What is it? What does it mean to have ‘power?’

A common definition of power among those who study it is ‘the ability to get someone to do something he/she wouldn’t have otherwise done.’ Another way of thinking of it is the ability to exert one’s will (think about the example of a patriarchal household where the man controls land, labor and capital, and perhaps exerts a fair amount of control over women’s reproduction and sexuality).

e.g., think of power structure in the classroom. Professors have power because:

• they have a formal position within the university structure–it’s their affiliation with the university that is their main source of power, authority; how or whether they choose to use it may be more a result of individual discretion; In other words, I may have resources not available to you that give me more power in our school relationship; At the same time, you can clearly exercise power as well–questions in class, creating classroom disruptions, petitioning the Dean with a problem, turning in assignments (which triggers my need to grade …), etc. Some might call that, as political scientist James Scott did, the ‘weapons of the weak,’ but students as a collective group can be a force.
• there is also a hierarchy (pecking order) among faculty–that is, all faculty are not equal, some have more influence within the university, and among their own faculty: tenure/non-tenure distinction is important (e.g., untenured Harvard instructors feel pressured to give high grades because of their insecure position; tenured faculty are more likely to gain the support of the university in conflicts with students, or at least not have to worry about losing their jobs);

So power matters, even in the university setting. It matters when looking at the world and understanding global inequalities, it matters within countries, within communities, within households, between individuals, between individuals and institutions. But there are different ways to think about how power operates, who can possess it, how it can be used. The following descriptions come from Sociologist Steven Lukes in his book Power: A Radical View.

Pluralist versus structural views of power

A pluralist view of power says that, for instance, all groups in a conflict are brought to the table and hash out an agreement amongst themselves. Democracy is rooted in the idea that society is comprised of different groups that can all have a public voice in government, and that when we watch the process, we see how it works–it’s observable. In a pluralists’ world, if you go to a city council meeting, you can tell who has the power by watching and seeing how votes on issues come out. Because different issues will lead to different voting blocs, it seems that power is not unitary or monolithic, but shifting and contingent.

But could we learn all we needed to know about power by simply watching the meeting and the different actors who were present, the outcomes? Probably not, but at least we can see what’s going on. A more sophisticated but harder to verify view would be a ‘second face’ or ‘two dimensional’ view of power. Maybe not all of the actors are at the table. Maybe the most powerful people don’t have to be there–they already know others will do their bidding for them, or potentially pay a price later.  This works for understanding how the United Nations operates. Yes, every country has a vote. And yes, the countries that provide the most funding (based on GNP) generally have more influence. And quite predictably, many of the powerless don’t show up either. They’ve not been invited to participate in deliberations about public issues (the more exclusive UN Security Council). Even if they had, they may not have time to attend. In the US only 50% of eligible Americans even bother to vote in most elections. Why? Possibly because many feel disenfranchised, disempowered. Likelihood of registering and voting increases with income. The ‘two dimensional’ view of power says that we can still observe conflict and power being exercised, but it’s not so easy as just watching what happens in a debate and counting up the points. Some decisions are made by people who can wield their influence behind the scenes. A development ‘professional’ who does a whirlwind tour of villages trying to get ideas for a project might be limited to two hours/village. Who will he/she see in those two hours? The chief? The important elders? How many women? How many less well-off will be way too busy working to provide input? Will they even know that a car with some officials passed through the village?

A ‘second face‘ view says that, yes, there may be some sort of process where groups get together and debate–for instance, republicans and democrats in Congress debate legislative bills–and end up with some sort of compromise that reflects multiple interests, and that we can watch the whole thing on C-Span (if we can stay awake …). But what we don’t see is that those representatives in Congress may be getting thousands, even millions of dollars from private industry they use to buy campaign ad time, take fact-finding trips to Bermuda, funded by Monsanto, to study the problems of beach erosion, may be sponsoring legislation that was for all intents and purposes drafted by corporate lawyers (this is sort of like getting your term papers off the Web, except that it’s our democracy instead of a class). Want to know who’s writing legislation for Congress? Check out the American Legislative Exchange Council (here’s the Center for Media and Democracy’s page). For example, companies involved in the private prison business, such as Corrections Corporation of America, lobbied the Arizona state legislature to tighten laws on immigration, increasing incarceration rates and ensuring a steady supply of new …. inmates. So in the second face we may know who has the most power, but it’s harder to observe it being exercised in an overt way.

