More generally, it can be defined as the real or perceived ability or potential to bring about significant change, usually in people’s lives through the actions of others.
The exercise of power seems to be endemic to people as social and gregarious beings.
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2 Types and sources of power 3 Theories of power |
Analysis and operation of power
Power manifests itself in a relational manner: one cannot meaningfully say (pace advocates of empowerment) that a particular social actor "has power" without also specifying the other parties to the social relationship.
Power almost always operates reciprocally, but usually not equally reciprocally. To control others, one must have control over things that they desire or need, but one can rarely exercise that control without a measure of reverse control - larger, smaller, or equal - also existing. For example, an employer usually wields considerable power over his workers because he has control over wages, working conditions, hiring and firing. The workers, however, hold some reciprocal power: they may leave, work more or less diligently, group together to form a union, and so on.
Because power operates both relationally and reciprocally, sociologists speak of the balance of power between parties to a relationship: all parties to all relationships have some power: the sociological examination of power concerns itself with discovering and describing the relative strengths: equal or unequal, stable or subject to periodic change. Sociologists usually analyse relationships in which the parties have relatively equal or nearly equal power in terms of constraint rather than of power.
Even in structuralist social theory, power appears as a process, an aspect to an ongoing social relationship, not as a fixed part of social structure.
One can sometimes distinguish primary power: the direct and personal use of force for coercion; and secondary power, which may involve the threat of force or social constraint, most likely involving third-party exercisers of delegated power.
Power may be held through:
Types and sources of power
Theories of power
The thought of Friedrich Nietzsche underlies much 20th century
analysis of power. Nietzsche disseminated ideas on the "will to power", which he saw as the domination of other humans as much as the exercise of
control over one's environment.
Some schools of psychology, notably that associated with Alfred Adler, place power dynamics at the core of their theory (where orthodox Freudians might place sexuality).
In the Marxist tradition, Antonio Gramsci elaborated the role of cultural hegemony in ideology as a means of bolstering the power of capitalism and of the nation-state.
One of the broader modern views of the importance of power in human activity comes from the work of Michel Foucault. Feminist analysis of the patriarchy often concentrates on issues of power: note the "Rape Mantra": Rape is about power, not sex.
Deconstruction often works to reveal hidden power structures and relationships.
See also:
