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Chapter 2
Empowerment: Definitions and Meanings
In this chapter we will define the concept of empowerment, indicate the meanings given to it in various contexts, and discuss each one of these meanings.
Verbal Definition
Empowerment is related to the word power. In English, the concept leans on its original meaning of investment with legal power—permission to act for some specific goal or purpose (Rappaport, 1987). The new meaning of the concept includes mainly references to power that develops and is acquired. People are managing to gain more control over their lives, either by themselves or with the help of others. The form to be empowered relates to what is both a process and an outcome—to the effort to obtain a relative degree of ability to influence the world (Staples, 1990).
Initial Meanings of Empowerment
Three of the first writers to relate systematically to the concept have had a most fundamental influence on the development of its use. Barbara Solomon (1976, 1985) emphasized empowerment as a method of social work with oppressed Afro-Americans. Peter Berger and Richard Neuhaus (1977) proposed empowerment as a way of improving the welfare services by means of mediating social institutions. Julian Rappaport (1981) developed the concept theoretically and presented it as a world-view that includes a social policy and an approach to the solution of social problems stemming from powerlessness. These writers emphasized the important connection between individuals and community, and encouraged a contextual-
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ecological approach to the treatment of social situations. They discussed the failure of social programs to provide social solutions, and the destructive by-product of these programs—the creation of powerlessness among those in need of the programs. The root of the evil, they claimed, is that local knowledge and resources are ignored in the course of corrective intervention, and that the missing resources are provided insensitively, without consideration for what is already there. Since the eighties, four ideological approaches have provided the framework of ideas for the discussion of empowerment. The first is an ethnocentric approach, which seeks a solution for difficult social problems of ethnic and other minorities (Solomon, 1976; Gutierrez & Ortega, 1991). The second is a conservative liberal approach that seeks to revive the community as a social unit which among other things has to care for its weak citizens as well (Berger & Neuhaus, 1977). The third is a socialist approach which demands of equity and social responsibility in the treatment of social problems (Boyte, 1984). The fourth approach wants to see empowerment as a profound and professional implementation of democracy—one that will contain every legitimate social ideological current in the democratic society. This is a progressive democratic world-view which resolves to live in harmony with the other approaches and attempts to create an integration of them. Its distinctive spokesman is Julian Rappaport (1981, 1985, 1987). The present book is a continuation of this approach. Where there is a multiplicity of shades it is not always easy to distinguish a new color, and not everyone who is interested in empowerment is interested in interpreting the ideologies behind it. Since empowerment is declaredly also a world-view, it is worth acknowledging that different and even contradictory value-systems have participated in its creation. In order to develop empowerment into a theory I first had to sort the accepted meanings, to discuss them, to analyze them in order to evaluate them, and then to recompose the
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essence is human activity in the direction of change from a passive state to an active one. The process brings about an integration of self-acceptance and self-confidence, social and political understanding, and a personal ability to take a significant part in decision-making and in control over resources in the environment. The sense of personal ability connects with civic commitment. Individual empowerment is an expression on the individual level of a multi-leveled process which may be applied to organizations, communities, and social policy (Zimmerman & Rappaport, 1988). Empowerment is a process of internal and external change. The internal process is the person’s sense or belief in her ability to make decisions and to solve her own problems. The external change finds expression in the ability to act and to implement the practical knowledge, the information, the skills, the capabilities and the other new resources acquired in the course of the process (Parsons, 1988). Some writers call the internal change psychological empowerment and the external change political empowerment. According to this distinction, psychological empowerment occurs on the level of a person’s consciousness and sensations, while political empowerment is a real change which enables a person to take part in the making of decisions that affect his life. To achieve psychological empowerment a person requires only internal strengths, while to realize his political personal empowerment a person requires environmental conditions, mainly organizational ones, which will enable him to exercise new abilities (Gruber & Trickett, 1987). In this discussion I do not intend to deal with the practical and the psychological processes of empowerment and the differences between them; rather, I want to emphasize the need for an integration of both. While the traditional approach sees political power as the possession of sufficient influence or authority to bring about a change, or even to impose it, the idea of empowerment adopts a different approach to power, one that does not attribute possession of power to anyone. When power is not conceived as a resource or a concrete
Chapter 2: Empowerment: Defi nitions and Meanings
position in any particular site, then it is in any case both political and psychological. Indeed, people have testified that in their empowerment process they did not necessarily acquire more social influence or political control, but they did become more able participants in the political process and in local decision making. They estimated that they did not possess more absolute power to dictate the character of their environment, but they believed that they were beginning to be more effective in the dynamics of social and political negotiations (Kieffer, 1984).
