EDUCATIONAL THEORY

Sprin 1986, Vol. 36, No. 2

0 I d 6 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

A Theory of Power in Education

By Nicholas C. Burbules

INTRODUCTION

When we propose to define social concepts, we are engaged in a normative activity,

because we select and emphasize certain aspects of the social environment over others
and because we make this choice in terms of certain purposes, values, and interests
that are rarely made explicit. We can attempt to justify social concepts in terms of their
explanatory or predictive value or in terms of their position within a larger theory, but
such justifications must refer to criteria of usefulness which, in the social domain at
least, depend on political or ethical judgments. Certain controversial concepts - for
example, “family,” “rape,” or “class” - wear their partisanship closer to the surface.
“Power” is certainly one of these, and the myriad attempts to define and redefine it
are an indication not that we have yet to “get it right,” but that social and political
theorists have many different axes to grind.
I make this point at the start because I do not claim that here, at last, is the correct
way of thinking about power. I will propose a theory of power, show how it is different
from previous versions, and suggest that it has advantage given certain purposes and
values that I will try to make explicit. The theory offered here does describe and explain
important features of our social and political life, but does so from a point of view,
namely, that a more democratic and egalitarian organization of society is both possible
and desirable and that education can have a role to play in attaining that kind of society.
I will argue, in brief, that power and power struggles are the consequences of underlying
conflicts between human interests; that these conflicts are inevitable given the hierar-
chical nature of our social system: that power is latent in structures of ideology, authority,
and organization; and that the resolution to the problem of power lies neither in simply
exorcising power nor in “getting it,” but in transforming the underlying conflicts of
interest that give rise to it. Educational institutions, I will conclude, are (as usual) both
culprits in creating and perpetuating the problem and, potentially, channels for revealing
and criticizing the nature and origins of power and hence for giving us an opportunity
to transform its bases.

POWER:
TRADITIONAL VIEWS

Many writers on power offer typologies - often alliterative - which itemize the
forms that power takes and in terms of which certain associated concepts (control,
influence, coercion, and authority) can be defined. David Nyberg, for example, offers
the four “F’s”: Force, Finance, Fiction, and Fealty.’ These correspond roughly to the
items in Kenneth Boulding’s jingle:
Four things that give mankind a shove
Are threats, exchange, persuasion, love.*

John Kenneth Galbraith, in a recent book, weighs in with his three “C’s”: Condign

Correspondence: Department of Educational Studies, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112.

1. David Nyberg, Power over Power (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981).
2. Kenneth Boulding, ”Toward a Pure Theory of Threat Systems:’ in Political Power: A Reader
in Theory and Research, ed. Roderick Bell, David V. Edwards, and R. Harrison Wagner (New York
Free Press, 1965), 292.

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(punishment), Compensatory (reward), and Conditioned (persuasive or manip~lative).~

Dennis Wrong offers Force, Manipulation, Persuasion, and Authority (with Authority
having five sub~ategories).~ Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz offer an account
similar to Wrong’s, but divide “Persuasion” into ”Influence” and “Coercion.”s One can
spend a great deal of time at this sort of thing, which often comes down to whether
one wishes to group oranges with apples because they are both fruits or with carrots
because they are the same color.
Such typological approaches are limiting for several reasons. First, they assume
that power is something an individual or group has, and uses, and that what differs is
the form of exercising it; such an approach emphasizes the means of power over its
effects. Second, segmenting power into various forms leads one to regard these as
natural divisions rather than as categories that are themselves socially constructed and
to hypostasize what are actually artificial points of emphasis. Third, the very attempt
to classify discrete forms that power takes distracts from the interrelated aspect of
certain elements (e.g., persuasion and manipulation), from the “layered” character of
power elements (we don’t see the hint of force that underlies the apparent contractual
agreement), and from the systemic nature of power in society as a continuous “web”
of relationships that catches up persons in a series of effects which are only partly
intended (as Michel Foucault argues).s
In general, traditional theories of power have assumed that power is a property
of individual persons, wielded instrumentally as a means to particular intended outcomes.
These three assumptions (the three “in’s’’) have prevented previous accounts from (a)
addressing adequately the reciprocal character of power relations, (b) appreciating the
efficacy of power as a conservative system, making dissent and transformation difficult,
if not impossible - and thus as identifiable in the perpetuation of a status quo as in
the achievement of discrete and intended purposes - and (c) recognizing the inherence
of power in certain institutions, regardless of anyone’s actively choosing or directing
them.
Much closer to the mark is Steven Lukes’s definition that “A exercises power over
6 when A affects 6 in a manner contrary to 5’sinterests.”’ This version is not tied to
specific individuals, to specific actions, or to specifically intended outcomes. Moreover,
it makes explicit a judgment that is, I believe, essential to discussions of power, that
B is influenced against his or her interests. However, this approach raises a troublesome
difficulty, as Lukes acknowledges: on his definition power cannot be exerted to compel
an outcome that is in 5 ’ s interests (e.g., the commanding parent seeking to prevent a
child from running into the street). Lukes offers an uneasy response.8 As I will argue
later, a theory of power does require a way of identifying where personal interests
reside; I will claim that one cannot analyze a particular instance apart from a larger
context of relations among the persons concerned and the interests which they do or
do not share. Where there is no conflict of interests (say, concerning this child’s safety),
the command does not constitute an exercise of power: however, a conflict of interests
might arise under different circumstances, if the parent’s authority is served but the
child’s autonomy is not. It must be said that different observers will judge conflicts of
interests differently, so that some will identify situations as involving power, while others
disagree. There is no avoiding such disagreements so long as “power” retains its

3. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Anatomy of Power (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), 4-6,
14-29.
4. Dennis H. Wrong, Power: Its Forms, Bases, end Uses (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979), 21-
64.
5. Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, “Decisions and Nondecisions: An Analytical
Framework,” in Political Power: A Reader, 100-6.
6. Michel Foucault, “Power and Strategies” and “The Eye of Power,” in Power/Knowledge
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 141-42, 188.
7. Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View (London: Macrnillan, 1974), 27.
8. Ibid., 33. See also Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human lnrerests (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1971), 301-17.

SPRING1986
 OF POWER
A THEORY 97
critical value. If “power” simply meant “efficacy,” there would be little need to discuss
it further.
The basis of a relational conception of power can be found in Anthony Giddens’s
definition:

Power within social systems can thus be treated as involving reproduced

relations of autonomy and dependence in social interaction. Power relations
therefore are always two-way, even if the power of one actor or party in a
social relation is minimal compared to another. Power relations are relations
of autonomy and dependence, but even the most autonomous agent is in
some degree dependent, and the most dependent actor or party in a relationship
retains some autonomy?

Foucault characteristically puts the point even more extremely: “One doesn’t have here
a power which is wholly in the hands of one person who can exercise it alone and
totally over others. It’s a machine in which everyone is caught, those who exercise
power just as much as those over whom it is exercised.”1°
A relational conception of power emphasizes two aspects of the problem. First,
power is a relation that is not simply chosen (or avoided) but made more or less
necessary by the circumstances under which persons come together. These circum-
stances include a background of conflicting or compatible interests; a presumption or
expectation of certain roles that constrain the alternatives the agents see as possible;
or psychological traits - sometimes unconscious - that predispose persons to car-
rying out dominant or submissive positions in the relationship.‘’ Such circumstances
and predispositions constitute a template or pattern which the relationship will tend to
follow: people rarely choose these and often remain quite unaware of them. Persons
can recognize and resist such constraints, but if this determination is not mutual, the
propensities of one person in the relation can restrict the options of the others. Even
when the determination is mutual, the persons often find that, because of their habits
and predispositions, the very terms and methods they invoke in criticizing and attempting
to transform the relation in fact tend to reinforce it.
Hence the second aspect, that in power relations there is usually a tension between
compliance and resistance. Although one agent in a power relation may be successful
in eliciting or proscribing actions by another, two consequences result: first, the
advantaged agent’s alternatives are also constrained by the relation (e.g., by working
to preserve it); and second, the advantaged agent often must depend on the complicit
involvement of the disadvantaged and so must cede to the other a range of autonomy
and even resistance. So long as the tension of resistance and compliance remains, it
is accurate to say both that X has power over Y and that Y empowers X. However,
not all power relations preserve this tension. Sometimes the desire to dominate destroys
the relation - in fact, destroys persons - as when power relations take the form of
extreme physical or psychic violence. In such cases, where prevention is often the
primary objective, minimal compliance is not required, and resistance may not be
possible.

