Mark Haugaard

Power: A ‘family resemblance’ concept

While Lukes’ view of power as an ‘essentially contested concept’ is a move in the right direction, it does not go far enough because it falls short of arguing for a plural view of power. Power constitutes a ‘family resemblance concept’, with family members forming complex relationships within overlapping language games. Members include, among others: episodic power, dispositional power, systemic power, power to, power over, empowerment, legitimate power and domination. This argument does not entail relativism or that ‘anything goes’, as all usages have to be justified as ‘conceptual tools’, whereby pragmatic criteria of usefulness, rather than essence, define better or worse usage. When moving language games, the relationship between signifier and referent changes, which leads to confusion, unless the family resemblance nature of power is understood. In the literature, the most significant confusion has taken place between sociological analytic and normative political theory language games.

Rethinking the four dimensions of power: domination and empowerment

In the literature, there have been two essentially contrasting views of power: one of power as domination, largely characterized as power over, and the other of power as empowerment, frequently theorized as power to. To date, the four (Lukes and Foucault) dimensions of power have been considered forms of domination. In this article it is argued that the processes of four-dimensional power also constitute the process of normatively desirable power, as emancipation. Key is the realization that structured power over has the potential to be positive-sum, rather than zero-sum; furthermore, that the exclusions of two-dimensional power also constitute the conditions of possibility for justice. The fact that normatively desirable power and domination are constituted through the same processes is not chance: the effectiveness of power as domination is parasitic upon power as emancipation.

Power and Truth

In the literature, the power debate is divided between modern and postmodern positions. The former hold that power and truth are opposites, while the latter view them as mutually constitutive. These debates mix epistemological, normative and sociological claims. Using classical sociological methods, strict criteria for valid functional explanations are set out and the relationship between power and truth is explained in these terms. It is argued that agents use truth to create local social capital for themselves, which has the unintended functional effect of reinforcing the effectiveness and stability of social systems. This entails an account of authority as a performative act that meets with a felicitous reaction by others.

Liquid modernity and power: A dialogue with Zygmunt Bauman 1

In this discussion, Zygmunt Bauman and Mark Haugaard debate the relationship of the changing nature of liquid modernity. They analyze how power relations in liquid modernity use a fundamentally different logic from solid modernity. In the former, power is exercised by controlling limiting possibilities, while the liquid modern elites dominate through uncertainty and insecurity. The contemporary condition is characterized by insatiable consumption, mobility, the contingency of social relations and flexibility. The old elites sought ‘cultural capital’ while the new elites ‘consume’ and ‘seduce’.

Power and reason, justice and domination: a conversation

Through an email conversation between Allen, Forst and Haugaard, this article explores the relationship between the dyads power and reason, justice and domination. In much of the literature reason is considered either a mode of emancipation from power (Lukes) or, conversely, a subtle ruse of domination (Foucault). Here it is argued that reasoning is intrinsic to political power, with both the potential for power as justice (Arendt), and for power as domination (Foucault and Lukes). With power and reason as normatively neutral, with both/either normatively desirable and undesirable potentials, this raises the fundamental question of how to distinguish between justice and domination. These issues are explored, taking account of processes of subject formation and systems of thought.

Power and habitus

This article explores the relationship between habitus and social power. It is argued that legitimacy and violence constitute an alternative basis of social power. The former is based upon habitus, while the latter is an extension of natural power. The complex processes whereby the state’s monopoly on violence and education are used to create habitus, thus legitimacy, are explored. The complex relationship between power legitimacy and habitus emerge as central to making sense of three‐dimensional power, hegemony, discourse formation, symbolic violence and democracy.

What is authority

This article theorizes authority from sociological and normative perspectives. It opens with the work of Weber, Arendt and Raz. This is followed by a sociological analysis of authority as a capacity for action, power-to and power-over, which are linked to felicitous performative action within epistemic interpretative horizons. Normatively, it confronts the anarchist challenge that authority is inimical to freedom by distinguishing between dispositional and episodic power. Bureaucratic and political power-over authority is theorized as normatively defensible when it confers dispositional power-to. This article concludes by discussing the mismatch between sociological authority, as a social fact, and normatively desirable authority: how the practices of charismatic, bureaucratic and democratic authority are often normatively problematic.

