Supporting Community Empowerment MiniMOOC Week 2
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This document discusses empowerment, structure, and agency. It introduces a model of empowerment that views empowerment as existing in a cyclical relationship with structures and agency. Structures both enable and constrain individuals, influencing their identity and empowerment. Empowered individuals then have greater agency to act and interact with structures, potentially creating new structures. The document emphasizes that empowerment is most effective when approached as a collective process that brings about social change. It questions how language around empowerment is used and how to encourage focusing on structures' enabling aspects.
Supporting Community Empowerment MiniMOOC Week 2
- 1. Empowerment, structure and agency Dr Lucy Maynard – Research Assistant, Brathay Trust Kaz Stuart – Head of Research and Evaluation, Brathay Trust
- 2. Aims of the presentation • Listen to Gemma’s story • Introduce a model of empowerment • Empowerment as collective action • Understanding structures • Relating to agency
- 3. Gemma’s Story People should be aware that Gemma’s language is at times colourful and she talks about sexual exploitation. Gemma is a pseudonym chosen by herself.
- 6. Personal becoming… • Questioning • Challenging • Critical • Political
- 7. Collective action Personal becoming collective “Collective narratives for change” (Ledwith, 2011, p.62).
- 8. Collective action Autonomy and action gather strength in a collective process: “the simple act of listening to people’s stories, respectfully giving one’s full attention, is an act of personal empowerment, but to bring about change for social justice this process needs to be collective and needs to be located within wider structures” (ibid.)
- 9. Structures • Micro – our day to day practice • Meso – organisational and professional governance and norms • Macro – National law, policy, and ‘discourses’ • Beneficiary – children, young people and families
- 10. Structures are positive and negative Enabling Constraining Policy A is fantastic, it means I can…. Policy A is terrible, it means I have to…. Less resources mean we need to do Less resources mean we don’t have more together time do anything together The way people work together is really I have to work with everyone all the inclusive and I get more out of it time, and it really gets in the way of doing my job Please help me out, I am really Don’t think that you can come into this struggling in how to handle my kids, house telling us what to do,, bloomin’ and know that you might be able to busy body…. help
- 12. Agency is….. • “individuals need to be conceptualised as personally agentic, yet socially shaped over time.” (Mead, 1913) • Agency; “implies the ability of individuals or groups to act on their situations, to behave as subjects rather than objects in their own lives, to shape their own circumstances and ultimately achieve change” (Jeffery, 2011, p. 6)
- 13. Agency comprises: • Awareness • Choice • Action
- 14. • “Any reasonably complete theory of human agency will need, in some way, to advert to our reflectiveness, our planfulness, and our conception of agency as temporally extended” Bratman (2007, p. 22). • Giddens (1984), Archer (2000), Hay (2004) are leading contemporary authors who debate structure and agency.
- 16. Our ideas…. • Structure pre-exists actions • Structures influence identity • Identity influences empowerment • Empowerment influences agency • Agency interacts with structures, creating a new structure • So empowerment, agency and structures exist in a cyclical relationship.
- 17. ??? • How important is our language when we are discussing ‘empowerment’? • How can we encourage people to focus on the enabling aspects of structure, rather than just the constraints?
- 18. Key references Archer, M. (2000) Being Human, the problem of agency. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Bratman, M. (2007) Structures of Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Freire, P. (1973). Education for a critical consciousness. New York: Seabury Press. Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hay, C. (2002) Political Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Jeffery, L. (2011) Understanding Agency. Bristol: Policy Press. Ledwith, M. (2011). Community development: A critical approach (Second Edition). Bristol: Policy Press. Maynard (2011) “Suddenly I See”- Outdoor Youth Development’s Impact on Young Women’s Well-being: An Empowerment Framework. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Cumbria. Mead, G. (1913) The Social Self. Bobbs Merril Reprint.