Power & Ideology
SOC1400: Understanding Contemporary Society
Lecture 8
This Lecture
Topic: Power
• Weber: power vs. domination
• Steven Lukes’ concept of power
• Michel Foucault’s concept of power
• Relationship to ideology (or language, ‘discourse’)
Structures, Relations…
• Class and work, economic • State and political institutions,
relations
social movements
• Gender relations, patriarchy
• International relations, wars, etc
• Racialised relations
• …
• Family relationships (youth, age, • Hierarchies
traditions, socialisation)
• The direct exercise of power
• Language and culture
from one side or the other
• Interpersonal relationships
• How does this power operate?
Power
• Can you see it?
• Can you feel it?
• Can you know it’s operating? How?
• What concepts of power are there?
• Why are there different concepts? !
Weber on Power
• Power ‘of men to realize their
own will’ ‘even against the
resistance of others‘
• Coercive power vs legitimate
authority
• Modern society is primarily
dominated on rational- legal
grounds (the law, the state,
bureaucracy)
• Legitimate domination also
functions on traditional grounds
and charismatic grounds.
Steven Lukes (1941–)
• Professor of Politics and
Sociology at NYU
• Power: a radical view
(1972, 2005)
• Three Faces/Dimensions
of Power:
One-dimensional View
• Robert Dahl (1957) ‘A has
power over B to the extent
that he can get B to do
something that B would not
otherwise do.’
• Close to Max Weber’s view
on power, focusing on
individuals realising their
wills
• Observable. Direct conflicts
• Content of decision-making
Two-dimensional View
• Controversial issues are
prevented from being
made visible
• Power is exercised by
keeping some issues out of
politics altogether, which
prevents oppositional social
groups from pursuing their
interests.
• Agenda-setting / Process of
decision-making
Three-dimensional View
• Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) and
other Marxist theorists
• The shaping of perceptions,
preferences and desires
• Acceptance of the existing
order even if it goes against
one’s immediate interests,
because
• No visible alternative
• Naturalisation of existing
order
• Ideology
Power & Ideology
• Ideology: a system of ideas and
ideals, especially one which forms
the basis of economic or political
theory and policy.
• Marx: Important factor in the
reproduction of capitalist class
domination
• Economically powerful are able to
control the dominant ideas
circulating in society, legitimising
their own privileged position.
• Ideologies can be proven
scientifically to be not valid.
Power as Repressive
• All three dimensions of power have a conception
of power rooted in an understanding of power as
a form of domination or oppression. !
• But is power only domination?
Michel Foucault (1926 –1984)
French Philosopher and Social Theorist
• Power is not simply
repressive, it produces
social relations
• Power runs through
society and it is
connected to knowledge
and language
• Where there is power
there is resistance
Power & Knowledge
• The production of
knowledge is connected to
power
• Scientific disciplines
(re)produce power relations
by producing what comes
to be established as
objective knowledge.
• Examples: Eugenics,
historical definitions of
mental illness, Eurocentric
conceptions of the world
Power & Discourse
• Alternative concept to ideology,
and critical of it: not a matter of
‘false ideas’ – includes scientific
ideas
• Focuses not on truth or falsity
but on how language is used
and meaning and subjectivity
produced as part of power
relations and scientific and
governmental practices
Empowerment / Resistance
• Marxist view: Class consciousness, class struggle,
taking over material resources
• Foucauldian view: ‘Micropolitics’, ‘mobile and
transitory points of resistance’, resistance internal
to power relations
Stuart Hall (1932–2014)
Jamaican-born sociologist,
co-founder of British Cultural Studies
• Synthesised Marxist and
Foucauldian views on
power, ideology and
discourse
• Theorised class and
racialised power
relationships through
studying language and
representation in culture
and media (past & present)
• Your reading this & next
week
Summary
• Power as domination or repression
• Power as command, authority, influence
• Power as agenda-setting
• Power as ideological manipulation
• Power as productive
• Linked to the production of knowledge
• Linked to the production of meaning and subjectivity
• Empowerment as
• takeover of power
• everyday acts of resistance
Readings
• Giddens & Sutton, Essential Concepts in Sociology, ‘Power’ 412–418
also see ‘Ideology’ and ‘Discourse’
• Hall, S. (2011) ‘The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power’. In Hall,
S. (Ed.) Formations of Modernity. Chapter 6 in the book, focus on
291-295. On MyLearning (same Chapter for the following week)
• Questions:
• What is power?
• How is it exercised and by whom?
• What kind of different situations can we understand through different
understandings of power?
• How does language play a role in the exercise of power? Think of an
example.
