power and power relations.


>How different would Foucault be from sociologists and historians, if
>his analyses of power relations (and he, rightly so, dismisses the
>concept of power),

Does F dismiss the concept of power? I thought, that on some readings, he
just made it so all-embracing and undifferentiated a concept as to render it
useless, thus of course, making the notion of 'power relations'
untheorisable, if only because the word power is superfluous.

It is a difference between Domination and
>Relationality, between Power and Power Relations,

But many social relations are power relations and the power within the
relations is unevenly distributed, i.e., between men and women.


>Both the concepts of power and power relations are
>inscribed within certain research methodologies, within the idea of
>social ontology. The concept of power serves the social ontology of
>social stratification, while power relations is reference to
>horizontal immanence.

Well, are you saying that certain research methodologies generate concrete
social ontologies and thus research constitutes the social world? Also why
does the concept of power serve the social ontology of stratification?
Equally, how is it that you so easily attribute power relations to the
horizontal axis? Even more important, if you are right, does this not
illuminate the fact that F analysis can't deal with vertical modes of
power/explanation?

The methodology of the concept of power allows
>us to see relations of domination between different kinds of social
>identities, while that of power relations allows us to perceive
>horizontal relations of different strategies in the contestation of resources
>and interests.

But the outcomes of such struggles are a function of power which is embedded
in power relations.

Thus to be gendered in power relations is an effect of
>these relations, and the same applies to the formation of other
>identities. In this regard, in power relations there are no pre-given
>social identities, such as class, race, or gender that dominate or
>are even dominated. Power relations, for Foucault, are not relations
>of domination; there is no social identity that is denied
>participation and self-determination in the constitution of
>social life.

Sounds very idealistic to me. I suppose those voices that fail to get space
to articulate their concerns aren't really dominated. They are, I suppose,
simply situated in power relations. Nice thought, but somehow it doesn't
seem to square up with the evidence (sic).


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"What I try to achieve is the history of the relations which
thought maintains with truth; the history of thought insofar as it is the
thought of truth. All those who say truth does not exist for me are
simple minded."
(Foucault)


Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA

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