| | 'Empowerment' is a concept which has found much favour in the development field in the last decade. Its very popularity and pervasiveness hint at its emptiness - or to put it more positively, we are on contested ground here. For those who use the term approvingly (and I include here international development agencies, the World Bank etc) it is understood to mean a creative harnessing of energies to the development effort: the energies of 'women' , 'communities' , occasionally even 'the poor' - social categories that are perceived to have been left out or left behind in the development process. At first sight this seems very promising, even revolutionary, with its echoes of Freireian consciencization, and its apparent commitment to 'listening to the people' . |
