Many people in the United States are poor, lead marginal lives,
and need jobs as well as basic services such as education, medical
care, and housing. Multitudes in other parts of the world, in
addition to being poor, are jailed, tortured, and killed for being
members of the wrong ethnic group or expressing political opinions.
Those who argue for empowerment claim it is a magic bullet. It can
liberate the oppressed, largely through self-organization,
self-motivation, self-invention, and even self-clarity.
William M. Epstein sees contemporary empowerment practice in the
United States as a civic church of national values, one better in
performing its ceremonial role than god-based houses of worship. By
itself, empowerment is not worth the effort of commentary, since it
achieves none of its goals and has not even generated a respectable
critical literature. But Epstein argues that empowerment practice
and American social welfare both embody prescriptive cultural
preferences. Like art and music, empowerment opens windows into
deeper social meaning.
The social sciences have carved out roles for themselves by
looking for simple remedies, ones that are inexpensive and
compatible with contemporary social arrangements. Epstein shows
that those in social work practices have not only deluded
themselves into thinking that these services have real instrumental
value, but really operate at cross-purposes. This accessible work
will attract critical attention among these professional groups. It
bases its carefully-documented insights upon informed sociological
and anthropological theory.
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