Empowerment

A Critique

Kenneth McLaughlin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317591801
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies

'Empowerment' is a term in widespread use today and one that is often considered to be a self-evident good. Here, McLaughlin explores its emergence in the 1960s through to its rise in the 1990s and ubiquity in present day discourse and interrogates its social status, paying particular attention to social policy, social work and health and social care discourse. He argues that a focus on empowerment has superseded the notion of political subjects exercising power autonomously.

This innovative volume:

- Discusses the relationship between concepts of empowerment and power, as they have been understood historically.

- Analyses changes in the conception and meaning of empowerment in relation to the shifting social and political landscape.

- Acknowledges the positive impact empowerment strategies have had on those who have campaigned to be empowered and also on those who have saw their role as being to help empower others.

- Highlights ways in which talk about empowerment can actually work in such a way as to further disempower those already marginalised.

Critically examining how 'empowerment' has become embedded in contemporary social and political life, this work offers a discussion of the term's multiple meanings, what it actually entails, and how it constructs and positions those being empowered and those empowering.

1
Power in modernity

Introduction

If the concept of empowerment is concerned with the distribution of power, it is necessary to detail what is meant when we talk about power. Indeed, ‘power’ is a word that is so ingrained in political and public discourse that its complexity can often be overlooked. Public discussion is often framed around a polarisation between the powerful and the powerless. It can take a variety of forms; we talk about, inter alia, political power, physical power, organisational power, media power and religious power. Sales campaigns often target children in recognition of their ‘pester power’, which it is hoped will eventually persuade their parents to purchase the desired object for the sake of peace and quiet. In addition, our interactions with our fellow humans are said to be shaped by racialized and gendered power relations whether at the macro, meso or micro level of social interaction. We frequently feel powerless in the face of seemingly insurmountable power, whether from the vagaries of our employer, the financial market, local authorities or other bureaucratic organisations. People can feel powerless to escape abusive relationships and/or economic deprivation. Those fleeing persecution, or merely looking for a better standard of living than is available in their country of birth, will soon feel the power of border control agencies standing in the way of a safe haven and/or economic opportunity.

However, despite its ubiquity, power is a difficult concept to define. In this chapter I explore some of the classical sociological discussions of power, in the process highlighting the complexities, theoretical explanations and material manifestations of power. This is important not only in and of itself but also to situate the later discussion of empowerment and how both terms are interrelated.

Sovereign power

From the power and authority of the Gods (within pantheism), or God (within monotheism), or of major religions such as Christianity and Islam and the earthly religious leaders who were trusted to interpret the ‘true message’, concerns with power and authority are as old as mankind itself. It is beyond the scope of this book to cover such a history, and for our purposes the focus will be on more modern conceptions of power. Even here it is not possible to draw a clear line, a total break with the past when a new theory emerged unencumbered from the thoughts of the past. Nevertheless, we have to start somewhere, and a good place to do so is with the thought of the sixteenth-century Florentine, Niccolo Machiavelli, and the seventeenth-century Englishman, Thomas Hobbes. This is due to Hobbes being regarded by many as articulating the form of modern secular government, with his emphasis on a central, sovereign authority that replaced the previous religious and feudal systems of rule. Machiavelli is often drawn upon, sometimes unwittingly, by those who consider that we are now in a postmodern age in which power is said to be dispersed throughout the social body, and which therefore entails the need for an analysis of systems, or strategies, of power.

In the centuries following their work, it was arguably the thought of Hobbes that had the most impact on future thinkers, with his premises being utilised in many modern conceptualisations of power. Nevertheless, in the twentieth century the influence of Machiavelli has arguably taken more hold on the popular and public imagination. Many who will never have read any of Machiavelli’s work will be aware that his name is synonymous with political machinations, betrayal and strategic manoeuvring. Indeed, Peter Mandelson, who played a key role within the UK Labour Party during the 1980s and 1990s, including a time as its ‘director of communications’ or ‘media adviser’, was often portrayed as a Machiavellian figure, the ‘spin doctor’ manipulating both the media and politicians in such a way as to achieve the goals of government.

In addition to having resonance within public discourse, Machiavelli’s work has received increased attention within social and political theoretical analyses, particularly from the 1950s onwards, proving popular with those of a more post-modern persuasion who draw on the way that his analysis of power focused on strategies of power, being concerned with the complex interactions within relations of power, as opposed to the more causal and linear mechanisms of power found in the work of many from Hobbes onwards. We will look at this in more detail in Chapter 2 when we discuss the work and influence of Michel Foucault. For now, it is necessary to give a brief account of the thinking of both Hobbes and Machiavelli.

