Health promotion in the Hutterite community and the ethnocentricity of empowerment

Empowerment, one of the cornerstones of health promotion, has been influenced by the transformative and emancipatory perspectives of the revolutionary educator Paulo Freire and critical social theory. The empowerment process is conceived as one of liberation from oppression, powerlessness, and ignorance, and at its core are notions of grassroots activism and rejection of the status quo. This paper critically examines the challenges faced by health-promotion practitioners and researchers who seek to work in an empowering way with a culturally distinct group, the Hutterites. The Hutterian world-view, which values (a) communalism, (b) respect for hierarchical decision-making, and (c) strict adherence to a traditional code of conduct, values, and beliefs, provides an opportunity to critique the ethnocentricity of the empowerment process.