Power and Empowerment

In this paper, we make the case that " empowerment " is still a concept which requires closer scrutiny, for both practical and theoretical reasons. Building on critiques of empowerment and on calls to more consciously address the power relations inherent in adult education, we lay the groundwork for a practical theory of action whereby education practitioners and researchers can work towards salvaging empowerment's emancipatory potential.

Aim. The purpose of this study was to compare the frequency of social stigma experiences reported by patients with schizophrenia and by people with other health problems. Method. The stigma subscale of the Consumer Experiences of Stigma Questionnaire (CESQ) was administered to patients with schizophrenia (n=153), recurrent depression (n=31), drug dependence (n=30), alcohol dependence (n=39), hematological malignancies (n=31), or cardiovascular disorders (n=33). Results. Multiple regression analysis showed that schizophrenia patients experienced stigmatization signifi cantly more often than did respondents diagnosed with hematological malignancies or cardiovascular disorders. Moreover, patients with schizophrenia were found to experience stigma at a level similar to that in patients with depression or alcohol dependence, but lower than that experienced by drug addicts. Conclusions. The study fi ndings confi rm that the stigma of schizophrenia is stronger than that associated with physical illnesses. However, people with schizophrenia were not found to experience stigmatization more often than people with other severe mental disorders.

La migracion actual a Europa es predominantemente femenina. El incremento paralelo de los matrimonios binacionales ha sido interpretado como via de escape ala pobreza de la mujer no calificada. Este articulo argumenta que muchas migrantes son altamente calificadas y sus matrimonios binacionales no son principalmente motivados por razones econ6micas sino de relaciones de genero e ideates de pareja. Aqui se expone una vision diferenciada de la mujer migrante y de la migracion por matrimonio, desarrollada a partir de los testimonios de profesionales latinoamericanas residentes en Suiza. Los metodos de estudio incluyen entrevistas autobiograficas, observacion participante y discusiones de grupo. El analisis del grado de integracion profesional de las mujeres muestra, en unos casos, la ausencia total de integracion y, en otros, la integracion por debajo de sus calificaciones. Las raices de esta situacion se encuentran principalmente en la politica de inmigracion y en los discursos discriminatorios los cuales obstaculizan la integracion profesional de las migrantes. Como reaccion a esta situacion, las mujeres han creado redes sociales de accion las cuales muestran su iniciativa y deseo de participacion y bUsqueda de una nueva identidad en la sociedad suiza. La conclusion es paradojica: mientras que America Latina pierde valioso capital humano, Suiza no aprovecha de su ganancia en capital.

This research article on feminism gives an account of the interaction between a female teacher and her students at a public university in Tunja, Colombia. The study aims to evidence features of feminism within an English as a foreign language classroom by analyzing the transcriptions of the teacher’s discourse using the Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis. As a result of the study, it can be stated that feminism is not determined by gender, but rather, it is an individual choice that is socially constructed and transmitted through power relationships. Findings suggest that being female or male does not guarantee having a definite position towards feminism; instead, it is mostly demarcated by the specific situations and circumstances that each individual experiences within a society.

The issue of power has always existed and it is indeed inevitable in children and young adult literature. Fiction for young adults addresses subjects which people are faced with in every day life and writers of such fiction try to make use of tangible topics to give a voice to children and young adult literature and reduce their Otherness in order to pave the way for empowerment. In this study A Monster Calls is analyzed based on four types of empowerment. It is argued that as the central theme of the story is death, the writer has managed to guide the young protagonist of the story through different techniques of characterization, plot, setting, fantasy and pictures to come to terms with loosing his mother to cancer. The reader can also go through the same stages and feel empowered at the end.

This study tested a parent empowerment framework using a national sample of 9,982 parents from the Parent and Family Involvement Survey (National Center for Education Statistics, 2007) to investigate relationships between parent empowerment and children’s academic performance. A multinomial logistic regression demonstrated significant relationships between parents’ competence, self-determination, community belonging, community participation, and academic performance, which differentiate among parents based on racial/ethnic, language, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Findings highlight the importance of parent empowerment interventions that consider structural barriers in schools.