In the Bambara language (spoken in Senegal and Mali, West Africa), women have an expression: Cew be nyo bo. The men bring out the millet. What do they mean? That women do much of the plowing, planting, weeding, harvesting, threshing, the grain gets stored in the granaries. And the men bring it out for the women to pound off the husks and prepare it for the meal. They understand the power differential, and will even make the observation (though in an obtuse way). But the conflict is is covert.

There is a ‘third dimension‘ of power, or its ‘third face.’ We may not always be able to see power being exercised. It may be so ingrained, that it is the structure of society or the culture through which power is exercised, and individuals are pretty interchangeable, at least in terms of their positions in the social structure. Certain groups consistently exercise power over other groups. For instance, now somewhat familiar with the practice of FGC, you might think that women would be opposed to this procedure in most parts of Africa. Many in fact support it. Mothers may want their daughters to go through the procedure, as they did, because that’s the way it’s done, or because otherwise they won’t be able to ‘find a husband.’ The underlying structure may be patriarchy. The notion is that the structure can be so powerful that sometimes people may actually do things, or think in ways that seem to run against their own real interests. Why would poor people vote for a politician who was working to cut welfare programs and provide tax cuts for the wealthiest classes? Perhaps allusions to patriotism, to religion, to pride in the American way, or complete distraction from key economic issues by focusing on flag-burning, school prayer, same sex marriage, etc., avoids the debate entirely.

However, because the power is really embedded in the social structure of the society, it may not appear as conflict at all, so ‘observing’ it always involves making some assumptions (for instance, FGC seems harmful for women, so if they support the practice there must be some exercise of power going on, even if there is no observable conflict).

Which perspective on power do you think does a better job of explaining women’s condition in many parts of the developing world, and why? Can you provide an example that illustrates?

(this discussion is drawn from Steven Lukes’ book Power: A Radical View).

Lukes’ ideas of power draw on Karl Marx’s writings. Marx saw power as structural–he contended that class struggle occurs in societies, and it is centered around those who own the means of production (land, labor, capital)–the capitalists–and the workers, whose labor is exploited to fuel the capitalist economic system. To understand power structures in a society, said Marx, find out who owns the property. Everything else flows from the economics–governing structures, the constitution and laws we choose to enforce, etc.

In its ultimate form (so Lukes and others who take a structural view of power say), people may not even be aware that society or some subset works against their interests–their understanding of their own interests may be affected by the system in which they live. What is the American Dream? Is it contentment, spirituality, neighborhood and community, and civility for all citizens? Or is it having lots of stuff–the cars, the house (the debt …), the electronic goodies, the trappings of wealth, etc? Who benefits from that? In the US Americans were told our patriotic duty after the attacks on 9/11/2001 was to continue to shop (that is, keep the economy going) . . . From a structural perspective, who benefits from this view? Yes, we get our smart phones, but these are table scraps. What about Gandhi‘s definition of development as ‘the realization of the human potential?’ The Pink Floyd song goes

‘welcome my son, welcome to the machine . . .
what did you dream? It’s all right, we told you what to dream.
You dreamed of a big star; he played a mean guitar.
He always ate in the steak bar . . .
and loved to ride in his jag-yuar . . .
so welcome . . . to the machine . . . ‘

So . . . what does this mean for women? Is it possible that women in some cultures simply think honor killings or stonings are simply ‘the way things are’ and that women who are raped and then accused of adultery somehow deserved such punishment? How are women in developing countries affected by structural power? With respect to female circumcision, how can we explain why some women are for, some opposed? Could this be a case where women aren’t even aware of their real interests, or are we being culturally insensitive? Or is it possible that the prevailing culture of patriarchy so shapes women’s identities that circumcision becomes a way to gain status and avoid stigmatization? If it is so culturally ingrained, how is it that it ended so quickly in the case reported by Gerry Mackie in Senegal? Mackie’s article describes some of the work being done by the Tostan project in Senegal. Here’s what the Tostan website (a non-governmental development organization in Senegal) has to say:

When a group of communities decides to abandon harmful practices like female genital cutting and child/forced marriage, we help them to organize a public declaration. At public declarations, entire networks of communities come together to celebrate their positive traditions as they abandon harmful ones.

Sociologist Max Weber’s work helps to understand how patriarchy and culture can exert a strong influence over men and women and gender expectations. See the discussion of Weber, authority and legitimacy.

Steven Lukes. 1974. Power: A radical view. NY: Macmillan.