When activists try to change people’s lives, or tackle the injustices that they face, we are actually trying to change power equations.
Released for the first time at #recon2019, All About Power: Understanding Social Power and Power Structures is an essential primer for activists who want to explore how power impacts their work in order to design strategies from a more comprehensive, shared definition and analysis of power as it operates in society.
The publication, by feminist activist, trainer, and scholar Srilatha Batliwala, recognizes that concepts like power are abstract and that we each understand power in our own way. At the same time, understanding power in its many forms is critical to achieving social change, regardless of our specific areas of work, constituencies or geographic location.
The publication structures the approach to understanding power through five core questions – providing a framework for approaching the complex concept, defining key sources of power, and analyzing how it operates, in order to effectively challenge the power structures which perpetuate injustices, inequalities and marginalization.
This is a translated version of the publication, in Hindi.