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

In 2012, a horrific "Nirbhaya" gang-rape incident occurred in Delhi and it shocks the entire Indian nation. A number of films and documentaries on this heinous crime are released due to its impact on society and how it has affected many people in India. Based on one of the series inspired by this crime, Delhi Crime (2019) is a cop-centric series that revolves entirely around the case of Nirbhaya while reflecting the social issue in Delhi and depicting the police force. Most cop-centric films feature unrealistic portrayals of the hyper-masculine police force and women's inclusion is rarely shown. Therefore, this thesis aims to examine the way Richie Mehta portrays his instrumental characters based on the social construct of gender and power and how these portrayals challenge the notion of gender binary opposites by using textual analysis.

A true life story of facing war time conflict internally and externally to overcome extreme trauma, focusing on post lobotomy coping mechanisms and empowerment through reframing dynamics situations and sculpting the situation into your favor.

Bali has been regarded as a 'paradise island', 'island of thousand temples' and many other images to support the growth of tourism industry. In fact, the industry has been developed massively  after a mass massacre of the leftists and radical populists associated with PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia) taking place in 1965-1966 led by General Soeharto. The images have been a strategy for romanticizing Balinese culture while simultaneously forgetting the traumatic tragedy of 1965.  Although the history has been distorted by the regime and most Balinese are reluctant to talk about tragedy, a few Balinese youth has established a community called Taman 65 (1965 Park) as a learning circle to study and challenge the state history. This book is a collection of their thoughts on history, Balinese social dynamics, and contemporary issues in Bali that arguably cannot be separated from the 1965 event.

Despite contemporary acceptance that children are active agents in their own socialization, that causality between parents and children is bidirectional, and that context matters, basic concepts used in socialization research continue to reflect an underlying mechanistic. In this chapter it is proposed that a dialectical relational systems conception of the transaction model provides direction for future advances in the study of dynamic parent-child socialization processes with an emphasis of intergenerational change, not only continuity. The chapter begins by exploring dialectics as a framework underlying an organismic-contextual metatheory for understanding the transactional model of human development. The chapter then outlines social relational theory as a framework for translating four assumptions of a dialectical ontology including agency, holism, contradiction, and synthesis to reformulate major transactional processes in parent-child relations and socialization. The chapter ends by considering implications for application and methodology informed by dialectics.

This paper describes the findings of an eight-year study on human health and community engagement in Anjukudisai, and 'objectionable' slum in Chennai. It shows that human behaviour, constrained by socio-economic factors, often leads to ecosystem degradation and frequently causes reactions that jeopardize people's health. Furthermore, institutional structures often prevent holistic integrated thinking and action. Urban health issues are closely linked to both environmental and socio-economic conditions. The impact of environmental degradation is often most severe on the poorest segments of society: slum dwellers, women, children, and the elderly.

Women's activism in Kuwait has historically intersected with nation building and regime perpetuation projects. The government has attempted to combine instances of modernity with growing political demands from the tribal and Islamist sectors, exploiting women's activism as part of its regime survival strategy.

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

Applying sociological imagination and theological perspectives and using some secondary literature that focus on the American pastoral experience, this article explains why sociology and the social sciences are underutilized in the pastoral ministry of Catholic priests despite the Catholic Church's openness to human sciences' contributions to evangelization after the Second Vatican Council. In particular, it examines how the (i) uneasy alliance between Catholic theology and sociology, (ii) overemphasis on the invisible and theological dimension of the Church in current ecclesiologies, (iii) highly philosophical and theological clerical education which sidelines the empirical sciences in clerical pastoral work, and (iv) dominance of the individualist approaches of clinical psychology in pastoral theology have greatly contributed to the neglect of sociological inquiries and perspectives in clerical formation and pastoral ministry. It also argues that a genuine pastoral care must be based on a holistic and empirical assessment of the pastoral needs of parishioners by priests using sociology and the social sciences before it prescribes a plan of action for pastoral care to accurately inculturate the Christian message in today's technological culture.

