Social capital and empowerment in social development: a research with the youth

Abstract

This paper problematizes social capital and empowerment dimensions and their relationship with social development, utilizing intergeneracional empirical data with the answers of young people to the survey entitled “The role of social capital in citizenship promotion and life quality in Latin America. This research was conducted comparatively in Porto Alegre (Brazil), Montevideo (Uruguay and Santiago de Chile (Chile), in 2005. The main argument of this paper is to show the importance of social ties and political culture construction as essential components, together with economic incentives in the social development of a nation. This occurs because, presently, there is a consensus in the literature about the fact that improvements in life conditions of citizens, materialized in a just and equitable social development, also depends of a normative support to democracy and its public policies.