Chapter 5

Chapter Aims

In this chapter you will learn about community and power. The specific aims of the chapter are

1. To define and critique the concepts

2. To study their value-base

3. To identify their implications for the promotion of well-being and liberation and for the perpetuation of oppression.

Have you done the warm up exercise in Box 5.1? How did you feel when you experienced a sense of community? Did you feel supported, appreciated? Did you feel constrained? What about power? Did you feel good when you were in control of a situation? Did power ever get to your head? Most people experience both sides of community and power: positive aspects and negative aspects.

Positive aspects of community include social support, cohesion, and working together to achieve common aims. Negative aspects of community include rigid norms, conformity, exclusion, segregation, and disrespect for diversity. Positive aspects of power include the ability to achieve goals in life, a sense of mastery and a feeling of control. Negative aspects of power include the capacity to inflict damage or to perpetuate inequality. Our challenge as community psychologists is to promote the growth-enhancing aspects of community and power and to diminish their negative potential. We want to use community and power to promote social justice and not to stifle creativity or perpetuate the status quo.

Our work is difficult because it is highly contextual. It’s hard to make rules that apply to all contexts (Trickett, 1994). On one hand, we know intuitively that sharing happy and sad moments with friends and others is beneficial for personal well-being. On the other hand, groups can exert powerful norms of conformity that suppress the creativity and individuality of their members. Similarly, we know that dis-empowered people could use more political power to advance their legitimate aims, but that doesn’t mean that more power is always a good thing, neither for dis-empowered or for over-empowered people. Being dis-empowered does not make a person into a righteous individual. These potential scenarios teach us that the outcomes of community and power are highly contextual. We need to know the specific circumstances and dynamics of community and power before we endorse either of them. Who will benefit from a set of community norms? Who will gain and who will lose from giving a certain group of people more power? What is the impact of community and power for well-being and liberation? These are the key questions that we want to address in this chapter.

COMMUNITY AND POWER

Community psychology has traditionally emphasized the role of community over power in promoting well-being. The sense of community metaphor discussed in Chapter 2 dominated the field’s narrative for its first decade or so. In a corrective move, Rappaport (1981, 1987) introduced the concept of empowerment to indicate that power and control over community resources would be just as important as a feeling of communion. As we will see in this chapter, the concept of empowerment has limitations of its own, but at the time it was introduced it served an important function: it drew attention to power dynamics affecting well-being. Feminist critics of empowerment like Stephanie Riger (1993) pointed out some risks inherent in the concept. First, she reminded us of the danger of swinging the pendulum too much towards individual power and forgetting the need for sense of community. Second, she recognized that empowerment may become another psychological variable that would lead to individual changes instead of social changes. Riger’s critique is reminiscent of Bakan’s (1966) distinction between agency and communion. Agency is the power to assert ourselves, whereas communion is the need to belong to something larger than ourselves. The conflict between these two complementary tendencies is played out in the field of community psychology through the tension between empowerment and community (Tyler, 2001).

In this book, we wish to avoid dichotomies such as community or power. We wish to push the community psychology agenda further and claim that psychological empowerment and empowering processes are not enough without social justice and a redistribution of resources (Speer, 2002). At the same time, achieving power without a sense of community, within and across groups, may lead to untoward effects (Nisbet, 1953). Without empowerment we risk maintaining the status quo and without community we risk treating people as objects. Let’s explore now this thesis and the ways in which these two concepts complement each other.

What Are Community and Power?

Community

At its most basic level, the word community implies a group or groups of citizens who have something in common. We can think of a geographical community such as your neighbourhood or country or we can think of a relational community such as a group of friends or your religious congregation (Bess, Fisher, Sonn, & Bishop, 2002). Members of a relational group may share a culture or a common interest. There are countless forces and dynamics that bring people together. Some of us feel quite close to the community of community psychologists, while others feel close to the fans of a football club or to members of a religious group. Some of us can feel close to these three groups at the same time. We can belong to multiple communities concurrently. Of the multiple meanings of the word community we have chosen to concentrate on two that are important to the work of community psychologists: sense of community and social capital.

Sense of Community. Seymour Sarason (1988), one of the founders of the field of community psychology, identified sense of community as central to the endeavour of the field. In his view, sense of community captured something very basic about being human: our need for affiliation in times of sorrow, our need for sharing in times of joy; and our need to be with people at all other times. He defined sense of community as

the sense that one belongs in and is meaningfully a part of a larger collectivity; the sense that although there may be conflict between the needs of the individual and the collectivity, or among different groups in the collectivity, these conflicts must be resolved in a way that does not destroy the psychological sense of community; the sense that there is a network of and structure of relationships that strengthens rather than dilutes feelings of loneliness. (Sarason, 1988, p. 41)

Since Sarason’s coinage of the term, others have tried to operationalize and distill the meaning of sense of community, all in an effort to understand the positive or negative effects of this phenomenon. McMillan and Chavis (1986) are credited with formulating an enduring conceptualization of sense of community. According to them, the concept consists of four domains: (a) membership, (b) influence, (c) integration and fulfilment of needs, and (d) shared emotional connection. These four domains of sense of community sparked a great deal of interest and research in the field of community psychology. A special issue of the Journal of Community Psychology in 1996 (volume 4) and a recent book on the subject summarize very well progress in the area (Fisher, Sonn, & Bishop, 2002).

The interest in communities is justified in a world where groups intersect and experience conflict over resources. We live in a world where communities of various identities share space, time, work, past, present, and future. Each community has to value its own diversity as well as the diversity present in other groups.

What on the surface may look similar may hide vast differences. Not all Aboriginal people share the same culture (Dudgeon, Mallard, Oxenham, & Fielder, 2002), nor do all immigrants experience the same challenges (see Chapter 17). We can talk about a community of women, within which there are obviously multiple communities of Chicanas, Aboriginal, African American, privileged, poor, disabled and able-bodied women. Every time we invoke a group of people, there are going to be multiple identities within it (Arellano & Ayala-Alcantar, 2002; Serrano Garcia & Bond, 1994; Trickett, 1994). Communities may define themselves in exclusive terms reminiscent of Apartheid or in inclusive terms reminiscent of solidarity.

