Topic
Empowerment
About: Empowerment is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 42112 publications have been published within this topic receiving 752953 citations.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
More filters
••
TL;DR: The authors argue that criticisms of participation's theoretical coherence and of its lapse into a routinised praxis largely arise from an unavoidable ambiguity that is inherent in the concept of participation, this being the means/end ambiguity.
Abstract: This paper examines some of the critiques addressed to participatory development by critics such as Cooke and Kothari. It argues that criticisms of participation's theoretical coherence and of its lapse into a routinised praxis largely arise from an unavoidable ambiguity that is inherent in the concept of participation, this being the means/end ambiguity. Participation must function as a means because any development project must produce some outputs (therefore participation is seen as a means to achieve such outputs), but it must also function as an end inasmuch as empowerment is viewed as a necessary outcome. This ambiguity becomes contradictory when emphasis is laid on participation as a means at the expense of participation as an end. The article proposes ways of re‐emphasising the element of empowerment so that participation may function as an emancipatory strategy.
204 citations
••
TL;DR: Arguing for a perspective that will allow us to address issues pertaining to the notion of empowerment in the lives of patients, generally, as well as those who are marginalized and disadvantaged is argued.
204 citations
••
203 citations
•
30 May 2009
TL;DR: Eisenstein this paper argues that international feminism is at a fateful crossroads, and argues that it is crucial for feminists to throw in their lot with the progressive forces that are seeking alternatives to globalized corporate capitalism.
Abstract: In a pioneering reinterpretation of the role of mainstream feminism, Eisenstein shows how the ruling elites of developed countries utilize women's labor and the ideas of women's liberation and empowerment to maintain their economic and political power, both at home and abroad. Her explorations range from the abolition of "welfare as we know it" and the ending of the family wage in the United States to the creation of export-processing zones in the global South that depend on women's "nimble fingers"; and from the championing of microcredit as a path to women's empowerment in the global South to the claim of women's presumed liberation in the West as an ideological weapon in the war on terrorism. Eisenstein challenges activists and intellectuals to recognize that international feminism is at a fateful crossroads, and argues that it is crucial for feminists to throw in their lot with the progressive forces that are seeking alternatives to globalized corporate capitalism.
203 citations