Promise Of Empowerment Research Articles

Citizen empowerment as a police force multiplier: Reproducing social domination through a 21st century personal safety app

Citizen is a digital mapping platform and personal safety app that boasts over 10 million users in the United States. Through the platform, users can report crimes, map safe routes, or rely on the app’s other functions to protect themselves from dangerous situations. Sold on a promise of empowerment, Citizen markets itself as a 21st century technology capable of repairing the ills of our social world. In this article we analyze how Citizen taps into the desire for control and safety and urges its users to actively protect their own communities. As such, we suggest that while surveillant in nature, Citizen revolves around the force inherent to police power, transforming its users via police power by first integrating them into their social platform. Ultimately, Citizen reminds us that police power is not limited to ideological or violent exchanges, but can be a compelling solution to community problems. Rather than a progressive fix to the issues between policing and communities, however, we find that Citizen offers an expansion of police power at the individual scale, reproducing social domination both at the level of capital and the state.

Empowerment narratives and sticky affects: the workings of affective capitalism in Philippine call centers

Abstract In contemporary work arrangements that are premised on the exchange of information, communication, and services, one dominant instrumentality of affective capitalism is the practice of emotional labor. In this paper, I turn my attention to the promise of empowerment in the workplace and propose that it is another instrumentality of affective capitalism. Specifically, I examine the ways through which positive feelings are evoked and maintained in the Philippine call center industry through the circulation of empowerment narratives that are of particular significance to its Filipino workers. Using Wetherell’s notion of affective practice and Ahmed’s notion of the stickiness of emotion, I examine the affective-discursive dimensions of the empowerment narratives, trace their repeated telling, and surface the other narratives upon which they draw to show how particular affects become sticky, that is, how they gain recognition and resonance, and are felt and taken up by the same bodies that circulate them. In making explicit the relationship between the empowerment narratives and their sticky affects, I demonstrate that the promise of empowerment in the call centers is as much a discursive practice as it is an affective one. Thus, to make sense of the workings of affective capitalism in the new work order, it is crucial to interrogate not only the affective dispositions that workers are made to occupy in the workplace, but also dominant workplace discourses that are, in fact, designed to evoke, circulate, and maintain the desired affects.

Digital health's impact on integrated care, carer empowerment and patient-centeredness for persons living with dementia

BackgroundE-health or digital health technologies endeavour to connect key stakeholders and thereby lay the foundation for better integrated as well as potentially more patient-centered care. However, despite the promise of empowerment, efficiency and value, digital health has yet to become part of the daily lives of the people who care for persons living with dementia. ObjectivesThis study examines what role digital health technologies play in enhancing integrated care, carer empowerment and the provision of patient-centeredness in dementia care. In particular, the focus is on how these carers may experience empowerment through digital means and if, or how, this engagement translates into better care for those persons living with dementia. MethodsEight qualitative case studies are conducted comprising semi-structured interviews before, during and after engagement with the technology. This data is used for each case, as well as health information and assessments, to explore the impact of digital health engagement and support on family carer empowerment and patient-centered care for persons living with dementia. FindingsThis study indicates that technology can empower both family carers and persons with dementia, and enhance many aspects of their clinical care. However, it may also increase the responsibility they feel (a 'responsibilization' of carers so to speak) in ways previously unanticipated. As much as carers are capable of embracing the complexities of caring for those persons with dementia, healthcare professionals and those designing technological support need to understand the tension between empowerment and responsibility that digital health engenders in family carers, in order to design and implement systems that can provide beneficial supports. Public interest summaryMany of us know someone with a diagnosis of dementia through family and the wider community. Whilst many persons living with mild dementia live fulfilling and independent lives, many rely on a family carer for more complex tasks, such as the management of their healthcare. This paper explores if and how health technologies can support carers in managing the clinical aspects of care, thus relieving stress and empowering them to provide supported care. This was achieved by installing a connected technology system for six weeks in the homes of persons living with dementia and exploring carers’ experiences. While some carers benefited from the real-time clinical supports, experienced empowerment and found that their caring capacity improved, the system also created stress and responsibility. It is clear that digital health systems have potential. However, they need to be designed in collaboration with the ‘real persons’ who will use them – carers, as well as the persons living with dementia.

