Power in Society

Abstract

Weber is credited with framing modern discussion of power but it was Dahl's definition of power as the probability of an A getting a B to do something that they would not otherwise do that framed much twentieth century debate. From this Lukes built a ‘radical,’ ‘three-dimensional view’ of power that he related to Gramsci's concept of hegemony—where power works against an agent's real interests without their knowing. Laclau and Mouffe initiated the idea that it was not the content of discourse that secured hegemony so much as its stability, in a formal sense, to which Haugaard added that power consisted not so much in the suppression of real interests but the denial of the relative autonomy required for reflection. The pervasiveness of forms of discourse could be one of the ways that such relative autonomy was minimized or denied. Hegemony occurs only rarely, however, because usually there is a plurality of life-worlds. The discursive turn drew on Foucault's work, and, given the centrality of discourse, it was not surprising to find that analysis swung back to community issues again.