ESSAY REVIEW Depoliticizing Power (original) (raw)
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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.
Human Relations, 2006
This special issue emphasizes psycho-/socio-analytic perspectives and elaborations on the relatedness of power and politics at a particularly sensitive moment in history. Both profit and non-profit institutions and organizations have been deeply affected by significant world events as well as their own problematic internal processes, all with profound implications for the economy and for leaders, executives and managers in groups of all kinds, from global corporations to small businesses and community organizations. Employees have been particularly beset as they struggle to remain vital and effective in a time of enormous vulnerability.
Book Review: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
Armed Forces & Society, 2004
the Commander in Chief. What do you think? Ask me about Stanley v. Illinois and who close to me is in dire need of a second opinion? This child custody case is fairly controversial and heavily cited. Way back in 1972, the Chief Justice William Rehnquist helped the court issue a decision upon whose effect the male parent had equal rights to children shared with a female partner. This is important to me because my own dad, my father, is a person who I do not believe received the appropriate treatment. He is currently being discriminated against at work for being a Moslem man, regardless of how often he practices. Do you believe, having read until now, that I am qualified to sue for him? Really? Even after I voluntarily tell you about the Kyoto Protocol, Marrakesh Accords, and the Paris Agreement.? Fine. I won't tell you if you don't ask. By now, I bet you are wondering about how any of this relates to me, and why on God's Green Earth should I hire this spook. Don't worry I will tell you. I have studied and showed an aptitude for the law. I can introduce evidence per your request to follow up our encounter. I passed the bar, after attending Lund University for European Business Law, Business Administration at University of Washington and
CRITIQUE OF POWER IN SELECT NOVELS OF NURUDDIN FARAH AND SUSAN ABULHAWA
Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection. 1-Henry Wallace 'Power' and 'Power Politics' have been the focus of analysis, discussion and deliberation since the times of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Bertrand Russel and others. Power, as documented in the pages of history, has usually been misused by people, countries, races, religious denominations, and political institutions. The moot point is that powerful people, institutions, countries, and denominations have always been calling the shots in comparison to those who do not have much influence, clout and leverage at their disposal due to one reason or the other. Misuse of power has been the recurring motif in many fictional and nonfictional works. It has been the subject of analysis for theorists like Michael Foucault, Edward Said, George Lucas, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Frantz Fanon and Antonio Gramsci. These theorists have distinctly theorized the idea of power in their respective works. Louis Althusser, a French Marxist philosopher, has given a very enlightening and cogent thesis about it. His 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus' is a very argumentative essay on the concept and theory of 'power and ideology.' Arguments on the idea of power and power politics are amply available both in fiction and non-fiction. These are mostly found in the works of the writers who have gone through the sordid experiences of colonization. The writers from the erstwhile colonies boldly depict the misuse of power by the colonizers. Besides, they show the resistance of the colonized to the exploitation perpetrated by the colonizers 1
Rather than offering a survey of different conceptualizations of power, which have been well discussed elsewhere, the chapter shows the crucial importance of conceptual analysis both for the critique and development of theory and as an empirical analysis of the performance nature of power analysis. In doing so, the discussion points to the analytical benefits and limits of taking a concept’s theoretical and political contexts seriously. The chapter proceeds in three parts. The first section will tackle how to understand or define a concept. Far from being a purely semantic exercise or a simple instrumental step in the operationalization of variables, I look at concepts from their context-specific usage, including our theoretical languages. Applied to the concept of power, I look at how the two overarching domains of power analysis, political theory and explanatory theory, can help us map the different concepts of the power family. The second section looks at the role the concept of power plays in our theoretical languages and shows how conceptual analysis can be used for the analysis and critique of theories. It does so by addressing a paradox. On the one hand, concepts derive their specific meaning from the theoretical and meta-theoretical context in which they are embedded. On the other hand, meanings travel across the multitude of theoretical contexts. This can produce situations in which a concept considered central is, however, not best served by keeping it within the theoretical context in which it is predominantly applied. Also, importing conceptualizations from other theoretical contexts may not work because it produces contradictions within receiving theoretical contexts. Applied to the concept of power, I will use the mapping of power concepts of the first section for a theoretical critique of realism, a theory that is often identified with the analysis of power. The third and final section focuses on the role of power in political discourse(s) and shows how the concept of power becomes itself the object of empirical analysis. This is a central issue for conceptual history in its different forms, but also for performative analyses of discursive practices, and hence the ‘political (critical) approach’ outlined in the introduction to this volume. . Power is performative in that it mobilizes ideas of agency and responsibility. It politicizes issues, since action and change are now deemed possible. Moreover, given that we have no objective measure of power, but practitioners need to assume one to attribute status and recognition, a part of international politics can be understood as the ongoing negotiation about who has the right to define and what is part of the definition of power. This struggle over the ‘right’ definition of power, as used by practitioners, is part and parcel of power politics.
Power & Politics (Political Sociology)
Finding a realm of social life independent from relations of power and politics is an extraordinary and futile task. After the advent of the feminist movement in the 1960s--with its core motto the personal is political--we have realized that the most minute aspects of our everyday life are informed and shaped by relations of power, both at the macro institutional levels of state and party organizations, as well as micro levels of interpersonal relationships, such as parent-child, husband-wife, brother-sister, professor-student, employer-employee, etc. etc.