Psychological Constructs and Empowerment
Several attempts have been made to define individual empowerment by means of psychological constructs. Especially conspicuous is the desire to connect empowerment to two groups of psychological constructs. The first group is that of personality constructs which are called locus of control (Rotter, 1966); the second group is that of cognitive constructs, which focus on self-efficacy, i.e., the belief in one’s efficacy to alter aspects of life over which one can exercise some control (Bandura, 1989). Locus of control is a concept with an internal-external continuum, which in general terms determines that someone whose locus of control is inside him is internal —he expects reinforcement from himself, possesses inner motivation, and therefore his achievements will be more under his control as opposed to someone whose locus of control is external. The external person perceives reinforcements as beyond control and due to chance, fate or powerful others (Rotter, 1966, Levenson, 1981). Several studies have attempted to define individual empowerment by means of the locus of control construct. Here an internal locus of control indicates the realization of the empowerment process, while an external locus of control means the continued existence of powerlessness (Chavis, 1984;
Chapter 2: Empowerment: Defi nitions and Meanings
social influences operating in the selected environments can contribute to personal development by the interests and competencies they cultivate and the social opportunities they provide, which subsequently shape their possibilities of development (Bandura, 1989, 1997). The connection between the self-efficacy mechanism and the empowerment process is so clear that there can be no doubt about the value of an integration between them.
The psychological constructs are not the subject of this book, for if we assume that every powerless person needs empowerment, and that potential empowerment exists in every person, then personality qualities are not essential for an understanding of the various levels of the empowerment process or its outcomes. Beyond this, the hidden message in the personality constructs is that an empowered person has changed psychologically in ways that only professionals can understand and measure. Such a message contradicts empowerment language, which calls for equal and transparent relations between professionals (including researchers) and the people in whose lives they intervene (Rappaport, 1985). I recommend that as part of adopting an empowering professional practice we should avoid using concepts which brand people in advance. Since empowerment is not a particular quality of a person, but an important condition for his existence, its realization must correspond to the most diverse (theoretically, at least, the infinite) number of human variations. Paradoxically, this very complexity is what enables the process to harmoniously absorb a vast quantity of psychological constructs (Zimmerman, 1995). Although we cannot dismiss the attempt to make connections between psychological theories and the concept of empowerment, my preference is to develop empowerment in a less psychological and more social direction.
