“Power”- a brief outlook

• Power is a key sociological concept with several meanings and

considerable disagreement surrounding them.
• Some major thinkers:
•  Max Weber
• Karl Marx 
• Talcott Parsons
• Michel Foucaut
Max Weber

• it as the ability to control others, events, or resources; to make

happen what one wants to happen in spite of obstacles, resistance, or
opposition.
• Eg.: Arab Springs.

• Power Gained through three types of authority.

• Traditional: Elizabeth.
• Charismatic: Martin Luther King, M.K. Gandhi.
• Legal/Rational: Democratic Govt.
Karl Marx & Talcott Parsons

• Used the concept of power in relation to social classes and social systems
rather than individuals.
• Power does not lie in the relationship between individuals, but in
domination and subordination of social classes based on the relations of
production.
• the ruling class wields power over the working class, with the ruling class owning the
means of production

• According to Parson: Power is not a matter of social coercion and

domination. Instead, he said, power flows from a social system’s potential to
coordinate human activity and resources to accomplish goals
Michel Foucaut

• Radical difference from previous ideas:

‘Power is everywhere’ and ‘comes from everywhere’
• Power is diffuse rather than concentrated, embodied and enacted rather than possessed, discursive rather than purely coercive, and constitutes
agents rather than being deployed by them.

• It is working through institutionalized and accustomed DISCOURSES that open up delimited forms
of action, knowledge and being.
• Discourses becomes important, so the language of discourse.
 Power- a positive outlook
power as associated not with repression or inhibition, or straightforward domination, but as working through
institutionalized and accustomed DISCOURSES that open up delimited forms of action, knowledge and being.

Foucault is one of the few writers on power who recognise that power is not just a negative, coercive or repressive thing
that forces us to do things against our wishes, but can also be a necessary, productive and positive force in society.
Power is also a major source of social
discipline and conformity
• Disciplinary power: prisons, schools and mental hospitals.
• Bio-power: regulation of their subjects through "an explosion of
numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of
bodies and the control of populations.