Freire's problem-posing method aim is to empower individuals. Empowerment is the ability to understand how we relate to the world. Learning that our actions affect the world, and that the structure of society also affects us is empowering because we understand that people make history. I think that for some people it is easy to understand their relationship with the world, but we should be aware that there are many who cannot do this as easily.
At the shelter, I met a woman who felt shame for staying in an abusive relationship. She believed she was very weak, and dumb for not noticing the early warning signs of abuse. At the end of the conversation I always repeat the story back to the clients to make sure I got everything right. Without noticing, I emphasized a bit more on the economic, and social factors that contributed to her decision about staying with batterer. It was still the same story, but this time I saw her face change. For a minute, she understood as she heard her own story that there were many outside factors that contributed to her decisions. I believe she felt relieved to understand that she was not weak nor dumb and the image of herself improved. I realized that my view of her change as well. I understood her position more and began to realized that under the same circumstances I may have suffered the same consequences.
I told you guys this story to show that many of our clients do not realize how our social circumstances affect our everyday life. Now I want to learn about your own views of empowerment. Is it your goal to empower your clients? Also, will a better understanding of our clients' position in the world allow us to see eye to eye more? Do you even want to have an eye to eye relationship with clients?
11 comments:
I do have a problem with using the word “empower” because I sense the word suggests “I” am going to endow “you” with “power.” In other words, the term itself suggests a hierarchical relationship between two actors. While it may be true that the one person—the “other”—the “you”—in the dynamic does not have power, the word seems to presume that because of what “I” do, the other will then be bestowed with power. In other words, the word “empowerment” itself seems to presuppose that one person “knows” and the other does not. What if the “I” knows some stuff and the “you” knows some stuff too? What if the goal is to share knowledge towards personal AND social transformation that will make things better for the “I” as well as the “you” in the dynamic? What if the goal is to come to understand together the causes and consequences of the harmful situation? Paulo Freire urges that the teacher AND the student learn from each other rather than pre-suppose the teacher is the be-all and end-all of knowledge (the “I”) and the student knows nothing about anything. This does not mean the teacher never shares with students their years of having gained knowledge, information and experience—they must do that (in my opinion). BUT even while the teacher shares knowledge, information and experience does NOT then compute that students are nothing more than passive vessels into which such knowledge gets dumped and then that’s the end of the story.
I wish we could come up with a different word that captures that alternative dynamic—and get rid of “EM-powerment” altogether. Any ideas or suggestions?
Here’s the Oxford English Dictionary definition of empowerment:
Transitive vbs. a. f. em- + n., ‘to put (something) into or upon what is denoted by the n.’; also ‘to put what is denoted by the n. into’ (something).
b. f. em- + n. or adj., with general sense ‘to bring into a certain condition or state’; also (cf. 3) ‘to furnish with something’.
1. trans. To invest legally or formally with power or authority; to authorize, license.
2. To impart or bestow power to an end or for a purpose; to enable, permit.
b. To bestow power upon, make powerful.
3. refl. To gain or assume power over. Obs.
1657 S.W. Schism Dispach't 167 When this strange Vsurpation impower'd itself over the whole Church. Ibid. 179 That William the Conquerour should have impower'd himself over England.
Hence em powering ppl. a.
I am very moved by Ana’s story of reading back to her client the very same words the client had uttered, but with a new emphasis. In a way, this small act could be a metaphor for all we consider central to psychotherapeutic change, indeed for all of social consciousness raising. So much of “empowerment” is the subtle act of sharing with someone their impact on you, thus allowing them to view themselves through another’s eyes: eyes that are not necessarily locked into one particular version of their narrative but that suggest a more expansive, even a contradictory, reading of their life.
I don’t have the same reaction to the word empowerment as Prof. Waterston does. In fact, it’s the name of a project I am working on. I do agree with the Professor’s conceptualization of the process of finding voice and through that voice, power. No one can “give” another the sense of agency or power. Everything happens within a relational paradigm in which people shift positionality between being an object for the other’s intentions, and being a subject who views, manipulates, eroticizes, or in some novel way objectifies the other. We seesaw back and forth in these positions. Thus, the “self- narrative” never originates inside a person (biological determinists be damned!) Any autobiography is a text co-authored by that person and the multiplicity of others that act as muses, editors, censors, and transmogrifiers of the story. All those people who take a place opposite you on the seesaw help write the story.
All of our stories are co-constructed. Therefore, in the same way that I believe others can rob you of your sense of agency through oppression, I do believe that others can empower you by facilitating your re-acquaintance with dormant parts of yourself, parts that you may have lost touch with during your skirmishes with oppressive forces. Others may help reacquaint you with your own clogged wellspring of power, by recognizing in you what you no longer see in the mirror. I do think such contact is empowering, particularly as it puts both people closer to a place where neither needs to play object to the other’s subject. Instead, the dyad might achieve a state of insubjectivity, where they can both be powerful at the same time. No one has to be the loser. As that one-on-one relationship is a microcosm of the broader relational context, it may serve as a model for finding one’s voice in the larger web of power relations. In this sense, it is truly "mutually empowering".
