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Three Notions of Powerveryard projects > power > 3 notions |
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Weber | The ability of a person in a social context to achieve his/her own goals, despite resistance from others. Equivalent to domination. |
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Marx | A structural relationship, independent of the conscious intentions and desires of individuals. |
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Parsons
(Pluralistic) |
A positive social capacity for achieving shared goals. Power is distributed through social structures, although some individuals may have more power than others. Individual power reflects a degree of influence, rather than a state of domination. |
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Quotes on Powerveryard projects > power > quotes |
| Force
Change Power |
"A force is applied to another force: They form a parallelogram of forces. They do not cancel one another; they are composed, according to a law. The play among forces is reformist: It produces compromises. But the game is never between two forces, it is among countless forces; the parallelogram gives rise to far more complex multidimensional figures. To decide which forces must be set against which other forces, decisions are made which are dependent not on the play of forces but on the play of power. A knowledge is produced, of the composition of forces." [Umberto Eco, Faith in Fakes (English edition: Secker & Warburg, 1986) p 249] This seems to me much more subtle than Kurt Lewin's perhaps rather simplistic force-field analysis. |
| Power
Choice |
"X’s power could be measured by the effectiveness
of the actions he chooses relative to his specific goals. A man may be
rich but weak because he lacks knowledge, or poor but weak because he lacks
the available choices. … One way to ‘increase’ your power is to simplify
your life." [C. West Churchman, Prediction and Optimal Decision (Englewood
Cliffs NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1961) pp 323-4] My underlining. Churchman goes
on to suggest alternative measures of power.
Marris (Politics of Uncertainty) has a similar argument. |
| Power
Energy |
"In modern society, energy conversion enormously exceeds the body power of men. Manpower stands to mechanical power in a ratio of 1:15 in China and 1:300 in the USA. Switches concentrate the control over this power more effectively than whips ever could. The social distribution over power inputs has been radically changed. If capital means the power to make effective change, power inflation has reduced most people to paupers." [Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (New York, Harper & Row, 1973) p 75] |
| Power
Commodity |
"The resort to sanctions in itself changes the balance
of power; because those who effectively control the use of force are never
exactly the same as those who invoked it." [Peter Marris, Meaning and Action:
Community Planning and Conceptions of Change (2nd edition, London, Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1987) p 11]
"The most efficacious power is exerted invisibly, through internalized norms rather than by overt sanctions … the use of power is an act of consumption rather than an act of investment." [Jon Elster, Logic and Society (John Wiley, 1978) p 73] This only seems to apply to physical force. Influence develops by being exercised. What about terrorism? Perhaps terror is inflationary - you need bigger and bigger bombs to get the same amount of press coverage. Tamerlane’s policy of Schrecklichkeit, exemplary atrocities, did not in fact deter places he had occupied from rebelling again and again. |
| Power Fantasy
Olympus Trip |
"Tempting to mortals is the fancy of half-concerned
Gods in the sky … we may well shake a weak fist one day at this vision, but the spell of high places will haunt us long after our jaunt has declined, as soon it must, to the hard ground." [W.H. Auden, Ode to Gaea] |
| Power,
Self-Promotion |
"Beria had enough force at his disposal to destroy his rivals and become General Secretary. But his attempt failed. Andropov came to power more or less without using force. Why the difference? Because Beria wanted to seize power, a procedure which the Soviet system disallows in principle. In that system one does not seize power. One is allowed to come to power. Even Stalin never seized power as it is imagined he did. Stalin was allowed to assume power. Once in, he exploited his position to increase his power and to use it for his own ends. But that does not make him a seizer of power." [Alexander Zinoviev, Kakastroika (trans C. Janson, London, Claridge Press, 1990) pp 17-18] |
| Authority
Ideology |
"Authority depends on a diffusely reproduced ideological framework which represents the relationships on which most people rely, for better or worse, in managing the social world that they take as given. This pervasive attachment to a familiar, predictable order is the greatest asset of established power, for it turns everyone, consciously or not, into an accomplice of its own confirmation." [Peter Marris, Meaning and Action: Community Planning and Conceptions of Change (2nd edition, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987) p 11] |
| Knowledge
Power |
"‘Knowledge is power’ is a misleading slogan. Knowledge
may well be important to the maintenance of power, but that does not mean
that the knowledgeable are powerful." [David Lyon, The Information Society
(Cambridge, Polity Press/Basil Blackwell, 1988) p 62]
"Facile equating of power with control has still to be dethroned in the popular and the political mind, even though scientists are now well accustomed to think of regulation as limited by the adequacy not of energy but of information." [G. Vickers, The Art of Judgment (Chapman & Hall, 1965) Harper & Row ed, p 82] |
| Ambition
Gratification |
"A man who loves power - which is a specific relationship
between a man and his milieu - both seeks power and exercises
power. If he finds himself in a position in which his opportunities for
exercising power are inadequate to what he feels to be his capacity, he
will probably seek (consciously or unconsciously) a position of greater
power. … But [for such people] even before and still more after their attainment
of their goal, the primary explanation of their activities is not the pursuit
but the exercise
of power. As they go through their daily work,
chairing a difficult meeting, conducting a complex negotiation, they enjoy
- amongst other things - maintaining that relationship with their milieu
which is the exercise of power." [G. Vickers, The Art of Judgment
(Chapman & Hall, 1965) Harper & Row ed, p 32]
Vickers is arguing here that rational behaviour should be described in terms of the maintenance of (ongoing) norms rather than the achievement of (instant) goals. |
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Books on Powerveryard projects > power > books |
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