Power: A Radical View

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A. Sen, “Gender and Hunger Issues and Misconceptions”, 2010, at http://athome.harvard.edu/food/4.html.

He is a member of the editorial board of the European Journal of Sociology and directs a research project on what is left of the socialist idea in Western and Eastern Europe.Non-decision-making power is that which sets the agenda in debates and makes certain issues (e.g., the merits of socialism in the United States) unacceptable for discussion in "legitimate" public forums. Adding this face gives a two-dimensional view of power allowing the analyst to examine both current and potential issues, expanding the focus on observable conflict to those types that might be observed overtly or covertly. [8] Language is the most important type of power. Mastering language is mastering the world. Language is power-creation, the inclusion or exclusion of certain words the most powerful act in politics. G. W. Domhoff, “Who Really Ruled in Dahl’s New Haven?” 2005, at http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/local/new_haven.html. Including a refreshed introduction, this third edition brings a book that has consolidated its reputation as a classic work and a major reference point within Social and Political Theory to a whole new audience. It can be used on modules across the Social and Political Sciences dealing with the concept of power and its manifestation in the world. It is also essential reading for all undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in the history of Social and Political Thought. Steven Lukes's Power: A Radical View was a very important contribution when it appeared in 1974. Lukes emphasized several important points that became landmarks in subsequent discussions of the social reality of power: that power is a multi-dimensional social factor, that power and democracy are paradoxically related, and that there are very important non-coercive sources of power in modern society. In the second edition in 2005 he left the 1974 essay unchanged, but added a substantive introduction and two new chapters: "Power, Freedom and Reason" and "Three-Dimensional Power". Also new in the second edition is substantially more attention to several other writers on the social context of power, including James Scott and Michel Foucault.

I first read Lukes' work about two years ago after trying for years to make sense of the power dynamics in public education systems, and it was a source of extreme clarity, putting names & rationale to much of what I had observed. I don't think there is anything wrong with his work at all. It is possible that you fail to appreciate the value it brought in its time, and also, the value of his focus on the pure model. Knowledge advances through a combination of going wide and going deep, and those of us who are generalists rely more than we realize on the people who develop an obsessive focus on one thing and delve to its wellspring. This is what Lukes did - applying the model to the myriad of situations in which it applies is left to the rest of us to do in our time, whenever that may be. From 1974 to 1983, he was President of the Committee for the History of Sociology of the International Sociological Association. He was the co-director of the European Forum on Citizenship at the European University Institute from 1995 to 1996. Robert Dahl exemplifies the pluralistic view of power with his analysis of the power structure in New Haven, Connecticut; in the 1950s (Domhoff, 2005). In Dahl’s view, there were a number of influential groups whose opinions held weight when it came to making and influencing decisions about the city (Domhoff, 2005). His conclusion about the power structure in, New Haven was that no single group held the monopoly on power (Domhoff, 2005). Although there were inequalities within the society, the fact that power was dispersed among different elites with different interests at heart meant that the situation was one of ‘dispersed inequalities’; where no one group controlled all of the important resources (Domhoff, 2005). I have defined the concept of power by saying that A exercises power over B when A affects B in a manner contrary to B's interests. (37)But this definition is too generic, and Lukes attempts to provide a more satisfactory interpretation by constructing a "three-dimensional" account of power.Highly theoretical but mostly accessible, the book asserts that the concept of power has to be looked at in 'three dimensions.' It is not enough to say that 'A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do.' That is the one-dimensional view. Likewise, even the two-dimensional conception is inadequate: 'Power is also exercised when A devotes his energies to creating or reinforcing social and political values and institutional practices that limit the scope of the political process to public consideration of only those issues which are comparatively innocuous to A.' Rather, in 3-D, power can be described thus: 'A may exercise power over B by getting him to do what he does not want to do, but he also exercises power over him by influencing, shaping or determining his very wants. Indeed, is it not the supreme exercise of power to get another or others to have the desires you want them to have - that is, to secure their compliance by controlling their thoughts and desires? One does not have to go to the lengths of talking about 'Brave New World,' or the world of B. F. Skinner, to see this: thought control takes many less total and more mundane forms, through the control of information, through the mass media and through the process of socialization.'