The contingencies of power: reformulating Foucault

Abstract

In a critique of Michel Foucault’s understanding of power relations, Andrew Sayer outlined an alternative that was both more conceptually rigorous and offered a clearer analytical framework with which to approach the analysis of power. Part of Sayer’s development was to distinguish not only between the holding and the operating of power(s), but also the three contingencies that always exist alongside power(s). The paper argues that Sayer’s critique of Foucault, while a welcome theoretical clarification, partially mistakes Foucault’s project (which was to analyse power ‘as is’, not power ‘in the abstract’) and also misses some of Foucault’s own clarifications to his understanding of power. The paper develops Sayer’s position by integrating important elements of Foucault’s approach – namely his concept of ‘dispositif’ – that illustrate Foucault’s more nuanced understanding of power. This is developed by arguing that there is, in fact, a fourth level of contingency that Sayer does not articulate. The paper uses De-facing Power, an early work of Clarissa Hayward, to illustrate how a combined ‘Foucaultian/Sayerian’ model of power and contingency can give extra explanatory and analytical strength. The outcome of the article’s argument is that contingency ceases to be a ‘problem’ in social scientific research; instead it becomes the raison d’être for social scientific explanation.