Insert Figure 5.1 About Here

Social Capital. While sense of community attracted a lot of attention within community psychology, allied terms such as community cohesion and social capital gained currency in other disciplines such as sociology, community development and political science. We find much in common between these two concepts and community psychology (Perkins, Hughey, & Speer, in press). In essence, they speak about the potential of communities to improve the well-being of their members through the synergy of associations, mutual trust, sense of community, and collective action (Kawachi, Kennedy, & Wilkinson, 1999; Veenstra, 2000). In short, they deal with the intersection of people, well-being, and community. The main difference between sense of community and social capital lies in the level of analysis. Whereas sense of community is typically measured and discussed at the group or neighbourhood level, social capital research has looked at the results of cohesion at state and national levels. Community psychologists Douglas Perkins and Adam Long (2002) maintain that sense of community is only a part of social capital. They suggest that social capital consists of four dimensions: (a) sense of community, (b) neighbouring, (c) collective efficacy, and (d) citizen participation.

In his widely popular book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam (2000) distinguished among physical, human, and social capital. “Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to properties of individuals, social capital refers to connections among individuals – social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them” (p. 19).

In our view, social capital refers to collective resources consisting of civic participation, networks, norms of reciprocity, and organizations that foster (a) trust among citizens, and (b) actions to improve the common good. Figure 5.1 shows the various dimensions of social capital identified by Stone and Hughes in their study of social capital in Australian families (Stone & Hughes, 2002). As may be seen, social capital entails networks of trust and reciprocity that lead to positive outcomes at multiple levels of analysis, including individual, family, community, civic, political and economic well-being. Figure 5.1 summarizes the types and characteristics of networks. Density, size and diversity are key factors in the quality of community connections. Another important feature of this figure is that the hypothesized outcomes influence the very determinants of social capital. Some of the outcomes, such as civic participation, may generate more social capital. Accordingly, we should see determinants and outcomes of social capital as exerting reciprocal and not unidirectional influence on each other.

Social capital, in the form of connections of trust and participation in public affairs, enhances community capacity to create structures of cohesion and support that benefit the population and produce positive health, welfare, educational, and social outcomes. Vast research indicates that cohesive communities and civic participation in public affairs enhance the well-being of the population. Communities with higher participation in volunteer organizations, political parties, local and professional associations fare much better in terms of health, education, crime, and well-being than communities with low rates of participation. This finding has been replicated at different times across various states, provinces and countries (Putnam, 2000; Schuller, 2000; Stone & Hughes, 2002; Wilkinson, 1996).

Insert Box 5.2 About Here

Power

In the last two decades, community psychologists have discussed empowerment more often than power per se (Speer, 2002; Zimmerman, 2000). For that reason, we begin with a brief review of the former.

Empowerment. Empowerment refers to both processes and outcomes occurring at various levels of analyses (Prilleltensky, 1994; Zimmerman, 2000). Empowerment is about obtaining, producing or enabling power. This can happen at the individual, group, or community and social levels. Rappaport claimed that empowerment is “a process: the mechanism by which people, organizations, and communities gain mastery over their lives.” (1984, p. 3); whereas the Cornell Empowerment Group defined it as “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 valued resources gain greater access to and control over those resources.” The latter definition starts talking about the process but ends with an emphasis on outcomes: control over resources. We agree with Speer (2002) that a balance must be reached between research and action on empowering processes and empowered outcomes. Otherwise, we risk sacrificing one for the other. Not only are the two components equally important, but they are mutually reinforcing as well. Based on the work of Zimmerman (2000) and Speer and colleagues (Speer & Hughey, 1995; Speer, Hughey, Gensheimer, & Adams-Leavitt, 1995), we represent in Table 5.1 the various domains and dynamics of empowerment at four levels of analysis. Similar to Figure 5.1 on social capital, some of the outcomes are reinforcing of the processes. Better empowerment outcomes should generate more empowerment processes and vice versa.

Insert Table 5.1 About Here

The concept of empowerment stimulated much discussion in community psychology, with two special issues of the American Journal of Community Psychology dedicated to it in 1994 (Serrano Garcia & Bond, 1994) and 1995 (Perkins & Zimmerman, 1995). Yet, despite much progress in the field, some key issues remain under explored. In our view, these issues pertain to the multifaceted and dynamic nature of power. Empowerment is not a stable or global state of affairs. Some people feel empowered in some settings but not in others, whereas some people work to empower one group while oppressing others along the way. A more refined concept of power is needed to understand better the concept of empowerment and its nuances.

From Empowerment to Power. Power is everywhere; it’s in interpersonal relationships, families, organizations, corporations, neighbourhoods, sports and countries. Power can be used for ethical or unethical purposes. It can promote well-being but it can also perpetuate suffering.

A more dynamic conceptualization of power is needed, one that takes into account the multifaceted nature of identities and the changing nature of social settings (Watts, 2001). Moreover, we need a definition of power that takes into account subjective and objective forces influencing our actions as community psychologists.

In light of the need for a comprehensive conceptualization of power, we offer a few parameters for clarification of the concept. Based on previous work, we present them as a series of ten complementary postulates (Prilleltensky, in press a).

1. Power refers to the capacity and opportunity to fulfil or obstruct personal, relational, or collective needs.

2. Power has psychological and political sources, manifestations and consequences.

3. We can distinguish among power to strive for well-being, power to oppress, and power to resist oppression and strive for liberation.

4. Power can be overt or covert, subtle or blatant, hidden or exposed.

5. The exercise of power can apply to self, others, and collectives.

6. Power affords people multiple identities as individuals seeking well-being, engaging in oppression, or resisting domination.