POWER
AND HUMAN
INTERESTS

Power is a matter of fascination to us: getting it, using it, lusting for it, admiring it,
etc. It is an element in all human relations at present, because we do not yet know
how to live without it. Power relations begin with a state of conflicting interests. Not all
conflict is a conflict of interests; a conflict of interests exists where there is a zero-

9. Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1979), 93.
10. Foucault, “The Eve of Power.” 156.
11. Goran Therborn, ?he ldeology of Power and the Power of ldeology (London: Verso, 1980),
15-16.

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sum game in which gaining or maintaining an advantage for one person or group
necessarily entails disadvantagingothers. Such a situation might involve unequal wealth,
political influence, status differences, or certain privileges: often this situation is
exacerbated by conditions of scarcity. Against this background of conflicting interests,
all social relations take on power significance because power relations suppress,
disguise, preserve, or deny conflicts of interests: the typical problem of power is obtaining
compliance despite an underlying conflict of interests; of making the disadvantaged
complicit in perpetuating their disadvantage. It is because “power” involves this
estimation of conflicting interests that it has a critical value, even when the “means”
of power appear benign.
A corollary of this conception is that where we do not judge there to be a conflict
of interests, we do not label a social relation a power relation. As with Lukes’s definition,
this view encounters a difficulty: can power ever be invoked to compel obedience which
is in the “victim’s” interest (e.g., a parent commanding a child, or a teacher punishing
a student)? The answer is complex. First, the means invoked in compelling obedience
are relevant to the judgment, because relying on certain means (such as physical
violence or intimidation) creates a conflict of interests where one may not have existed
before. It is not only that certain means are intrinsically undesirable, but also that they
constrain or distort the future development of the relation. The judgment of power is
not only synchronic, but diachronic; it is not simply a matter of the momentary relation
at present, but how that relation (a) stands against previous relations involving those
(or other) persons and (b) affects potential future relations involving them (or others).
Hence the second point: Judgments of power refer to a historical background, in which
predispositions and propensities are established that shape and constrain the relation
and which are in turn reinforced by it. We may judge these to constitute a conflict of
interests not only for the specific agents at the particular moment, but, because of the
perpetuation of a pattern of relations, for them and others in the future. Third, the
degree of self-reflectiveness and open-handedness in the relation will influence whether
we judge there to be a conflict of interests. Where a parent or teacher says, for
example, “I must punish you for your own good,” much depends on whether we agree
that it is for the child’s good, whether we think the punishment appropriate, whether
we see alternative means for making the lesson take hold, and whether we believe
that the adult is sincere and honest in invoking the punishment as a last resort. Where
the preservation of a superior role in the relationship becomes its own goal, a conflict
of interests is created where it might not have existed before. Thus we look to whether
the relationship tends to promote autonomy in both agents, and whether it is tending
towards greater equality and consensus, in deciding to label it a power relation.
Addressing Lukes’s problem, then, we should not call a relation a power relation
where there is no conflict of interests (the parent and child is a typical example), and
one might invoke means that “look like” power in other contexts, but which are not
expressions of power in a specific setting. Needless to say, given the judgments above,
this determination is very subtle and risky. Adopting certain attitudes and strategies,
however provisionally, can lead to their greater and greater use. Taking an authoritarian
role and privileges has a cost in terms of transforming the future potential of the
relation. And some methods, such as violence and physical intimidation, inherently
create conflicts of interests and are always power laden. Other means, those of
persuasion and consensuality, tend to preserve the relation and emphasize common
interests: to this extent they avoid the problems of power and domination.
This account raises a further difficulty: how do we determine where human interests
lie? There are two undesirable alternatives immediately apparent. One is to accept at
face value what persons believe to be their interests; the other is to attempt to ascertain
independently what their interests are, whether they recognize them or not. The first
“subjective” method has the virtue of respecting persons, but at the risk of reifying
their occasional errors and self-deceptions. The second “objective” method has the
virtue of impartiality, but at the risk of condescension and paternalism. Neither approach
is any less likely to deceive. Like John Dewey, we must question this way of defining
the alternatives. Furthermore, we must see our methods of determining interests, and

SPRING1986
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power relations, as potential power issues themselves. Certainly a major rationale for
assuming power over others, or justifying it to them, is the presumption that one knows
better and can best serve their interests.
Here the best available approach is dialogical - pedagogical in the Socratic
sense - and in some ways therapeutic. We can inquire of others what they believe
their interests to be, but we can also question them: we can pose alternative versions
of their interests and disclose inconsistencies or ambiguities in their own versions.
Alternatively, they may take the short-term view and we the long-term view (or vice
versa). In the end we may convince them or be convinced ourselves; in either case
our judgment then is more likely to be accurate and less likely to be authoritarian. A
practical, contextual process is the best guard against credulous subjectivism and
presumptuous objectivism. Sometimes this dialogue must be indirect (as with historical
figures or persons in a foreign land), and sometimes it is partly imaginary; but to the
extent that we attempt to inform ourselves about how others understand the world
and their interests, we can at least be confident of our best and fairest effort (and in
matters of power, this is often the most that can be hoped for). However, judgments
of interest, and hence judgments of power, will differ widely; what you call “power,” I
may call “benign.” We can discuss the matter, but we may not come to an agreement.
Assuming that we have identified a power relation as grounded in a conflict of interests,
there remains the second level of questions concerning the quality of the relation itself.

DOMINATION,
COMPLIANCE,
AND CONSENT

Nyberg suggests that all power relations are consensual.‘* There are two serious
problems with this account. First, consent means that one has an approving attitude,
and clearly there are cases of reluctant obedience, coercion, and habit which do not
include this attitude. Compliance is a better and less evaluative word to use. Yet not
all power relations involve even minimal compliance, as in the case of overwhelming
use of physical or psychic force, which I will call domination. This is the second problem.
What we have is a continuum of relations, beginning with the extremes of domination
at one end and of consent at the other, with a range of degrees of reluctant or willful
compliance in between. Usually a power relation does include some degree of com-
pliance; one gives an order and expects a response. But, at one extreme, the use of
force to elicit, or especially prevent, action requires no compliance whatsoever: the
victim is almost entirely objectified and passive. At the other extreme, that of consent,
there is also no compliance, in the sense of constrained participation; both parties are
knowingly and actively cooperating, without coercion of even the most indirect sort -
in this pure form there is no power relation, because there is no conflict of interests,
in either goals or means. Domination and consent in these extremes are relatively
straightforward; the vast middle ground of power relations are those of variously
coerced or voluntary compliance, and in this range resistance is always a p~ssibility.’~
Each of these terms, domination, compliance, consent, resistance, and their relation,
requires further discussion.
Consent is an ideal in human relations. It involves a situation in which, first of all,
there is no background conflict of interests; the persons join together in a course of
action, or accept a given state of affairs, because they commonly recognize a purpose
that they each approve. To repeat a previous point, however, it is possible that persons
can be mistaken in this judgment, as when the parties view their relation in overly

12. Nyberg, Power over Power. 45-46. For an extended critique of Nyberg’sbook,see Nicholas
C. Burbules, “Toward a Theory of Power in Education,” in Philosophy of Education, 7984:
Proceedings of the Fortieth Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, ed. Emily
Robertson (Normal, 111.: Philosophy of Education Society, 1985), 79-89. Some authors do use
“consent” in a manner similar to Nyberg’s: see C.Wright Mills, Power, Politics, and People (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 23.
13. Michel Foucault, quoted in Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power; Socialism (London: New Left
Books, 1978), 146.

