Technologies that connect people to knowledge, services, and one another across the globe have acted as a centrifugal force, spinning functions and authority away from the center toward millions of previously silent and disempowered individuals.
In her work, Kristin Shrader-Frechette identifies the focus of environmental justice as being on the disproportionate burdens faced by socially disempowered individuals and groups (e.g., the poor and racial and ethnic minorities) [ 27, 28].
Our repeated ignoring of frontline workers' own voices is, in my experience, creating an unhappy, disillusioned and disempowered set of individuals.
In an economic system that scrambles extreme scarcity (of resources and public cohesion) and extreme abundance (of images and entertainments), individual action can seem disempowered or useless, lost in the churn of financial transactions.
He raises money for individuals and organizations advocating for the disempowered or victimized, yet street art and graffiti kids who feel marginalized in their lives call him a sellout for making commercial work.
But rigid models for standardized implementation that exclude national and local institutions in matters of design, resource allocation, and monitoring, particularly those outside of individual projects or programs, ensure that local institutions will remain disempowered and peripheral to the scaling up process.
Furthermore, Wallerstein (27) reported that disadvantaged populations are also disempowered and unable to engage in traditional health promotion programmes in which individuals are encouraged to take control over their health.
We can combat the insidious tendency to downplay the needs of vulnerable individuals and communities with a requirement that planners identify marginal or disempowered groups or communities and ensure that their actions do not jeopardize the lives, homes or livelihoods of those people if possible — and where not possible, that every step is taken to respect the rights of the affected individuals.
Epistemologically, it prioritises giving agency and voice to an increasingly disempowered collective, online learners, who often are institutionally pursued for economic advantage, rather than pedagogical interest in serving students' unique, individual needs/preferences.
People feel disempowered.
