Empowerment

Two-thirds of the population of the world are poor, and their
number is growing in the first as well as in the third world,
despite billions of dollars of aid. The economic development
policies of the last two decades, and the theory which gave rise to
them, have been discredited. The rich are disillusioned,
apprehensive or uninterested, while the poor are embittered and
without hope, the victims and agents of ignorance, instability and
environmental degradation. The need for radical rethinking is
urgent: this book makes an important contribution towards that end.

John Friedmann argues that poverty should be seen not merely in
material terms, but as social, political and psychological
powerlessness. He presents the case for an alternative development
committed to empowering the poor in their own communities, and to
mobilizing them for political participation on a wider scale. In
contrast to centralized development policies devised and
implemented at the national and international level, alternative
development restores the initiative to those in need, on the
grounds that unless people have an active role in directing their
own destinies long-term progress will not be achieved.

The author takes the household as the strategic starting-point -
stressing its moral, political and economic potential - as a source
of continuity and as a location for production. From this basis he
propounds a politics of emancipation that would enable the
disempowered poor to assert their rights.

Empowerment provides a morally-informed theoretical
framework for a development policy that meets the needs of its
recipients rather than of its makers.