Community Psychology Power and Participation

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Community PsychologyPower and Participation

• Paul Duckett
• EGB E48
• 0161 247 2552
• p.duckett_at_mmu.ac.uk

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Content of Lecture

• Definitions of power
• Types of power
• Group exercise types of power you are subjected
  to and use as students in HE
• Definitions of empowerment
• Levels individual, organisational, community
• Definition of citizen participation
• Concept of participation and active citizenship

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Where is it?
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Definition of Power

• The capacity to produce change
• But, in a culture of competitive
  hyper-individualism, power manifests into
  power-over
• A has power over B to get B to do something that
  they would not ordinarily do

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Typology of Power
(Based on Wong, 1979 cited in Orford, 1993)
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Group exercise 115 mins

• List the types of power you are subjected to and
  that you subject others to as students in HE

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Two opposing views on power

• Consensus view
• Power is used benignly for the good of the
  people. Power helps organisations, communities
  and societies to work smoothly (e.g., Talcott
  Parsons)
• Conflict view
• There is a constant state of conflict between
  groups and power is used by the dominant group
  over the non dominant group to protect the
  dominant groups interests (e.g., C. Wright Mills)

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Conflicting perspectives
Preserve the status quo
Challenge the status quo
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Why a focus on power is important

• As a community psychologist, I assume that power
  is intimately bound up with mental health, i.e.
  that disempowerment is implicated in the
  causation of many, if not most, mental health
  problems and that empowerment is implicated in
  the promotion and enhancement of positive mental
  health
• (Fryer, 199882)

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Main causes of poor mental health are

• socio-political
• (discrimination, oppression, social exclusion)
• socio-economic
• (poverty, un/underemployment, poor housing)

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Why a focus on power is important

• Academic psychologists seldom engage seriously
  with issues of power. When they do they often
  conceptualize power as an individual/personality,
  interpersonal or organizational variable.
  However, community psychologists believe that in
  Western societies power is most powerfully
  structured through socio-occupational
  stratification, relative wealth, gender, dominant
  (often ethnic) group membership, age and
  organizational structures
• (Fryer, 199882)

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Power is

• Relational
• Structural

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Empowerment

• a process, a mechanism by which people,
  organisations, and communities gain mastery over
  their affairs
• (Rappaport, 1987122)

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Organisational ChangeEmpowerment

• EMPOWERMENT
• A helping hand?
• Stop getting in the way?
• ORGANISATIONAL EMPOWERMENT
• Empowering organisations
• Empowered organisations

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Community Activism
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Citizen Participation

• A process in which individuals take part in
  decision making in the institutions, programs and
  environments that affect them
• (Heller, et al., 1984339)
• Citizen participation is not simply volunteering
  time or resources, but occurs when citizens take
  part in making decisions for the community
• (Dalton et al. 2001342)

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Citizen Participationmeans and ends

• As a means to an end
• To get citizens to have a sense of ownership over
  the decisions being made and thus generate a
  greater level of commitment to that decision
• To have a decision informed by those who know the
  problems best to achieve ecological validity
• As an end in itself
• Participation as a value an essential component
  of social justice and egalitarianism

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Group Exercise 2(15 mins)

• How are you active citizens?
• Eg.
• Your community psychology placements
• Your extra-curricular activities
• Your previous and present employment experiences

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Citizen Participation Active Citizenship

• New Labour brought active citizenship into
  education employment
• (Higher education active community fund, national
  curriculum new deal)
• WHOPPEEE HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN .?

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• Doh!
• (Simpson, n.d.)

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Active Citizenship

• Social Democracy
• the social policy agenda adopted by the Labour
  government in its first term of office. Such
  policy stresses the responsibilities and duties
  of citizens to play an active part in the labour
  market. Through such social policy, employment
  has become a duty of citizenship
• (Duckett, 2002 101)

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Third Way moralisation of politics

• If distribution in present-day society can no
  longer be optimised politically - or is optimal
  under the circumstances - deficiencies can no
  longer be attributed to removable imperfections
  in society, but only to the moral shortcomings of
  individuals. Here the moral imperative is
  directed first and foremost at the prospective
  victims of modernisation, the recipients of
  welfare benefits, whose duty to accept training
  or a job is repeatedly pointed out. The less
  likely the prospect of good jobs (i.e.
  tolerably secure and acceptably paid employment),
  the more strongly this duty is emphasised.
• (Ehrke, 19997)

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The ends

• This political ideology is reflected in the New
  Public Health movement and the concept of the
  Risk Society (Peterson Lupton, 1996) where
  social and economic issues become atomized as
  individual, personal responsibility involving
  issues of consumer and lifestyle choices
• (Duckett, 2001103)
• Conspicuous to these social policies is a theme
  critiqued by community psychology, a fascination
  with the individual and the tendency to make the
  person rather than place culpable for
  socio-economic and structural inequalities.
• (Duckett, 2001103)

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Active Citizens and Victim Blaming Ideology

• the adoption of social democratic social
  policies and third-way political thinking
  sidelines attention away from the systemic
  factors that are responsible for the structural
  inequalities that exist in society.
• (Duckett, 2002102)

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The Keystones of aConsumer Society

• Choice
• Voice
• Participation
• Change

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References

• Dalton, J.H., Elias, M.J., Wandersman, A.
  (2001). Community Psychology Linking individuals
  and communities. Stamford Wadsworth.
• Duckett, P.S. (2002). Community Psychology,
  Millennium Volunteers and Higher Education a
  disruptive triptych? Journal of Community and
  Applied Community Psychology, 12, 94-107.
• Fryer, D. (1998). Editors preface. Journal of
  Community and Applied Social Psychology, 8,
  75-88.
• Heller, K., Price, R.H., Reinharz, S., Riger, S.,
  Wandersman, A. (1984). Psychology and Community
  Change challenges of the future. Homewood, IL
  Wadsworth.
• Rappaport, J. (1987). Terms of empowerment/exempla
  rs of prevention toward a theory for community
  psychology. American Journal of Community
  Psychology, 15, 121-144.
• Soderbergn, S. (Director) (2000). Erin
  Brockovich. US Universal Pictures. (starring
  Julia Roberts and Albert Finney)