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Key words that begin with the letter I

by Phil Bartle

IDEOLOGY

Ideology, the holding of ideas that one particular political system is better than another, belongs to the values or aesthetics (values) dimension of culture.

Therefore "ideology" (meaning a set of values) does not belong to the political dimension of culture.

IGNORANCE

One of the five major factors of poverty is ignorance. To many, the word ignorant is an insult. What we mean is simply that some people do not know some things; there is no shame in that.

Also know that ignorance and stupidity are different things. Adults can learn, but do not treat them as children or as inferior, or you will block their learning.

Ignorance means not knowing something, stupidity means not being able to know something, and foolishness means doing or not doing something when one knows better. Ignorance, stupidity and foolishness are very different things.

IMMIGRATION

Movement of people into a population. Opposite of emigration. One of the four factors affecting the size of population. (With emigration, birth rate, death rate).

See Demography.

IMPLEMENT

To “implement” (verb) a project, is to begin and complete the activity described in the project design.

The older and more grammatically correct use of the word is as a noun. An “implement” (noun) is a tool.

INCOME

Income is wealth, usually symbolized by money, that is received by someone, usually for services rendered.

From the point of view of the receiving individual, it is money that is "coming in," thus the word "income."

INCOME GENERATION

When income is generated (created), then it means wealth has been created.

When value is added to something that already has value, then wealth has been generated.

INDEPENDENCE

Pure, theoretical, absolute “independence,” where a person, group, or community does not rely on anything or anyone outside, for survival, for growth, for decision-making, is as impossible as a frictionless state is in physics.

While your job is to encourage greater levels of independence, self reliance, and to fight dependence, the pure level of total or absolute independence cannot be reached.

As the poet, John Donne, wrote “No man is an island;"  we are all, to some extent, interdependent upon each other.

Where the empowerment methodology promotes self reliance, it is a matter of degree; eliminating dependency means working towards partnerships.

INDIGO

Indigo is a little shrub which is native to the West African rain forest. It is used to make a deep lush blue purple dye.

It is popular today to colour the clothes of the Tuareg on the Sahara desert, people still nick named the "Blue Men."

In the European middle ages, the dye found its way to Europe where only the royalty could afford to buy it. It was used to make lush purple robes popular with kings.

In Europe it was known to come from Timbuktu which was thought to be the end of the world, yet was a thriving commercial city and university town.

Indigo (Indigofera tinctoria), may have been carried from West Africa to Asia, or vice versa.

The plant is still cultivated in the Kwawu rain forest, and is used to dye the kente cloth, although imported commercial dyes are relentlessly replacing the indigo.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_dye,

INDIRECT LABOUR COSTS

Wages or salaries your business pays to employees who are not working in production, eg: store keeper, security guards.

INFORMATION

Information is one of the sixteen elements of strength, power or capacity of a community or organization.

See: Elements of Community Strength.

More than just having or receiving unprocessed information, the strength of the community or organization depends upon the ability to process and analyse that information, the level of awareness, knowledge and wisdom found among key individuals and within the group as a whole.

When information is more effective and more useful, not just more in volume, the community will have more strength. (Note that this is related to, but differs from, the communication element).

When stimulating a community to organize and act, the mobilizer needs to be aware of the role of information in empowering or strengthening that community or organization.

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

The process of managing information, including collecting it, storing it, retrieving it, analysing it, communicating it, and using it.

Different from management information.   See Monitoring.

INPUT

The word "input" is used differently as a noun and as a verb.

Noun: a resource that is put into a project or a productive enterprise.

Verb: to put something into something (eg to put information into a computer).

English language purists object to the word input being used as a verb; planners, managers, coordinators and mobilizers often use it that way.

INSTITUTIONAL DIMENSION OF COMMUNITY

The social, interaction, or institutional dimension of community is composed of the ways people act, interact between each other, react, and expect each other to act and interact.

It includes institutions such as marriage or friendship, roles such as mother or police officer, status or class, and other patterns of human behaviour. See Community.

INTEGRITY

A person of “integrity” is honest, righteous, good; essential for any mobilizer, entrepreneur or leader.

INTELLIGENCE QUOTIENT (IQ)

From a scientific perspective, social science sees the search for a universal measure of intelligence as problematical. An IQ test can only measure the ability of a person to get a score on an IQ test. The content of those questions can not be divorced from culture, and are therefore dependent upon variations in culture.

Historically, they have been used as self justifying predictions that children of aboriginal communities and from disadvantaged ethnic minorities are less intelligent. The intelligence in question is that of the administrators of such tests who put some legitimacy in their results.

INTER ACTION

In sociology, "interaction" goes beyond our ideas of action or behaviour of individuals. Because we are social animals, we human beings behave in response to the ideas and behaviours of other individuals and groups. Social interaction.

It is because of this social interaction that we say a community is more than just a collection of human beings, but consists of all the shared ideas, expectations and communication between each other, that it transcends human individuals, making it superorganic.

INTERVENTION

Intervention is one of the sixteen elements of strength, power or capacity of a community or organization.

See: Elements of Community Strength.

What is the extent and effectiveness of animation (mobilizing, management training, awareness raising, stimulation) aimed at strengthening the community or organization? Do outside or internal sources of charity increase the level of dependency and weaken the community, or do they challenge the community to act and therefore become stronger?

Is the intervention sustainable or does it depend upon decisions by outside donors who have different goals and agendas than the community itself? When a community or organizationhas more sources of stimulation to develop, it has more strength.

When stimulating a community to organize and act, the mobilizer needs to be aware of the role of intervention in empowering that community or organization.

INVESTMENT

There are basically three things you can do with wealth: (1) consume it, (2) store (save) it, or (3) invest it.

If you direct wealth away from direct consumption or storage, and towards capital, it contributes to an increase in future wealth (by foregoing immediate consumption).

© Copyright 1967, 1987, 2007 Phil Bartle
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Last update: 2015.10.04