So, I was sitting in the car, outside an Italian grocery store in a small town near my in-laws’ home. I had the radio on the ‘Ottanta’ channel–the 80s channel. And some song came on, it was in English, but probably not a native English speaker singing, about ‘taking back the power.’ You don’t hear too many songs like this any more, but this one was so bland, it didn’t really strike me as worth listening. But it did get me to thinking about ‘the power.’ Most of us don’t have much power, especially when it comes to politics and decision making on issues that might affect our lives. We vote. We consume, and can use that as a ‘vote’ of sorts for what we’ll support.

But really. If politics reflected the interests of most people, higher education would leave you debt-free, those who don’t choose higher ed could find decent paying jobs, a trip to the hospital wouldn’t cause you to cancel your vacation and internet service or miss meals, housing would be affordable and available, and the minimum wage would be a living wage. Which, for a family of four with one income earner working full-time, would mean making at least $15/hr–with the understanding that the federal poverty guidelines woefully underestimate 60 years after their creation the costs of health care, transportation, housing, and … smart phones. And the federal minimum wage? $7.25/hr in 2023.

So obviously, someone else is making the rules. Oh yes. It’s those people elected to represent constituents in their states and Congressional districts! But the rules seem tilted towards those who don’t have to make ends meet on $7.25/hr. And that’s a small minority. And it isn’t like they meet in some smoke-filled room to decide the fates of the unwashed masses. No, the individuals derive their power from their positions in powerful organizations and institutions (with the exception of some billionaires, who can wield influence even as individuals, but whose power derives from their wealth and organizational capital). Is it surprising that these groups might see it to their advantage to ‘frame’ issues in a way that benefits the interests of their owners? They certainly have the wealth and means to do so, and they can hire the best persuaders money can buy.

But is this how power operates in a village, a community, an urban area? Even in a small town–perhaps especially in a small town–the local media tend to reflect the interests of the most powerful elements, who can pay for advertising space, air time, and who probably have considerable influence over how local government operates.

And this is the environment in which what appears as the natural order of things to the casual observer, may in fact be a heavily processed version of reality, slanted to benefit those who would like people to believe that any inequalities of wealth are the result of a system of meritocracy, and those of us who haven’t measured up have only ourselves to blame. This is the world we live in–where privileged, connected and well-organized organizations and industries seek to shape our perceptions of reality. But I digress.

So . . . 

What is power? We discussed in class the notion that it’s getting someone to do something they wouldn’t otherwise do–enforcing your will, so to speak. What does it take to enforce one’s will? Force, perhaps? Firearms can help. But they’re an expensive way to get people to comply, so holding a gun to someone’s head isn’t the way most power gets exercised, although the U.S. Military often doesn’t have to hold the gun–having nuclear weapons, C-130 gunships, aircraft carrier and battleship groups and the like often does the trick.

Legitimacy

Short of force, legitimacy can be effective. We talked briefly in class about sociologist Max Weber’s concept of legitimate authority. There is charismatic authority, which is usually someone with a strong personality and following. Cult leaders, Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Ayatollah Khomeni in Iran (he’s dead now), Donald Trump . . . there are some individuals who by the sheer force of their personalities command respect and allegiance. What they say goes. Hitler was charismatic in a sense, but as in many cases, charisma backed up by force at least encourages compliance. A second source of legitimacy is tradition. Monarchs often are thought to rule as a divine right from God. It certainly makes it easier to get subjects to obey your commands if they believe they’re coming directly from their god. Traditional societies often have cultures that perpetuate ideas because ‘this is the way it’s always been done.’ Inheritance practices, division of labor between the sexes, religious authority, patriarchal control over households, even domestic violence in some cultures is condoned and considered a right of a husband or head of household. Tradition can be a powerful source of legitimacy. The third kind of legitimate authority Weber mentions is rational-legal. Our government for instance serves because of the set of laws we have. The Constitution gives the government its authority. We often respect the law not because it’s always been done a certain way, but because it’s a legal source of legitimacy. Most people comply. Maybe you’ve heard the expression ‘You can’t fight City Hall.’ 

A ‘three dimensional’ view of power (from Steven Lukes)

To understand why the media have some level of power and how they wield it, it’s useful to briefly examine how they cover power, and how people decide who has power. Political sociologist Steven Lukes discusses three different dimensions, or faces, of power.

First face of power (first dimension)

In this view, power is a resource available to a broad range of individuals and groups. We can see it, measure it, and it shows up in the form of overt, observable conflict. This is a pluralist approach to power–in other words, different interest groups sit down and debate and argue and in the end someone wins. But we can watch it, observe power being exercised and figure out as a result who has it.

