Empowerment Gone Bad: Communicative Consequences of Power Transfers

Abstract

Empowerment as a positively connoted concept has been studied extensively in applied research in different fields. Yet its unfavorable, paradoxical character has so far not received enough theoretical attention to make it possible to improve empowerment efforts. In this theoretically informed analysis of the processes that lead to the paradox of empowerment, the author argues that it evolves from discrepancies between approaching empowerment from a structural versus a communicative viewpoint: empowerees’ agency might be increased on a structural level but simultaneously decreased on a communicative level, leaving them feeling disempowered.