What Exactly is an Emancipatory
Methodology?
Ewen Speed, Department of Sociology, Trinity College, Dublin
Introduction
In this paper I will talk about my own experience of involvement in what might be
classed as ‘emancipatory methodologies’ in a mental health context, but first I want
to consider some of the differences between the role and prevalence of emancipatory
research in the field of disability and the field of mental health. There is a distinct
tradition of ‘emancipatory research’ within the Disabled People’s Movements. The
term was coined by Oliver in 1992 and has been used ever since to describe
research which has critiqued mainstream disability research and which instead has
offered a perspective that draws on disabled people’s experiences, ‘illustrating the
complexity of the process of disablement with reference to environmental and social
factors,’ (Colin Barnes, 2001:4). The legacy of Oliver’s 1992 statement has enjoyed a
far higher profile within disability research than it has in mental health research.
There are, I would argue, two primary reasons for the differences between disability
movement approaches to social research and mental health movement approaches
to social research. The first of these relates to the actual movement and the second
relates to the role of the different movements in a specifically Irish context.
Movement Differences
The disability movements are in a different social place than the mental health
movements. Beresford and Wallcraft (1997) talk about some of the reasons for these
differences. The primary difference they identify is in the relationship between service
users and service providers. Beresford and Wallcraft (1997) contend that the
disability movements in the UK, through their utilisation of the social model, have
developed
Largely independently of the disability professionals and the disability service system.
It has placed an emphasis on developing organisations of disabled people and
challenging the traditional dominance of organisations for disabled people (1997:70).
The distinction between ‘of’ and ‘for’ is one that crops up again in the literature; it is
related to issues of empowerment and is one that I will return to later in the paper
(see also Barnes, 2001: 47-8). However, this does not simply mean that the social
model can be extended to encompass issues of emotional distress. Plumb (1994)
has argued that there are distinct differences between the two movements. She
argues that the prevalence of the social model within the disability field could well
lead to the colonisation of mental health service users, to the extent that their specific
needs may be subsumed under the social model of disability. However, to return to
the original point, this distinction or distance from service providers within the
disability movement is not found to be the same when UK mental health movements
are considered. Mental health organisations have been much more closely tied into
the mental health service system. In relation to the Irish context, the dominant type of
533570031
1
mental health organisations would tend to be organisations for users of services (see
Speed, 2002), but within these self same organisations there is a move towards
some representation of users by users.
Movement Roles
With regard to the roles or potential roles of these different movements in an Irish
context, I would argue that the disability movement, both here and abroad, has made
more substantial gains in battles against stigma and discrimination than mental
health movements. This does not mean to say that I feel all or even the majority of
stigma against people with a disability has been eradicated. However, more steps
have been taken with regard to issues of stigma, within the disability movements than
has been the case in the mental health field. This may be allied to the extensive
disability lobbies, which have campaigned for social change, based on an application
of the principals entailed in the social model of disability. Indeed Beresford and
Wallcraft (1997) cite the lack of a common unifying ‘alternative’ theory of mental
illness as a reason for the relative lack of success of emancipatory research
strategies within psychiatric system survivors.
Conversely, regardless of its effectiveness, legislation has been drafted which is
designed to address the concerns of the disability lobby. Again, it could be argued
that the States’ agenda is informed by equality legislation driven by the European
Union, but in turn, I think it is possible to identify the role and the successes of
disability lobbyists and disability movements at European and local levels. Indeed,
Colin Barnes (2001) argues that the British Council of Disabled People’s
emancipatory research project that considered the level of discrimination
encountered by disabled people in the UK ’played a crucial role in getting antidiscrimination legislation on to the statute books in the UK (2001:15). In Ireland I
would argue that organisations for disabled people, such as the FORUM, enjoy a far
higher public profile than any mental health organisation.
An Irish Context
So far I have posited two possible or contributory reasons for the lack of what would
appear to be emancipatory methodologies with regard to mental health social
research in Ireland. However, in the last two years working as a research ‘consultant’
I have been involved with two user-led mental health research projects in Ireland. To
attempt to put these two projects in context, I want to again draw from the Beresford
and Wallcraft (1997: 76-8) paper. In their examination of psychiatric survivor research
methodologies, they identify four primary ways in which emancipatory research
associated with the survivor’s movement has developed. These are:
● Survivors acting as paid and unpaid consultants and researchers for non-statutory
and statutory mental health organisations
● Research produced by conferences of service users
● Funded research by survivors
● Unfunded research by survivors
The two projects I have been involved with can most neatly be described within the
remit of the first category identified here, that is to say ‘survivors acting as paid and
533570031
2
unpaid consultants and researchers for non-statutory and statutory mental health
organisations’. However, again tying it to an Irish context, and I think this is an
important distinction, not all the members of either project team I was involved with
would describe themselves as survivors (some members would but other team
members would be very resistant to this description of themselves, preferring to use
terms such as consumer, user or patient). I shall talk about this distinction in more
detail later. However, I feel it is more appropriate to first talk about the implications of
this model of research, which in turn will then lead into a discussion of the
politicisation of system survivors and consumers of services.
