Aaron Schutz - Böcker

This book provides an interdisciplinary examination of the multiple meanings of "empowerment." Rather than seeking to define and critique this term, it draws out a range of different meanings, exploring diverse possibilities for action and engagement. We must carefully examine the possibilities and limits of the approaches to empowerment we choose. Efforts focused on building individual skills and capacities, for example, may overlook opportunities for supporting more collective, community-based forms of social action. In concise chapters, the book maps out a range of ways that people can be empowered along different continuums of power, moving from more familiar forms of teaching and counselling to less common and more radical strategies for fostering solidarity and civil resistance.This will be of great interest to advanced students and scholars in a wide variety of fields, particularly social work, public health, sociology, education, and international development as an introductory yet comprehensive study of the nuances of empowerment.

This book provides an interdisciplinary examination of the multiple meanings of "empowerment." Rather than seeking to define and critique this term, it draws out a range of different meanings, exploring diverse possibilities for action and engagement. We must carefully examine the possibilities and limits of the approaches to empowerment we choose. Efforts focused on building individual skills and capacities, for example, may overlook opportunities for supporting more collective, community-based forms of social action. In concise chapters, the book maps out a range of ways that people can be empowered along different continuums of power, moving from more familiar forms of teaching and counselling to less common and more radical strategies for fostering solidarity and civil resistance.This will be of great interest to advanced students and scholars in a wide variety of fields, particularly social work, public health, sociology, education, and international development as an introductory yet comprehensive study of the nuances of empowerment.

Saul Alinsky, according to Time Magazine in 1970, was a ""prophet of power to the people,"" someone who ""has possibly antagonized more people . . . than any other living American."" People Power introduces the major organizers who adopted and modified Alinsky's vision across the United States:Fred Ross, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the Community Service Organization and National Farm Workers AssociationNicholas von Hoffman and the Woodlawn OrganizationTom Gaudette and the Northwest Community OrganizationEd Chambers, Richard Harmon, and the Industrial Areas FoundationShel Trapp, Gale Cincotta, and National People's ActionHeather Booth, Midwest Academy, and Citizen ActionWade Rathke and ACORNWeaving classic texts with interviews and their own context-setting commentaries, the editors of People Power provide the first comprehensive history of Alinsky-based organizing in the tumultuous period from 1955 to 1980, when the key organizing groups in the United States took form. Many of these selections--previously available only on untranscribed audiotapes or in difficult-to-read mimeograph or Xerox formats--appear in print here for the first time.