The Romance of Empowerment: Revealing Conventions in Social Change

Abstract

The presentation critically discusses the contemporary discourse of empowerment in hypermediated Indonesia, questioning how it obscures and sustains existing power structures rather than subverting them. Drawing on Lila Abu-Lughod's 1990 germinal critique of resistance, I interrogate how resistance has been co-opted and repackaged as empowerment by dominant actors, particularly within the activism associated with youth and gender in Indonesia. Drawing on recent fieldwork with young women leaders across Indonesia, I reveal how digital feminism, celebrated for its democratizing potential, reflects regional and socio-cultural inequalities. I present a contrast in how Jakarta, Yogyakarta, and Lombok frame empowerment strategies and shed light on the defects of current approaches that, though outwardly progressive, reproduce conventions of power imbalance. This presentation thus demands an incendiary and rootedly critical approach to empowerment, one that moves beyond the romanticized, abstracted, top-down narratives to uncover the complex ways in which power operates and is maintained.