Dimensions of Power and Community Social Work: A Guide to Empowerment
1.1. Dimensions of Power: The Virtuous Circle of Empowerment
Human societies have an internal dynamic towards stratification and asymmetrical distribution of resources and opportunities. The momentum towards democracy aims to alter such processes, starting from the principle of citizenship. It strives to build a societal model that recognizes us for what we truly are: free citizens with equal dignity as human beings.
Power, and the development of the capacity to exercise it, are basic features of human life. We can distinguish four dimensions or types of power:
1) Power Over
This is the ability to control something or someone. Increased power for one subject involves a loss of power for another. The objectification of others, reality, and nature leads to a relationship based on dominance and competition for supremacy.
2) Power To
This refers to the power some people have to encourage agency, self-esteem, and knowledge in those they interact with. It’s a relationship where power doesn’t involve coercion. It exists between autonomous subjects who respond to stimuli based on belief, information, and motivation.
3) Power With
This refers to power-sharing, which is generated and remains within the community. It implies a capacity for dialogue, empathy, and community mechanisms to resolve issues, make decisions, and establish common goals.
4) Internal Power
This refers to developing a balanced personality with self-confidence and a healthy level of self-esteem. This isn’t achievable through individual reflection alone. It’s acquired by dealing with others, learning to share experiences, reaching agreements, and knowing how to maintain reasonable disagreements. Ultimately, it’s about taking joint action, even without full agreement. In fact, loyalty, cooperation, and commitment – key issues for maintaining strong social relationships and increasing what is called social capital – are indicators of the level of community cohesion in a given social environment.
1.1. Between the Individual and the Community: Guidelines for the Community Social Worker
The community social worker practices in projects that address structural challenges requiring mobilization or community action. Here are some basic guidelines for personal development within the dynamics of community social work:
1) Community Development Rooted Within the Person
Although our model has internalized life patterns that reinforce exclusion and gender inequalities, we can objectify our circumstances and establish a process of change. In this sense, the community social worker should generate momentum for meeting and cooperation. This enables each participant to overcome fears and feelings of separation or isolation, strengthening their confidence in the ability to act collectively and establish positive and creative relationships with significant others.
2) Overcoming Isolation Through Participation
For each person, overcoming isolation and participating creates a sense of belonging and bonding that favors agreement and cooperation. The social worker must establish a relationship with individuals in the community based on trust. This allows for frank dialogue among participants, a preliminary step to correctly identifying problems and possible solutions.
What Elements Are Involved in Empowerment as a Process and Outcome?
a) Developing a more positive self-concept, in which the person recognizes their abilities and potential, and releases interpretations that favored passivity in the face of events.
b) Promoting a critical and analytical understanding of the social, political, economic, and cultural context – a prerequisite for designing successful community action.
c) Developing collective resources for social and political action, with the goal of liberation or challenging the alienation of those who lack power within a particular social environment.
3) Creating Self-Realized Communities
The community social worker seeks to create communities that allow for the self-realization of their members, while also possessing the characteristics to meet the challenges they face.
In this sense, the individual is not separated from the community. Instead, the social worker works with both in a relationship of mutual involvement and strengthening. Personal change can be a bridge for community solidarity, and vice versa.
4) The Importance of Interpersonal Relationships
Relationships between individuals and communities don’t occur in a vacuum; they are always generated in an environment characterized by interpersonal relationships. Any community dynamic begins as a group dynamic. The social worker should create groups within the community and act as a facilitator, as action is based on the distribution of tasks, collaboration, utilizing each person’s capabilities, and the progressive self-organization of the community.
4. Values, Citizenship, and Social Work: Community Training as a Subject of Collective Action
1. Introduction
An ethical view that does justice to our nature must confront the limitations of postmodern individualism. We are not autonomous entities interacting based on rational expectations in a neutral environment. We become who we are through interaction with others.
The Relationship Between Identity and Difference
In the complex relationship between identity and difference, we can identify three important aspects:
- We are not alone: our identity is built on relationships with others.
- The relationship with others, based on what unites and differentiates us, is essential for our own identity. Therefore, encounter, communication, and interaction are prerequisites for being ourselves.
- Difference arises precisely from the critical dialogue between our personal journey, our interactions with others, and our socio-economic and cultural environment.
A Strategy for Emancipation
Therefore, we can establish a strategy for emancipation in community social work based on the following principles:
- The principle of historical context (we are situated in a historical context that both constrains and enables us).
- The principle of cultural contextualization (we are immersed in a culture that we can describe and analyze because we have the reflective capacity to analyze ourselves).
- The principle of community achievement (to fulfill ourselves in interaction with others, we can analyze the problems and opportunities created by the logic that articulates our relationships and the constraints imposed by a particular conception of the person and the community).
Authentic personal self-determination can only be achieved by entering into committed relationships, characterized by encounter and reciprocity with others.