SWN025 Chap.7 Power, Empowerment and Conflict
Power, Empowerment and Conflict
This chapter compares two models of power. The modernist model treats power as a possession located in structure and hierarchy, which makes empowerment something given to others. The poststructural model, drawn from Foucault through Healy and Fook, treats power as exercised in relationships and discourse, and as productive as well as negative.
The chapter shows how the second model reveals points of choice in conflict, especially conflict with managers, and why it is the deconstruction students use most. An extra clinic page turns four ordinary sentences into deconstruction questions about power, including the power a worker exercises over service users.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Modernist notions of power and empowerment
- 02
Marx and class struggle
- 03
Critiques of power as a commodity
- 04
Postmodern critiques of empowerment
- 05
Foucault: power exercised, not possessed
- 06
Structural power alongside local relations
- 07
Critical reflection in conflict situations
Worked example · free
Rethink empowerment in a group program
- 1Name the model: empowerment here is something the worker gives, which assumes the worker holds power and the women lack it.
- 1Apply the critique: this sets up a binary of empowerer and empowered and may bolster the worker’s own power.
- 1Apply the poststructural view: power is exercised in the group’s interactions, including in how topics and expertise are chosen.
- 1Revise the framing: build the program with participants, starting from the forms of agency and resistance they already exercise.
Key terms
- Power as commodity
- Power as a commodity is the modernist view that power is a possession some people hold and others lack.
- Exercised power
- Exercised power is the Foucauldian view that power operates through relationships and discourse rather than being owned.
- Productive power
- Productive power is power understood as capable of creating possibilities, not only of constraining people.
- Point of choice
- A point of choice is a moment in an incident where a different response was possible, revealed by a poststructural view of power.
- Zero-sum assumption
- A zero-sum assumption is the belief that any power one person gains must be lost by someone else.
Power, Empowerment and Conflict FAQ
What is wrong with the idea of giving clients power?
The Week 5 lecture’s postmodern critiques note that it casts the empowerer as powerful and the client as powerless, creates a binary, makes empowerment something done to people, and may strengthen the empowerer’s own position while leaving the client feeling disempowered.
Does Foucault deny that structural oppression exists?
No. Citing Healy, the lecture explains that Foucault accepts large oppressive systems of power, including capitalism, patriarchy and imperialism, but argues we must also grasp how local relations produce, and do not merely reflect, those forms of power.
How does this theory help with conflict at work?
If power is exercised in interaction as well as embodied in structure, there are more options than winning or losing. Critical reflection shows points of choice and agency, moves beyond the powerful and powerless binary, and brings practice closer to stated social justice commitments.
Is power always a negative force in this unit?
No. The Week 5 lecture, drawing on Morley (2014), stresses that power is not just a negative force but can also be productive. On this view power creates possibilities, such as new ways of speaking about a situation, as well as constraining people, which is why reconstruction can locate agency even in difficult settings.
Why does framing conflict as allies and enemies cause problems?
The Week 2 and Week 12 lectures both describe that framing as fraught. Casting a manager or colleague as an enemy fixes positions, hides shared goals and closes off negotiation. A poststructural view of power treats conflict as a set of exchanges in which each party still has points of choice.
Assessment move
Find every sentence in your initial account that mentions control, authority, permission or having no say, and label it with the model of power it assumes. Then rewrite one of them using the poststructural model and name the point of choice it reveals. That rewritten sentence is often the hinge of a strong essay, so cite Fook’s chapters on power and the Week 5 sources beside it.
Pair this chapter with Chapter 8: most incidents that raise power also raise identity, and analysing both together usually produces the strongest deconstruction. Before submitting, read your essay once looking only at power: every place you appear powerless should be followed by the point of choice your reconstruction found.
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