This is the way politics are often covered in the media. City council meetings, for instance, or deliberations in Congress. The media often make a “first face” assumption about how power is exercised (that way they can claim they can show it to the viewing/reading/listening public). In the first dimension, the consumer is a rational decision maker, who can examine media and make informed choices about what to buy, for instance. Producers of goods and services have to listen to consumer preferences and try to meet their demands, and this drives the free enterprise, capitalist system of production and consumption. The free market is the pluralist approach to power. Power may not be equally shared, but we can see its exercise. And we know who has it, because they win the elections, the debates in local government. The outcomes are observable.

Second face of power

One criticism of the pluralist approach is that you just can’t always see power as observable disagreement or conflict. For instance, take Congressional debates over proposed legislation. It could be that lobbyists wrote the legislation being debated, after their industries provided millions of dollars in campaign contributions to key members who could push legislation forward. 

Another example might be how local government operates. Maybe a City Council makes decisions, and we can count the votes of Council members. But it’s possible that not everyone has a voice at the table. Some are excluded. Others have enough power and influence that they don’t even need to attend or participate–they wield influence behind the scenes (Lukes’ reading highlights research on urban ‘renewal’ in Baltimore and how it represented the interests of the white ruling class, most always at the expense of poorer minority neighborhoods that were razed to build highways and new skyscrapers, the displaced consigned to unlivable public housing projects). 

Critics of the pluralist (one-dimensional) view say the exercise of power is not always overt or public. Yes, power is exercised, but we can’t always see it happen or know who wields it. This may happen behind the scenes. But there is still observable conflict–opposing viewpoints–it’s just harder to figure it out than the “first face,” pluralist approach suggests, because there are always groups, power structures working in the background to influence public agendas, elections, etc. Take the city council meeting. It could be that actual decisions are made long before an actual meeting of the council members, who may have little power but have to listen to large corporations that employ lots of local residents, or real estate developers with lots of clout and money to spend in the local community on development projects.

In addition, sometimes the powerful exclude others from the public debating arena as well. So it could be that not only are the powerful not there, but the powerless are absent as well. When debates about welfare happen on network news, do we see advocates for the poor, or actual individuals who depend on assistance participating? Would this make for good TV? Do those marginalized groups buy advertising or purchase the goods and services being advertised to a target audience? People, whether by class, race, ethnicity, gender, religious persuasion, sexual orientation, etc., are often aware that they’re in subordinate positions.

The research on the “second face” came from ‘urban renewal‘ projects in inner cities in the 1960s, particularly Baltimore. They tended to require construction of lots of new highways and expressways to get people and their cars in and out of cities, and whole neighborhoods had to be razed. You can imagine which routes were taken–minority neighborhoods, where people had less political clout to resist and were displaced to unlivable and crime-infested public housing projects (denied access to suburban areas, which were ‘redlined’ to exclude blacks). Forget talk of mass transit systems–you’ve got the automotive and petrochemical industries working that end of the political gymnasium. But in the end, you can bet that the people who lost their neighborhoods–largely minority and African American–knew they were mostly powerless to influence the debates. They weren’t there when the decisions were made.

With respect to consumers’ views, they aren’t represented on television, the second face would say. There is no ‘consumer sovereignty.’ Corporations decide what consumers should buy, what they should aspire to own, and use expensive advertising campaigns to create new needs. What might really make consumers happy–friendship, love, family, peace, etc.–become vehicles for selling goods and services. In other words, buy a certain car, a certain insurance policy, and you can have the contentment, the secure family, your kids in college, etc. Associate the things people say they really want with products that they believe will help them obtain them.

Lukes likens this second face of power to a concept from the work of political scientist E.E. Schattschneider, the mobilization of bias. Schattschneider contended that wealthy and powerful interests are better able to ‘mobilize’ bias to present their views to the public. Think of the local Chamber of Commerce. Or an influential religious community. Put more simply, they can organize, and power at the societal level isn’t really exercised without some organization. In this case, they’re ‘mobilizing’ to see that their interests are served. Who? At the national level, think corporations, industries, governments, political parties, etc. They have the resources to lobby, fund campaigns, advertise, influence legislation, create illusions of consensus, etc.  The public is often sold the notion of a ‘liberal’ bias in the media–those liberal journalists who vote democratic. What we don’t see are the corporate pressures represented by their bosses and advertisers who pay many of the bills, and accept advertising money from political candidates as well. This is what organizations like Sourcewatch and CorpWatch and Open Secrets try to expose.

