Empowerment

About: Empowerment is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 42112 publications have been published within this topic receiving 752953 citations.

HIV prevention in the Hispanic community: sex, culture, and empowerment.

Abstract: To address the serious HIV epidemic in the Hispanic community in the United States, the underlying causes of the epidemic must be addressed. Marginalization, including homophobia, poverty, and racism, as well as cultural factors such as machismo and sexual silence disempower people, making HIV prevention difficult. This article reviews evidence for the impact of marginalization and cultural factors on HIV risk and proposes a cycle of disempowerment. Three examples of empowerment interventions developed specifically for Hispanics (targeting heterosexuals, women, and gay men) are presented, and how these interventions address disempowerment is discussed. One intervention is used to illustrate principles of developing culturally appropriate interventions.

Employee perceptions of empowerment

Abstract: Purpose – This study aims to examine how empowerment is perceived by individuals employed on construction projects. In contrast with previous research which has predominantly been conducted from a management perspective, this paper deals with employee perceptions of empowerment.Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative approach was adopted for this study employing in‐depth interviews on four major construction projects.Findings – The findings from the study indicate that there can be a gap between the employee experience and the management rhetoric. Health and Safety issues were often cited by the employees as a major barrier to empowerment. The strict Health and Safety regulations under which construction employees operate limit their freedom to influence the work that they undertake. A further factor that was found to have a strong influence on the diffusion of empowerment was the role of the employees’ immediate supervisor.Research limitations/implications – The data are based on case studies that il...

Still Left out in the Cold: Problematising Participatory Research and Development

Abstract: Participatory approaches to research and development have had relatively little academic or practitioner critique, resulting in a mythologising of the power of participatory methodologies to accomplish problem solving, emancipation or empowerment. Participation is also presented as evidence of social inclusion and is fostered as a strategy to counteract social exclusion. The purpose of this article therefore is to challenge and critique a range of definitions and perspectives of participation in terms of theory and practice. The paper focuses on two issues arising from the participatory literature and our own research experiences with communication technology projects based in rural and remote Queensland, Australia. We propose that non-participation and peripheral participation are valid and legitimate choices exercised by community members that can be seen to be as individually empowering as participation. We also support the view of participation as both the means and the ends of development, a position that reflects the reality of participatory practice as fluid and variable over time. The paper concludes that both theoreticians and practitioners need to recognise and challenge the assumptions that underpin many participatory development projects.

Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge, and Action: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Abstract: Essential to continued growth in the field of multicultural education is the documentation of its historical roots and its linkages to the current school reform movement. James Banks demonstrates the ways in which the current multicultural education movement is both connected to and a continuation of earlier movements, both scholarly and activist, designed to promote empowerment, knowledge transformation, liberation, and human freedom in US society. The book's five parts: discuss the types of knowledge, the characteristics of transformative knowledge, the historical roots of multicultural education and its links to transformative teaching; document the historical development of transformative scholarship, surveyed through case studies of individual pioneer scholars and activists in race relations and multicultural education such as Carter G. Woodson, Allison Davis, George I. Sanchez, Franz Boas, Mourning Dove, Ella Deloria, and Robert E. Park; focus on the work of women scholars and activists, and particularly women of colour, who have faced the triple oppressions of race, gender and class; describe the rise and fall of the intergroup education movement and the emergence of research related to prejudice in the 1930s and 1940s; and highlight the school reforms currently needed to promote educational equity and accommodate a culturally diverse and democratic society.