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personalistic and ahistorical terms or when the conditions of consent involve partial or
inaccurate information. In such cases an outside observer may identify conflicts of
interests that the parties themselves do not recognize and so reveal their “consent”
as misinformed; hence the relation is better described as “compliance,” because there
is an element of power in the relation whether the participants acknowledge it or not.
This leads to a second point: consent is an expression of informed and autonomous
judgment by the parties concerned. We see limits on the rationality of that judgment
as impediments to consent. However, if we are to respect and promote the autonomy
of others, we cannot as observers always assume that our perception of a conflict of
interests, or of partiality and inaccuracy in information, or of compromised rationality
or “false consciousness” in the judgments of others, is always correct (hence the need
to identify interests and the context of social relations via dialogue).14Third, consensual
relations are characterized by egalitarian social positions, mutual respect and concern,
and such affects as caring, affection, loyalty, and trust.’’ There may be conflicts in the
relation, in disagreements, competitiveness, debate, etc., without there being conflicts
of interests. As we approach consensual relations, where cooperation and communi-
cation have served to identify common interests and where there are no conflicts of
interests, we come as close as possible to avoiding power over one another.
Domination, at the other extreme, is the virtual negation of each of these factors:
it begins with an incompatability of interests, it undermines autonomy even to the point
of destroying it, and it represents a contempt for persons and humane values. Domination
is always the domination of one person or group over another, and what the “over”
signifies is a lack of even minimal compliance or acquiescence by the victim. Domination
tends to destroy social relations (sometimes by destroying persons), whereas all other
forms of power, however coercive, seek to elicit compliance in such a way as to
maintain at least a surface legitimacy to the relation itself. Domination can involve
physical or psychic strategies and is most evident in extreme uses of force; furthermore,
it is usually more effective in preventing action than in eliciting it. Thus a paradigm
case of domination would be shooting a political dissident who is preparing to give a
speech: no compliance is required; no resistance is possible. Marginal cases of
domination include immediate dire threat or psychic domination, such as brainwashing.I6
In these cases there is a kind of voluntary activity by the victims, but under such
restricted conditions it is practically true to say that they had no choice.”
Compliance is a more difficult category to define, because it refers to a broad
range of relationships in which, for a variety of reasons and with varying degrees
of enthusiasm or reluctance, persons cooperate with the demands or expectations of
others, either by action or by inaction. In some cases, compliance is a result of
agreement with the purpose behind the request, and here it comes quite close to
consent - except that this agreement is more partial, misinformed, or reluctant than
consent.’’ In other cases, compliance is a response to explicit or implicit threat, and it
comes very close to domination - except that there exists a narrow range of possible
reaction or resistance to the command. In still other cases, compliance is secured by
an exchange relation, either one of economic incentive or one of social compromise.
Compliance can also be identified in cases where out of habit, ignorance, apathy,
laziness, or various degrees of active or tacit complicity, persons act to encourage or
perpetuate a state of affairs - even one which they would not approve were they to
face the decision directly. This range of applications, particularly in the last set of cases,

14. Richard Rorty, “Method, Social Science, Social Hope,’’ in Consequences of Pragmatism
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982),202.
15. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury Press, 1970), 77-80.
16. Ralph Page, “Opportunity and Its Willing Requirement,” in Philosophy of Education, 7976:
Proceedings of the ihirty-second Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, ed. Kenneth
Strike (Normal, 111.: Philosophy of Education Society, 1977), 296-305.
17. See, for example, the climax of George Orwell’s 7984 (New York: New American Library,
1961), 180-236.
18. Paul Willis, Learning to Labour (Westmead, England: Saxon House, 1977), 188.

SPRING1986
 A THEORY
OF POWER 101

puts a burden on the observer who identifies the power situation to specify where the
conflict of interests resides and in what actions, inactions, or attitudes compliance is
manifested.
Resistance is linked with compliance, for in the extreme cases of power (domination
and consent) resistance is not a factor: in the former case because it is impossible or
futile, and in the latter case because it is unnecessary. But apart from the pure forms
of these extremes (that is, in the range of compliance), resistance is always a possibility,
since what is offered can be withheld: one either refuses to act cooperatively or acts
in a disruptive and oppositional manner. Resistance is often expressed as part of a
relationship in which conflict, compromise, and eventual compliance ebb and flow.’’
Defined in this way, the tension between compliance and resistance is the form of most
human interaction. Often this tension is not expressed directly. It may not be a face-
to-face struggle. Rather, it is often instantiated in human institutions, conventions, or
forms of life that are distanced from the actual interests that are at stake; hence
compliance is drained of any sense of culpability, while resistance is sapped of much
of its danger (for either the resistor or the resistee). Moreover, it can be said that
certain institutions are specifically designed and promoted with this effect in mind; as
I will discuss later, many have argued that this is a primary function of schools.
I have argued that it is not useful to treat these categories as discrete forms of
power: in any concrete relation various elements are present, operating perhaps at
different levels of immediacy. This point can be illustrated by considering a specific
case of compliance, acquiescence: it is often possible to induce others to acquiesce
in a course of action because they accept the aims and purposes that serve one’s
own interest. “Acquiescence” in this terminology is narrower than “compliance,” since
persons can comply under immediate threat or coercion, or out of ignorance or apathy,
without acquiescing. The means of securing acquiescence include persuasion, manip-
ulation, some appeals to authority, and economic incentives of various types, including
economies not only of material benefit but of pleasure, emotional comfort, sensuality,
social approval, and so on. Three points of elaboration are relevant here. First, as can
be seen from the economic case, aspects of force and threat might be found in any
particular relation: economic incentives can secure acquiescence, but their withdrawal
is an ever-present threat, and where these incentives include material or psychic
necessities, their actual withdrawal can be as brutal and injurious as outright violence.
Second, the particular blend of force, threat, and acquiescence will vary depending on
the extent to which compliance has begun to break down in a social setting: where
persons begin to manifest greater resistance, the strategy moves back from securing
acquiescence to threat, to force, tending in the end to overwhelm noncompliance by
means of domination; otherwise the power relation breaks off entirely. Third, as Dewey
and many other commentators point out, “Force. . . is built into the procedures of the
existing social system, regularly as coercion, in times of crisis as overt violence.”2o It
is not only that force stands always in the background as the strategy of last appeal,
but that as always present in the background it is implicitly a factor even in more
voluntary forms of association. The paradox of force, however, is that as its use
becomes manifest, its legitimacy becomes more difficult to maintain; the use of force
is likely, in the long run, to generate resistance, and it makes the targets of opposition
more apparent.*’ Furthermore, where it destroys the relation, or destroys persons, it
can be self-defeating when the minimal compliance of a person or group (e.g., workers
or students) has become necessary to the powerful.

PREVENTION
AND PRIVILEGE

I have emphasized that power relations reside not only in situations where one
person or group elicits particular actions by another; often power also inheres in the

19. Ibid., 125-27.

20. John Dewey, Liberalism and Social Action (New York: Capricorn Books, 1963),63.
21. Nyberg, Power over Power, 70-71.

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ability to maintain an existing situation without change or within a minimal range of

change. At the heart of this point of view is a broadened conception of control, removing
the specifically instrumental connotations of that term.“ In the case of prevention, the
interests of a dominant group can be secured not only by eliciting active participation,
but also by discouraging or constraining opposition. Often power is manifested in
“business as usual” and can be as oppressive as any overtly restrictive policy. Preventive
power can take forms as widely varied as killing persons to silence them or tolerating
a degree of “open” dialogue in which the agenda and debate are truncated:
Of course power is exercised when A participates in the making of decisions
that affect B. But 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.23

These are, in Bachrach’s and Baratz’s terms, the “two faces of power.” What must be
added to their account is that preventive power does not always take the form of
specific policies to restrict debate or action. The persistence of ideological and
organizational constraints does not always depend on specific compromises or active
participation; it is a feature of such institutional forms that they take on a “life of their
own” and often restrict the conceptions and activities of their beneficiaries no less than
those of their victims.24However, when one’s judgment of power is based on an analysis
of interests, it matters little to this judgment whether institutional forms are actively or
passively maintained.
Privilege is also an expression of power when it comes to be taken for granted
by both the privileged and nonprivileged. Because power relations are directed toward
the masking or perpetuation of conflicts of interests, privilege -when it is unques-
tioned - reinforces the presumption of advantage. Presumed privilege is unquestioned
conflict of interests. Because privilege means being able to do or have particular things,
it is often thought to be only the concern of the privileged person and not necessarily
related to the nonprivilege of others. But because situations of conflicting interests
arise where there is a zero-sum game, additions to the advantage of one do entail the
disadvantage of others: the presumption of privilege takes advantage of others.
A clear and contemporary example of this analysis of privilege can be found in
current gender debates: a man can with relative impunity take a run along a deserted
footpath after dark: a woman does so only at considerable risk and with feelings of
fear and anxiety. In what meaningful way can we say that the man’s privilege is an
expression of power? First of all, there is an underlying conflict of interests, because
the woman’s fear is of a male attacker (an attack the male runner is much safer from)
and because the male runner is safer by virtue of being a man, even if he is physically
weaker than the woman. Hence the man’s privilege is indirectly related to the woman’s
nonprivilege. (This would not be true if, for example, the woman feared being struck
by lightning more than the man did.) His act is a privilege because hers is
Some privileges, it will be said, are justifiable because they accompany legitimate
authority, or an orgnizational role, and are necessary for carrying out the responsibilities
appropriate to that position: this is frequently the case in educational contexts.
Sometimes privileges are justified, as I will discuss later. But what is challenged here
is the presumption of privilege, or privilege which goes unquestioned by either the
privileged or nonprivileged. Some privileges, and some authority, may serve the interests
of both parties in a relation; where there is no conflict of interests, there is no power.

