We've looked at power as the socially embodied ability of some people to compel the behavior of other people. But this isn't the whole of what we would want to include within the scope of the uses of power. Other important aspects of power are more impersonal, having to do with influencing outcomes rather than …
Non-coercive power?
The most visible exercise of power involves the direct use of force or the threat of violence. Demonstrators are cleared from the streets by police with truncheons and water cannons. Storekeepers are compelled to pay protection money by the example of a few mysterious fires. But are there also instruments and tactics of power that …
Power and social class
What does social class have to do with power? The two concepts represent theories about how a modern society works, and there are some fundamental relationships between them. But at bottom they are separate social factors that allow for independent forms of social causation. The first is fundamentally concerned with the economic structure of a …
Public versus hidden faces of organizations
Think of a range of complex organizations and institutions -- police departments, zoning boards, corporations, security agencies, and so on indefinitely. These organizations all have missions, personnel, constituencies, and policies and practices. They all do various things -- they affect individuals in society and they bring about significant social effects. And, in each case there …
Continue reading "Public versus hidden faces of organizations"
Is publicity an important source of power?
What is publicity in the sense intended here? It is shared public knowledge of a given state of affairs. It stands in contrast to secrecy and deception, and it is cognate to transparency. Public knowledge is shared knowledge. And philosophers such as Rawls and Habermas have given great moral importance to this circumstance of publicity …
Continue reading "Is publicity an important source of power?"
Koestler’s twentieth century
Arthur Koestler is most celebrated for his historical novel about the Moscow show trials, Darkness at Noon. And the book is indeed a deeply revealing look at the heart of totalitarianism in the twentieth century -- the more so if you do a side-by-side reading of the trial of the fictional Rubashov and the transcripts …
A normative aspect to power
It sometimes seems as though there is a normative dimension to our concept of power. What if we defined "power" in these terms: an agent exercises power when he/she undertakes to compel individuals or groups to act in ways they prefer not to act, against their interests and without the justification of a legitimate state …
Structure, psychology, power
Political and social power involves the exercise of social resources to compel various kinds of unwilling behavior by others. What creates power in society? What are the sorts of social and structural factors that permit individuals to exercise power? And what features of personality lead a given individual to choose to use the instruments of …
Power and violence in China
Several recent postings on this blog have focused on power. Ultimately power depends upon a threat of violence. And recent reports from China have thrown the spotlight on the use of violence against innocent citizens who are challenging one aspect of power or another. The photo at left is taken from a news story reporting …
The power of the authoritarian state
If any collective entity possesses power, surely it is the state in a dictatorship – the Burmese military dictatorship or the single-party states of Cuba or China. So how does an authoritarian state exercise power? It is common to equate power with the ability to coerce and threaten in order to compel behavior. And certainly …
Understanding Society 