Power (sociology)
Sociologists usually define power as the
ability to impose one's
will on others, even if those others
resist in some way.
- "By power is meant that opportunity existing within a
social relationship which permits one to carry out one's own
will even against resistance and regardless of the basis on
which this opportunity rests."
-
Max Weber, Basic Concepts in Sociology
The imposition need not involve
coercion (force or threat of force). Thus "power" in the
sociological sense subsumes both physical power and
political power. In some ways it more closely resembles what
everyday English-speakers call "influence".
More generally, one could define "power" as the real or
perceived ability or potential to bring about significant
change, usually in people’s
lives, through the actions of oneself or of others.
The exercise of power seems endemic to humans as social and
gregarious beings.
Analysis and operation of power
Power manifests itself in a relational manner: one
cannot meaningfully say (pace advocates of
empowerment) that a particular social actor "has power"
without also specifying the other parties to the social
relationship.
Power almost always operates reciprocally, but
usually not equally reciprocally. To control others,
one must have control over things that they desire or need, but
one can rarely exercise that control without a measure of
reverse control - larger, smaller or equal - also existing. For
example, an employer usually wields considerable power over his
workers because he has control over wages, working conditions,
hiring and firing. The workers, however, hold some reciprocal
power: they may leave, work more or less diligently, group
together to form a
union, and so on.
Because power operates both relationally and reciprocally,
sociologists speak of the balance of power between
parties to a
relationship: all parties to all relationships have some
power: the sociological examination of power concerns itself
with discovering and describing the relative strengths: equal or
unequal, stable or subject to periodic change. Sociologists
usually analyse relationships in which the parties have
relatively equal or nearly equal power in terms of
constraint rather than of power.
Even in
structuralist social theory, power appears as a process,
an aspect to an ongoing social relationship, not as a fixed part
of social structure.
One can sometimes distinguish primary power: the
direct and personal use of force for
coercion; and secondary power, which may involve
the threat of force or social constraint, most likely involving
third-party exercisers of delegated power.
Types and sources of power
Power may be held through:
Theories of power
The thought of
Friedrich Nietzsche underlies much
20th century analysis of power. Nietzsche disseminated ideas
on the "will to power," which he saw as the domination of other
humans as much as the exercise of control over one's
environment.
Some schools of
psychology, notably that associated with
Alfred Adler, place power dynamics at the core of their
theory (where orthodox
Freudians might place
sexuality).
Marxism
In the
Marxist tradition,
Antonio Gramsci elaborated the role of cultural
hegemony in
ideology as a means of bolstering the power of
capitalism and of the
nation-state. Gramsci saw power as something exercised in a
direct, overt manner, and the power of the bourgeois as keeping
the proletariat in their place.
Feminism
Feminist analysis of the
patriarchy often concentrates on issues of power: note the "Rape
Mantra": Rape is about power, not sex.
Some feminists distinguish "power-over" (influence on other
people) from "power-to" (ability to perform).
Foucault
One of the broader modern views of the importance of power in
human activity comes from the work of
Michel Foucault, who has said, "Power is
everywhere...because it comes from everywhere." (*Aldrich,
Robert and Wotherspoon, Gary (Eds.), 2001)
Foucault's work analyse the link between power and
knowledge. He outlines a form of covert power that works
through people rather than only on them. Foucault outlined
belief systems that gain momentum the more people accept a
particular view as common knowledge. Such belief
systems define their figures of authority, such as medical
doctors or priests in a church. Within such a belief system – or
discourse - ideas crystallise as to what is right
and what is wrong, what is normal and what is
deviant. Within a particular belief system certain
views, thoughts or actions become unthinkable. "This is so"
becomes a particular way to see the world, a particular way to
live has become
normalized. This subtle form of power lacks rigidity, and
other discourses can contest it. Indeed, power itself lacks any
concrete form, occurring as a locus of struggle.
Resistance defines power.
Deconstruction often works to reveal hidden power structures
and relationships.
Unmarked Categories
The idea of unmarked categories originated in
feminism. The theory analyses the culture of the powerful.
The powerful comprise those people in society with easy access
to resources, those who can exercise power without considering
their actions. For the powerful, their culture seems obvious;
for the powerless, on the other hand, it remains out of reach,
élite and expensive.
The unmarked category can form the identifying mark
of the powerful. The unmarked category becomes the standard
against which to measure everything else. The international
address structure of the
Internet provides a good example: US addresses (.edu; .gov)
appear unmarked.
One can often overlook unmarked categories. Whiteness forms
an unmarked category not commonly visible to the powerful, as
they often fall within this category. The unmarked category
becomes the norm, with the other categories relegated to deviant
status. Social groups can apply this view of power to
race,
gender, and
disability without modification: the able body is the
neutral body; the man is the normal status.
Representation/Counterpower
Gilles Deleuze, a French theorist, compared voting for
political representation with being taken hostage. A
representational government assumes that people can be divided
into categories with distinct shared interests. The
representative is regarded as embodying the interests of the
group. Many social movements have been successful in gaining
access to governments: the working class, women, young people
and ethnic minorities are part of the government in many
nation-states. However, there is no government where the
government represents the population along the characteristics
of the categories.
The problem of finding suitable representatives relates to an
individual's membership of different categories at the same
time. The only truly representative government for a population
is the population itself. These ideas have become popular in
social movements for global justice. The logic of government
open to all underpins the social forums (such as the
World Social Forum) that have developed in contradistinction
to the forums of the powerful. These alternative forms are
sometimes called counter-power.
Participation/Liberation
This view appears in many projects of social change, but its
founder
Paulo Freire is largely unknown. Freire assumes that people
carry archives of knowledge within them. In particular he
rejects the idea that people remain ignorant unless they have
learned to communicate using the culture of the powerful. The
person is seen as part of a culture circle with its own
view of reality, based on the circumstances of everyday living.
Dialogue can bring about social change. Such dialogue
directly opposes the monologue of the culture of the powerful.
Dialogue expands the understanding of the world rather than
teaching a correct understanding. The process of social
change starts with action, on which the group then reflects.
Commonly, more action of some kind then results...
See also