22. Michael Apple, “Curricular Form and the Logic of Technical Control,” in Cultural and
Economic Reproduction in Education, ed. Apple (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), 264.
23. Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, “Two Faces of Power,” in Political Power: A Reader,
95.
24. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 42.
25. Does this mean the male runner should forego the footpath? Perhaps.

SPRING1986
 A THEORY
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But relations which in some contexts, or in their origins, are beneficial for all concerned,
can nevertheless become pernicious when they continue after their purpose is served,
or when they go beyond the range of necessary prerogative, or when their preservation
becomes an end in itself.

A RELATIONAL
CONCEPTION
OF POWER

As noted earlier, three assumptions typify most conceptions of power (the three
“in’s”): that power is an individual possession, wielded instrumentally to achieve
particular intended outcomes. These assumptions arise from a causal analogy, taken
from the natural world, that considers power strictly in terms of immediate effects and
efficacy. A clear example comes from Hobbes: “The power of a man, to take it
universally, is his present means to obtain some future good.”26 As I have argued, such
assumptions limit the usefulness of previous conceptions, failing to address the complex
and relational character of power.27
As opposed to thinking of power only as an individual possession, it broadens our
understanding to view power as a relation among persons: that A has power over 5,
but that in most cases 8 empowers A. This form of analyis is familiar from Hegel: the
Master is dependent, both conceptually and practically, on the existence of a Slave.28
On a more concrete level, power, in the absence of domination in its extreme form,
requires compliance, and such compliance involves the potential for resistance; as
Giddens put it, dependency involves a degree of autonomy, and autonomy a degree
of dependence. A relation of power binds and constrains the activities of both parties,
and each party defines its purposes and range of alternatives partly in terms of the
other. This is not to say that one party is not advantaged and the other disadvantaged
in the relation; but such relative advantage and disadvantage is usually a consequence
of the background conflict of interests behind the power relation.29In the power relation
itself each party might gain a particular gratification from the negotiated balance
between compliance and resistance.
As opposed to thinking that power is only wielded instrumenta//K it broadens our
understanding to view power as a means of prevention as well as a means of direction
and control. On one hand, it can effectively serve the interests of one person or group
to maintain a particular state of affairs by concealing it, by discouraging opposition, or
by encouraging a range of free action and criticism that does not alter the essential
features of the arrangement. At least since Gramsci we have seen that hegemonic
control can be especially effective and enduring when it takes this preventive form.
Loosely coupled, it tolerates dissent and considerable modifications. Relatively hidden,
it is difficult to make problematic, to defy, or to rally popular opposition against; it is
implicit and latent in the common-sense, ordinary way of things. Ideological and
institutional in nature, such hegemonic control is less obviously pernicious, less
personalized, and less dramatic in its effects; it limits without expressly
On the other hand, the very framework of prevention is a framework of permission as
well. In many cases we can recognize and choose alternatives only by reference to
the fixed points of various limits: “Power would be a fragile thing if its only function
were to repress. . . [Plower is strong . . . because, as we are beginning to realize, it
produces effects at the level of desire - and also at the level of kn~wledge.”~’
As opposed to thinking of power only as aimed at attaining particular intended
results, it broadens our understanding to view power as inherent in the framework of

26. Thomas Hobbes, “Of Power,“ in Power; ed. John R. Champlin (New York: Atherton Press,
1971). 75.
27. Nyberg also proposes a relational view: Power over Power; 40-41.
28. Alexandre Kojeve, introduction to the Reading of Hegel (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1969),chap. 1.
29. Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism, 147.
30. Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks (New York: international Publishers, 1971), 55-56.
31. Foucault, ”Body/Power,” in Power/Know/edge, 59.

VOLUME36, NUMBER
2
104 EDUCATIONAL
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a status quo: in the exercise of presumed privilege, in habit and apathy, and in
unquestioned authority and organizational roles. Underlying this notion, and linking it
to the previous two, is the conception of power as a web, as a system of relations:
discursive, practical, material, intellectual, and psychological. This conception reveals,
first, that relations of power are to some extent reciprocal, both because of the dynamic
of compliance and resistance and because a person in power over another in one
respect may be relatively powerless in other respects. Second, it reveals that power
can be transitive in its nature and its effects (the father beats the boy, and the boy
kicks the dog)?* Third, it reveals that the traditional distinction between actual power
and potential power is too simple, since power can be as effective in its latent form
as in its overt expression and use. Fourth, it reveals that typologies of “forms” of
power treat as distinct what are always and necessarily interrelated aspects of a given
power relation.
But what does it mean to consider power as a web of relations? The starting point
of a power analysis is a background of conflicting interests; the conflict or compatibility
of interests is not always a matter of choice for the parties concerned. They might not
desire the conflict; they might not even be aware of it. More seriously, there might be
a difference of opinion over whether there is a conflict of interests; a judgment that
there is underlies the power analysis, and this is a judgment in which one observer
may differ from another, or an observer may differ from the parties concerned. Given
this background conflict of interests, any relation which conceals, perpetuates, or
legitimates that conflict is a power relation, even if the character of the relation is itself
benign; more often, however, when the conflict of interests is apparent to the agents
concerned, the relation necessarily takes on a coercive or manipulative character. Thus
we can criticize power relations because of their effects (in maintaining or serving a
relation not in the mutual interests of all concerned) or because of the quality of the
relation itself, or - most often - because of both.
The identification of a relation as a power relation, therefore, has a descriptive
and a normative aspect: one is never neutral in calling a relation “power.” This
identification rests on a presumed conflict of interests: these positions of conflicting
interests are the nodes or vertices of the “web.” They often preexist the particular
persons who come to occupy the relation. The relations which persons create and
maintain, strung across the nodes at which they find themselves, become the web-
work of power. Power is not simply a matter of getting people to do things (or not do
things), but a relation of human attitudes and activities against a background of
conflicting interests.
Power relies on compliance, not consent; in fact it is antagonistic to consensual
or egalitarian relations, because no rational and autonomous person would accede to
a relation based on a conflict of interests. Not all conflict, however, is a conflict of
interests: two athletes in competition, or two debaters, or two politicians can conflict
mightily within a larger framework of common interests. Here, too, a judgment is being
made, about which people might differ. Unfortunately, sometimes a mistaken presumption
that there is a conflict of interests will induce persons to actions that themselves create
a conflict of interests.
Finally, the question of power and human interests can be raised again in a new
context: When, if ever, is it justified to occupy or take on a position of power as a
means to a “legitimate” end? Often, for example, resistance to power takes on the
form of a power struggle, that is, not only an escape from the power relation, but an
attempt to wrest power away in order to obtain one’s own alternative purposes. This
strategy is never ultimately worthwhile, I believe, for the exercise of power has certain
inevitable and interrelated effects. First, it makes the relationship between persons a
fundamentally utilitarian endeavor, with little intrinsic value, conceived and exercised
toward the attainment or maintenance of certain ends; or it becomes a relationship of
expedience and limited self-reflection, a kinship of habit, legitimated only by familiarity

