Topic
Empowerment
About: Empowerment is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 42112 publications have been published within this topic receiving 752953 citations.
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151 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that if we want to empower people, we must learn from the Independent Living Movement, from the people who struggled against segregation and insisted that access to personal assistance over which they have control is a civil rights issue.
Abstract: This paper challenges the notion of “care”, arguing that people who need support in their daily lives have been constructed as “dependent people”. Instead, the author argues, if we want to empower people we must learn from the Independent Living Movement, from the people who struggled against segregation and insisted that access to personal assistance over which they have control is a civil rights issue. The paper takes issue with Clare Ungerson's perspective on the new direct payments legislation. This legislation is an important stage in the achievements of a civil rights movement and social researchers have a moral responsibility to collaborate with this movement in any work which they develop on issues which are not of mere academic interest but which concern people's rights to choice and control in their lives.
150 citations
TL;DR: A postStructural approach merits a place alongside other approaches to understanding power and empowerment in nursing, and one way of fostering such criticism is to view nursing practice through a poststructural lens.
Abstract: Title. Power and empowerment in nursing: a fourth theoretical approach.
Aim. This paper is a discussion of the use of poststructuralism as a means of exploring power and empowerment in nursing.
Background. Power and empowerment are well-researched areas of nursing practice, but the issue of how to empower nurses and patients continues to cause debate. Power and empowerment are complex issues and other researchers have provided some clarity by proposing three theoretical approaches: critical social theory, organizational theory and social psychological theory. We support their work and propose an additional poststructural approach as a means of analyzing power and empowerment in nursing.
Discussion. The concept of power in nursing may be critiqued by drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and paying particular attention to two areas: disciplinary power and knowledge/power relationships. Foucault’s contention was that behaviour is standardized through disciplinary power and that power and knowledge are intertwined. Nurses who seek an understanding of empowerment must first grasp such workings as hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement, the examination, and power/knowledge relationships, and that cognizance of such issues can promote nursing practice that is empowering. They need to adopt a more critical stance to understanding power and empowerment in nursing, and one way of fostering such criticism is to view nursing practice through a poststructural lens.
Conclusion. A poststructural approach merits a place alongside other approaches to understanding power and empowerment in nursing.
150 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the work of Hernando de Soto, in light of similar arguments made in earlier policy prescriptions on formalisation of land title in rural sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Kenya, which has the longest history of experimentation with formal titling in the region.
Abstract: This article interrogates the ambitious claim that the procedural act of formalisation of property rights has a causal link with the empowerment of poor people. The article explores this claim primarily through examining the work of Hernando de Soto, in light of similar arguments made in earlier policy prescriptions on formalisation of land title in rural sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Kenya, which has had the longest history of experimentation with formal titling in the region. Contemporary arguments such as de Soto's ignore lessons learnt and therefore reproduce five shortcomings of earlier arguments linking formal land title to productivity in sub-Saharan Africa. First, a narrow construction of legality that equates legal pluralism with extra-legality. Second, an underlying social evolutionist bias which presumes that individual ownership is ultimately inevitable for all social contexts. Third, an unproven link between formal title and access to credit facilities. Fourth, a narrow underst...
150 citations
TL;DR: A review of the literature on women's land rights and poverty reduction can be found in this article, where the authors identify pathways by which WLR could reduce poverty and increase wellbeing of women and their households in rural areas.
150 citations