Fisher, P (2008) Wellbeing and empowerment: the importance of recognition. Sociology of Health and Illness: a journal of medical sociology, 30 (4). 583 - 598. ISSN 0141-9889
Abstract
Health and wellbeing are now located within a policy framework that emphasises the empowerment of the individual 'consumer'. Within this paradigm, empowerment is writ large and wellbeing is seen as a 'civic duty'. The role of the health and social care services has been identified as one of enabling service users to promote their own wellbeing. In this paper, it is argued that dominant narratives relating to 'achievement' and 'normality' may result in forms of 'misrecognition' that act to undermine the positive sense of self that is crucial for self-empowerment. It is suggested that while the parents of disabled babies often act reflexively to create empowering life narratives within the private sphere, this is not always facilitated by their encounters with health and social care organisations where neo-liberal ideas and biomedical narratives, based on a modernist view of identity as individual and existing prior to society, mean that parents and children are attributed 'deficient' identities in ways that undermine empowerment. With reference to 'the politics of recognition', it is argued that services that seek to empower must value diversity and alterity whilst respecting human dependency on intersubjective recognition.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2008, Wiley Blackwell. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Sociology of Health and Illness: a journal of medical sociology. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The definitive version is available at www3.interscience.wiley.com |
Keywords: | Child, Preschool; Consumer Satisfaction; Disabled Children; Great Britain; Humans; Interviews as Topic; Parent-Child Relations; Parents; Personal Satisfaction; Policy Making; Retrospective Studies; Self Efficacy; Social Work |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Healthcare (Leeds) > Nursing Mental Health (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 22 Nov 2013 10:27 |
Last Modified: | 15 Sep 2014 02:48 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01074.x |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley Blackwell |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01074.x |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:76833 |