7. Whereas people may be oppressed in one context, at a particular time and place, they may act as oppressors at another time and place.

8. Due to structural factors such as social class, gender, ability, and race, people may enjoy differential levels of power.

9. Degrees of power are also affected by personal and social constructs such as beauty, intelligence, and assertiveness; constructs that enjoy variable status within different cultures.

10. The exercise of power can reflect varying degrees of awareness with respect to the impact of one's actions.

We expand here on the first and main postulate of our conceptualization of power. We claim that power is a combination of ability and opportunity to influence a course of events. This definition merges elements of agency, or self-determination on one hand, with structure or external determinants on the other. Agency refers to ability whereas structure refers to opportunity. The exercise of power is based on the juxtaposition of wishing to change something, and having the opportunity, afforded by social and historical circumstances, to do so. Ultimately, the outcome of power is based on the constant interaction and reciprocal determinism of agency and contextual dynamics (Bourdieu, 1990; Martin & Sugarman, 1999; 2000).

People who are born into privilege may be afforded educational and employment opportunities that people on the other side of town could never dream of. Privilege can lead to a good education, to better job prospects, and to life satisfaction. These, in turn, can increase self-confidence and personal empowerment. Lack of structural opportunities, such as the absence of good schools or economic resources, undermine children’s capacities for the development of talents, control and personal empowerment (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Prilleltensky, Nelson, & Peirson, 2001).

Another defining feature of power is its evasive nature. You can’t always tell it’s there. Nor can you tell how it’s operating. Power is not tantamount to coercion, for it can operate in very subtle and concealed ways (Bourdieu, 1986, 1990; Foucault, 1979; Swartz, 1997). According to social critics such as Bourdieu, Foucault and Rose, people come to regulate themselves through the internalization of cultural prescriptions. Hence, what may seem on the surface as freedom may be questioned as a form of acquiescence whereby citizens restrict their life choices to coincide with a narrow range of socially sanctioned options. In his book Powers of Freedom, Rose (1999) claimed that

Disciplinary techniques and moralizing injunctions as to health, hygiene and civility are no longer required; the project of responsible citizenship has been fused with individuals’ projects for themselves. What began as a social norm here ends as a personal desire. Individuals act upon themselves and their families in terms of the languages, values and techniques made available to them by professions, disseminated through the apparatuses of the mass media or sought out by the troubled through the market. Thus, in a very significant sense, it has become possible to govern without governing society – to govern through the ‘responsibilized’ and ‘educated’ anxieties and aspirations of individuals and their families. (p. 88)

The point is that if governments or rulers want to exert power over their dominion, they don’t have to police people because people police themselves through the internalization of norms and regulations (Chomsky, 2002). The problem with this is that many groups absorb rules and regulations that are not necessarily in their best interests, as can be seen in Box 5.3.

Insert Box 5.3 About Here

Power, then, emanates from the confluence of personal motives and cultural injunctions. But, as we have seen, personal motives are embedded in the very cultural injunctions with which they interact. Hence, it is not just a matter of persons acting on the environment, but it is a matter of individuals coming into contact with external forces that, to some extent, they have already internalized. The implication is that we cannot just take at face value that individual actions evolve from innate desires. Desires are embedded in norms and regulations (Bourdieu, 1990; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Swartz, 1997). This is not to adopt a socially deterministic position however; for even though a person’s experience is greatly shaped by the prescriptions of the day, agency and personal power are not completely erased (Bourdieu, 1998; Martin & Sugarman, 2000).

Why Are Community and Power So Important?

Community

Sense of community, social support and social capital can produce beneficial results at the individual, communal, and societal levels. Different kinds of social support may be given and received. Instrumental support refers to the provision of resources, such as lending money, helping a neighbour with babysitting, or sharing notes with a student who couldn’t make a class. These are concrete actions that people take to help each other. Emotional support, in turn, refers to the act of listening and showing empathy towards others. When a friend shares with you a problem you show emotional support by being there, listening non-judgmentally, and making yourself available. Bonding, sharing, and building relationships through common experiences can activate either type of support.

Social support can increase or restore health and well-being in two ways (Cohen & Wills, 1985). First, social support can enhance well-being through bonding, affirming experiences, sharing of special moments, attachment, and contributions to one’s self-esteem. The more support I have the better I feel and the more likely I am to develop well-being and resilience in the face of adversity (Prilleltensky, Nelson, & Peirson, 2001). There is an accumulated positive effect of having had good interpersonal experiences. According to our model of well-being, relational well-being leads to personal well-being. The second mechanism through which social support enhances well-being is by providing emotional and instrumental support in times of crises. The stressful reactions associated with divorce, moves, transitions, or death may be buffered by the presence of helpful and supportive relatives and friends.

Cohen and Wills (1985) posited the buffering hypothesis to indicate that social support may serve (a) to enhance coping and (b) to mitigate the negative effects of stress. In their view, social support may prevent the perception of events as stressful because people have sufficient instrumental and/or emotional resources to cope with untoward situations. A person with sufficient supports may not experience a situation as stressful whereas others without supports may perceive the situation as very threatening. A father who suddenly becomes unemployed but who has a partner with a stable job and parents with economic resources may not experience the loss of a job as a father with no parents, no back-ups, and several kids to feed. The very phenomenon of unemployment is experienced differently by the two men.

But social support can buffer the effects of stress even when situations are perceived as stressful. In the case of the man with supports, he will not worry as much about his children because others will come through. In the second case, the father has good grounds to worry about feeding his family. In effect, Cohen and Wills (1985) postulate that supports can help in (a) reducing the very perception of a threat and (b) in increasing the act of coping with the threat.

