Empowerment as Ceremony (häftad)
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Format
Inbunden (Hardback)
Språk
Engelska
Antal sidor
124
Utgivningsdatum
2013-09-30
Förlag
Routledge
Dimensioner
234 x 147 x 15 mm
Vikt
318 g
Antal komponenter
1
ISBN
9781412851602

Empowerment as Ceremony

Inbunden,  Engelska, 2013-09-30
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Many people in the United States are poor, lead marginal lives, and need jobs as well as basic services such as education, medical care, and housing. Multitudes in other parts of the world, in addition to being poor, are jailed, tortured, and killed for being members of the wrong ethnic group or expressing political opinions. Those who argue for empowerment claim it is a magic bullet. It can liberate the oppressed, largely through self-organization, self-motivation, self-invention, and even self-clarity. William M. Epstein sees contemporary empowerment practice in the United States as a civic church of national values, one better in performing its ceremonial role than god-based houses of worship. By itself, empowerment is not worth the effort of commentary, since it achieves none of its goals and has not even generated a respectable critical literature. But Epstein argues that empowerment practice and American social welfare both embody prescriptive cultural preferences. Like art and music, empowerment opens windows into deeper social meaning. The social sciences have carved out roles for themselves by looking for simple remedies, ones that are inexpensive and compatible with contemporary social arrangements. Epstein shows that those in social work practices have not only deluded themselves into thinking that these services have real instrumental value, but really operate at cross-purposes. This accessible work will attract critical attention among these professional groups. It bases its carefully-documented insights upon informed sociological and anthropological theory.
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"For decades the human service professions have been enthralled with empowerment practice, mistaking talk therapy and personal adjustment for an effective challenge to socioeconomic inequality. Empowerment as Ceremony aims to end that romance. Epstein's trenchant analysis traces the revolutionary roots of the idea of empowerment to its degeneration into a deeply conservative accommodation to the status quo through small scale self-help, encouraging adaptation to social norms, consciousness raising, and re-education. He challenges the usefulness of empowerment practice on historical, ideological, and empirical grounds. This bracing critique takes few prisoners and those it confines for questioning are not treated kindly. Empowerment practice, he argues, does not challenge the ruling class, but rather serves ceremonial functions by engaging in the 'literary theatrics of liberation.'" --Stuart A. Kirk, professor emeritus, Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA "Social work as a field has focused on empowerment rather than self-efficacy. Dr. Esptein's thoughtful and provocative consideration of the problems with the use of the construct of empowerment takes the reader a long way towards understanding why social work has suffered from pursuing this path." --Gary Holden, Ph.D., professor, New York University Silver School of Social Work "For decades the human service professions have been enthralled with empowerment practice, mistaking talk therapy and personal adjustment for an effective challenge to socioeconomic inequality. Empowerment as Ceremony aims to end that romance. Epstein's trenchant analysis traces the revolutionary roots of the idea of empowerment to its degeneration into a deeply conservative accommodation to the status quo through small scale self-help, encouraging adaptation to social norms, consciousness raising, and re-education. He challenges the usefulness of empowerment practice on historical, ideological, and empirical grounds. This bracing critique takes few prisoners and those it confines for questioning are not treated kindly. Empowerment practice, he argues, does not challenge the ruling class, but rather serves ceremonial functions by engaging in the 'literary theatrics of liberation.'" --Stuart A. Kirk, professor emeritus, Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA "Social work as a field has focused on empowerment rather than self-efficacy. Dr. Epstein's thoughtful and provocative consideration of the problems with the use of the construct of empowerment takes the reader a long way towards understanding why social work has suffered from pursuing this path." --Gary Holden, Ph.D., professor, New York University Silver School of Social Work "In his usual brilliantly captivating expressive writing style, he [William Epstein] makes a persuasive argument questioning the overall effectiveness of empowerment practices. This book should be read by social work educators and scholars, policy makers, helping professionals, and by those who are publicly minded intellectuals. His command of the history of American social policy, the practice of social welfare, and his amalgamation of sociological and political literature significantly enrich his arguments. This book is a significant contribution to the social work profession and scholarship, which should cause a long and deep pause about our thinking concerning teaching and promoting empowerment practices as a core, efficacious practice strategy and valued ideology. Epstein provides a corrective lens to understanding how empowerment practices in human services and social policy function to uphold and help the oppressed adapt to narcissistic American values rather than to change underlying social policy and political forces that favor the privilege by further delimiting the redistribution of resources and opportunities." --Jeff Skinner, Research on Social Work Practices "For decades the human service

Övrig information

William M. Epstein is professor of social work at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA. He is the author of numerous books, including Welfare in America: How Social Science Fails the Poor and The Illusion of Psychotherapy.

Innehållsförteckning

Introduction, Empowerment Practice, A Knowing Misadventure, Acknowledgments, References, Index