I love, love, love that story about Ana the client from LEAP. My experience in substance abuse counseling at Phoenix House has shown me that hearing and sometimes re-experiencing your history through another person’s voice is the essence of learning how to change – by “learning that our actions affect [our] world.” That is why therapy could initially feel harmful – when you realize that your decisions weren’t constructive toward a positive outcome. We spend more time referencing “coincidences” rather than recognizing how our choices lead us to meet certain people or put us in miscalculated situations. To me, empowerment is learning to deal with your own free will.
The question then becomes, how would you have done things differently? If YOU were the US President and simultaneously had pleas for help and threats to your life over what to do about healthcare, what would perceive as the most constructive route for US citizens? If you were married for one year and expecting a baby with a man/woman who your family and friends love, who hit you hard for the first time out of what you perceive as feelings of love and frustration, how could you find the most constructive route to a better life for yourself and your child? If you’ve just spent 7 years in prison for selling crack and arrive at CEO with decreased respect for authority because the prison guards beat you for laughing, how could you get yourself together to sit up straight and start conducting yourself like the 24 year old man you once dreamed you would be? How do you accept your own past – the bad choices you thought were “good,” while acting on your capacity to make smarter choices, even if they seem to go against everything you’ve known until now?
Lately I have found myself thinking about the term empowerment and what it might mean to empower others. While I thought of this I began to realize how many frequently use this term to loosely claiming themselves for instance, to empower women. When do we as individuals know we have truthfully empowered others and therefore, proceed to take credit for the empowerment we claim to have accomplished? I read around just out of curiosity to see what empowerment meant and found there were several distinct uses of the word by different groups. One similarity I did find amongst all its users was that clearly empowerment is a positive thing, that many enjoy accrediting themselves with having accomplished, which is none the less obvious.
Personally I feel that empowerment is helping others to become better. The Merriam- Webster Online Dictionary defines empowerment as to “promote the self-actualization or influence” meaning which to me seemed quite simple and limited compared to what many of us might view empowerment as and to how it may be expressed in our current day society. It is my goal to empower myself and others when possible. Empowerment to me is kind of like always pushing into trying to maintain a positive outlook, helping mold yourself and others into becoming better people. I’ve been told its is kind of like seeking the clear skies after the storm. I feel that a better understanding of your clients stuation does help you provide them with better services because you become more inapt with what they may need and down which road they may need to be lead. I feel “eye to eye relationships” as Ana puts it are better to accomplish the best results when executing your work.
I found Ana’s post very inspiring this week. How powerful it is to open the eyes of an individuals by simply reiterate their story back to them. I also thought Danielle’s post was quite inspiring too. I personally don’t know how I feel about the word “empowerment.” Part of me agrees with Professor Waterston, empowerment sounds a bit paternalistic and perhaps even a bit oppressive. But then again it sure is a wonderful thing when an individual gets inspired and feels the strength within them to better themselves. And I think Katiria has a valid point, what I took from it (and I could be completely wrong) is who takes the credit for empowering someone else. It seems like a win-win situation. I wonder what Neethu thinks of this, what is the relationship, if any, between empowerment and compassion fatigue?
I do not think however, that it is our responsibility to empower people. Like Ana said in the seminar, empowerment is a reflection of emotional self sufficiency. I think we are here to provide services, and hope our clients will find empowerment through their independence. I unfortunately cannot empower "my clients." I do not have enough interaction with them on a one on one basis. All I can do, is facilitate the process and the service CJA offers them, the possibility to be released on their own recognizance. At the end of the day though, it is up to them to come back to court on their appointed date, and to take charge of their own lives....
I’m completely with Professor Waterston on this one. I also feel that “empowerment” has a pitiful and paternalistic connotation. I think that Ana’s experience with her client was one where Ana did an excellent job in providing perspective to someone in a very vulnerable and confusing position. Ana’s compassion and warmth were conducive to this client’s “healing process” (another cliché but it fits). However, “empowerment” strikes me as a term created by a conceited therapist or “higher-up” to solidify or sum-up what he or she does. I also feel this term implies a one-way, top-to-bottom power structure when dealing with others, a sort-of “banking-method” to therapy (as described by Paulo Freire) which I believe we were all against unanimously. While I believe that experiences can be empowering, I don’t believe anyone can empower anyone else, nor should empowering others be a goal due to what I feel are problematic connotations and implications with this word and attitude. However, I understand that the definition of “empowerment” can be subjective. You should absolutely set out to help, to converse, and to show compassion and understanding in hopes of reaching someone. This, to me, sounds a lot nobler than “empowerment” and allows for the eye-to-eye understanding Ana speaks of. This is so important and often missing in supposed holistic approaches when dealing with sensitive social and personal issues. The compassion and interpersonal intelligence Ana exhibits are exactly what is needed in this field.
This is an interesting debate: is empowerment a co-authored story, as Prof Stein suggests, or does it necessarily imply a kind of insidious directionality?