Various channels lead to the positive effects of social support (Barrera, 2000). We can think of agents and recipients of support, where the former is the one providing the help and the latter is the one benefiting from it. Relational well-being is characterized by relationships in which people assume the dual roles of agents and recipients. Support may be given and received from a single agent to a single recipient (friends talking to each other), from a single agent to multiple recipients (grandmother helping her daughter and grandchildren with shopping and cooking), from multiple agents to a single recipient (a self-help group where various participants encourage and support a person going through a hard time), and from multiple agents to multiple recipients (a group of women raises funds and lobbies the government to help refugee women). In some cases, the recipients are single individuals, whereas in others they are small or large groups. Let’s explore the significance of social support for the various recipients.

At the individual level, compared with people with lower supports, those who enjoy more support from relatives or friends live longer, recover faster from illnesses, report better health and well-being, and cope better with adversities (Cohen, Underwood, & Gottlieb, 2000; Ornish, 1998). At the group level, studies have shown that women with metastatic breast cancer have better chances of survival if they participate in support groups. After a follow up of 48 months, Spiegel, Bloom, Kraemer and Gotheil (1989) found that all the women in the control group had died, whereas a third of those who received group support were still alive. The average survival for the women in the support group was 36 months, compared to 19 months in the control group. Richardson and colleagues made similar claims on a sample of patients with hematologic malignancies. They claimed that “the use of special educational and supportive programs designed to improve patient compliance are associated with significant prolongation of patient survival” (Richardson, Shelton, Krailo, & Levine, 1990, p. 356). Finally, Fawzy and colleagues (Fawzy et al., 1993) found that patients with malignant melanoma were more likely to die or experience recurrence of the disease if they did not receive the group intervention that the experimental group received. Out of 34 patients in each group, of those who received group support, only 7 had experienced recurrence and 3 had died at the five-year follow-up, compared with 13 and 10, respectively, in the control group. Altogether, these three teams of researchers found that social support can enhance health and longevity in the face of deadly diseases.

In the psychological realm, self-help groups provide support for people experiencing addictions, psychiatric conditions, weight problems, and bereavement. In addition, support groups are also available for relatives and friends caring for others with physical or emotional problems. Estimates of participation in self-help groups in the United States range from 7.5 million in 1992 to 10 million in 1999 (Levy, 2000).

Keith Humphreys is one of the leading researchers in the field of self-help groups. In a study of people with substance abuse problems, Humphreys and colleagues found positive results for African American participants attending Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholic Anonymous. The sample of 253 participants showed significant improvements in employment, alcohol and drug use, legal complications, and psychological and family well-being (Humphreys, Mavis, & Stoffelmayr, 1994). In another study Humphreys and Moos (1996) compared the outcomes of self-help groups versus professional help on people who abused alcohol. The outcomes were positive for both groups, but the cost of the self-help option was considerably lower. Like these two examples, there is a vast amount of research documenting the positive effects of self-help groups. The research provides evidence that lay people can be very helpful to each other, even in the absence of professionals leading the groups.

At the community level, the research demonstrates that communities with high levels of social cohesion experience better health, safety, well-being, education and welfare than societies with low levels of cohesion. Based on U. S. research, Figure 5.2 shows the positive effects of social capital on a number of well-being indicators. Putnam created a measure of social capital based on “the degree to which a given state is either high or low in the number of meetings citizens go to, the level of social trust its citizens have, the degree to which they spend time visiting one another at home, the frequency with which they vote, the frequency with which they do volunteering, and so on” (Putnam, 2001, p. 48). He then compared how states with different levels of social capital fare on a number of indicators. Putnam compared states on measures of educational performance, child welfare, TV watching, violent crime, health, tax evasion, tolerance for equality, civic equality, and economic equality. The trends in Figure 5.2 are representative of the results overall. States with high levels of social capital and social cohesion enjoy better rates of health, safety, welfare, education, and tolerance. As can be seen in the graph, there is a clear gradient: The higher the level of social capital, the better the outcomes.

Insert Figure 5.2 About Here

Of particular interest to us is whether social capital and social cohesion can increase health and well-being. There is evidence to support this claim. In a survey of 167,259 people in 39 U. S. states Kawachi and Kennedy (1999) lent strong support to Putnam’s claim that social capital reinforces the health of the population. Convincing evidence making the links between social cohesion and health is also presented by Berkman, (1995), Kawachi, Kennedy, and Wilkinson (1999), Veenstra (2001), and Wilkinson (1996). Whereas the previous sets of studies investigated the effects of social support on individuals, researchers like Putnam, Berkman, Kawachi and Wilkinson assessed the aggregated effect of social cohesion on entire populations, demonstrating that a sense of community and cohesion can lead to population health.

Power

People like you and us can use power to promote social cohesion or social fragmentation. But power does not inhabit humans alone. Power is vested in institutions like the church, in business corporations, in schools and in governments (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). Power is important because it is central to the promotion or prevention of the goals of community psychology: well-being and liberation. Without it, the dis-empowered cannot demand their human rights. With too much of it, the over-empowered is not going to relinquish privilege. With just about enough of it, it is possible that people may satisfy their own needs and share power with others in a synergic form (Craig & Craig, 1979).

Power to Promote Well-being. Well-being is achieved by the simultaneous, balanced, and contextually-sensitive satisfaction of personal, relational, and collective needs. In the absence of capacity and opportunity, central features of power, individuals cannot strive to meet their own needs and the needs of others.

Personal and collective needs represent two faces of well-being (Keating & Hertzman, 2000; Marmot & Wilkinson, 1999). The third side of well-being concerns relational needs. Individual and group agendas are often in conflict. Power and conflict are intrinsic parts of relationships. To achieve well-being, then, we have to attend to relationality. Two sets of needs are primordial in pursuing healthy relationships among individuals and groups: respect for diversity and collaboration and democratic participation. Respect for diversity ensures that people’s unique identities are affirmed by others, while democratic participation enables community members to have a say in decisions affecting their lives (Prilleltensky & Nelson, 1997). Without power to exercise democratic rights, the chances of promoting the three dimensions of well-being are diminished.