The Aalborg Project may be interpreted as a metaphor of modern politics, modern administration and planning, and of modernity itself. The basic idea of the project was comprehensive, coherent, and innovative, and it was based on rational and democratic argument. During implementation, however, when idea met reality, the play of Machiavellian princes, Nietzschean will to power, and Foucauldian rationality-as-rationalization resulted in the fragmentation of the project.

Since Esther Boserup’s seminal book Women’s Role in Economic Development (1970), making women active economic actors has been a priority in the development field (Moser 1993, Kabeer 1994). Under the different logics that economic independence for women improves gender equality, addresses poverty, and increases the efficiency of whole economies, innumerable microfinance programmes have been implemented to serve female clients only (Moser 1993:56-79, Armendáriz and Morduch 2010:212-213).
With the shift from a Women in Development (WID) to a Gender and Development (GAD) paradigm during the 1990s and the rising recognition that the relationship between economic wellbeing and gender equality is neither linear nor causal (Mayoux 1999, Duflo 2005), attention was moved to redress unequal power relations between the sexes in society (Moser 1993:3,74). Despite this re-orientation, most microfinance programmes continued to finance only women and to dismiss men, ignoring couple dynamics (Kabeer 2000, Armendáriz and Roome 2008). Multiple studies have already shown this to be problematic by pointing to negative effects both for women’s ‘empowerment’ and gender equality overall (Mayoux 1999, 2001, Kabeer 2000, Leach and Sitaram 2002, Armendáriz and Morduch 2010:212), and many programmes have made an explicit move to a gender-sensitive approach (Esplen and Brody 2007, Barker and Schulte 2010).
Due to the important limitations of gender-specific development approaches that the microfinance field has made evident, but also the prominence of microfinance as an approach to women’s empowerment historically (and today), I select one such programme to unpack the ‘gender’ question for ‘development.’ The programme I discuss was designed for women, but it later extended loans to men. Tracing the transition from a gender-specific to a gender-sensitive approach validates many of the points raised in the critical literature, and makes evident the influence of man-woman power dynamics on the prospects of women’s empowerment. It also shows that employing a gender lens can help planners to perceive such complex interdependencies, and to redirect development objectives toward gender equal development that increases the likelihood of ‘good’ change for both men and women.
I start this paper by offering some working definitions. A following section provides the reader with an overview of women-only microfinance, the justification behind it, and some of its criticisms. Immediately after, I present the case-study, offering some final remarks in a concluding section.

This study examined the effects of empowering leadership on employees in a customer service organization, using data from 266 employees and their supervisors from 41 work teams in a division of a large Hong Kong telecommunications corporation. Empowering leadership had acceptable levels of within-group agreement and between-group variability , providing support for its analysis as a group-level construct. Testing a multi-level model in which psychological empowerment was hypothesized to mediate the relationship between both within-group and between-group empowering leadership and individual outcomes, empowering leadership was associated with psychological empowerment at both levels. There was evidence of significant mediation effects at both the individual and group levels. These findings underline the importance of analysing both within-group and between-group differences in empowering leadership and their effects on individual attitudes and behaviours.

At the same time that case studies are widely used and have produced canonical texts, it may be observed that the case study as a methodology is generally held in low regard, or is simply ignored, within the academy. For example, only 2 of the 30 top-ranked U.S. graduate programs in political science require a dedicated graduate course in case study or qualitative methods, and a full third of these programs do not even offer such a course. In contrast, all of the top 30 programs offer courses in quantitative methods and almost all of them require training in such methods, often several courses. In identifying this paradox of the case study’s wide use and low regard, Gerring rightly remarks that the case study survives in a “curious methodological limbo,” and that the reason is that the method is poorly understood. In what follows, we will try to resolve Gerring’s paradox and help case study research gain wider use and acceptance.

