Introduction: Rhetoric and the Workings of Power—the Social Contract in Crisis (original) (raw)
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Rhetoric and the Workings of Power--the Social Contract in Crisis
Social Analysis, 2010
… since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.-Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War Rhetoric, Agency, and the Workings of Power As social, cultural, and political subjects, we are all constituted in power. Power is not something external to the subject, but rather a context and an idiom of subjectivity. It is creative and generative, as Foucault (1977) would argue, and also relational insofar as it is manifested in relationships (Etzioni 1993; Kritzman 1988; Wolf 1999). It has long been argued that resistance itself, as Foucault ([1976] 1990: 95) put it, "is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power" (see also Abu-Lughod 1990; Mitchell 1990; Reed-Danahay 1993; Williams 2008). In a recent article on autonomy and the French alter-globalization movement, which also builds on Donald Moore's (1998) argument, Williams (2008: 80-81) claims that "[r]esistance … emerges not from an originary site but from oppositional practices, which … are always relational and dynamic." The present collection of articles focuses on such relational and dynamic (mostly discursive) practices, seeking to examine the connections between power, identity, history, and agency. Imbued with historicity and inspired by local narrative, the contributions to this special issue do not conflate poweras a concept and context-with Western powers as political formations. They rather attempt to deconstruct relations of power; to examine the consequences of the excess of power inherent in modern political processes; and to recover agency by taking local commentary seriously. Notes
State of the Art: Divided by a Common Language: Political Theory and the Concept of Power
Politics, 1997
Power is probably the most universal and fundamental concept of political analysis. It has been, and continues to be, the subject of extended and heated debate. In this article I critically review the contributions of Bachrach and Baratz, and Lukes to our understanding of the multiple faces of power. I suggest that although the former's two-dimensional approach to power is ultimately compromised by the residues of behaviouralism that it inherits from classic pluralism, the latter's three-dimensional view suggests a potential route out of this pluralist impasse. To seize the opportunity he provides, however, requires that we rethink the concept of power. In the second half of the paper I advance a definition of power as context-shaping and demonstrate how this helps us to disentangle the notions of power, responsibility and culpability that Lukes conflates. In so doing I suggest the we differentiate clearly between analytical questions concerning the identification of power w...
ESSAY REVIEW Depoliticizing Power
This is a review of books by Rouse and Barnes that pertain to power, from opposite directions. The essay contrasts the power in routine order giving networks and the power of the leader who acts in defense of this power.
This is a review essay on two books, one by Joseph Rouse, the other by Barry Barnes, both of which attempt to redefine power in terms other than the political sense and apart from the Schmittian realities of struggle.
Agency, power, modernity: A manifesto for social theory
European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology , 2018
In this article, we propose a new direction for social theory, based on a distinction between action and agency, a reconsideration of sociological theories of power, and a rereading of the transition to modernity. Drawing on Aristotle, Carole Pateman, Hannah Arendt, and Ernst Kantorowicz, we propose a conceptual model of power centred on the sending and binding of another to be one’s agent in the world, and the varying representation of this relation and what it excludes. This approach allows a different understanding of modernity than is offered by accounts of power derived from the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault. With reference to the French Revolution and twentieth and twenty-first century presidential politics in the USA, we manifest the utility of the framework for the construction of a research programme in historical and political sociology.