Power to Oppress. Power can be used for ethical or unethical purposes. This is not just a risk of power, but part of its very essence. For French social scientist Pierre Bourdieu, social capital is power. It is power because it encompasses networks and resources available to serve personal and class interests (Bourdieu, 1986; 1990; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). Unlike authors like Putnam who tended to emphasize the positive in social capital, Bourdieu was concerned with some of its negative effects. Like Bourdieu, we are concerned with the possibility of social capital and power being used to oppress others.

Oppression can be regarded as a state or a process (Prilleltensky & Gonick, 1996). With respect to the former, oppression is described as a state of domination where the oppressed suffer the consequences of deprivation, exclusion, discrimination, exploitation, control of culture, and sometimes even violence (e.g., Bartky, 1990; Moane, 1999; Mullaly, 2002; Sidanius, 1993). A useful definition of oppression as process is given by Mar'i (1988): “Oppression involves institutionalized collective and individual modes of behavior through which one group attempts to dominate and control another in order to secure political, economic, and/or social-psychological advantage” (p. 6).

Another important distinction in the definition of oppression concerns its political and psychological dimensions. We cannot speak of one without the other (Bulhan, 1985; Moane, 1999; Walkerdine, 1996, 1997). Psychological and political oppression co-exist and are mutually determined. Following Prilleltensky and Gonick (1996), we integrate here the elements of state and process, with the psychological and political dimensions of oppression. Oppression entails a state of asymmetric power relations characterized by domination, subordination, and resistance, where the dominating persons or groups exercise their power by the process of restricting access to material resources and imparting in the subordinated persons or groups self-deprecating views about themselves. It is only when the latter can attain a certain degree of conscientization that resistance can begin (Bartky, 1990; Fanon, 1963; Freire, 1972; Memmi, 1968).

The dynamics of oppression are internal as well as external. External or political forces deprive individuals or groups of the benefit of personal (e.g., self-determination), collective (e.g., distributive justice), and relational (e.g., democratic participation) well-being. Often, these restrictions are internalized and operate at a psychological level as well, where the person acts as his or her personal censor (Moane, 1999; Mullaly, 2002; Prilleltensky & Gonick, 1996). Some political mechanisms of oppression and repression include actual or potential use of force, restricted life opportunities, degradation of indigenous culture, economic sanctions, and inability to challenge authority. Psychological dynamics of oppression entail surplus powerlessness, belief in a just world, learned helplessness, conformity, obedience to authority, fear, verbal and emotional abuse (for reviews see Moane, 1999; Mullaly, 2002; Prilleltensky, in press b; and Prilleltensky & Gonick, 1996).

What Is the Value-Base of Community and Power?

We have already established the complementarity of values for personal, relational, and collective well-being in Chapter 3. In a similar vein, Newbrough (1992, 1995) has argued that community psychology should try to reach an equilibrium among the principal values of the French revolution: liberty, equality, and fraternity. In our view, however, the desired equilibrium has not been reached because the field has paid more attention to fraternity than to the other two values. Unlike the value of fraternity, which has been enacted through the concept of community, the values of liberty and equality have not found similar expression in concepts like power and justice (Prilleltensky & Nelson, 1997). To achieve personal liberty and collective equality, which are closely intertwined, sometimes we need to resort to conflict. If fraternal means fail to produce a more equal distribution of resources, conflict may be necessary. The absence of conflict rewards those who benefit from the current state of affairs, for the status quo is to their advantage. Hence, for as long as they produce the desired results, we would prefer conflict-free and fraternal means of promoting well-being. But if they don’t, we have to consider more assertive means (Hughey & Speer, 2002). We could try to persuade companies to provide better conditions for their workers, or we could create support groups for workers experiencing stress. Furthermore, we could negotiate with factory owners to put in place better working conditions such as ventilation, proper lighting, and more breaks. But if the owners deny all requests workers may consider a strike or more confronting means of action.

The erosion of social cohesion since the 1960s, at least in the U. S., has been amply documented by Putnam (2000). This is a reminder that it is not enough to reflect on the virtues of community structures; somebody has to support them! In the age of economic neoliberalism and globalization, governments are under great pressure to reduce community and social services either to cope with lower taxes or to reduce them. This has been the trend in the last two decades. As a result, we see less and less investment in communities and more and more tax cuts that benefit the rich (Gershman & Irwin, 2000; Sen, 1999). In light of these developments, now more than ever we need social movements to fight for the restoration of community services and for social investments (Bourdieu, 1998; Kim, Millen, Irwin, & Gershman, 2000).

How Can Community and Power Be Promoted Simultaneously?

The literature is quite abundant in examples that promote either a sense of community (e.g., Fisher, Sonn, & Bishop, 2002) or empowerment (e.g., Perkins & Zimmerman, 1995; Serrano Garcia & Bond, 1994), but not so vast in cases that promote both simultaneously. Based on their research with community mental health groups, Nelson, Lord and Ochocka (2001) proposed the empowerment-community integration paradigm. With input from various stakeholder groups they identified values, elements, and ideal indicators for the promotion of the new paradigm. The key values for this paradigm are psychiatric consumer/survivor empowerment, community integration and holistic health care, and access to resources. The principles, which correspond respectively to liberty, fraternity, and equality, seek an integration of empowerment and community interventions. Table 5.2 shows the main ingredients of the new paradigm.

Insert Table 5.2 About Here

As found by Nelson and colleagues, the three values are needed for the well-being of psychiatric consumer/survivors. In our view, this integration is really imperative for the promotion of individual, group, community, and societal well-being (see also Table 5.1). Social support by itself promotes a sense of community but it doesn’t rectify power imbalances, whereas combative social action addresses power inequalities but doesn’t necessarily promote cohesion.