Concerted Power Over

However, with the exception of the latter,it has largely been assumed that power over largelycorresponds to power as domination — normativelyreprehensible power. In contrast, power to and with areemancipatory, giving capacity for action. In contrastwith this established view I argue that power over con-stitutes a duality whereby the very same process whichleads to domination also constitutes the conditionsof possibility for democracy, and thus is normativelydesirable. For democratic theory this has significantimplications. It is not sufficient to identify processes ofdominationandtrytodeconstructthem.Rather,thetaskisthemorecomplexoneofdecidingwhentheverysameprocess of power is desirable and when it constitutesdomination. In practice this means that power becomesa highly qualified scalar phenomenon, in which allpower processes are to some extent normativelydesirable and undesirable at one and the same time.With regard to the opposition between conflictualand consensual perspectives Foucault’s work is am-biguous. In Foucault we find assertions that power is

Editorial: reflections upon power over, power to, power with, and the four dimensions of power

In the power debates, the three/four dimensions of power and the characterization of power as, power over, power to, and power with, constitute one of the cornerstones of academic analysis. The papers in this issue deal with this subject, largely from empirical but also from theoretical perspectives. The empirical papers add a rich ethnography to our understanding of the relationship between the many forms of power, showing how these forms of power are usually found together, and in the ways they are mutually constitutive as social processes, which is a theme that is taken up in the concluding theoretical paper. The opening paper ‘Philanthropy: Power in international relations’, by Lena Partzsch and Doris Fuchs, analyses the philanthropic work of Bill and Melinda Gates as well as Michael Otto both from the perspective of the power over/power with opposition, and the three-dimensional power debate. Lena Partzsch and Doris Fuchs demonstrate that relative to all three dimensions of power – decision-making, structural bias, and dominant ideology – Gates’ and Otto’s power with, as a capacity for action, is premised upon power over. Thus, for instance, in the third dimension, the power with of mobilizing actors and organizations for a good cause is always couched in the habitus of neoliberalism, thus reinforcing ideology legitimating the sources of these actors’ wealth. Maciej Potz’s article, ‘Legitimation mechanisms and third-dimension power practices: The case of the shakers’, integrates the three-dimensional perspective with Weber’s renowned account of the move between forms of rationality and modes of domination. Potz shows how social change is initiated through appeals to charismatic authority, which entails the third dimension of power. They are stabilized through traditional and bureaucratic power, which draws upon power in its first and second dimensions. What emerges is a complex and nuanced picture in which charismatic power is useful as a mode of organizational outflanking, yet is unstable and constantly requires institutionalization. Steven Lukes has argued that Foucault’s account of power is incommensurable with his own account. In many respects, Lukes’ critique of Foucault (Lukes 2005) mirrors some of the criticisms made of his own third dimension of power. In particular, once power is theorized in its most subtle forms, in terms of received structures and tacit knowledge, there is a danger that power becomes co-extensive with socialization itself. In response to this critique, Lukes has insisted that the third dimension of power entails attributable agency, which is a position exemplified in his debate with Hayward (Hayward and Lukes 2008). However, as Hayward observed, this renders his analysis too conservative relative to some of the most significant modes of domination and, I would add, makes his position too behaviorist – which, ironically, was the criticism that Lukes leveled at Bachrach and Baratz. Journal of Political Power Vol. 5, No. 3, December 2012, 353–358

Reflections on the sources of power

An interview carried out at the Power and Knowledge Conference, Tampere, Finland, 8 September 2010 In this conversation Mann and Haugaard discuss Mann’s four sources of power: military, political, economic and ideological power. It is argued that military and political power can have different sources, whereby political power is not reducible to coercion. The significance of ideological power is explored in relation to nationalism, ‘false consciousness’, the enlightenment, and the rise of religion in the twenty-first century. The exchange concludes with reflections upon the relationship between these sources of power to globalization and current environmental challenges.