32. A point suggested by Ann Cuthbertson.

SPRING1986
 A THEORY
OF POWER 105

and convenience. Second, power relations change the persons who occupy them by
restricting autonomy, narrowing the horizons of what persons see as possible, and -
especially, but not exclusively, for the powerful -tending to make the maintenance of
the power relation an end in itself: “No one ever seizes power with the intention of
relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. . . . The object of power is power.”%
Orwell’s pessimistic assessment in 1984 overstates the point but reveals a psychological
truth: power is a seductive, even addictive, tonic, and anyone who takes it, ostensibly
for a limited time and for a limited purpose, invariably finds it easier and easier to
justify retaining and exercising it beyond those limits. As I will discuss later, educators
have been notably susceptible to this temptation.
Power is a kind of social pathology: based on what is already a conflictive foundation,
social relations take on coercive or manipulative qualities, regardless of the intentions
and specific purposes of the parties concerned - although often enough these inten-
tions and purposes do explicitly invoke power. As a social relation, and as a state of
social being for persons, power exacts a definite price and makes a variety of more
consensual and egalitarian relations impossible. Considered from this vantage point,
power relations are, once instituted in the habits of society, unavoidable. Particularly
in a world of scarcity, conflicts of interests inhere in the nature of things; furthermore,
there is the historical record of relations among groups, as well as the varied personal
histories and experiences of particular individuals, which bear upon every social
encounter whatever the intentions of those concerned. Relations of greater mutuality,
trust, consent, and common interests are worth striving for; but the best we can hope
for in the present social world are specific improvements and intermittent successes.
We can never be certain, even for ourselves, when consent is fully autonomous, without
the taint of coercion - usually it is not.
The tempting alternative is to say that since power is, given the present arrange-
ments of society, unavoidable, one should seize it and attempt to wield it wisely and
for good purpose. I have argued that this is a choice with steep costs and with the
likelihood of being self-defeating, even given the best intentions. We deceive ourselves
that we will merely “use” the power, without considering how the power relation “uses”
us. One presumes, in such cases, to have a better sense of the interests of others
than they do themselves; yet a habitual disregard for the consent of others, and the
presumption of authority and privilege, inevitably tend toward the most pernicious
manifestations of power. Both history and personal experience bear this conclusion
out.
Having laid out a theoretical and conceptual framework, I can now address directly
the problem of power in schooling and education. My account begins with a brief
analysis of three structural features of the educational context: ideology, authority, and
organization.

IDEOLOGY, AND ORGANIZATION

AUTHORITY,

As discussed earlier, acquiescence is a relatively hidden manifestation of power:

it does not depend on force or the explicit threat of force, and it involves a kind of
cooperation by persons that can appear consensual (even to the persons involved).
Three predominant arenas in which acquiescence is secured are ideology, authority,
and organization. In keeping with previous comments, elements of force or the threat
of force exist even in these arenas, and a complete treatment of any concrete instance
(e.g., the judicial system or schools) will need to include such substrata. Furthermore,
these three arenas are interdependent and overlap in their influence on any particular
case.
ldeology is often conceived as a framework of legitimation, as a rationale for
existing power relations. This conception neglects that ideology is a key element in
the “web” of power itself:

33. Orwell, 7984, 217.

2
VOLUME 36,NUMBER
106 EDUCATIONAL
THEORY

To put the matter sharply: A may exercise power over B by getting him to do
what he doesn’t want to do, but he also exercises power over him by influencing,
shaping, or determining his very wants.. . . Is not the supreme and most
insidious exercise of power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having
grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions, and preferences in such
a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things, either because
they can see or imagine no alternative to it, or because they see it as natural
and unchangeable, or because they value it as divinely ordained and benefi-
cent?%

Lukes’s formulation here is helpful because it covers three areas of ideological

effect: that the present state of affairs is good; that it may not be good but is at least
preferable to the alternative; or that it may be in no way desirable, but is unavoidable,
so that we must put up with it.35Thus ideology is not simply a means of rationalization
or coercion, but also a way of generating positive enthusiasm for a particular course
of action or state of affairs; it facilitates, and not only restricts, action.
Ideology represents a framework of explanation and justification which accom-
modates persons to their position vis-bvis one another in society; and it often does
so no less in the minds of the advantaged than of the disadvantaged. One should not
view ideology, as some Marxists do, simply as an instrument wielded by the ruling
class to promote its own position.36Like other aspects of power, ideology constitutes
a contested system of belief and value that has real plausibility and c~herence.~’
Ideologies combine several characteristic features: they are ambiguous and elliptical
enough to allow a fairly wide range of interpretation and so are resistant to falsification;
they combine descriptive and evaluative effects by using highly emotive and connotative
terms; and they are attractive because they help persons make sense of the social
world and their place in it. Ideologies explain, reassure, and rnoti~ate.~’
Ideologies become hegemonic when they monopolize the range of social and
political discourse; when they constitute the unquestioned assumptions of a society.=
There is a natural tendency for them to become so, not simply because any group
actively promotes and maintains them, but because most persons take most of their
beliefs and values for granted, and because they tend to accept the first minimally
plausible account of affairs that comes along, if it fits their more salient experiences
and their prejudices. Ideologies are rarely imposed on people (some forms of propaganda
are). Rather, they are insinuated by, for example, schools, public speakers, or the
media; interpreted and understood with varying degrees of internal consistency by an
audience; then elaborated and promulgated as part of “common sense.” Ideologies
are often contested, or negotiated, between dominant beliefs and values and populist
demands and expectations - and enduring ideologies are resilient (or vague) enough
to tolerate this.
The critique of ideology is typically assumed, both by conservative critics of a
Parsonian persuasion and by Marxists of a positivistic bent, to be a matter of simply
opposing the falsehoods and distortions of ideology with the facts. The view of ideology
proposed here, however, calls for a more indefinite and qualified approach. Even
identifying certain beliefs and values as “ideological” requires a judgment about their
genesis, grounded in social history as well as in the particular psyches of the agents
concerned, and their effects, again at both levels, in terms of relations of power (i.e.,
conflicting interests). Usually this judgment will hinge on a claim that the beliefs and

34. Lukes, Power: A Radical View, 23, 24.

35. Therborn, ldeology of Powec 18-19, 94-1 00.
36. Karl Marx, The German ldeology (New York: International Publishers, 1970), 64.
37. Clifford Geertz, “Ideology as a Cultural System,” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New
York: Basic Books, 1973), 218, 220.
38. Nicholas C.Burbules. “Ideology and Radical Educational Research” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford
University, 1983).
39. Douglas Kellner, “Ideology, Marxism, and Advanced Capitalism,” Socialist Review 42
(November-December 1978): 46-47.

SPRING1986
 OF POWER
A THEORY 107

values are biased, partial, or patently untrue. Ideology-critique includes the questioning
of unspoken assumptions, ambiguity, vagueness, manipulative rhetoric, and misrepre-
sentation; equally important is a disclosure of what is excluded from discourse, what
Terry Eagleton calls “significant silences.”4oIdeology-critique exposes the partiality Of
social and political discourse, not only in terms of incompleteness or inaccuracy, but
also (and associated with these) in terms of the interests served by that discourse -
that is, in terms of prevailing relations of power.
Aurhoriry has, since Weber, been thought of as the legitimate cousin of power:
where power coerces, authority persuade^.^' However, the appearance of legitimacy
often fades when we scrutinize the institutional and intellectual framework in which
authority is claimed (or granted). Simply because a relation is not one of domination
does not make it consensual; in the broad range of relations of compliance, power is
still present in unexamined constraints on human action or imagination. The authority
of judges, doctors, or teachers is underwritten not only by their special knowledge or
expertise, but also by institutional arrangements that may have little to do with their
authority and much to do with the maintenance of advantage or privilege: these include
symbols (the judge’s robe), rituals (the teacher’s calling roll), and physical configurations
(the centrality and elevation of a judge’s bench or a teacher’s desk).42 That these
institutional arrangements in some cases have, or once had, a functional justification
does not overshadow the fact that they take on a semiotic life of their own. Furthermore,
even exceptional knowledge and expertise (or the reputation of it, which is hardly the
same thing) may be constituted in an ideological framework; for example, the political
views of certain religious leaders can command considerable following despite their
complete lack of relevant knowledge. It is not enough to say that such “authorities”
do not meet certain rational criteria for authoritative expertise.43From the standpoint
of power relations, we must look at what social factors allow them to be taken as
authorities and to what effect.
Authority is associated with privilege, since certain privileges are justified by
reference to authority. In particular cases, and within specific limits, such justifications
may be proper. But the presumption of authority, like the presumption of privilege,
becomes a relation of power even when it may have legitimate roots. Questioning
authority does not mean rejecting authority: it means scrutinizing who is an authority,
why they merit such a position, and what are the limits of that authority. Unquestioned
authority becomes authoritarianism and takes on in the minds of both the authorities
and those subject to them a self-perpetuating quality. When authority begins to appeal
to tradition as part of its justification, this is usually a sign that its maintenance has
outlived its worthiness.
Organization as a framework of power relates closely to ideology and authority?
Bureaucratic organization is characterized by hierarchy, specialization, and relegated
responsibility (there are nonbureaucratic approaches to organization, as I will discuss
later). Weber called bureaucratic organization “technically the most highly developed
means of power in the hands of the man who controls Galbraith, in his recent
book, considers organization basic to the exercise of power.46Organization is an

40. Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1976). 35.
41. Max Weber, in Max Weber: Selections in Translation, ed. W. G. Runciman (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1978), 328.
42. These examples were presented by Susan Philips in a recent lecture at the University of
Utah.
43. Robert Ennis, “A Conception of Rational Thinking,” in Philosophy of €ducation, 7979:
Proceedings of the Thirty-fifth Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, ed. Jerrold
Coombs (Normal, 111.: Philosophy of Education Society, 1980), 9-10.
44. See Bill Johnston, “Organizational Structure and Ideology in Schooling,” Educational
Theory 35, No. 4 (Fall 1985).
45. Max Weber, “Bureaucracy,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and
C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948), 232.
46. Galbraith, Anatomy of Powel; 6-7, 57, 65, 68, 183-84.

VOLUME36, NUMBER2
108 EDUCATIONAL
THEORY

essential subject for a theory of power because it moves the focus of discussion
beyond the particular commands of one person and the particular acts of another. With
highly developed bureaucracies, power ceases to be personalized in either its genesis
or its effects. As with ideology and authority, it is usually in the presumption and
maintenance of a status quo that bureaucracy achieves its most subtle power effects.
Once established, bureaucracy constrains and facilitates activity, for persons at both
the bottom and top of the network: it defines categories of role in terms of which
persons conceive of their appropriate activities, their goals, and their rightful claims
and duties relative to others. To this degree organizational roles determine the
possibilities and limits of personal endeavor.
In hierarchy, bureaucracy reinforces, and to an extent creates, the conditions of a
zero-sum game; when privileges and prerogatives accrue to those at the head of an
organization, these necessarily involve the withholding of such from others. A conflict
of interests arises when the possession or maintenance of positions at the head
becomes a significant preoccupation of those who occupy them (as it invariably does).
In specialization, bureaucracy undercuts the autonomy and self-sufficiency of persons
occupying various roles, none of which is significant in its own right. By so doing, often
in the name of efficiency, organizational frameworks in fact bifurcate human interests
(a) because the interdependenceis artificial, conditioned only by the immediate concerns
of the group, and (b) because the exact division of tasks is formed and directed by
parties other than those who actually will carry them out. In relegated responsibilitH
bureaucracies typically exert control over persons by allotting specific and accountable
tasks; hence this aspect is related to specialization. Moreover, this aspect of bureaucracy
tends to promote competition and rivalry, since the successful performance of one’s
task often does not involve promoting the success of others and may involve actually
impeding it. It may be answered that organizations need not involve these bureaucratic
elements; I am suggesting here that where such elements exist, they necessarily take
on power qualities.
Ideology, authority, and organization each can take forms, and arise in contexts,
in which they are relatively free from power. In each case, it involves seeing these not
as ways of securing acquiescence, but of promoting participation, open communication,
and consent. Ideologies can be such under certain conditions: often this is the case
when they are novel, literally “radical,” challenging and questioning the root assumptions
of a status quo. In fact, it is often possible to trace a historical evolution of ideologies
(e.g., liberalism or Marxism) from an early progressive phase, in which they introduce
new categories and values into public discourse, to a growing conservatism, solidifi-
cation, and mediocrity - that is, becoming hegemo~ic.~’ Authority can be grounded in
consensually defined qualifications and bounded by relevant and sensible limits: in this
case it can serve common human interests by sharing information, promoting open
and informed discussion, and maintaining itself only through the respect and trust of
those who grant the authority (on their best days, educators can aspire to this ideal).
But authority, when it is unquestioned, is tainted by authoritarianism; by the presumption
of privilege; by the exercise of prerogative beyond limits justified by special knowledge
or expertise; by the assertion of authority within ideologically constituted parameters;
and by the attempt to maintain and exercise authority for its own sake - a seductive
temptation. Organization can be realized through forms that emphasize participatory
rather than hierarchical decision making, collective and cooperative tasks rather than
specialized ones, and decentralized responsibility rather than responsibility focussed
d by fiat. These conditions do not depend on exactly identical abilities or
s. Organizations of this type are more democratic in nature and less likely
to introduce relations of coercion or manipulation. Unfortunately, even these organi-
zations have a tendency to disintegrate into more rigid and formal structures for the
sake of “efficiency.”4a

47. Kellner, “Ideology, Marxism, and Advanced Capitalism,” 52-53.

48. For example, see Michael Walzer, “The New Left and the Old,” in Radical Principles (New
York: Basic Books, 1980), 115-16.

SPRING1986
 A THEORY
OF POWER 109

In fact, in each of these three instances, the life expectancy of truly successful,
noncoercive, and nonmanipulative institutions is limited, and the process of degeneracy
more or less inexorable. Avoiding power in human relations is a matter of brief and
provisional victories and of a continual willingness to abandon anachronistic forms in
favor of alternative and experimental forms -which themselves tend to become
anachronistic. Our tendency to cleave to the familiar because it is familiar threatens
human interests (others' and our own) because - as can be seen in ideology, authority,
or organization -the maintenance of institutions, when it becomes a goal in itself,
distracts us from changing circumstances and the human interests that those institutions
are meant to serve. This is not meant to imply a knee-jerk iconoclasm; rather, as we
live within necessary institutional bounds and roles, we should subject them and
ourselves to periodic and skeptical scrutiny. Persons' acquiescence in hegemonic,
authoritarian, or bureaucratic directives tends to reinforce and legitimate them, in the
minds of both those issuing them and those directed by them - if for no other reason
than that we fall into habits easily. On the other hand, acts of resistance can be
progressive when they raise to question the ideological, authoritarian, or organizational
elements of social roles (by actually opposing them or by formulating coherent alternative
roles) and when they avoid becoming mere power struggles, that is, attempts to supplant
one group in power with another without rejecting the basic power relation or conflicts
of interests that have given rise to it.

POWER, SCHOOLING, AND EDUCATION

In order to identify power relations in schools, we have to begin with the questions
Where are the conflicts of interests? Where are the zero-sum games? In principle,
education need not involve power relations at all; the learning of one student does not
necessarily entail the disadvantaging of another. In principle, teachers can function as
legitimate authorities, not as authoritarian masters. In principle, schools can educate
and broaden student understandings beyond the facile and hegemonic. At their best
moments, schools as institutions, and the educators and Students who populate them,
minimize power relations and promote the basis for informed, consensual, and egali-
tarian human relations - but these are moments. As presently constituted, schools are
the site of various conflicts of interests and hence maintain the conditions of power
relations even when these conflict with the benign and ameliorative purposes educators
avow.
For example, the criteria of teacher employment and promotion (and hence their
interests) often conflict with the best interests of students. Where students require
teachers who are innovative, autonomous, and willing to flout conventional wisdom,
the constraints of institutional survival in most schools discourage teachers from daring
to experiment or risk, from setting their own educational agenda and formulating
appropriate methods of achieving it, and from questioning the prevailing beliefs and
values in the particular community which pays the teachers' salary. Teachers, too, can
be the victims of power relations.49
Notions of discipline and classroom control also create conflicts of interests between
teachers and students. Here is a good example of how parties on both sides of a
relation, by shaping their actions in terms of certain expectations, thereby realize them.
To the extent that teachers believe (somewhat accurately, as it turns out) that they
must coerce, manipulate, or elicit compliance from students, they assume an authori-
tarian role. To the extent that students enter the classroom with a preexisting antipathy
to, or ignorance of, consensual relations (based on their family experiences, their
friendships, or their socialization via the media), they often act in ways which interfere
with even the best teacher intentions, thereby "justifying" that authoritarianism. And

49. Robert V. Bullough, Jr., Andrew Gitlin, and Stanley Goldstein, "Ideology, Teacher Role,
and Resistance," Teachers College Record 86,no. 2 (Winter 1984):341,356.

