Gendered isolation, idealised communities and the role of collective power in West Bengal self-help groups

Empowerment and power have long been fervently contested in feminist theory and geography. Much debate focuses on whether empowerment is mainly monetary or more holistic and emancipatory. In both cases, most of the literature centres on individual empowerment and internal ‘power within’. Much less attention, however, has been given to the idea of ‘power with’ and how friendship, solidarity and emotional connections are fundamental to empowerment and yet are highly vulnerable to outside influence. Drawing on field research from Self-Help Groups in West Bengal, this article highlights how the formation of ‘power with’ is particularly important in contexts of gendered isolation, where patriarchy is enacted through the spatial control of women and removal of women from the public sphere, illustrating that communities in the Global South are not necessarily sites of collective unity and cohesion. These findings contest both idealised notions of community and mainstream theories of power and empowerment and in turn, provide crucial insights for feminist geography and power theory.