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Exploring Empowerment in Settings: Mapping Distributions of Network Power
Author(s) -
Neal Jennifer Watling
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
american journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.113
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1573-2770
pISSN - 0091-0562
DOI - 10.1007/s10464-013-9609-z
Subject(s) - empowerment , power (physics) , health psychology , intervention (counseling) , perspective (graphical) , sociology , social network (sociolinguistics) , psychology , empirical research , social psychology , computer science , public health , political science , epistemology , world wide web , artificial intelligence , medicine , physics , nursing , quantum mechanics , psychiatry , law , social media , philosophy
This paper brings together two trends in the empowerment literature—understanding empowerment in settings and understanding empowerment as relational—by examining what makes settings empowering from a social network perspective. Specifically, extending Neal and Neal's (Am J Community Psychol 48(3/4):157–167, 2011) conception of network power, an empowering setting is defined as one in which (1) actors have existing relationships that allow for the exchange of resources and (2) the distribution of network power among actors in the setting is roughly equal. The paper includes a description of how researchers can examine distributions of network power in settings. Next, this process is illustrated in both an abstract example and using empirical data on early adolescents’ peer relationships in urban classrooms. Finally, implications for theory, methods, and intervention related to understanding empowering settings are explored.