So we have a model of research, based on my own experience of Irish user led
mental health research that is composed of mental health service users acting as
paid and unpaid consultants and researchers for non-statutory and statutory mental
health organisations. The basis of this model is grounded in the types of mental
health organisations carrying out the research, that is to say, the projects I was
involved with were both initiated by statutory or non statutory mental health
organisations for users of psychiatric services. What we see in this model is the
addition of some service users in a research capacity, so that we have statutory and
non-statutory organisations for service users, with some research of service users,
conducted by service users.
In effect we may be seeing a shift of power away from the mental health
organisations and towards the service users themselves. Service users are recording
the responses of other service users to questions about their treatment, the
conditions within psychiatric units, their dealings with mental heath professionals and
so on and so forth. These responses are given added credence because the
research measure (i.e. the questionnaire), the data gathering and the analysis are all
completed by service users.
However, this activity raises a concern. What happens after the research has been
completed? Are the findings going to be accepted by mental health professionals,
and more importantly are the findings going to be acted on, will there be a real impact
of the research upon the lives of those people who are in the psychiatric services. In
the case of both projects I was involved with, they are either recently completed or in
the final stages of completion so, as of yet, it is difficult to assess what sort of impact
they might have upon the psychiatric services. My concern would be that
empowerment within mental health research can be regarded as simply letting the
service users construct a questionnaire and administer and analyse the data (this is
not intended as a reflection of either of the projects I was involved with, it is simply a
general observation).
The real occurrence of empowerment surely is what follows on from the publication of
the report where service users are supported in getting the research read by as many
people as possible (other service users and mental health professionals), getting
feedback on the main concerns of the project and effecting some degree of social
change within the lives/situations of psychiatric service users. Whether either of
these projects will lead to this sort of empowerment of service users remains to be
seen.
Within this section I have talked in the main about processes of empowerment, I do
not regard either of these projects as pieces of emancipatory research. I have talked
533570031
3
throughout about movements for service users versus movements of service users.
As I have already stated, the dominant type of organisations in mental health in
Ireland are movements for service users. This in turn affects the potential of the
empowerment or emancipatory user led research projects.
Empowerment, Emancipation and Movement Development
Essentially my argument here is that emancipatory research is part of a process, or is
bound up in a process, of movement development. Empowerment research is a
necessary pre-cursor to emancipatory research, empowerment research might be
thought of as the tool, which can re-distribute or even open up (an important
distinction) what up to now has been professionally dominated power. It is through
these changes in power relations that it becomes possible to build projects and
programmes which can then be identified as emancipatory projects.
Marion Barnes (2001) in a book on Empowerment and Mental Health talks about a
distinction between empowerment strategies that seek to re-distribute existing power,
and empowerment strategies that seek to create new ways of using power (Figure 1).
I would argue that this distinction might be better conceived of as a distinction
between approaches that can be used to empower service users, versus approaches
that can be used to emancipate service users. Additionally I would argue that given
the historical legacies of the two movements, one approach may be more readily
applied to mental health research and the other more readily applied to disability
research.
Framework 2, in which the existing power structures are opened up and power
becomes a shared resource, might be regarded as an emancipatory model. Inherent
in this framework is a process whereby new forms of social life are generated, new
power relations are opened up and shared, and emancipation can be seen to at least
be addressed, people that previously had little or no power, now are a part of the
social processes that impact upon their lives. This could be demonstrated through
reference to lobbying groups, which have researched and campaigned, and,
according to Barnes, effected social change.
The first framework highlights strategies where power is regarded as a finite
resource, which can only be re-distributed and divided amongst more and more
people. New social roles and forms of life are not generated within this strategy;
rather the old roles are adjusted to accommodate other people into the power
structures. So the power structure itself does not change intrinsically, professionals
still hold the balance of power, so whereas before professionals could make
decisions without including users, now professionals make decisions including users,
but the service users inclusion, in and of itself, does not necessarily amount to a
mandate for social change. To quote from Parsloe:
[Empowerment] is a most unfortunate word…because it can well be argued that the
very idea that one person [a professional] can empower another [a client] runs
counter to the whole idea of greater equality of power on which the concept
supposedly depends (1996: 6).
533570031
4
Figure 1 Frameworks for Empowerment and Emancipatory Strategies
So whilst even the most laudable projects could be constructed within this
framework, they still entail a basic element of dependency, by users on
professionals. Additionally, how the research is framed, that is to say, whether the
research is couched as a piece of user led research, or psychiatric survivor research,
or consumer-led research does have an impact upon the type of research that might
be completed. For service users to describe themselves as ‘survivors of psychiatric
treatment’ is to make a political and ideological statement. Some service users are
happy to make this statement; others are not. It is in this area that we see distinctions
or types of service users emerging; some people like to think of themselves as
consumers of services, others as patients, others as mental health service users.