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both teachers and students are restricted by the realities of a twenty-five- or thirty-to-
one classroom ratio and the need for “discipline” that createsm
At the same time, there are various types of teacher privilege - for example, that
teachers may eat or drink in the classroom, while students are forbidden to -which,
however trivial in themselves, manifest and reinforce the superior position of the teacher
in ways that have little to do with the appropriate sphere of his/her duties. These
presumed privileges constitute relations of power, arrogating to teachers authoritarian
status that outstrips their due authority. There is a borderline to be drawn between the
educationally relevant privileges and responsibilities of teachers and those aspects of
the teacher role that are bureaucraticallydefined, related to the imperatives of hierarchy,
specialization, and relegated responsibility. Yet role is not simply an individual matter:
it is maintained and reinforced by the actions of others as they carry out their expected
role functions and by institutional structures and demands which constrain individual
~ptions.~’ However critically minded a particular teacher might be, he/she is unable to
escape entirely the traces of power that are latent beneath the ordinary life of the
classroom. It must be made explicit how certain advantages and privileges of teachers
are related to disadvantages for their students. Critical studies of the classroom have
an essential role to play in increasing such ~nderstanding.~~ For this reason such
research cannot rely solely on the perceptions, feelings, and beliefs of educators about
what they are doing; it must stand back and examine as well how the actual pattern
and effects of school interaction do or do not fit those claims.53
Given the size of the average classroom, there is a zero-sum game for students
in terms of the teacher’s time, energy, and emotional resources. Students compete in
explicit and implicit ways for the teacher’s attention and develop various strategies for
doing so; this competition fosters power relations among students, and between teacher
and student, as the teacher controls a scarce resource that a surfeit of students
demand. The temptation to ration that resource, to mete it out in portions to particular
students at particular times, and to withhold it as a promised reward, creates a potential
for abuse no teacher can entirely avoid. Thus, even if in principle an unlimited amount
of knowledge can be attained by any student, where the actual means of learning are
scarce, there inevitably arise conflicts of interests.
Ideological elements, such as faith in the meritocracy of our educational system,
also foster power relations. First, this faith does so by basing classroom relations on
competition rather than cooperation -that is an old and familiar criticism. Competition
can be a constructive human relation when it is entered into (a) consensually, (b) with
a common purpose in mind, and (c) within limits that are mutually recognized and
mutually beneficial. Not all conflicts are conflicts of interests. However, these three
conditions for constructive competition do not usually exist in schools. Second, the
ideology of meritocracy does not serve the interests of students who are for varying
reasons handicapped or disadvantaged, when schools do not also offer realistic means
by which those initial burdens can be overcome. Promulgating the ideology of meri-
tocracy without providing the means of effectively identifying, rewarding, or promoting
merit “blames the victims” of handicaps or disadvantages. Meritocracy preserves and
exacerbates power relations by convincing both the successful and the failed that their
destiny is deserved.%Third, in most schools grades constitute another scarce economic

50. A point suggested to me by Andrew Gitlin.

51. Therborn, ldeology of PoweG 27-28: and Bullough, Gitlin, and Goldstein, “Ideology, Teacher
Role, and Resistance,” 341.
52. Nicholas C. Burbules, ”Who Hides the Hidden Curriculum?” in Philosophy of Education,
1980: Proceedings of the Thirty-sixth Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, ed.
C . J. 8. Macmillan (Normal, 111.: Philosophy of Education Society, 1981), 281-91.
53. Rachel Sharp and Anthony Green, Education and Social Control (Boston: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1975).
54. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling In Capitalist America (New York: Basic
Books, 1976), chap. 4.

SPRING1986
 A THEORY
OF POWER 111

reward not equally available to all; grades give tangible expression to a competitive
system among students and to the judgmental and discretionary largesse of teachers.
Finally, teachers work in a bureaucracy: various demands put on teachers from
higher administrative levels, to which they are answerable, require them to place a
higher value on control and efficiency (in the name of “accountability”) than is
educationally defensible. A key feature of power relations, the web analogy, is that
such relations are often transitive; persons in a position of power relative to some are
subject to the power of others and frequently discharge their own frustrations and
pressures by transferring expectations and constraints farther on down the line.
Unfortunately, as the form of power relations becomes reified in one part of one’s life,
one finds it more and more difficult to imagine, let alone create, alternative relations in
other areas.
Power relations are inherent to schools as we have currently structured them: in
administrative hierarchies and roles, in instructional methods, in classroom size and
organization, in curricular values and practices, and in popular conceptions of what
“teachers” and “students” should be and do in our culture - I have mentioned just
a few examples here. But beyond this perspective, power relations inhere in schools
because they inhere in our society: between classes, between sexes, and between
various racial, ethnic, and religious groups. Paulo Freire has analyzed this phenomenon
well, drawing on the writings of Frantz Fanon and others: In a society characterized
by the relation of oppressor and oppressed, we will see that dyad recreated in other
institutions - family, church, and school - and even within the psyche of the particular
citizen.55That pattern may even come to be seen as natural, inevitable, or good; it
becomes a kind of need, as people who have been long subjected actually fear the
prospect of making their own decisions, of risking the unknown, or of taking respon-
sibilities and duties upon t h e m ~ e l v e s Freire’s
.~~ point is that this oppressor/oppressed
dyad is especially manifested in the relation of teacher to student, particularly in Third
World societies.
We have managed, in the United States, to hide the structures of power relations
beneath more layers of subtlety and complexity, in schools and throughout society. We
have both radically individualistic and egalitarian ideologies; together these have given
us the particularly meritocratic interpretation of equal opportunity which predominates
in education and employment.” As a society of relative plenty (often at the expense
of people in other countries), we have been fairly successful in avoiding the worst
manifestations of power among our own citizenry: arbitrary execution and imprisonment,
widespread famine and destitution, or brutal and incendiary propaganda. But in its
more subtle expressions, power endures because underlying conflicts of interests
endure: in egregious manifestations of privilege, in authoritarian political structures and
rhetoric, in manipulative and coercive economic arrangements, and in social relations
typified by objectification and exploitation. Schools can be no more free of these
manifestations than any other public sector of society. Nor should we imagine that
power in the sense of force, threat, or coercion is absent from schools; a renewed
interest in corporal punishment and a Federal administration placing increased emphasis
on discipline reminds us that the Repressive State Apparatus (as Althusser calls it)
always stands behind the Ideological State Apparatuses.% Even where teachers are
cautious and critical of such issues, their students often recreate them by their own
choices, as in the class divisions among students in the average high school, strongly

55. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30-33.

56. Ibid.. 31-32; and Erich Fromm, Escape from freedom (New York: Avon Books, 1965).
57. Nicholas C. Burbules and Ann Sherman, “Equal Educational Opportunity; Ideal or
Ideology?” in Philosophy of Education, 1979, 105-14.
58. Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” in Education: Structure
and Society, ed. B. R. Cosin (London: Open University Press, 1972), 252-54.

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reinforced by social cliques, extracurricular activities, vocational choices, styles of dress

