情報メディアを用いたエンパワーメントの可能性

グラミン銀行の「ヴィレッジフォン」を事例に

抄録

　In this article the author explores the present situation and the future path of social development in a developing country, by examining the case of Grameen Bank’s Village Phone (VP) program.　VP is a development program in Grameen Bank’s microcredit project, which gives poor and needy women the chance to run the mobile communication service. According to the bank, that VP program promotes women’s empowerment throughout the villages of Bangladesh. VP is “mobile phone business”, and people think it “modern and sophisticated” work. Thus such a commonly-held idea elevates the status of VP managers. From this viewpoint VP is expected to achieve the social empowerment of poor women. This article investigates whether the program does in fact cause women’s empowerment.　Many researchers are interested in the issue of people’s empowerment in developing countries, and sociologists have therefore produced a variety of publications on the subject. Contrary to this trend, however, there are few analyses that include both a conceptual study and an empirical study of empowerment.　Keeping these conditions in mind, in this article we conduct our discussion as follows. First, examining some texts, we clarify the concept of empowerment. Next, we indicate the structural elements of empowerment. Thirdly, we discuss the efficacy of the VP program. With the research data the author has collected, we reach the provisional conclusion that the program does not succeed in empowering women. Finally, we offer a brief consideration of the structural background to the failure of the VP program.