Can digital health save democracy? Meeting the cosmopolitical challenge of digital worlds

This article explores the challenges and opportunities of social media health activisms to shape public participation in the digital future of healthcare. As health becomes ever more entangled with digital technologies, a growing ecology of digital health services promise greater individual autonomy to learn about and managing medical conditions, as well as accessing health services and engaging in forms of self-care. Cautioning against optimist visions of digital health and their promise of empowerment and autonomy, the article explores how health activisms on social media are reclaiming visions of healthcare that move beyond individual and depoliticised models of health technologies. The notion of cosmopolitics is employed to conceptualise relations between technology and health that implicate human and non-human interests in entanglements between health, morality and technology.

Imaginings of Empowerment and the Biomedical Production of Bodies

In this paper, I will explore the development of vaginal microbicides (female-initiated HIV prevention methods designed as gels, films, sponges and rings women can insert vaginally before having sex to protect themselves against HIV infection) as a women’s health intervention that entangles feminist ideals of empowerment with biomedical enterprise. The field of vaginal microbicide development pays heed to both the specific biological vulnerabilities of ‘the female body’ that are understood to make women more susceptible to HIV infection as well as the social gendered power relations that leave women at a higher risk of HIV within the power dynamics of their sexual relationships. I am particularly interested in the ambiguity that emerges between the effects of a biomedical search for facticity through clinical trial testing and advocacy promises of empowerment, which I will explore through analysing the clinical trials of Nonoxynol-9 microbicide candidates in the early 1990s – a microbicide candidate that was continuously linked to vaginal ulceration and consequently a potential increase in receptivity to HIV. Through an interrogation of clinical trial reports, advocacy documents and a social science study in which the women trial participants articulated Nonoxynol-9 as their “protector”, I argue that the story of Nonoxynol-9 shows an intrinsic ambiguity between the field’s feminist promise of empowerment and the effects of the biomedical search for an effective microbicide candidate. Drawing on the work of Karen Barad, I argue that agential realism is able to provide a robust analytical framework to interrogate the political and ethical effects of this ambiguity that the field’s own discourse of empowerment does not provide.
 
 Key words: HIV, vaginal microbicides, agential realism, global health, new materialism

If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them: The French Constitutional Council's First Reference to the Court of Justice

Not unlike national parliaments, which have seen their influence eroded as power gradually shifted to Brussels, constitutional courts are, if anything, net losers of the integration process.1 At least lower domestic courts had some incentives to embrace the constitutional revolution initiated by the Court of Justice. For them, the twin doctrines of supremacy and direct effect combined with the Simmenthal mandate came as a promise of empowerment. It was a promise of empowerment against domestic legislators as lower courts gained the power to set aside statutes, in legal systems that had either made it the exclusive preserve of constitutional courts or denied it altogether to the judicial branch. But equally, it was a promise of empowerment against the higher echelons of the domestic judicial hierarchy as EU law and the European Court afforded lower court judges a convenient avenue to challenge established lines of case law. None of this applied to constitutional courts. Not only did legal integration entail the loss of a cherished monopoly that was a distinctive trait of the Kelsenian model of constitutional review. But it also meant that, as the body of EU law expanded, so too did the Court of Justice's remit and influence. Very much like in a zero-sum game, any jurisdictional gain for the Court of Justice came at a commensurate loss for constitutional judges. Worse still, for the constitutional courts that used to exert a tight grip on the operations of ordinary courts, or wished to establish such control, the ever-expanding reach of EU law together with the emergence of a powerful European Court posed a potentially ominous challenge to their authority over ordinary judges.