Hobbes developed his thinking in a period that had witnessed great social turmoil. Seventeenth-century England had experienced a Civil War and Hobbes was greatly concerned with the need for a return to social order, something that he saw as best achieved by the unification of power in a single sovereign authority. For Hobbes the choice was stark. We could have a modern world where civility, sovereignty and rule flourished or we could have one in which,

there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, not use of the commodities that may be imposed by the sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

(Hobbes, 2008 [1651]), p. 84)

Hobbes was of the view that a lack of sovereign authority would lead to the breakdown of civil society and reduce us to the state of nature, the pitting of ‘all against all’. However, there is no anthropological referent for such a negation. For some, Hobbes’ conception is seen as fulfilling the role of myth, a theorisation of the possible dystopian society. As such he has been criticised for offering an oversimplified representation concerned not only with the ‘state of nature’ but also the ‘state of order’, in which ‘each was equally fanciful but both served a strategic purpose: that of producing legitimation for a political community’ (Clegg, 1989, p. 26).

This more pragmatic reason for the centralisation of power was bolstered by Hobbes’ view of humanity’s ability for moral reasoning. Hobbes had faith in scientific claims to rational intelligence. He firmly believed that ‘armed with the right method, and further armed with opportunity, man could construct a political order as timeless as a Euclidian theorem’ (Wolin, 1960, p. 243).

Society, for Hobbes, comes into existence when individuals contract out of the state of nature and give up some of their freedoms for security and peace. His conceptualisation differs from Rousseau’s ‘social contract’ in that the former focuses on the restraint of natural impulses by the sovereign whereas the latter has more of an emphasis on the creation of common social rules (Rousseau, 1998 [1762]). The renunciation of violent means to pursue one’s goals and desires is replaced by the establishment of a set of rules, customs and laws to which all must abide. The place where such power should reside in order to ensure such compliance is, in Hobbes’ view, the body of the sovereign, in a secular rather than a religious authority. Such a situation relies on a notion of political community, of a body of people with a common interest in, and identification with, the social and political organisation of the day. Without the people there can be no sovereign. In other words, Hobbes was aware that a modicum of consent was necessary for a stable government and society. This is illustrated on the front cover of the 1651 edition of Hobbes’ most famous work, Leviathan, which represents the sovereign as a large figure overlooking an orderly, but by contrast, miniscule, civil society. However, there is another feature of the frontispiece worth noting. As Wolin (1960) points out,

The sovereign’s powerful body is, so to speak, not his own; its outline is completely filled in by the miniature figures of his subjects. He exists, in other words, only through them. Equally important, each subject is clearly discernible in the body of the sovereign. The citizens are not swallowed up in an anonymous mass, nor sacramentally merged into a mystical body. Each remains a discrete individual and each retains his identity in an absolute way.

(p. 266)

In essence, what the image represents is the identity of the subject as an individual but an individual whose identity is subsumed within the body of the sovereign. The sovereign is the people in another state, but ‘not in a mystical way but as the result of a symbolic translation of voice: the social contract’ (Clegg, 1960, p. 27).

The political community envisaged by Hobbes is seen as being like an extension outwards from family, to locality, to the political community of citizens, something that was integral to the establishment of the nation-state and political citizens. Power is concentrated in ‘one man or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will’ (Hobbes, 2008 [1651]), p. 114). This ‘one will’ representing the plurality of voices is the sovereign/state power: Leviathan. The sovereign/state is the parent to the family, maintaining order and disciplining when necessary. Hobbes articulated a theory of power whereby its centralisation in sovereign or state power could achieve social stability and order. This new combination of state power and resources, coupled with a discursive framework within which it was situated represented ‘modernity’ (Bauman, 1982).

As mentioned above, Hobbes was concerned with the need for social stability to prevent the outbreak of civil disorder and war and this influenced his articulation of the need for absolute power, akin to a dictatorship, situated with the sovereign. In the time since Hobbes wrote, democracies have attempted to place restrictions on the use of arbitrary state power against its citizens. However, at times of crisis it is not uncommon to hear calls for such rights of citizenship to be revoked in the name of peace or social order. At such times it is Hobbes’ Leviathan that is being invoked.

Machiavelli and ‘strategies of power’

Power, for Machiavelli, was not conceived in the instrumental way of Hobbes, as the power of a man to obtain some future good, but in terms of expediency and strategy. Rather than legislating for a social contract, Machiavelli would analyse and interpret a strategy. Where Hobbes conceived of power in terms of motion, causality, agency and action, Machiavelli was more concerned with revealing the workings of power, of discovering the rules of the game. In The Prince, Machiavelli (2009 [1532]) provides a detailed ethnography of power in terms of strategic effectiveness with little regard for the morality of any such strategy. The strategies

are neither good or bad, their only purpose is their effectiveness. They flow from no principle of sovereignty; they serve no principle of sovereignty; they reproduce no principle of sovereignty. Machiavelli does not serve power: he merely describes its strategies as he sees it at work within the arena of the palace. Power does not belong to anyone nor to any place; it is not something that princes necessarily have; it is no Leviathan. Power is simply the effectiveness for achieving for oneself a greater scope for action than for others implicated by one’s strategies. Power is not any thing nor is it necessarily inherent in any one; it is a tenuously produced and reproduced effect which is contingent upon the strategic competencies and skills of actors who would be powerful.

