Lesson 4: Power Flashcards
Who is the ‘canon’ of power?
- Foucalt
- Weber
- Marx
- Bourdieu
What is power?
Multiple versions, but some common elements
Relational: power as a relationship between 2 or more actors
Asymmetric: principal (power holder) and subject
Influence: agents have the capacity to influence
Zero-sum game: fixed amount so increasing your share reduces that of others
Different authors stress different aspects, but these are some shared features
Marx: aspects of power
Social class/ how is economy organised in society:
- Power is about modes of production for Marx- materialist: who runs these modes of production
- economic
-ideological
-political
Marx: Economic Aspects of Power
Economic: social relations of production
Centrality of capitalism: means of production
Ownership of the means of production: capitalist vs. proletariat
How and what is produced in society?
Who benefits from that production?
Economic surplus: exploitation (profits > labour costs)
Two-class society: extract more economic resources/ costs low and profits high: POSSIBILITY OF EXPLOITING
capital owners (exploiters)
working class (exploited)
Marx: Political Power
Political: state dominated by the ruling class
Capitalists societies very unstable: class struggle BUT
It is thought by Marx that the political state is important as it plays a role in stabilising the economy BUT if it is too unequal and reaches a tipping point that there might be a revolution
State provides stability to the system and reproduces inequalities
Example 1: Welfare state (e.g., basic health, education)- seen as there’s a shake of hands between the capitalist and working class: the workers can have the bare minimum- suffering tempered to the minimum amt so that there is not an uproar and they are still useful to the cap society
Example 2: ’primitive accumulation’ (colonialism, land enclosures)- before capitalist state: it was seen through violence and acts of power against others- but also self sustaining their agricultural lands then got taken over by these land owners of the feudal system.
Marx and Ideology:
Ideology: Intellectual and moral leadership
Imposition of values, beliefs, and preferences: serves the capitalist class
Ideology works like a camera obscura in which everything appears upside down (Marx and Engels (1845/1932)
They cannot see their exploitation and contradictions of capitalism
Consent from the dominated class
Key for structural reproduction of inequalities and power
Weber’s ideas of power:
Max Weber (1864-1920)
“Power is sociologically amorph. A range of very different qualities and constellations can enable [such power].” (Weber 2013: 28f.)
Different forms of power: he studied how power was seen through social order rather than conflict : through authority instead
Coercive: force and threats (e.g: bullying, violence) Non-coercive: Legitimacy and consensus
AUTHORITY:
“… the likelihood that an order meets obedience…” (Weber 2013: 28); domination/power that is (widely) considered legitimate
Weber’s ideas of authority
Authority = power perceived as legitimate rather than coercive. Three forms:
- Cultural/traditional: legitimatised by cultural patterns eg: Gender roles or religion
- Legal/bureaucratic: legitimatised by legal rules and frameworks
- Charismatic: ?
AUTHORITY
“traditional authority” (e.g. patriarchal, religious)
Typical of pre-modern societies
Based on shared cultural norms across society
Modernity challenges this
“bureaucratic authority” (part of a wider process of rationalization)
Legal rules and framework- even rules in a university
Rationality (efficiency, specialization)
Increasingly important in modern/complex societies
“charismatic authority” – Based on individual ‘charisma’ (elusive, not clearly defined)
A «certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader» (Weber, 1922/1947)
idealised???
Potentially challenges traditional and legal authority
But, can be ’routinised’ (e.g. a revolutionary leader becomes new head of government)
Or ‘commodified’ (celebrity culture/industry)
Summary of Weber
Doesn’t centre capitalism (like Marx)
Studies Non-coercive forms of power/authority (vs. violence/subjugation)
Historically changing
Macro-historical, but also more ‘meso’, less top-down than Marx
The balance of ‘powers’ can change across different social institutions
Care work in Canada and how Marx + Weber would view it
Marx: power as exploitation (‘underpaid’, ‘overworked’)- labour and working class exploited
Marx: political power (how does the state make exploitation possible? Visa system, legal status)
Marx: ideology (hard work, gendered ideologies of ‘care’)
Weber: power and tradition (women expected to ‘care’; racialised migrants expected to take low-status, low-pay jobs)
Weber: legal forms of power (visa permits, government policies)
Weber: charismatic power (power inequalities stemming from personal relationships)
Foucalt’s idea of Power
Michel Foucault (1926-1984)
Post-structuralist approach to power
Power as present in every social relationship…
…and institution
Multiple scopes and points of interaction
Bi- or multi-directional
POWER IS ABOUT KNOWLEDGE: how does it become dominant in society
Identities of the agents shaped by the power relationship
F. attempted to understand how knowledge is created (regimes of truth)
How knowledge and its creation is linked to power (who creates knowledge/power and for what purpose?)
‘To create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects.’ (Foucault cited in Rainbow 1991, p. 7)
3 IDEAS OF FOUCALT
People become subjects (and objects of power) in three ways:
3 FORMS WHICH CREATE POWER
1) Dividing practices: distinction between the normal and abnormal (spatial and social): mad, criminal, diseased from normal (separation)
2) Scientific categorisation: (in link w divide in practices) modes of inquiry that give themselves scientific status (medicine, psychology and criminology) and shape everyday life-
2 CONTINUED scientific racism: “visual differences had something to do with their intelligence or morality”: used to make colonialism legitimate in the 19th century
3) Subjectification: where the individual actively turns themselves into a subject (soul training or self-policing)- People become invested in power: he focussed on prisons , wanted to understand how punishment changed from the physical torture to the soul in modern prison
FOUCALT SIMPLIFIED:
Less physically painful but more intrusive
Demands inner transformation
Focus on changing ‘the soul’
Society as a multitude of dominated ‘others’ (students, patients, workers, soldiers, shoppers etc) and ‘judges’ (teacher-judge, doctor-judge, social worker-judge, criminologist-judge)
No single centre of power. Distributed across society within a range of different institutions and organisations – carceral continuum or carceral city
No single dominating class, but different sites of power
Makes revolutionary change difficult
Criticisms of Foucalt
Criticised for a weak notion of ‘agency’: power is too strong/ubiquitous, there seems to be no possibility for action
Interestingly, Foucault’s reflections on power were influenced by the violent repression of French colonialism towards Tunisian and Algerian people (including in France and after the end of French colonialism)
Yet, these concrete struggles disappear in his more abstract theory of knowledge/power (Medien, 2019)
Are all forms of knowledge/power equally valid/invalid? Aren’t some forms of knowledge more ‘objective’, or ’closer’ to empirical reality, or more useful, than others?
Postcolonial critique of Foucalt
SPIVAK: CRITICISM
Economic inequality, political violence and resistance ‘disappear’ in Foucault
BUT these issues are even more relevant in a postcolonial Global South that hasn’t experienced the affluence and welfare of post-war Western societies
And which continues to be economically and politically controlled/exploited by former colonies
Is Foucault’s focus on ‘knowledge’ a reflection of Western privilege? (and/or male, middle-class privilege)
Interestingly, Bourdieu (2007: 81-82) also criticised Foucault for being too ‘abstract’ and ‘philosophical’, esp. in his methodology (library/archival work)
