GRANT TO FUND STUDY OF DEVELOPMENT ETHICS

In the international-development community, says Associate Professor of Philosophy Christine Koggel, one of the current buzzwords is "empowerment." There is a growing consensus that development projects of the past have often failed because they imposed the priorities of donor agencies on the recipients of aid; the new model seeks to empower the intended beneficiaries. But what exactly is empowerment? Do we know it when we see it?

A $30,000 Research Development Initiatives grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada will give Koggel and a Canadian colleague seed money to investigate how empowerment works and what characterizes development programs that promote it. Along with Jay Drydyk of Carleton University in Ottawa, Koggel will supervise a two-year research project titled "Ethics of Empowerment." Working with both scholars and international aid workers, the two investigators aim, Koggel says, "to establish a framework for the concept of empowerment and for making assessments of whether specific programs empower people.

"Our working hypothesis is that empowerment has two dimensions," Koggel says. "One has to do with individual agency: some development activities are more empowering than others because they enhance individual agency so that people are better able to accomplish goals of their own. The second dimension has to do with communities: some activities are empowering because they enhance democratic influence so that people are better able to change conditions that impoverish them or threaten their well-being."

Koggel, who is the co-director of both the College's Center for International Studies and a new minor in international studies, says that she and Drydyk have already established solid connections with NGOs and research networks of leading political philosophers, social scientists, policy analysts and political leaders. In the first phase of the project, they plan to undertake a critical analysis of current concepts of empowerment and what it entails in practical terms. A second phase will test that framework against field observations of an NGO working to promote democracy in Indonesia. The project will culminate in published studies, a Web site and a workshop including participants from development organizations in 2007.

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