bureaucracy and organizational change.

Other contributors: Julie Van Domelen, Michael Edwards, Jonathan Fox, John Gershman, Jeffrey Hammer, David Lewis, Deepa Narayan, Martien Van Nieuwkoop, Lant Pritchett, M. Shameen Siddiqi, and Jorge Uquillas.

Anthony Bebbington is Professor in Institute for Development Policy and Management in the School for Environment and Development at the University of Manchester, UK.

Scott Guggenheim is Lead Social Development Specialist in the East Asia and Pacific region, and in the Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development network, World Bank.

Elizabeth Olson

Michael Woolcock is Senior Social Scientist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank.