Power and Change
Social Change, Week 9
This week was a deep dive into power and how it affects change. In physics1, power is the rate at which energy is transferred or work is done. In society, power is similarly the ability to change behavior of other actors, and the amount of power is fairly considered proportional to both the breadth of the change (the force needed to move the actor(s)) and the depth of the change (the distance the behaviors are moved); the less power you have, the longer it takes to make a given change, etc. By keeping the definition abstract and objective in this way, traditional dichotomies like hard/soft power, just/unjust exercise of power, legitimate/illegitimate power, etc, are fully encompassed as different flavors of the same underlying phenomenon. Because power involves a subject and an object (the one that acts and the one acted upon), it’s fundamentally relational: less “X has Y power” and more “X has Y power over Z”.
In the 1950s French and Raven laid out 5 main types of power: reward power, where the object of power is induced based on the trustworthiness of the agent and the attractiveness of the promised reward2; coercive power, which is basically a negative reward, but this creates new sub-problems around monitoring the object’s compliance with the condition (or if they can withdraw entirely from the relationship); legitimate power, where the object has some internalized values that create an obligation to the agent’s desires3; referent power, where the agent influences the object passively through identification and a desire to affiliate and imitate; and expert power, which is also passive but based on the agent’s perceived knowledge/wisdom in a given area. Any given act’s effectiveness is influenced by the mix of power used. As an example, when the CDC halted evictions at the beginning of COVID, it was using coercive power (threats of substantial fines and jail times), but operating beyond the boundaries of their legitimate power4, and probably beyond the scope of their expert power; as a result, the net effect was pretty small, and one factor that led to a decrease in the legitimate power of the CDC for many Americans.
Views on the Role of Power
Many models don’t have a strong role for power. For example, the evolutionary views of Comte, Spencer, and Rostow describe paths where society is dragged along by the underlying logic; individuals and institutions exercising power might be the immediate mechanism, but there’s a base level of inevitability that makes the goals and resources of the powerful window-dressing to the real story. This is in contrast to, for example, the great man theory of history, where “all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the word”5; that is, individual ideas and power drive change.
Marx, of course, centers power in his work: the defining feature of society is the arrangement of the means of production of the things needed for survival. In the current capitalist system, for example, some people own the land, machinery, and apartment buildings, which gives them power over the people dependent on them for wages to afford food, shelter, etc6. The people on a given side of this equation constitute a class, and a revolution changing the fundamental distribution of power between classes is the driving force of history. Michel Foucault7 takes a similar approach but updates it for an age where many fewer people are on the edge of starvation: power is synonymous with the ability to dictate truth in society and control the discourse, and that flows downstream to create laws and institutions. However, he attempts to study power not as it flows from the mind/intent of the powerful, but as it directly affects those at the receiving end8; that is, the goals take a back seat to the mechanisms. For example, think of US border policy: rather than understand it in terms of economic, political, and humanitarian goals, you might consider the shift from checkpoints and immigration raids to walls and cages (bringing an increased focus on controlling the bodies of migrants), how those create the categories of borders/citizenship/legality/etc as “truth”, and what it reveals about the society we live in.
Women and Power
Riane Eisler sees the whole equation differently. The exercise of traditional forms of power, and the framing of reality with power at the center, she sees as variations on what she calls the “domination” model, characterized by rigid hierarchy and gender roles, acceptance of violence as a means of enforcement of those two ideas, and stories and culture that make all this seem normal, right, and inevitable. By contrast, “partnership” societies are organized around more equal and democratic societies and families, where violence is rare, discouraged, and seen as less naturally human than empathy and collaboration. Eisler points out that this dichotomy crosses traditional binaries in defining society, such as East/West, North/South, right/left, rich/poor, etc.
The 8th chapter of Krznaric’s History for Tomorrow finds two modern societies that serve as decent examples of the kind of broad equality Eisler describes: Finland and the Indian state of Kerala. The former is wealthy and the latter is not, but they share a similar history over the last two centuries of broad education for women, who in turn organized and advocated for various social reforms that have led to social connection, leveling, and tranquility. The link between economic equality and the empowerment of women certainly bolsters Eisler’s insight about a key dividing line in society9.
Sorry, I am aware that this etymological way to start an article is only one step better than a “Webster’s dictionary defines…”
With the possibility that offering a reward at all could be counterproductive if seen as illegitimate or inappropriate to the situation, such as a bribe.
Basically, anytime someone says they “should” do something, they are expressing the pull of legitimate power. Note also that the idea of legitimacy can affect the strength of reward or coercion.
At least according to the Supreme Court.
Note that this theory definitely elevates humans as active choosers of the future, but only a few (and specifically just men). Also, being able to look back on history and decide retroactively which were the “Great Men” based on their accomplishments doesn’t seem like much of a theory at all…
Note that in this conception, the power of the capital owner in offering wages may be couched in reward terms per French and Raven, but because people need to eat it’s effectively coercive (accept the wages or starve).
Not the pendulum guy, for the record.
If you choose to read him, often Foucault uses the word subject to talk about those on the receiving end of power (though he sees power as always circulating through society, so these are temporary roles, not identities). Note that this is the opposite of my use of subject and object, which I mean in the grammatical sense.
Of course, the implication of this model is that we should see the elements of each paradigm correlate pretty closely in actual examples of society. But both Kerala and Finland seem to have higher domestic violence rates than the more domination-style United States, for example, though it’s hard to know how much of that is explained by other factors, differences in definition, or even the definitions being used.