But we can identify power relations, if we look hard enough–there is conflict, but sometimes those who are victims aren’t heard from (e.g., undocumented immigrants, civil rights protesters, the growing population of the unsheltered that can’t afford housing.

Third face of power

This is the tricky one, but the most crucial to understand, if you’re interested in understanding how power can function in a way that appears to simply be the ‘natural’ order of things. This is a structural view of power. Power is part of the society’s superstructure. Lukes says that people don’t even recognize its presence. We go and buy things, advertisers bombard us with images, tell us we’re inadequate and if we’d only buy these products (the rationalization trap) . . . but people often insist these things have no effect on them.

Maybe you come from a community where a handful of employers dominate the business landscape. They write checks to charities, advertise in local media, populate or know civic leaders. More and more these are companies attached to larger interests and corporations, which tend to outcompete local businesses. How many stores in your home town are franchised chains from corporations located elsewhere, paying relatively low wages? In Eastern Oregon, we are seeing more and more ‘server farms’ and evidence of the tech industry. But there are also communities where a state or federal prison dominates the economic landscape. Or a hospital. A university. Lumber mill. Food processing plant. Coal-fired power plant. Etc. The local pulp mill stinks, you say? Perhaps there are health effects underexamined? That’s the smell of money, say many locals. 

And it isn’t just a phenomenon for the industrialized world. In Africa, millions of women and young girls are subjected to female genital mutilation–it is a rite of passage in many cultures across the continent. The procedures range in invasiveness, from removal of the clitoris to essentially partially sewing up the vagina. Men say that this keeps women from being tempted by adultery–that they should have sex for procreative purposes.

Why would women in Africa support this practice? Forget that you probably don’t know about it–that’s another commercial media blindspot, but Africa is off many people’s radar screens. But FGM leads to very harmful health effects–physical, emotional, and psychological. But in a patriarchal culture, where mothers want their daughters to marry, have children, and ‘fit in,’ many people, men and women alike, don’t question the practice. If they’re going to ‘fit in,’ be married and have children, that’s what is supposed to happen. It’s always been that way. Barbaric? Clearly it is for women and girls forced to undergo it as a sort of rite of passage. But think of the sorts of procedures and chemical treatments women in our culture undergo in attempts to attain some media-defined beauty ideal. And of the sanctions society inflicts on those women who ‘opt out.’ It starts early in school, and it can be cruel. Culture is a structure of shared beliefs, values, symbols, etc. There is usually a dominant set of beliefs that prevails. For us some of those belief systems are centered around capitalism, anti-communism, patriarchy. This is traditional legitimacy. Even the women most harmed often think ‘it’s just the way things are.’ That’s pretty powerful stuff.

But Lukes’ critics would say it’s not power. Who are we to know better than the women themselves what’s good or bad for them?

Isolated example? I can hear corporations, in the background, criticizing efforts to reduce consumption and use of fossil fuels. If the people choose these things, who are they to claim they know better? Effete elites and intellectuals (take it from the VP who resigned in disgrace)!

So in the third dimension of power, there isn’t necessarily any evident conflict. What conflict? We all want to buy lots of stuff, and some are more successful than others at getting the money to do that, but we all aspire, right? It’s the American dream. For those who can participate. Yet, though that rhetoric sounds hollow to those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, with little hope of escaping the traps of low-wage employment, most people believe their chances of escaping poverty are much greater than the statistics show (and hope is a good thing).

But the systems within which we live clearly serve some groups very well, and work against the interests of others. What makes it power, according to Lukes, is that everyone for the most part buys into the system as legitimate and equitable. To the point where tax increases on billionaires are presented–often without much critical questioning–as morally problematic.

So Steven Lukes says, in the absence of conflict, how do we know power is being exercised? Look for people’s real interests. What does he mean? What might these be? Who can decide what real interests are if not the powerless themselves? Think back to what people say they want in surveys, and what advertisers do to sell them their dreams. Advertisers can’t deliver of course, but they have to sell and stimulate consumption, and some people are convinced that having the stuff is the fulfillment of the dream. The third face of power is the most insidious, because it doesn’t require any observable conflict. It is also the most contentious, because of the difficulty of someone observing from the outside and saying that people are powerless, being exploited, and don’t even know it.

Know what?  .  .  .  Hasn’t it always been this way?

Steven Lukes. 1974. Power: A Radical View. London: MacMillan.