We are no longer used to critically examining the meaning of “design”,

which maintains an unexplored dimension in terms of the Power that can be exercised through the cyclic act of creation, preservation and disruption.

This assumption induces us to focus on the contrast between the “visible” side of the act that involves all its conceptual and practical manifestations, and a hidden or “dark” side that deals with politics and power play, but that, however, has a major influence in the process and its hierarchical dynamics.

This implies an order on the surface, which seems to be naturally stirred by the so-called “perceptions” that reflect the preferences of overall public opinions: however, looking deeper, all the production acts involves a carefully controlled disequillibrium influenced by social, ecological, economical and political interests.

The power flow in the act of “design” takes into consideration the paradoxical contradiction between its potentiality and its preservation of power.

(En inglés y español):
We live in times of crisis that seem to be structural in long-term and reveal the inability of the state to respond to social demands. It is a shift of era that needs new answers, in which is clearly questioned the role played -and needed to be played- by institutions, professionals of social action and the population, in the research and implementation of solutions. Community action and empowerment of the population can play a decisive role in driving new answers and / or preserving the existing rights; hence the interest in identifying their potential and their limits.

Vivimos momentos de crisis que se dibujan como estructurales a largo plazo, en los que se pone de manifiesto la incapacidad del Estado para dar respuesta a las demandas sociales. Un cambio de época que necesita nuevas respuestas, en el que
se cuestiona claramente el papel que han tenido y deberán tener las instituciones, los profesionales de la acción social y la población en la búsqueda y puesta en marcha de soluciones. La acción comunitaria y el empoderamiento de la población
pueden tener un papel determinante a la hora de impulsar nuevas respuestas y/o preservar derechos existentes; de ahí el interés para identificar sus potencialidades y límites.

This book will combine a broad selection of unpublished or difficult to access texts by well-known community organizers with a history of this largely unknown period.  Co-edited with Mike Miller.

Saul Alinsky, according to Time Magazine in 1970, was a "prophet of power to the people," someone who "has possibly antagonized more people . . . than any other living American." People Power introduces the major organizers who adopted and modified Alinsky's vision across the United States:
--Fred Ross, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the Community Service Organization and National Farm Workers Association
--Nicholas von Hoffman and the Woodlawn Organization
--Tom Gaudette and the Northwest Community Organization
--Ed Chambers, Richard Harmon, and the Industrial Areas Foundation
--Shel Trapp, Gale Cincotta, and National People's Action
--Heather Booth, Midwest Academy, and Citizen Action
--Wade Rathke and ACORN

Weaving classic texts with interviews and their own context-setting commentaries, the editors of People Power provide the first comprehensive history of Alinsky-based organizing in the tumultuous period from 1955 to 1980, when the key organizing groups in the United States took form. Many of these selections--previously available only on untranscribed audiotapes or in difficult-to-read mimeograph or Xerox formats--appear in print here for the first time.
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Reviews
• "People Power: The Community Organizing Tradition of Saul Alinsky brings together in one place many of Alinsky's most important organizing disciples who implemented his ideas on the ground and, in the process, added their own field-tested insights. Through their interviews, articles, speeches, and organizational documents, they reveal why the Alinsky organizing tradition remains relevant in our contemporary world. With their own writing, coeditors Schutz and Miller weave together the various strands into a coherent whole."
--Sanford Horwitt, author of Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky, His Life and Legacy
• "People Power is indispensable for community organizers and all those who seek a more just and democratic society. Its breadth of Alinsky-tradition material and editorial commentary are an important part of the discussion we must have in this country if we are to have any real democracy."
--Bob Moses, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee field secretary, 1961-65; Founder and President, The Algebra Project
• "People Power is the most definitive rendering of the work of Saul Alinsky, a giant in the theory and practice of community organizing. A must-read for anyone who wants to do or teach about how to reach and organize people for collective action."
-- Lillian B. Rubin, sociologist, psychotherapist, and author of twelve books, including Worlds of Pain

This is a summary paper of the community health project taken place with participants of Jubilee Soup Kitchen in the lower Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  The community profile of the Hill District and the community’s strengths and challenges emerge from the windshield survey, personal communications and research.  Identified problems specific to the aggregate, proposed implementation plans, summary of practicum education and interventions follows. 

