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Introduction
The concept of 'empowerment' has increasingly become part of mainstream development vocabulary and is frequently identified as a key objective in its approach to poverty reduction, as exemplified by the World Development Report (WDR) 2000/2001 (Rowlands 1997; Cornwall 2000; World Bank 2000). Although this can be seen as part of the broader shift to a Post-Washington Consensus discourse in the late 1990s,1 with its emphasis on governance, civil society and poverty reduction, this recent addition of the idea of empowerment is of particular interest. In contrast to other concepts adopted by the development mainstream, the language of empowerment and participation has its roots in a radical history associated with the emancipatory pedagogy of Paulo Freire and the Marxist-oriented school of Participatory Action Research, on which view development comes only as a result of individual self-awareness and subsequent collective action to transform the structures that reproduce poverty and marginalisation (Leal 2007: 540-1).
Given its radical history, for some 'the proliferation of the language of "participation" and "empowerment" within the mainstream is heralded as the realisation of a long-awaited paradigm shift in development thinking' (Cornwall 2000: 15). The replacement of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) with Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), and the accompanying use of participatory methods of research popularised by Robert Chambers known as the Participatory Rural Appraisal/Participatory Poverty Assessment (PRA/PPA) approach, seemed to imply a move away from top-down and externally imposed development projects and the possibility of transforming the hierarchical nature of development institutions (Chambers 1997). As opposed to SAPs, PRSPs are produced by governments in consultation with 'stakeholders', such as non-governmental organisations (NGOs), churches and businesses, to encourage a sense of 'ownership' of development programmes and to promote processes of participation (Klugman 2002). The role of the empowerment of the poor has been increasingly emphasised in this new consensual approach to poverty reduction (World Bank 2000, 2002; Brock et al. 2001: 1). Accordingly, the mainstream acceptance of the concept of empowerment could be seen as an attempt by governments and development agencies to improve upon past development failures and to engage with grassroots organisations and communities.
A second view, held by a number of critical practitioners and academics, is that the malleable concept of empowerment has been adopted by the development...