Power and community may be invoked to promote well-being, engage in oppression or, finally, strive for liberation. Liberation refers to the process of resisting oppressive forces. As a state, liberation is a condition in which oppressive forces no longer exert their dominion over a person or a group. Liberation may be from psychological and/or political influences. Building on Fromm’s dual conception of “freedom from” and “freedom to” (1965), liberation is the process of overcoming internal and external sources of oppression (freedom from), and pursuing well-being (freedom to). Liberation from social oppression entails, for example, emancipation from class exploitation, gender domination, and ethnic discrimination. Freedom from internal and psychological sources includes overcoming fears, obsessions, or other psychological phenomena that interfere with a person's subjective experience of well‑being. Liberation to pursue well-being, in turn, refers to the process of meeting personal, relational, and collective needs.

The process of liberation is analogous to Freire’s concept of conscientization, according to which marginalized populations begin to gain awareness of oppressive forces in their lives and of their own ability to overcome domination (Freire, 1972). This awareness is likely to develop in stages (Watts, Griffith, & Abdul-Adil, 1999). Through various processes, people begin to realize that they are the subject of oppressive regulations. The first realization may happen as a result of therapy, participation in a social movement or readings. Next, people may connect with others experiencing similar circumstances and gain an appreciation for the external forces pressing down on them. Some individuals will go on to liberate themselves from oppressive relationships or psychological dynamics such as fears and phobias, whereas others will join social movements to fight for political justice (Bourdieu, 1998). While a fuller exploration of interventions will be given in Chapters 8, 9, and 10, we offer below some parameters for intervention at different levels of analysis.

Individual and Group Interventions. Research on the process of empowerment shows that individuals rarely engage in emancipatory actions until they have gained considerable awareness of their own oppression and have enjoyed support from other community members (Kieffer, 1984; Lord & Hutchinson, 1993). Consequently, the task of overcoming oppression should start with a process of interpersonal support, mentoring, and psychopolitical education. It is through this kind of support and education that people experience consciousness-raising (Hollander, 1997; Watts, Griffith, & Abdul-Adil, 1999).

The preferred way to contribute to the liberation of oppressed people is through partnerships and solidarity. This means that we approach others in an attempt to work with them and learn from them at the same time that we contribute to their cause (Nelson, Ochocka, Griffin & Lord, 1998; Prilleltensky, Nelson & Peirson, 2001). The three community mental health organizations studied by Nelson, Lord and Ochocka (2001) dedicated themselves to empowering people with psychiatric problems. At their best, these organizations provided support and empowerment to their members, affording them voice and choice in the selection of treatment, caring and compassion, and access to valued services and resources. Similarly, action groups studied by Speer and colleagues offered citizens better resources such as services and housing, but connectedness at the same time (Speer & Hughey, 1995; Speer, Hughey, Gensheimer, & Adams-Leavitt, 1995). In both sets of studies, the groups acted as communities of support and communities of power.

Community and Societal Interventions. Joining strategic social movements is perhaps the most powerful step that citizens can take to transform unacceptable social conditions. In some cases these will be global movements, in others they may be regional or community-based coalitions. In North America community-building efforts have proven useful in bringing people together to fight poverty. Snow (1995) claims that “community-building can enable the underprivileged to create power through collective action” (p. 185), while McNeely (1999) reports that “community building strategies can make a significant difference. There is now evidence of many cases where the residents of poor communities have dramatically changed their circumstances by organizing to assume responsibility for their own destiny” (p. 742). McNeely lists community participation, strategic planning, focused and local interventions as central to success. Similar initiatives have taken place in Europe to address the multifaceted problems faced by residents in large public housing estates. Community organizing helped many poor neighbourhoods throughout the UK to demand and receive improved social services such as health, policing, and welfare (Power, 1996).

In their research of Block Booster Projects in New York, Perkins and Long (2002) found that sense of community and communitarianism predicted collective efficacy, which is encouraging because collective efficacy may be a precursor of social action. A similar and encouraging result was reported by Saegert and Winkel (1996) who found that social capital increased empowerment and voting behavior at the group level.

These interventions work at the personal, relational, and collective levels at the same time. By participating in social action groups, citizens feel empowered while they develop bonds of solidarity, a phenomenon that is particularly prominent in women-led organizations (Gittell, Ortega-Bustamante, & Steffy, 2000; hooks, 2002). The feelings of empowerment and connection contribute to personal and relational well-being; whereas the tangible outcomes in the form of enhanced services and quality of life contribute to collective well-being. In comparing two social action groups, Speer and colleagues found that members of the organization that invested more in interpersonal connections reported their group to be “more intimate and less controlling. They also reported more frequent overall interpersonal contact and more frequent interaction outside organizing events. Members of the community based organization also reported greater levels of psychological empowerment” (Speer, Hughey, Gensheimer, & Adams-Leavitt, 1995, p. 70). Their research illustrates how an organization can promote empowerment and community at the same time.

What Are Some of the Risks and Limitations of Community and Power?

Community

Social capital may be used to increase bonding or bridging. Whereas the former refers to

exclusive ties within a group, the latter refers to connections across groups. Country clubs, ethnic associations, farmers’ association, and men’s groups increase bonding. Coalitions, interfaith organizations and service groups enhance bridging (Agnitsch, Flora, & Ryan, 2001). There is a risk of bonding overshadowing the need for bridging. If every group in society was interested only in what is good for its own members, there would be little or no cooperation across groups. Bridging is a necessity of every society. It is a basic requirement of a respectful and inclusive society. However, there are examples of groups investing in bonding to prevent bridging. Classic examples include the Ku Klux Klan and movements that support ethnic cleansing.

If bonding leads to preoccupation with one’s well-being and the neglect of others’, we see a problem. The problem is even greater if social capital is used to promote unjust policies or discrimination. “Networks and the associated norms of reciprocity are generally good for those inside the network, but the external effects of social capital are by no means always positive” (Putnam, 2000, p. 21). Movements such as NIMBY (not in my backyard) and coalitions of elite businesses exploit their power and connections to achieve goals that are in direct opposition to the values of community psychology. “Social capital, in short, can be directed toward malevolent, antisocial purposes, just like any other form of social capital....Therefore it is important to ask how the positive consequences of social capital – mutual support, cooperation, trust, institutional effectiveness – can be maximized and the negative manifestations – sectarianism, ethnocentrism, corruption – minimized” (Putnam, 2000, p. 22).