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Individual Empowerment as a Political Concept
The advantage of the concept of empowerment lies in its integration of the level of individual analysis with the level of social and political meaning. This conjunction appears in feminist thinking, which connects the personal with the political: what happens in the life of an individual woman is not only her private affair, it is also an expression of her social situation (Lengermann & Niebrugge-Brentley, 1988). If we acknowledge that politics is the everyday activities of ordinary people who are attempting to change social and economic institutions, individual empowerment cannot consist only of personal assertiveness, mobility, and a psychological experience of power (Morgen & Bookman, 1988). Feminist thinking presents the personal and the political as two sides of one coin, in remonstration against a common social tendency to divide what is considered worthy of public discussion and is openly and publicly discussed from what is not such and belongs inside the private sphere (Ackelsberg, 1988). This division defined women’s problems as private , prevented public recognition of their importance, excluded them and separated them from one another, and thus prevented them having a community life which would strengthen their perceptions, establishing a vicious circle that augmented their exclusion and institutionalized their disconnection from politics. In this way, too, the private space and the public space were divided: the home and the residential environment as one entity, and public life and work as another. Men are connected with the public domain—the world at large; women with the private domain—the home. This division has been harmful not only to women. Any division that contributes to isolation and separation between domains in the individual’s life brings it about that people do not comprehend the connection between what goes on in their work situation and what happens in their home and community, just as they do not understand the connection between political decisions (or non-decisions) and personal
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When the empowerment process is undergone by the individual in a group, it also includes the enabling influence of a peer group within a collective-organizational structure, and also relations with a mentor that enrich the experience (Kieffer, 1983). The conjunction of empowerment with mutuality
- mutual empowerment – broadens people’s possibilities of controlling their lives. It has been found that people in self- help groups who have both provided and received help have gained more satisfaction from their participation in the group and more self-esteem than people who only received help or only provided help (Zimmerman & Rappaport, 1988; Maton & Rappaport, 1984). Participation in a self-help group is considered an ideal (though not exclusive) means of encouraging individual empowerment, for such a group produces empowerment beyond the individual as well: people receive emotional and social support in the course of a change process in which they provide concrete help to others and acquire new skills, including development of ability for future public action (Dodd & Gutierrez, 1990; Chesler & Chesney, 1995).
Critical Consciousness and Individual Empowerment
The development of critical consciousness is, without doubt. The most significant personal experience in the empowerment process. Critical consciousness is the process by means of which people acquire an increasingly greater understanding of the cultural-social conditions that shape their lives, and of the extent of their ability to change these conditions. A person lives not only in the present but also in history, and is capable not only of interpreting but also of interpreting interpretations—hence a critical consciousness is essential and basic to all human learning (Freire, 1970). Critical self-consciousness includes people’s recognition of their right to give their experiences a name. People learn to speak in their own language, and to give names to the elements of their world (Van Den Bergh & Cooper, 1986).
Chapter 2: Empowerment: Defi nitions and Meanings
Critical consciousness is people’s better understanding of their powerlessness and of the systematic forces that oppress them. The success or failure of a particular struggle or activity are only one aspect of empowerment. The change in people’s outlook on themselves, and in their ability to understand the world in which they live, is more important. The empowerment of a woman who is poor, belongs to an ethnic minority, and is at the bottom of the social status and income levels, expresses itself in her understanding and her consciousness of the dynamics of her oppressed condition, and not in her success to liberate herself from it. Her power expresses itself in a translation of her consciousness into action with others in her situation in order to withstand the heavy burden of their lack of resources (Gilkes, 1988; Bookman, 1988).
We may distinguish two main approaches to the significance of critical consciousness in the empowerment process: those who see empowerment as essentially an internal process see the development of critical consciousness as the main realization of empowerment. On this view, critical consciousness is the outcome of empowerment (Luttrell, 1988; Morgen, 1988). Those who claim that the goal of empowerment is actual achievements see the development of critical consciousness as an important stage, but only an initial one in the process (Kieffer, 1984; Gruber & Trickett, 1987). Consciousness is formed by means of praxis in the course of action (Morgen, 1988). Hence, one may also join in collective action without such consciousness and, through actual experience and learning about such experience, one may achieve consciousness and empowerment. Action alone does not deepen critical consciousness, just as learning with no experience at all does not achieve this. Theories of learning and education have long since recognized the importance of experiential learning. The empowerment process makes manifest the importance of the application of this approach to
Chapter 2: Empowerment: Defi nitions and Meanings
powerless because of lacks in their private lives or their personalities, but because they belong to a powerless group. Of course, in each such group there will always be those who, thanks to exceptional talent or luck, will attain to personal success and power (the converse situation also exists: in a group that possesses power there will always be some powerless individuals). Nonetheless, although these are known and accepted truths, psychological and individual explanations of success and failure are still prevalent, and the conservative social policy that reinforces them is still in vogue. These explanations remain in force because they cast the responsibility for the situation and the onus of change on the individual victims of inequality and oppression, instead of on the social structure which is the root of these problems. Empowerment is the opposite approach, and that is why its social dimensions are so important. Individual empowerment is only one constituent of the process which as a whole connects the personal and the individual with the collective and the social in people’s lives.