(Clegg, 1989, pp. 32–33)

The Prince embodied a change in the intended audience for political treatises. With the decline of republican institutions in mid-fifteenth century Italy and the rise of the rule of princes, political publications tended to be addressed directly to the princes rather than to the whole body of citizens. As a consequence, the individual citizen is ignored and all attention concentrated on that of the prince. In The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, his remarkably detailed two-volume history of both the renaissance and the reformation, Skinner (1978a, 1978b) notes how The Prince can be read as an extended job application. After the overthrow of the Florentine Republic and the return to power of the Medici, Machiavelli had lost his job as a public servant. With The Prince he hoped to find favour with the Medici and regain political employment.

Nevertheless, Machiavelli was at times hostile to the idea of monarchical government. In the Discourses he states his belief that whilst ‘there are and have been any number of princes, but of good and wise ones there have been but few’ (quoted in Skinner, 1978a, p. 159), and also that government by the people is better than government by princes as the populace makes fewer mistakes than do princes and therefore can be more trusted.

Despite the apparent differences in the Discourses and The Prince, both are concerned with advising on and shaping political opinion, the former being addressed to the whole body of citizens, the latter to individual princes. His support for ‘reprehensible’ actions is on the basis that they ‘are often unavoidable if the freedom of the commonwealth is to be preserved – a value which is thus allowed to override any rival considerations in favour of clemency, justice or the other conventional virtues of political life’ (Skinner, 1978a, p. 184). As a consequence it is unsurprising that Machiavelli is often read as believing that ‘the end justifies the means’, although the verbs he uses are ‘accusare and scusare. The action itself accuses, but its outcome excuses (rather than justifies) its performance’ (ibid., emphasis in original).

Many of Machiavelli’s insights are pertinent to contemporary political strategy. In The Prince he warns that ‘one may be very strong in armed forces, yet in entering a province one has always need of the goodwill of the natives’ (2009 [1532], p. 5). This necessity, which in contemporary discourse is termed ‘the winning of hearts and minds’, is something that was palpably not achieved by the USA-led military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq during the first decade of the twenty-first century.

This need for the goodwill of the natives did not mean that Machiavelli was averse to the exercise of harsh and brutal punishment by the Prince, even if it meant incurring a reputation as a cruel master. Indeed, for him, the reproach of cruelty should not unduly bother the Prince, and as long as the examples of such cruelty were relatively few the prince ‘will be more merciful than those who, through too much mercy, allow disorders to arise, from which follow murders or robberies; for these are wont to injure the whole people, whilst those executions which originate with a prince offend the individual only’ (ibid., p. 59). Whilst he agrees that it is better to be both loved and feared, he notes that such a balance is difficult to achieve and therefore if the choice is between one or the other ‘it is much safer to be feared than loved’ (ibid., p. 60). To be most successful an ‘economy of violence’ is necessary whereby strategies of power need to know not only when to resort to violence but also when to withdraw.

Weber and legitimate power

Max Weber was arguably one of the most influential sociologists of the twentieth century, his work on power being especially pertinent to the development of our understanding of the concept. Weber made the important distinction between power as authority and power as coercion. There were two aspects of authority that he considered central to historical types of domination: first, was the ruler’s authority viewed as legitimate by those subject to it, and second, did such authority rely on the rise of an administrative apparatus containing personnel who will see that the ruler’s commands are carried out. This administrative system mediates between the rulers and the people. In modern Western democracies the legal system, police and local authorities, amongst others, can be seen as ensuring that the commands of those in authority are carried out.

Within modern societies Weber saw domination as comprising elements of each of three historical forms of legitimate domination: charismatic domination, traditional domination and rational-legal domination. Traditional domination refers to the ‘age old rules and powers’ that are held to give the ruler, such as the monarch and aristocracy in feudal societies, their authority and concomitant power. Deference to authority in traditional societies is not due to an enacted legal system but rather from the ruler’s position and the authority deemed to be inherent within that position. In contrast, it is precisely adherence to the legality of enacted rules that characterises ‘legal-domination’. Modern Western democracies can be viewed as examples of legal-domination whereby compliance with the commands of authority figures is expected on the grounds that their power has been legitimated on principles of law, and unlike sovereign power even those holding power are subject to the same legal constraints as those to whom they issue commands. Charismatic domination refers to ‘a certain quality of an individual’s personality which is considered extraordinary and treated as capable of having supernatural, superhuman, or exceptional powers and qualities’ (Weber, 1978 [1922], p. 241). Weber had in mind leaders whose right to rule could be based on either divine origin, such as religious leaders, or conversely, those who emerge from the existing population but command obedience due to the populace seeing them as possessing heroic or mystical powers. Morrison (2006) gives Mahatma G...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Power in modernity
• 2 Power in postmodernity
• 3 From power to empowerment
• 4 Empowerment and social work
• 5 From consciousness- raising to awareness-raising
• 6 Advocacy research and social policy
• 7 From public health to personal empowerment
• 8 The politics of nudge: empowerment by subterfuge
• Conclusion: the subject of empowerment
• References
• Index