Social Learning Theory and Pender’s Health Promotion Model provide the framework for the cognitive behavioral interventions for depression.

Every nanosatellite, including Tel-Usat which is currently developed by Telkom University, needs power resource to carry out its mission. Thus, a subsystem called Electrical Power System (EPS) is usually given a task to harvest and manage the power resource. One of the problems in the EPS subsystem is the design so it can work properly and effectively to convert the energy from sunlight into electric power. In this paper, two design of EPS has been done and investigated. Both design use two different concept where the model one using a pair of series SPV1040 charger module at the solar cell input while model 2 only uses single LT3652 charger module at the same point. The result shows that EPS model 2 has a better performance in charging or discharging capability although the circuit is more complex than the EPS model 1.

In this paper we argue that the use of the communicative theory of Jürgen Habermas in planning theory is problematic because it hampers an understanding of how power shapes planning. We posit an alternative approach based on the power analytics of Michel Foucault which focuses on ‘what is actually done’, as opposed to Habermas’s focus on ‘what should be done’. We discuss how the Foucauldian stance problematises planning, asking difficult questions about the treatment of legitimacy, rationality, knowledge and spatiality. We conclude that Foucault offers a type of analytic planning theory which offers better prospects than does Habermas for those interested in understanding and bringing about democratic social change through planning.

This research, conducted by the author when a Senior Researcher at Newcastle University, UK, was funded by a UK governance organisation to help them assess, integrate and improve their understanding of the governed population.

ABSTRACT: Governance organisations have been urged to develop more holistic evidence-based approaches with partners to better deal with issues affecting the governed population. This presupposes an understanding of the population, yet there has been little research work addressing how governance organisations come to understand their governed population, nor how this understanding can be improved upon within such organisations.

This case study examined in-depth how understanding of a governed population was developed within one UK local governance organisation and it explored how such understanding might be developed and improved through more holistic and evidence-based organisational learning within the organisation and its governance partnerships.

The research methodology involved placement within the governance organisation, participant observations on several projects and innovative initiatives, observations within, across, and outside the organisation, and also interviews with varied key stakeholders.

The study examined:

- stakeholder engagement and networks
- current and varied understandings of the population
- mechanisms actually used for developing understandings
- the influence of context on organisational learning

and analysed these to arrive at a recommendations to improve organisational understanding of the governed population.

In the case studied, significant strengths were found: including innovative past learning trials for development, extensive ongoing networking activities, and many varied and accumulating quantitative datasets available across partnerships.

However, entrenched organisational approaches and practices constrained the development of holistic evidence-based understanding, for instance: the absence of systematic maintained collective learning processes; weak recording and forgetting of understandings; methodological exclusion of stakeholders from the development of understanding; the relative neglect of qualitative data, explanations, investigations, interpretations, and reflexivity; and also implicit organisational acceptance of such limitations and low aspirations.

Nonetheless, untapped opportunities existed to enable change including: latent practitioner knowledge and innovative management champions, the desire for improvement and raised aspirations within learning networks, and the development potential of alterative learning approaches.

It was concluded that more holistic evidence-based understanding was possible, but required new learning approaches beyond those then in use in both local government or academia.   

Recommendations are made to utilise and develop improved organisational learning approaches trialed and reported in the case study.

It is argued that the case study findings, conclusions, and recommendations may be applicable to other similar local governance organisations and partnerships that seek to better understand local populations, services and interventions.

The work was also submitted for, and awarded, an MPhil (at Newcastle University, supervised by Prof. Patsy Healy)