Download Citizen Participation and Empowerment

Citizen Participation
and Empowerment
Chapter Overview
Definition of Citizen Participation &
Empowerment
 Description of Citizen activists study
 Proposition of a sense of community
model
 Research and conceptual issues
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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 (K. Heller et al., 1984, p. 339)
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Does this sound like your group experience???
What Citizen Participation
IS NOT:
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Volunteering (ie: field trip, nursing home)
Social support or mutual help for individual
adjustment (ie: alcoholics anonymous)
Voting
Holding the power to control all decisions
Static characteristic of persons or of
organizations
What Citizen Participation IS:
A process
 Member input for group decisions
 Occurs in a diversity of forums
 Serving on a community coalition to
address prevention of ______?
 Means (technique) or end (value) (ie: mandatory
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community advisory committees)
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Competes with economic efficiency
Empowerment & Community
Psychology
a process, a mechanism by which
people, organizations, and communities
gain mastery over their affairs
(Rappaport, 1987)
Cornell Empowerment Group
an intentional, ongoing process centered in
the local community, involving mutual respect,
critical reflection,, caring, and group
participation, through which people lacking an
equal share of resources gain greater access
to and control over those resources (cited in
D.D. Perkings & Zimmerman, 1995, p. 570,
and by Rappaport, 1999).
Citizen Participation vs. Empowerment
Participation is a behavior involving
actively engaging in decision making
within a group, or organization, or
environment
 Empowerment is a broader process that
includes variables that may lead to
citizen participation, accompany it, or
result from it
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Qualities of Empowerment
Multilevel Construct
 Bottom-Up Perspective: (ie: grassroots
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organizations)
Contextual Differences
 Process of Empowerment: “not a personality
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trait”
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Collective Context: not a solitary
process
Contributions and Limitations
The process of empowerment may
promote ends such as justice, equality,
respect for diversity, or sense of
community
 May be used to promote selfadvancement without regard for one’s
community or for others

Stages, Outcome, & Themes of
Psychological Empowerment
(Kieffer, 1984)
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Era of Entry: strong sense of community
threatened direct provocation to the selfinterest or wider community
 Era of Advancement: role model,grassroots
org., critical awareness
 Era of Incorporation: integrating learning and
experiences into a changing sense of
personal identity
 Era of Commitment: full integration into one’s
own life and personal identity
Outcome of Developmental
Stages
Participatory competence
Involves 3 Factors
 Self perception of having skills for
citizen participation
 Critical understanding of the
sociopolitical environment
 Cultivation of individual and collective
resources for community action
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Sense of Community
Citizen Participation
Empowerment
Elements of Psychological
Empowerment
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Involves cognition, behavioral skills or
competence & motivation, commitment to
values etc.
Develops through the interaction of
personality factors and social experiences
Critical Awareness
Participatory Competence
Sustaining Participation and Empowerment
Empowering Community
Settings
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Empowering Settings and Personal
Development
Group-Based, Strengths-Based Belief System
Opportunity Role Structures
Peer Social Support Systems
Shared, Inspiring Leadership
Overall goal is to strengthen the internal
sense of community within the setting
Empowering Settings and
Community Change
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Conflict and “Coempowerment” within
an organization
– Activating resources
– Appreciating interdependencies
– Inclusive decision making
– Boundary spanning
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Benefits of costs participation
Qualities of Empowering
Community Settings
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Group-based,
strengths-based belief
system
Opportunity role
structures, participatory
niches
Peer social support
systems
Shared, inspiring
leadership
Coempowerment
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Coempowerment
– Activating resources
– Appreciating
interdependencies
– Inclusive decision making
(through citizen
participation)
– Boundary spanning
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Maximizing benefits,
minimizing costs of
participation
Overarching theme:
Sense of community
within setting
Benefits and Costs of
Participation
Dilemmas in Creating empowering
Settings
 Challenges of “Success”
 Inequalities of Resources
 Top-Down Empowerment
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Figure 12.1
ENVIRONMENT
Empowering
Setting
Provocation
Citizen
Participation
Sense of
Community
Psychological
Empowerment
INDIVIDUAL