Trying to Make Sense of History: Chinese Christian Traditions of Countercultural Belief and their Theological and Political Interpretation of Past and Present History

The dramatic changes occurring in China in recent years have made many intellectuals ask about history, its values, and its purpose. When Chinese Christians reflect about history they find themselves in a contradictory situation. They enjoy the fruits of tremendous social changes, yet they also experience ongoing hostility of the state. Equally, they recognise that social change is not only a blessing, but may also contribute to growing disintegration in society. This paper introduces three interpretations of Chinese history offered by independent Christian groups or individuals. They are attempts to make sense of history and the radical changes and emerging contradictions of the past years. The historical constructs try to shed light on the question where Christians stand in this process of change. The examples presented are (a) the Back to Jerusalem Movement (BJM), a strongly revivalist missionary movement, (b) Yuan Zhi Ming who became famous through a DVD, called China's Confession, and (c) Ren Bumei, a Christian intellectual. They all in different forms offer a political theology that shows a political assertiveness and outspokenness that is atypical of the independent Christian tradition in China. The article concludes that the three presented historical interpretations stand in continuity with a long countercultural history in China. They reflect an experience of powerlessness and a promise of empowerment that are both responses to the experience of life in a totalitarian state.

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this issue. Institutional Economics Perspectives on African Agricultural Development. Edited by J. F. Kirsten, A. R. Dorward, C. Poulton and N. Vink. Moving Out of Poverty, Vol. III: The Promise of Empowerment and Democracy in India. Edited by Deepa Narayan. Uganda's Economic Reforms: Insider Accounts. Edited by Florence Kuteesa, Emmanuel Tumusiime‐Mutebile, Alan Whitworth and Tim Williamson.

Iris Borowy and Wolf D Gruner (eds), Facing illness in troubled times: health in Europe in the interwar years, 1918–1939, Frankfurt am Main and New York, Peter Lang, 2005, pp. xiv, 424, £41.90 (paperback 3-631-51948-6).

“Troubled times” seems a bland summary of the interwar years, and experts—statisticians, scientists and doctors—rather than individual or collective sufferers are “facing illness” in this volume. That said, this is an informative collection with a comprehensive introduction worth further expansion. The editors highlight the ambiguities surrounding health as a public issue in this period, with the repositioning of voluntary and charitable effort and increasing state involvement suggesting responsibility for individuals but exercising authority over them. Health matters took on greater significance in the formation and conceptualization of nations; integrating or excluding, helping to define borders and to forge identities. They were the focus of new and influential international bodies (notably the League of Nations Health Organisation, and the Rockefeller Foundation) and of scientific expertise, with developments in bacteriology, nutrition, eugenics, and social medicine interacting with contending political viewpoints. A healthy citizenry featured in varied ideologies offering “the promise of empowerment and uplift which included the option not only of a new position for the common man but of a new man per se, strengthened by improved education and status and significantly improved health” (p. 7). Differing interpretations of health, seen here as “neither an objective reality, nor a cultural construction but a synthesis of both” (p. 8), require allowance for conceptualization and contextualization by contemporaries and by historians. This involves the interaction of problem-laden objectification of certain “realities” and of their political, social or ideological usage. Most contributors are content to focus upon data or policy issues, however, and the book divides along these lines. Part One needed a summary of changes in mortality in European countries, as this cannot be established from individual chapters. Robert Lee's examination of causes of mortality, specifically defects in the quality of data and the limited implementation of an international classification system, demonstrates that “more” did not necessarily mean “better” in data provision. Mortality is a poor approximation for health and Paul Weindling reviews studies based on insurance, school and family records, and efforts to quantify morbidity and to utilize health indicators. Iris Borowy also evaluates problems surrounding the compilation and use of the League of Nations' International Health Yearbooks (1924–9) for comparative purposes. Central and south-eastern Europe, where health featured strongly in nation building, are well-represented. Hana Masova and Petr Svobodný survey health care in the new Czechoslovak Republic and the awkward combination of public health arrangements, an established sickness insurance scheme, and voluntary and state institutions with interests in social medicine. They see inclusionary innovations in social hygiene (combating “civilisation diseases”) and hospital provision before the Munich Agreement and subsequent invasion. Yugoslavia suggests contrasting interpretations. Željko Dugac focuses upon Andrija Stampar, at the Ministry of Health and working closely with the Rockefeller Foundation, who ascribed a pivotal role to public health and health education but was removed in 1931 by self-interested private physicians and ethnically-motivated anti-centralisers. Patrick Zylberman's study of the anti-malarial campaign in Macedonia depicts this as a form of border consolidation and “Serbianisation”, whereas Esteban Rodriguez-Ocana's parallel Spanish study suggests the limitations of international bodies and new medical technologies when faced by suspicious local physicians and powerful, unsympathetic landowners. Thorsten Halling, Julia Schafer and Jorg Vogele consider German infant mortality in the contexts of the epidemiological transition and of attempts to measure “human capital” assets (or, on racial or eugenicist grounds, liabilities). Sylvelyn Hahner-Rombach's examination of depictions of TB sufferers as “anti-social” is germane to this, though her comparison of medicine and scientific discourse with earlier social labelling of such “threats” seems compartmentalized. A disturbing parallel may lurk in the influence of Zionist ideology and the medical selection of Jewish migrants to Palestine, discussed by Nadav Davidovitch and Shifra Shvarts. Generally the approach is “top-downwards” in national or local studies, with some privileging of doctors, scientists or institutions as principal actors shaping health policy or medical campaigns (Lion Murard on Jaques Parisot in Nancy or Emilio Quevedo on the Rockefeller Foundation and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine). However Martin Gorsky and Bernard Harris build on James Riley's work, using Hampshire Friendly Society records to suggest that rising claim rates were driven by an ageing population, specifically the over-fifties. This offers a rare glimpse of ordinary people facing illness in a none the less valuable and informative collection.