Community Empowerment
Community empowerment is the increased control of people as a collective over outcomes important to their lives. Before discussing community empowerment we need to clarify the concept community in the sense used in the present book.
The Community and the Common Critical Characteristic
Community has a meaning of a life that is more egalitarian, participatory and intimate than life in society at large, which demands the objectification of man and anonymous obedience to authority and law. The community as an image is a kind of antithesis of the bureaucratic, hierarchical, formal and judiciary society. The concept is to a certain extent abstract, but at the same time concrete, because it operates in the geographical, the ethnic, and the functional sense. The
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need for a community is a need to live together, to trust, to communicate. In the Middle Ages the concept commune was used to describe a settlement with an independent identity and government. In English, community and communication are derived from the same root (Handler, 1990). There are several approaches to community:
- A utopian approach oriented to a vision of a future community whose members will be able to fulfill their human and social potential. This approach draws its inspiration from the utopians of the 19th century. Although it is far from the idyllic scene of adults and children who are cultured, educated, strong, healthy, and possess high moral qualities, who group together in a rural setting to grow vegetables and weave clothes, it too preaches egalitarianism and autarchy. The separation from society at large is necessary in order to realize important social goals of the members (Friedmann, 1987).
- A rehabilitational approach which focuses on the situation of ethnic minorities, and more recently also of other minorities, such as the disabled (Dolnick, 1993). On this view, the community struggles with life beside a different and sometimes hostile society, and grapples with the dilemma of integration into this society. Here too a utopian vision exists: to revitalize the intimate and supportive community in which, more by necessity than because they want to, people whom the society isolates and discriminates against live today (O’Sullivan, 1984; Friedmann, 1989; Rivera & Erlich, 1984, Cendeluci, 1995).
- A social approach which redefines community and departs, perhaps too sharply (because quite a few people still live in traditional communities in our time too) from the traditional community as it used to be (Warren, 1975). The new community is a social collective entity, and the image appropriate to it is one of people with common problems and generally a common dependence on service
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have a potential to create a community around their common critical characteristic: they need special services, some of which are provided, and some of which are lacking, partial, or defective. Their everyday lives and the problems that preoccupy them are similar and they share a common fate. All these are a common basis for connection. The connection may be partial, unstable and changing, or permanent and requiring more commitment, but it exists, and a community may be built upon it. It is important to remember not to define all people who share the same common critical characteristic as a community: not everyone who carries the critical characteristic has to belong to a community even if it exists—joining a community is a conscious and voluntary act. Nonetheless, these two concepts – community and common critical characteristic
- complement and reinforce one another in very important ways. One of these, perhaps the most important one, is that the creation of the community helps the surrounding society to understand the critical characteristic as a social problem, instead of seeing it as an individual problem. While an individual view isolates those who suffer from a problem, and casts the responsibility for their situation and for changing it upon them as individuals, the creation of a community around a critical characteristic is an expression of an improvement of the human ability to cope with a social problem: there is an improvement both in the ability of those suffering from the problem to ease their suffering, and in the society’s ability to understand their distress and to seek a social solution for it. The definition of community empowerment contains processes that have diverse collective bases. As already noted, community empowerment on a basis of geographical boundaries, as in residential neighborhoods, is only one of the possibilities. Also important is community empowerment of people whose common characteristic is ethnic origin, gender (women), age (the elderly), or a difficult and limiting life problem (such as deaf or paraplegic people). Further on we
Chapter 2: Empowerment: Defi nitions and Meanings
will discuss these various categories and also some issues that are common to community empowerment of all kinds.
