Abstract
Empowerment is a prominent concept in psychology, and for decades, it has been a key term in global development policy, theory, and practice. However, in line with similar turns toward individualism in psychology, the prevalent understanding of the concept centers on individual capacity to change circumstances, with less focus on empowerment as a context-dependent or communal approach. In this article, adopting decolonial feminist psychology as a lens, we analyze how rural Malawians make meaning of the overarching empowerment and development approach of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in their villages, and how they perceive the approaches as fitting with local contexts. When development implementers largely ignore Malawi’s communal lifestyle, individualized empowerment initiatives can lead to individual and communal disempowerment and distress. Given psychology’s large influence on other arenas, and psychology’s implication with the individualized gender-development-empowerment nexus, we argue that it is imperative to explore the effects and experiences of this empowerment approach in different contexts. A more context-appropriate understanding of empowerment—as with most other psychological concepts—is needed.
Highlights
Empowerment is a prominent concept in psychology, and for decades, it has been a key term in global development policy, theory, and practice
In line with the decolonial feminist psychology stance, we emphasize our own positionality from the get go: being white, female Scandinavian researchers writing about mainly western non-governmental organizations (NGOs) lack of context-sensitivity in development work in Malawi, we want to emphasize two aspects: first, that the project was conducted in close collaboration with Malawians
This led us to focus on the following: how do the participants talk about the approaches of the NGOs implementing development interventions in their villages? How do participants see the NGOs ways of operating as fitting with their settings? We read the material for this, and constructed themes that we reworked through our discussions
Summary
Empowerment is a prominent concept in psychology, and for decades, it has been a key term in global development policy, theory, and practice. In this article, adopting decolonial feminist psychology as a lens, we analyze how rural Malawians make meaning of the overarching empowerment and development approach of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in their villages, and how they perceive the approaches as fitting with local contexts. The dominant focus on the individual, prevalent in many Western psychological traditions (Adjei, 2019), has come to play a substantial role in development policy, theory, and practice (Klein, 2016) This is manifested in non-governmental organizations’ (NGOs) general tendency to center implementation of empowerment on individuals’ agency and capacity to change their own circumstances (Cornwall & Anyidoho, 2010; Rutherford, 2018); and less on systemic alterations or communal interventions. Looking at how Western (psychological) assumptions of development and individualism travel through NGOs in the language of 'empowerment', we ask rural Malawians targeted by these development practices, how they make meaning of them
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
