http://www.lauraagustin.com/the-em-of-empowerment Dr Laura Agustín on Migration, Trafficking and Sex Mon, 21 May 2012 11:21:43 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 http://www.lauraagustin.com/the-em-of-empowerment#comment-2297 peripheries » Blog Archive » SCRAPS (things I would like to have written about) Wed, 11 Aug 2010 01:02:54 +0000 http://www.lauraagustin.com/?p=94#comment-2297 [...] I would like to have blogged about how empowerment has come to represent the latest incarnation of colonialism, a well meant, cuddly way not only to tell people what they should do, but also what they should need and what they should ask for on the ground that we have feeling for them. A fabrication like any of these fizzy drinks adverts selling sweeter dreams of wellbeing, happiness and trendiness to people who will only end up isolated, obese, and rejected. Empowerment “understood to represent the currently ‘politically correct’ way of thinking about ‘third world’, subaltern or marginalised people” as Laura put it 10 years ago. [...] [...] I would like to have blogged about how empowerment has come to represent the latest incarnation of colonialism, a well meant, cuddly way not only to tell people what they should do, but also what they should need and what they should ask for on the ground that we have feeling for them. A fabrication like any of these fizzy drinks adverts selling sweeter dreams of wellbeing, happiness and trendiness to people who will only end up isolated, obese, and rejected. Empowerment “understood to represent the currently ‘politically correct’ way of thinking about ‘third world’, subaltern or marginalised people” as Laura put it 10 years ago. [...]

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