Understanding ‘Empowerment’

The term ‘empower’ has become ubiquitous within the social development sector. Empowerment has become the answer to most problems, and it is a rare development initiative that does not overtly seek to empower somebody. And yet, the term is used loosely, without regard to the variety of meanings and flavours of power that make it up, rendering it as a standardised and meaningless jargon instead of a subtle and nuanced word with deep implications for development policy and practice. This article looks to understand empowerment in the social development context by exploring its roots in the term ‘power’. It delves into power in its abstract form, in its relationship with structure and agency, in its role in participatory processes and in its function in governance and development. It also goes into the multiple ways by which communities resist power and its imposition upon them. In the process, it explores the thinking of intellectuals such as Riker, Dahl, Lukes, Foucault, Giddens, Olson, de Certeau, Scott and Havel on power and brings these multiple understandings and meanings into a single narrative. It concludes that a single universal definition of power may not be possible given the multiplicity of contexts within which it is used, and that each of these contexts and their underlying assumptions has implications on the usage of the term ‘empower’. It goes on to suggest that those using the term ‘empower’ would be well advised to state their own assumptions on power and the context within which they use it such as, inter alia, is it transferrable via empowerment. Does it exist in an act, or is it universal and always there? Does the empowerment of one necessarily mean the disempowerment of another so that the sum total of power in a community is constant? In the process, the article looks to provide development practitioners with a broad perspective on power so that they use the term ‘empower’ with specificity and precision.