and fashion, and so on - very few of which are within the sphere of teacher
Societal power relations are exacerbated by the curriculum content of schools at
all levels: by what is taught, by how it is taught, and by what is not taught. This pattern
is attributed to the “reproduction” function of schooling by such radical critics as
Bowles and Gintis, Apple, Anyon, Giroux, and other “new sociologists of education.”6o
First, certain explicitly taught beliefs and values tend to reinforce and legitimate positions
of power held by persons or groups in society; they perpetuate the presumption of
privilege and authority by failing to call them into question or by justifying them in
partial or biased terms. Second, the “hidden curriculum” of the school engrains certain
habits of thought, disposition, and activity without ever explicitly teaching them; these
habits almost universally tend to perpetuating the social status quo, to acquiescing in
one’s “social destiny,” and to adopting a socially conservative outlook -that what is
is either necessary, inevitable, or good. Third, the ideological form of the school
curriculum is equally effective in its silences, by what is excluded from discussion. To
an increasing degree, the controversial, the unconventional, the problematic, the
irreverent, and the iconoclastic - in short, the content necessary for making instruction
educational rather than indoctrinating - is being excised from the school curriculum.
This censorship is not necessarily a matter of teacher preferences; it may be a
consequence of principals seeking to avoid controversy, of school boards seeking to
maintain a curricular compromise between professionals and the local community, or
of parents seeking to preserve their traditional and local values. The case of the hidden
curriculum demonstrates that power relations need not be actively recognized and
promoted, but can endure quite effectively simply through passivity, habit, or ignorance
of the unintended consequences of one’s actions.6’
Thus, power relations characterize the processes and outcomes of schooling: first,
because there are certain preexisting conflicts of interests among groups in society,
and because schools inevitably reflect these; and, second, because schools are
organized in such a way that conflicts of interests are created or exacerbated by
structures of ideology, authority, and organization. At this point a glaring question
emerges: Isn’t there a normative sense of “education” that disavows power relations
and that eschews the hegemonic, the authoritarian, and the bureaucratic? My own
view here is ambivalent: Yes, there is such an ideal, which is worth discussing and
which we might occasionally foster in schools. But current realities and trends work
against it.
First, we should conceive of education as a relational activity, not as the transmission
of established truths and values from a privileged expert to a naive recipient (this is
precisely what Freire rejects as oppressive).62Rather, if becoming educated involves
developing a capacity for the discovery and testing of knowledge and the revision of
values, then the process must cede to students an opportunity to test and question
what is taught in terms of their own thought and experience. In this process, what is
taught becomes less reified and more provisional, and how it is taught becomes more
dialogical; the educator can become the educated, and vice versa.
Second, and related to the first, the authority of the educator should be defined in
specific terms; the advantages and privileges of the position, where they must exist,
can be justified only in terms of promoting the interests of the educated. Where authority
becomes authoritarian, education in its highest sense ceases. The same can be said

59. Willis, Learning to Labouc 14-22; and Philip A. Cusick, h i d e High School (New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1973), chaps. 3 to 7.
60. For an excellent review of this literature, see Henry A. Giroux, “Theories of Reproduction
and Resistance in the New Sociology of Education;’ Harvard Educational Review 53, no. 3 (August
1983): 257-93. See also Walter Feinberg, UnderstandingEducation (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1983), chap. 8. See also Michael Apple, Education and Power (Boston: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1982), chap. 4.
61. Burbules, “Who Hides the Hidden Curriculum?” 289-90.
62. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 53-65.

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about the organization of the setting in which teaching and learning take place. Education
always occurs in particular concrete conditions; it requires experiences, resources,
material objects, and finances, and these in turn require administration and management.
These organizational features are also justified only when they promote the interests
of the educated. Clearly, the role of educators in schools, and the structures of hierarchy,
specialization, and relegated responsibility, often have less to do with educational
benefits than with expediency, efficiency, control, or the perpetuation of various personal
prerogatives within the bureaucratic system. When this is so, the particular good
intentions of teachers or administrators are compromised by the power structures to
which they are answerable. Unfortunately, the current trend in schools is toward
tightening up these bureaucratic structures in the name of greater “effectiveness.”
Third, education should include the process of identifying generalizable human
interests. Part of being educated means having a sense of human needs and priorities
and being able to relate one’s life choices to the advancement of one’s own and others’
best interests. The identification of interests, as noted earlier, involves a dialogical
relation of comparing our understanding of self-interest with the perceptions of others,
of trying to understand better how interests and perceptions of interest differ, and of
seeing one’s own interests in relation to the interests of others. A goal of education,
therefore, should be the recognition of conflicts or commonalities of interests and a
desire to ameliorate conflicts of interests where possible. Education can provide skills
of power-critique by enlarging our critical ability to disclose conflicts of interests; part
of this process is carrying out the process of education in such a way as to minimize
conflicts of interests among students or between students and educators.
Finally, education can proceed without an active educator; we educate ourselves
through new experiences, discoveries, and reflections. This autonomous capacity is
rightly considered a major goal of education; and yet we err if we assume that such a
capacity is solely a matter of having been taught particular skills and critical under-
standings at an earlier age. Such skills and understandings are a necessary condition
and, sadly, rare enough in schools at present. But applying them also involves a
disposition to do so, an attitude of “critical-mindedness,” and a willingness to challenge
prevailing norms. This disposition is almost never fostered in our public schools, which
is one of our greatest educational failings.
Apple, Anyon, Willis, Giroux, and others have called for resistance against the
reproductive elements of schools.w In this sense students, teachers, administrators,
and parents can each be resistors within the educational system. As I have argued,
however, resistance per se need not threaten power relations and may even contribute
to them. Schools in particular have shown a notable resiliency in incorporating, deflecting,
or coopting acts of resistance. Furthermore, not all acts of opposition or obstruction
are progressive, and demarcating a progressive notion of resistance has thus far
eluded radical critics of education.M I am suggesting that a successful demarcation
can be drawn in terms of the educational benefit of acts of resistance and that this
benefit can in turn be defined in terms of becoming aware of, calling into question, and
transforming power relations of authoritarianism, hegemony, and bureaucracy. Pro-

63. Giroux, “Theories of Reproduction and Resistance,” 292-93; and Theory and Resistance
in Education (South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey, 1983), chap. 3. See also Willis, Learning
to Labour, chap. 5; and Bullough, Gitlin, and Goldstein, “Ideology, Teacher Role, and Resistance,”
338, 339, 357. lnterchange 12, nos. 2-3 (1981), featured several good articles on this topic,
especially Jean Anyon’s “Elementary Schooling and Distinctions of Social Class,” 118-32; see
also Henry Giroux, “Hegemony, Resistance, and the Paradox of Educational Reform,” 3-26;
Michael Apple, “Reproduction, Contestation, and Curriculum: An Essay in Self-criticism,” 27-47;
and Paul Willis, “Cultural Production Is Different from Cultural Reproduction Is Different from
Social Reproduction Is Different from Production,” 48-67.
64. See Geoff Whitty’s review of Henry Giroux, Theory and Resistance in Education, which
appeared in HarvardEducational Review 55, no. 2 (May 1985): 233-35; several articles in lnterchange
also address this problem. These issues are discussed in greater detail in Stanley Aronowitz and
Henry Giroux, Education under Siege (South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey, 1985).

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gressive resistance might increase conflict for the sake of disclosing and ameliorating
confficts of interests: a test of whether or not resistance is progressive can be found
in its willingness to adopt democratic, participatory, and consensual strategies. Re-
sistance need not be a power struggle.
Resistance, by criticizing and challenging power relations, can promote education.
In each case of authority, ideology, and organization, there are pernicious, power-
promoting forms these relations can take and emancipatory, democratic, and educative
forms as well. Authoritarianism, in the sense of assumed privileges or prerogatives
and a refusal to tolerate opposition or dissent, must be distinguished from authority
that is narrowly circumscribed and granted consensually and provisionally. Hegemony,
in the sense of enfranchized and inflexible assumptions in belief or value, must be
distinguished from ideologies that in particular circumstances and for particular purposes
can disclose new possibilities and enlarge the scope of social or political discourse.
Bureaucracy, in the sense of rigid and traditional systems of hierarchy, specialization,
and relegated responsibility, must be distinguished from organizations that are con-
sensual, egalitarian, and cooperative. However, even progressive forms of ideology,
authority, and organization have a limited “life expectancy”; they tend to degenerate
into more restrictive forms. Educationshould not only avoid engendering power relations,
even for the sake of “good” effects, but should promote a critical understanding of
the tendency of even beneficial institutions to become conservative over time (including
educational institutions).
It is not enough simply to criticize and reform educational relations into more
friendly and agreeable patterns. So long as there remain underlying conflicts of interests,
such reforms merely change the form of power relations more toward compliance and
acquiescence - and it can be questioned whether this is a substantive improvement.
Education as power-critique should attempt to identify generalizable human interests
and to promote these in democratic and relatively power-free ways; but the fact is that
schools have a severely limited capacity to alter the conflicts of interests that are the
substratum of power in the contemporary world.

I wish to thank those who read drafts of this essay and whose criticisms and suggestions helped
me to improve it: Ann Cuthbertson, Bob Bullough, Kathleen Densmore, Andrew Gitlin, Ladd Holt,
Harvey Kantor, David Nyberg, and Ralph Page. A previous version of this essay was presented
at the University of Illinois, and various comments from that discussion prompted me to rethink
my argument, as did feedback from the reviewers of Educational Theory.

1986
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