Empowerment meets narrative: listening to stories and creating settings.
Comments on and summarizes some of the themes of a special issue on empowerment. Extends empowerment theory with the suggestion that both research and practice would benefit from a narrative approach that links process to practice and attends to the voices of the people of interest. Narrative theory and method tends to open the field to a more inclusive attitude as to what counts as data and to cross-disciplinary insights as well as citizen collaboration. Communal narratives are defined at various levels of analysis, including the community, the organizational, and the cultural. A definition of empowerment that includes a concern with resources calls attention to the fact that communal narratives and personal stories are resources. Implications for personal and social change are suggested.
Rappaport
J
J
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 61820, USA.
D019058:Community Networks; D003256:Community Participation; D003255:Consumer Organizations; D006801:Humans; D015279:Organizational Culture; D011209:Power, Psychological; D012922:Social Change; D012940:Social Problems / Q000517:prevention & control