Critical perspectives on empowerment
- Editors:
- HUMPHRIES Beth, (ed.)
- Publisher:
- Venture Press
- Publication year:
- 1996
- Pagination:
- 148p.
- Place of publication:
- Birmingham
The issue of power has been treated (by feminists as well as others) in terms of a commodity which can be handed over from one person to another, or wrested from one group by another - possessed rather than exercised. Equally empowerment has been used in simplistic and reductionist ways which treat it as just a matter of will, either on the part of those who are disempowered, or on the part of those in a position to empower. People who do emancipatory research are as much at risk of depoliticizing their activities as others who use the concept of empowerment. These include containment - where the demands of oppressed groups are incorporated or accommodated without a radical reordering of social structures. Related to this is a theme of collusion - where subordinate groups accept unequal terms and in turn obtain resources in competition with other oppressed groups. Moreover, a discourse of empowerment is located largely within existing socially powerful groups - it is not the oppositional agency of the poor and disenfranchized, but the enforcement of the concerns of hegemonic groups. Finally, a theme of empowering nihilism leads to the identity of the Other being appropriated by marginalized groups to form a clear, strong identity and sense of power. At the same time this identity is disrupted by a confirmation of the characteristics displayed by them as of the essence of their alien nature, therefore requiring containment.
- Subject terms:
- participatory research, self-advocacy, social work theories, empowerment, feminist theory;
- Content type:
- research
- ISBN print:
- 1 873878 50 8