Rethinking Empowerment: A Postmodern Reappraisal for Emancipatory Practice

Summary This article is concerned with the implications of the postmodernchallenge to critical theory for the practice of empowerment.How do we conceptualize empowerment from a postmodern perspective?It is argued that the modernist concept of power upon whichempowerment rests, can have unintended disempowering effects.By conceptualizing power as a commodity, identities are forcedinto a powerful–powerless dualism which does not alwaysdo justice to diverse experiences. Thus we can sometimes contributeto dominance in spite of our liberatory intentions. It is arguedthat social workers need to become more aware of the self-discipliningand self-regulatory processes involved in professional workto address the social relations of power embedded in professionalpractices. Foucault's analysis of how marginalized knowledgesare affected by dominant cultural practices suggests a redefiningof empowerment as the insurrection of subjugated knowledge.The implications of this redefinition for practice is illustratedby reference to work with indigenous people in Australia.