Another serious risk of the current discourse on social capital is its potential deflection of systemic sources of oppression, inequality and domination. There is a distinct possibility that social capital may become the preferred tool of governments to work on social problems because it puts the burden of responsibility back onto the community (Blakeley, 2002; Perkins, Hughey, & Speer, in press). We believe that communities should become involved in solving their own problems. But that is part of the solution, not the whole solution. No amount of talk about social support can negate the fact that inequality exists and that it is a major source of suffering for vulnerable populations. Social support can buffer some of the effects of inequality, but it would be most ironic if it was used to support the same system that creates so much social fragmentation and isolation. Hence, we caution against social capital becoming the new mantra of governments. Furthermore, we call on people to create bonds of solidarity to enhance, not to diminish, political action against injustice. We concur with Perkins, Hughey, and Speer who claim that “excessive concern for social cohesion undermines the ability to confront or engage in necessary conflict and thus disempowers.” (in press, p. 2).

Power

Too much power in the wrong hands and too little power in the right hands are two problems associated with power. Of course, we don’t always know who is the “wrong hands” and who is the “right hands.” But, in principle, we know that certain groups are clearly over-empowered. At the time of this writing, in July 2002, newspapers and magazines all over the world are decrying the unrestrained power of corporate executives. The collapse of corporations like Enron and Worldcom, due in part to the unrestrained power of chief executive officers and their ability to doctor the books, left thousands of people with no pension plan and thousands of others with no life savings (e. g., Gibbs, 2002). We don’t want to give more power to corrupted corporate leaders, nor, for that matter, to racist demagogues or unreformed sexists.

Far too often, not enough power gets into the hands of the marginalised. A number of barriers stand in the way of the disempowered (Gaventa & Cornwall, 2001; Serrano-García & López Sánchez, 1994; Speer & Hughey, 1995; Speer, Hughey, Gensheimer, & Adams-Leavitt, 1995). Superior bargaining resources is the first instrument of power in the hands of the powerful. Those with resources to pay lawyers and send their children to elite schools have more access to power than those with fewer resources. In the case of a dispute, those with the lawyers, the money, and the connections can outweigh the position of the disadvantaged.

By setting agendas and defining issues in a particular way, power is also exercised by excluding from discussions and public debate issues such as inequality, privilege, oppression, corruption and power differentials. The third barrier to power and participation is defining issues in such a way that people do not realize that power is being taken away from them. Callers to the Suzie Orman show (see Box 5.1) are being robbed of power when they believe that their “net-worth is a reflection of their self-worth.” They are buying into myths and cultural messages that prevent them from fighting injustice. Instead, they are told to go therapy and improve their self-esteem. This is a forceful way to deny people the power of political and economic literacy (Bourdieu, 1990, 1998; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977).

Finally, we caution against covering the whole human experience with a blanket of power. Power is vitally important in fostering well-being and liberation. Moreover, it is ever present in relationships, organizations, and communities. But we want to think that there are spaces in human relations where power differentials are minimized, where people feel solidarity with others, where empathy outweighs personal interests, and where love and communion are more important than narcissism (Craig & Craig, 1979; Dokecki, Newbrough, & O’Gorman, 2001; hooks, 2000, 2002). The complementary risk is that we fail to see power where power is present, for masking power is perhaps one of the gravest risks in the pursuit of well-being and liberation.

SUMMARY

In this chapter we explored the concepts of community and power. These two concepts are the root of sense of community and empowerment, both of which have been hailed as defining metaphors for community psychology. We considered geographical and relational communities and explored sense of community and social capital. The research demonstrates that cohesive communities achieve better rates of health, education, tolerance and safety than fragmented ones.

The benefits of social support extend beyond the individual. Social networks improve outcomes for children, adults, and for the community as a whole. While the positive outcomes of cohesion and social capital are many, it’s important to remember that group unity can be used to exclude “others.” It is equally important to keep in mind that social capital and the call for community may be used to excuse governments from investing in public resources (Blakeley, 2002). In other words, community and social capital may be used to deflect responsibility from governments.

Whereas bridging and bonding are desirable qualities of healthy communities, they can restrict opportunities for challenging power structures and for engaging in productive conflict. Although social capital can contribute to health and welfare, it can also depoliticize issues of well-being and oppression (Perkins, Hughey, & Speer, in press).

The ability of communities to promote well-being and liberation is linked to the power of the group to demand rights, services, and resources. We explored the concept of power and noted its multifaceted nature and applications. For us, power is a combination of ability and opportunity. In other words, power is not just a psychological state of mind, but it’s a reflection of the opportunities presented to individuals by the psychosocial and material environment where they live. Of particular interest to us is the potential of power to promote well-being, to cause or perpetuate oppression and to pursue liberation. Personal empowerment has to be complemented by collective actions (Cooke, 2002). We identified three main barriers to power, based on the ability of the powerful to (a) use resources to reward and punish behavior in line with their interests, (b) set agendas, and (c) create cultural myths and ideologies that perpetuate the status quo. We noted that our work is challenged by the fact that it is not always clear who needs more power and who needs to be dis-empowered. Knowledge of the values, the context, and the various interests at play is the best antidote against dogmatism. We can see too much power in certain places and not enough of it in others. Both are serious risks, for we don’t want to be oblivious to power, nor do we want to project it where it doesn’t belong.