Discourse in different voices: reconciling N=1 and N=many

When groups are convened to discuss the making of policy, people are chosen to represent particular interests because they have relevant experience. Different stakeholders, however, may use differing discourses, and particular discourses may be privileged in particular contexts. This means that important contributions to the discussion may not be reflected in final reports. Discursive incommensurability is particularly seen when individual, personal experience is presented in meetings where quantification or “numbers talk” is privileged. While pooled personal experience may carry some weight in such a context, individual anecdote does not. The inclusion of ‘consumers’ in policy making groups may result in their dysempowerment. Their presence promises that they will have influence, but their voices disappear from the final document. The promise of empowerment is not realised. Dysempowerment may translate into empowerment with time, as it has done with feminism and the HIV/AIDS lobby. In order to speed the process, we suggest some practical means whereby mixed discourses may be generated and monitored. For constructive interchange, each party to the discourse needs to express the interests and arguments relevant to the group he or she represents. Supporting this principle of representation are principles of implicature and radical respect. Implicature is the act of implying what is relevant to others involved in the discourse. Radical respect is a fundamental and foundational respect for others in their roles as representatives of stakeholders with legitimate interests in the topic of the discourse.

Southern NGOs and the Internet: Empowerment or Enslavement?

Abstract This paper explores the implications of Information Communication Technology (ICT) adoption amongst southern based advocacy oriented non government organisations (NGOs). The current debate suggests that ICTs hold promise of empowerment for such NGOs, but also threats of enslavement. A significant portion of this paper concentrates on the World Development Report 1998/99, which deals with some of these issues, and on the World Bank's InfoDev initiative, which promotes the use of ICTs In development contexts. What are the effects of NGOs' increasing reliance on donor agencies, such as the World Bank, to finance their connection to the Internet? It is suggested that these NGOs face Important issues of identity and accountability.

The Marketing of Empowerment and the Construction of the Health Consumer: A Critique of Health Promotion

Health promotion claims to be empowering. However, this claim is not without major problematic contradictions and inconsistencies. The way in which health promotion is also controlling is identified in this article. To understand why the discourse of health promotion is traversed by this empowering/controlling contradiction, the discourse is critically analyzed, revealing a parallel with the structure of the discourse of marketing. Health promotion, rather than fulfilling its promise of empowerment, effectively constructs the individual subject as a "health consumer" in accordance with the model of consumer capitalism.