Community Empowerment on a Geographical Basis
The first thing that the idea of community empowerment brings to mind is a neighborhood, or any other defined residential area. It should be made clear that since human existence as such is anchored in a locale in a specific space, the discussion of community empowerment on a non-geographical basis may also take place within the bounds of a geographical neighborhood. In such a case, however, the common critical characteristic of the people involved may be their origin and not their place of residence (e.g., Greeks in Arcadia, New York, or Armenians in Jerusalem). The discussion of community empowerment on a geographical basis is conducted almost separately in a number of professional disciplines, e.g.,: community psychology (Wandersman & Florin, 1988), community work (Rubin & Rubin, 1992), urban studies and planning (Friedmann, 1992; Brower & Taylor, 1998), social action (Boyte, 1984), and social policy (Page-Adams & Sherraden, 1997). I have chosen to present the essentials without relating to each domain separately. Techniques of resident participation in the affairs of their neighborhood are considered as encouraging individual empowerment: participation encourages perceived self- efficacy, expectations of successful group solutions, and increased civic commitment (Wandersman & Florin, 1988). Community empowerment is manifested in the increasing actual power of neighborhood groups, especially when the participation produces a change in decision making in the neighborhood and leads to residents’ organizations having more control over their affairs (Biegel, 1984). Only when residents’ participation in their neighborhood’s agenda becomes an accepted procedure (where poor neighborhoods are concerned, this is in most cases an achievement that
Chapter 2: Empowerment: Defi nitions and Meanings
isolated individualism. Community empowerment therefore depends on a de-linking from the system at large, and on greater local self-reliance based on resources that the community households can produce (Friedmann, 1987). The outcome may be an making change: the recovery of the political community. The goal is not community empowerment, but the reactivation of political life—a society whose residents are active in the processes of civil governance. This is an ideal way of life that includes: cooperative production of consumer goods, democracy at home and outside the home, and active participation in political and community life. Household economy, the society and the world economy are integrated together in the framework of a moral economy that is based on social justice in the division of resources and the care of people (Friedmann, 1989). In the domain of urban planning models that declare goals of empowerment are occasionally presented (Bradbury et al., 1987); these models accord people more choice, proclaim a message of more equality, recommend that people should not be labeled, nor isolated in services of their own. The danger in these models is disempowerment resulting from inattention to the importance of the empowerment process. For example, the establishment of a city-wide pilot project means most significant changes in the lives of people who will not be participants in the planing or the implementation of the change. The deterministic premise that the outcomes of such a plan will lead to empowerment of people has no connection with the empowerment approach as it is presented here. A social plan which makes use of the word empowerment to describe final outcomes only, and does not deal with processes of community development or mobilization of participants from the area of intervention, is not empowering. Following Berger and Neuhaus’ classical article (1977), the idea of turning the community into an exclusive provider of welfare services to its members has also been called community empowerment. The critique of this trend stems from concern about the erosion of the idea of the welfare
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state by means of such solutions. Although not all the present institutions are efficient as service providers or promoters of public participation, neighborhood organizations too can be “institutionalized, rigid, inaccessible, insensitive and undemocratic just like professional bureaucracies” (Kramer, 1988). Exaggerated enthusiasm about voluntary activity in the community, mutual help and social networks may cause harm, because the replacement of bureaucratic state services by community services is problematic for three reasons:
- The social networks on which they rely do not always exist, or are not always acceptable to those in need. It also happens that the most needy are not wanted by the geographical community or by the community services (Borkman, 1984).
- The resources of the community service may be inadequate to provide efficient service. 3. The accountability of community organizations is still particularly problematic. We often tend to forget that the present, formal and bureaucratic form of service provision developed in the wake of the failure of the mediating institutions – the community, the family, the church and the voluntary organization – to provide a response to complex needs. John Friedmann (1992) claims that community empowerment is the creation of access to social and economic resources. Poverty, then, results from lack of access to essential resources, not only economic but also political and social resources. This being so, some writers claim that politics, not planning, is the major process by means of which needs should be identified and responses for them should be located (Marris, 1987; Hajer, 1989). The term community empowerment hints at the (at least theoretical) possibility that in a certain sense it is the community itself, and not only the individuals who belong to groups or organizations that comprise it, that undergoes an empowerment process. The question that precedes such a possibility is whether the geographical community can act collectively. Urban neighborhoods lack the primal connections of kinship, emotional connection and economic inter-relations