Insert Box 5.3 About Here

Insert Table 5.3 About Here

Resources

1. For an interesting project on community capacity (headed at the time of this writing by community psychologist David Chavis), visit the Association for the Study and Development of Community on

2. For information on the role of social capital in international community development, you can visit a site operated by the University of Sussex in collaboration with the UK government department of International Development. Go to www.id21.org/insights/insights34/insights‑iss34‑art02.html

3. ISUMA – The Canadian Journal of Policy Research has devoted its second volume to social capital. You may read online state of the art articles by leading authors in this field. Visit

4. The Saguaro Seminar at Harvard University is interested in promoting social capital. Visit at

5. Robert Putnam has an interesting website on his book Bowling Alone. You can read an overview of the book on

6. The Poverty and Race Research Action Council offers resources on how to promote community development and community organizing. The Council aims to use social research to reduce poverty and racism. You can visit them at

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Box 5.4

Class Exercise

1. Identify a group or a community to which you belong. Using Table 5.3 make a list of benefits and disadvantages associated with being part of a particular group or community. Write down benefits and disadvantages for yourself, for other members of the community and for people not belonging to this particular group or community.

2. Compare and discuss with peers in class the contents of Table 5.3

3. As part of the discussion, consider the role of power in bringing about positive or negative outcomes for the various groups of people listed in Table 5.3

Table 5.1*

Empowerment Processes and Outcomes at Multiple Levels of Analysis

Levels of Analysis

Processes

Outcomes

Individual

training in critical thinking

participation in action groups

mentoring experiences

connecting with people in similar situations

training in value-based practice

consciousness raising

participation in social action

assertiveness

expanded options in life

sense of control

mentoring others

Organizational

shared leadership

training in group facilitation

participation in decision making

sense of common purpose

participation in social action

increased resources

enhanced connections

solidarity with other groups

influences public opinion

Community

access to government

participation in

civic organizations

political education

target local issues

improved quality of life

enhanced health and well- being

democratic institutions

improved access to services

coalitions for well-being

tolerance of diversity

Societal

struggles for democracy

struggles for liberation

solidarity across social groups

resisting globalization

political and economic literacy

redistributive policies

support for disadvantaged people

governmental accountability

control of resources by poor

progressive social policies

resists economic

neo-liberalism

* Expanded from Lord and Hutchison (1993), Speer and Hughey (1995) and Zimmerman (2000).

Table 5.2

Values, Elements, and Ideal Indicators of the Empowerment-Community Integration Paradigm in Community Mental Health (reproduced with permission from Nelson, Lord, & Ochocka, 2001, pp. 243-245)

Values	Elements	Ideal Indicators
Consumer/survivor empowerment	Personal empowerment	• There is consumer/survivor independence • Consumer/survivors have a positive self-image
	Voice, choice, and control over services and supports	• Consumer/survivors have choice over the type and source of support • Consumer/survivors’ choices about medication are viewed in terms of choice, not “compliance”
	Voice, choice, and control over organizational planning and policy	• Consumer/survivors have a strong voice on all organizational committees • Consumer/survivors constitute the majority on agency boards and committees
	Consumer/survivor control over financial resources	• Consumer/survivors have control over how mental health dollars are spent • Consumer/survivors are staff at all levels of the organization
Community integration	Participation in the community	• Consumer/survivors participate everywhere in the community, in all walks of life • There is non-segregated living, working, and playing
	Acceptance of consumer/survivors as valued members of the community and eradication of stigma and labelling	• People are loved and accepted for who they are • Consumer/survivors do not feel ashamed, isolated, or stigmatized
	Relationships with people who are not consumer/survivors	• Consumer/survivors have relationships with people in normal community settings, recreation and leisure, work, education • Consumer/survivors have informal support and are not isolated
	Participation in self-help/mutual aid	• Consumer/survivors have their own independent organizations over which they have total control • Consumer/survivors have peer support
Access to valued resources	Income	• Consumer/survivors are assured a guaranteed minimum income that allows them to live in dignity and peace • Consumer/survivors have decent financial support, not poverty level
	Housing	• There is a focus on homes as opposed to housing • Everyone has access to clean, safe, affordable housing; housing is a basic human right
	Education	• There are more sensitive departments in schools and universities that aim to support students who are consumer/survivors • Colleges and universities have supported and flexible education policies to ensure access and support
	Employment	• An employment strategy to eliminate unemployment of consumer/survivors who want to work at whatever work or level they want • Consumer/survivors do not lose financial support when they try to go back to work
Holistic health care (treatment and support)	Holistic treatment and support	• Treatment and support focus on spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical aspects of health • Treatment and support focus on the whole person
	Information from professionals	• Consumer/survivors get full information about treatment • Consumer/survivors have a directive role with psychiatrists and professionals
	Professional attitudes and behaviours	• Professionals listen to and respect consumer/survivors • Professionals acknowledge their own mental health issues
	Valuing of consumer/survivors’ experiential knowledge	• Consumer/survivors’ experiential knowledge is considered valid • Consumer/survivors disseminate their knowledge about recovery to professionals
	Individualized and flexible support and treatment	• There is a move away from “programming” to individualized supports • Services and supports build upon consumer/survivors’ strengths
	Community and home-based support	• Support is provided in a person’s home or wherever it is needed in the community • Life changes for the consumer/survivor are minimized while treatment is provided
	Coordination of treatment and support	• There is cooperation and common goals between psychiatrists and support workers • There is more coordination and cooperation among service-providers • Consumer/survivors direct support coordination

Table 5.3

Positive and Negative Aspects Associated with Being Part of a Group or Community

	Positive Aspects of Being Part of a Group or Community	Negative Aspects of Being Part of a Group or Community
For myself
For other members of the group
For people not associated with the group or community

Figure 5.1 Summary of Core Measures of Social Capital, and Illustrative Examples of its Determinants and Outcomes.

Insert here figure, available in RTF separate file called “Fig 1 social capital RTF”

From Stone and Hughes (2002). Reproduced with permission from the Australian Institute of Family Studies.

Figure 5.2 The Effects of Social Capital in Different States of the USA

Examples of

Low social capital states: Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana

Medium social capital states: Illinois, Kansas, California, Ohio

High social capital states: Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota.

* The trends reflected in the graph are based on research summarized by Putnam (2000) in Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American Community. New York, NY: Touchstone.