Ethics Of Empowerment Research Articles

'Troubling' moments in health promotion: unpacking the ethics of empowerment.

Concepts of empowerment feature strongly in global health discourses. Empowerment is frequently advocated as a positive approach to addressing individual and community-level health needs. Despite its popularity, relatively little has been said about the unintended consequences of empowerment, which may give rise to some troubling ethical issues or, indeed, result in outcomes that may not be considered health promoting. Drawing on current uses of empowerment within health promotion, along with insights from an ethnographic study on young people's health, this paper raises some critical questions about the ethics of empowerment. By doing so, the paper troubles the idea that empowerment is a 'good thing' without some careful attention to the varying ways in which the ethics of empowerment may unfold in practice. Findings revealed young people's different perspectives on health and priorities for health promotion. The present analysis highlights how these alternative framings prompt a number of ethical tensions for understanding and operationalising empowerment. In conclusion, the findings underscore the importance of promoting ethical reflexivity in health promotion and, crucially, attending to the unintended and potentially ethically problematic consequences of empowerment. So what? This paper raises some critical questions about the ethics of empowerment and calls for a more thorough engagement with the unintended consequences of empowerment within health promotion.

Towards a Deleuzo-feminist ethics of empowerment and freedom from logics of judgement

This paper brings together themes from the varied texts of Gilles Deleuze in outlining a Deleuzo-feminist ethics that speaks to contemporary debates in education. Drawing on Deleuze's (1988) engagement with Spinozan ethics, Foucault's (1987) ‘practice of freedom’, the Nietzschean ‘doctrine of judgment’ and ‘system of cruelty’ (Deleuze 2001), and Bergsonian ‘fabulatory processes’ (Deleuze 1995), we explore the poststructuralist distinction between ethics and morality and its implications for feminist responses to neoliberal educational practices, identities and cultures. Following Gannon (2012a, 2012b) and others (e.g. Braidotti 1996, 2000; Colebrook 2000; Grosz 2000, 2002; Wyatt and Davies 2011), we mobilise Deleuzian accounts of subjectivity, corporeality and difference in reconfiguring the existential dimension of teaching as an ethico-aesthetic relationality. A Deleuzo-feminist ethics of empowerment promises: escape from systems of cruelty that mark, shame and blame; the politicisation of such systems; productive experimental alliances and an alternative mode of existence to that prescribed for the teaching and student body by neoliberal rationalisation and bureaucratic proceduralism.

The Ethics of Empowerment

The Ethics of Empowerment

The Ethics of Empowerment

The Ethics of Empowerment

Ethics of empowerment

Ethics of empowerment

The ethics of empowerment

Driven by competitive pressure, organizations are empowering employees to use their judgment, creativity, and ideas in pursuit of enhanced organizational performance and both employee and shareholder satisfaction. This empowerment offers both benefits and potential harm. This article explores the benefits and harm associated with role, reward, process and governance empowerment and makes recommendations for minimizing the harm while maximizing the benefits.