When I think of empowerment and all its sticky issues, I think of literacy. It is empowering to learn how to read and write. Sometimes you can teach this to yourself (Abraham Lincoln, a famous if apocryphal example) but most often someone "knows" some stuff and has to teach this to the one who does not. The "teacher" (a parent, an actual teacher, an older sibling) has real power in this relationship, but the "student" is also acquiring something that has real power. Of course, literacy is not empowering in a straightforward way. There can be strings attached (the kinds of ideological traps that come with a top-down transfer of power, as Prof W and Manny discuss). This is the point of the famous comment by Caliban, Prospero's slave in Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST:
"You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse."
What good is language, Caliban suggests, if he is only empowered to understand (and curse) his own deplorable condition? But if one's only profit from language were to know how to curse, slaveholders would not have made reading illegal for slaves. Learning how to read, as Frederick Douglass did on the sly, would not have been the powerful tool against slavery that language became in his hands.
This brings me back to a point I feel we have made over and over again in seminar this semester, whether it is in making an argument for some kind of textbook or for some kind of basic transfer-of-knowledge aspect in at least elementary education. Sometimes there is just stuff to know as a building block to asking questions/developing the kind of agency so crucial to social justice. As much as I admire Freire's ideas, I don't think I've ever been in a class where every student received the information in the same way. Some students will absorb stuff without question, some will resist, adapt, ignore. So I guess I'm saying both: something can be empowering while also being -- hopefully only temporarily -- hierarchical.
This speaks to an interesting idea in a book by a former professor of mine, Neil Lazarus. In NATIONALISM AND CULTURAL PRACTICE IN THE POSTCOLONIAL WORLD, he talks about "hating tradition properly." His point is sophisticated, but to put it simplistically you have to study and understand -- perhaps inhabit -- something in order to dismantle or reject it. He writes: "To hate tradition properly is rather to mobilize its own protocols, procedures, and interior logic against it -- to demonstrate that it is only on the basis of a project that exceeds its own horizons or self-consciousness that tradition can possibly be imagined redeeming its own pledges." Think, for example, of how the "Declaration of Independence" was made, by those who fought for liberty over centuries of struggles, to "redeem its own pledges," or how those who mastered British law were able to mobilize its own "protocols, procedures and interior logic against it" in the struggle for Indian independence. Maybe cursing is not as much of a dead-end option as Caliban thought.
Beautiful, Professor Reitz.
I wish--hope--ALL the students in the seminar are reading the posts. Not all, clearly, are writing them.
Where are you, the rest?
"Is it your goal to empower your clients? Also, will a better understanding of our clients' position in the world allow us to see eye to eye more?"
I don't think I have the ability to empower the kids at CASES. I can help them learn to read or write or teach them math and science or how to do well on the GED test, but they must empower themselves I feel. Or maybe it is about the willingness and openness to being empowered? Some students really embrace what you teach them and struggle to learn and practice--they're the ones who do the homework and bring it back to make sure it's correct. Other students do as much as they need to pass the test or get through the hour or two in class.
Sometimes it can all be really frustrating, and what keeps me in check is putting myself into the kids shoes and better understanding their position in the world, as Ana states. Last week, we gave another GED predictor test at CASES and as usual some of the kids just didn't show. One of the kids, who is pretty smart and who we all felt would do well, came in too late to take the test. All of us were pretty upset by this and when we questioned him as to why he was late, he replied that he had been up until 4 am. And when we asked why he was up until 4am when he knew he had to take the test in the morning, he replied "who else is gonna make my money for me?" It's so frustrating when the kids don't make the decisions you want them to but at the same time it is easy for us to say what decision they should make when we are not in their position. I've never really had to make a choice between making money to survive and furthering my education and my life. I think about how I might have turned out if I had been born into their neighborhood, their position in the world, with the same schools and the same peers...the meager opportunities. I could be the client at CASES instead of the intern. Some perspective helps keep the frustration at bay.
I've always thought of empowerment as someone bestowing power to another person (as Professor Waterston's post stated). For instance, when I was at the Learning Center at The Kenmore, I taught a tenant how to use the internet to search for public housing because he wanted to live independently. For someone that doesn't know how to use a computer, I felt that I empowered him by teaching him to use the computer and we were able to find the information that he was looking for.
After reading everyone's post, I realized that empowerment can have a different meaning all together. Ana's story was very inspiring to read. As Ana simply re-read the clients story back to her she was able to see her life (& the world) in a different perspective.
I do not believe that I have the ability to "empower" clients at the Guardianship Project. I agree with Prof. Waterston that the term does not precisely fit this discussion. Perhaps, give "hope" would be a better fit?
Clients at the Guardianship Project, ultimately, want to know that they are being taken care of. This is understandable as the social workers, who work there, are responsible for their assets, including property, legal, and financial. Visiting clients has allowed me to get a better understanding of why certain office/legal work needs to be done. Affiliating the personal situation of clients with their legal situation has allowed me to understand why courts appoint guardian ad litums.
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