privatization and the erosion of the welfarestate.In the context of patriarchal domination of influential organizations, such as the academy,feminist educators have seen curriculum andteaching/training methodologies as sites of struggle, but also as potential areas for changeand empowerment[17-21]. O’Brien andWhitmore[22, p. 309] define empowerment as:
…an interactive process through which lesspowerful people experience personal and socialchange, enabling them to achieve influence overthe organisations and institutions which affecttheir lives, and the communities in which they live.
The idea here is that by exposing people to theappropriate educational interventions, they willgain the confidence to critically engage andchange their environments. However,Lather[23, p. 4] argues that empowerment is“not something done to or for someone, butinstead is a process one undertakes for oneself”.She uses the term to mean “analysing ideasabout the causes of powerlessness, recognisingsystematic oppressive forces and acting bothindividually and collectively to change theconditions of our lives”. Shrewsbury[24, p. 8]claims that:
To be empowered is to recognise our abilities toact to create a more humane social order. To beempowered is to be able to engage in significantlearning. To be empowered is to be able toconnect with others in mutually productive ways.
Robinson[25, p. 7] maintains that:
Empowerment is a personal and social process, aliberatory sense of one’s own strengths,competence, creativity and freedom of action; tobe empowered is to feel power surging into onefrom other people and from inside, specifically thepower to act and grow.
Gore[26, p. 56] believes that empowerment firstpresupposes an agent of empowerment(teacher, youth worker, therapist, manager);second holds the notion of power as property;and third has some kind of vision or desirableend state. Ellsworth[27, p. 306] concludes fromher attempts at progressive education that“strategies such as student empowerment anddialogue give the illusion of equality while infact leaving the authoritarian nature of thestudent/teacher relationship in tact”. Shequestions the relationship between teachers andlearners by asking how a teacher “makes”students autonomous without directing them.Discourses on power frequently includereferences to both Marxist and postmodernpositions. In Marxism, power operating in thesocial formation is ultimately grounded in theeconomic power of the dominant class. In apostmodern analysis power is no longer seen asa reified possession, but as capillary, that is,exercised in every moment of social life. In thisconstruction, power is conceptualized as agenerative, productive phenomenon, as well asrepressive. Gore[28, p. 120] argues that:
It is this productive conception of power thatundergirds notions of empowerment and notionsof emancipatory or liberatory authority, authority–
with
rather than
over
others.
A fundamental challenge is how one person, orgroup, ethically and practically can empoweranother, and whether the absence of politicizedreflexivity means empowerment could involvenew forms of domination[28]. A key questionthen arises as to how those on the left canempower, without playing into the hands of theNew Right?
Managing empowerment
In the UK public services, managerialism hasplayed an essential role in achieving the shift tothe values of the New Right. Employermalleability and motivation are increasinglyimportant in times of social and organizationaltransition and transformation. Public serviceshave been traditionally characterized as wastefuland extravagant. By introducing competitionand market forces there is a belief thatinefficiency, inertia and antiquated methods of working will be exposed[29]. Empowermentenables the transition from one
modus vivendi
toanother. The literature of managementdevelopment in the USA has been threadedwith references to empowerment for the last twodecades[30-33].
‘…much of early management developmentthinking on empowerment appears todraw on mechanistic, behavioristnotions of reward and punishment…’
The implication is that, in order to wieldinstitutional power, the manager has to connectwith his or her own power, and foster the
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Theorizing empowerment in the UK public services
Louise Morley
Empowerment in OrganizationsVolume 3 · Number 3 · 1995 · 35–41
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