Each of these descriptions, in the academic literature at least, contains an inherent
element of political positioning. Barnes and Shardlow (1996) distinguish between
survivor approaches and consumer approaches on the basis that the former is based
on issues of citizenship (asserting equality) and the latter on issues of consumerism
(maximising returns from the market). This distinction, in turn, can be problematic.
Stone and Priestly (1996) argue that service users can
...feel as alienated by the politicised nature of [service users] organisations as they
do by state welfare bureaucracies. Devolving control over the research process may
seem a straightforward means of achieving accountability but it may do little to
empower individual research participants in the process (1996: 710).
Within the finite framework of empowerment, politicisation is not necessarily such an
inherent feature as it can be in an emancipatory framework. Again, this may work in
relation to the projects I was involved with because, whilst some group members
were highly political, others were not, so there was more room for a diversity of
533570031
5
attitudes towards professionals and services within an empowerment framework.
Additionally, through the use of a consumerist approach:
Space was created within which legitimacy was granted to ‘user involvement’ and
user groups could build relationships with service purchasers and providers…
(Barnes, 2001: 59).
However, the cost of this diversity is that the research can have less emancipatory
potential, because it does not fundamentally address existing power structures.
Perhaps, ‘consumerist’ approaches can play the same sort of role as empowerment
research in terms of being a stepping-stone onto emancipatory research projects.
Conclusion
If power is conceived of as being finite, that is to say, if power is seen as something
that is limited and can only be re-distributed, then the possibilities for service users to
effect emancipatory change through social research are limited. If power is regarded
as infinite, that is to say, without limit, then new power relations can be brokered;
professional power is opened up and shared between service users and mental
health professionals. I would argue that the two projects I have been involved with
use an empowerment framework as outlined in figure one.
I do not intend this as a criticism of either the participants or the organisations
involved with these projects. I do feel and this paper has demonstrated, that there are
fundamental differences between the disability research field and the mental health
research field with regard to both the social contexts of the different organisations
and the social progress of the organisations. The two projects I was involved with can
be seen, very positively, as exercises in the use of empowerment methodologies and
an important step on the way towards the use of emancipatory methodologies.
Empowerment methodologies, I would argue, are fundamentally different from
emancipatory methodologies. I would further this distinction by stating that,
(particularly in relation to mental health): empowerment methodologies and research
projects are a necessary precursor to emancipatory methodologies and research
projects.
The disability movement has succeeded (to a degree) in moving from a framework of
empowerment to a framework of emancipation (the idea that people are readily
familiar with a notion of emancipatory research within the disability movement is in
itself a reflection of progress). This has been achieved in part, by the utilisation and
development of empowerment methodologies. Mental health service users and
professionals can begin to address effecting similar levels of social change by
starting on this road, that is, utilising empowerment methodologies, and ensuring that
this utilisation is supported in terms of the completion of the research and the
dissemination of the results. I will conclude by reiterating my assertion that the two
projects I mentioned in this paper can be seen as an important step towards this
ideal.
References
Barnes, Colin. (2001). ‘Emancipatory Disability research: Project or Process’.
www.leeds.ac.uk/disabilitystudies/archiveuk/Barnes/glasgow.lecture.
533570031
6
Barnes, M. and P. Shardlow. (1996). ‘Effective Consumers and Active Citizens:
Strategies for users’ influence on service and beyond’. Research Policy and
Planning, 14 (1), 3-38.
Barnes, Marion. (2001). Taking over the Asylum: Empowerment and Mental Health.
Palgrave Press: Basingstoke.
Beresford, P. and J. Wallcraft. (1997). Psychiatric System Survivors and
Emancipatory Research: Issues, overlaps and differences, (66-87) in C. Barnes and
G. Mercer (eds.) Doing Disability Research. The Disability Press: Leeds.
Beresford, P. (2000). ‘What have Madness and Psychiatric System Survivors got to
do with Disability and Disability Studies’. Disability and Society, 15 (1), 167-172.
Parsloe, P. (ed.) (1996). Pathways to Empowerment, Series: Social Work in a
Changing World. Birmingham: Venture Press.
Plumb, A. (1994) …Distress or Disability? A discussion document, Occasional Paper,
GMCDP Publications (cf. P. Beresford, 2000, Ibid).
Speed E. (2002). ‘Irish Mental Health Social Movements: A Consideration Of
Movement Habitus’. Irish Journal of Sociology, 11 (1), 62-80.
Stone, E. and M. Priestley. (1996). ‘Parasites, Pawns and Partners: Disability
research and the role of the non-disabled researchers’. British Journal of Sociology,
47(4), 699-716.
533570031
7