A teacher has power over his students. Parents have power over their children. A boss has power over his employees. Politicians have the power to decide. Social power is present in all walks of life: one person has power over another, some professions have more power than others, but what is power?It is not enough to say that someone is powerful, we must clearly define what power is.
Power is the ability to do or be something; the ability to exercise hegemonic dominance over one or more people; the ability to influence one and/or more individuals and assume the recognized supreme authority in a society; as can be seen, the definition of Power is very vague. Throughout history, there have been different definitions, theories and typologies of power. To better understand this, you need to know some more accepted definitions.
- One of the first authors to speak of power was Friedrich Nietzsche (2005).
- Who cited the desire to be powerful as an ambition to fulfill one’s own desires.
- And at about the same time.
- Max Weber defined power as the opportunity or possibility that exists in a social relationship that allows an individual to satisfy his own will.
- Subsequently.
- Since Marxism.
- Several authors have studied this concept.
- The French philosopher Michel Foucault developed one of the most complete analyses of power.
- Although there have been many other authors.
- We will cite some of the most relevant.
- Not to mention the work on social power studied by psychology.
Max Weber was one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. Although its field of study is very varied, we will focus on its conception of power and domination. For Weber, power means “the probability of imposing one’s will, in a social context relationship, even against any resistance and regardless of the basis of that probability (Weber, 2005).
In this case, power implies the potential capacity to impose willpower and can manifest itself in different ways, while domination, understood as a form of obedience to the mandate, would be the most effective means of expression of power.
In domination, there are different types. One of the most important would be legitimacy, which is the belief in the validity of a specific social order or relationship. There are three forms of legitimacy in domination (Weber, 2007).
According to Karl Marx, “the political movement of the working class has the ultimate goal of taking political power (letter to Bolte, 29 November 1871)”. When it comes to the conquest of social power, political class struggle is the basis. In addition, it is above other forms of class struggle, such as economic or ideological, although, according to Marx, changes in the economic base can influence the conquest of power, political practices will have more weight (Sánchez Vázquez, 2014).
However, Marx did not develop a theory of power, but suggested that “political power is organized violence from one class to the oppression of another” (Marx and Engels, 2011). Years later, Marxists immersed themselves in theories of social power. For example, for Antonio Gramsci (1977), the power of the ruling classes over the proletariat and all classes subject to the capitalist production model is not simply given by control of the state’s repressive mechanisms, this power is basically given by “hegemony”. The ruling classes can exercise on submissive classes, thanks to the control of the education system, religious institutions and the media.
Foucault said that power is everywhere because it does not come from a specific place, therefore, power cannot be placed in an institution or state and the Marxist idea of assuming it would not be possible, power is a relationship of forces that occurs in a society at any given time. Therefore, if power is considered as a result of power relations, it will be everywhere, and individuals cannot be considered independent of these relationships.
Foucault, contrary to previous conceptions of power, wondered: how can relationships of being able to produce rules of law that, in turn, produce truthful discourses?Although power, law, and truth feed each other, power still maintains a predominant influence on law and truth. Foucault’s theories address the relationship between power and knowledge and how they are used as a form of social control between institutions.
Although Foucault analyzes power in different contexts and eras, one of the most important concepts is biopower (Foucault, 2000). Biopower is a practice of modern states through which they control the population. Modern power, according to Foucault’s analysis, is codified in social practices and human behaviors, as the individual gradually accepts subtle controls and expectations of the social order. Biopower produces biological regulation of life. A classic example is psychiatric hospitals, prisons and courts, which define the rules by which part of the population moves away from society (Foucault, 2002).
In social psychology, John French and Bertram Raven (1959) have proposed five forms of power. Of these five forms of power are the foundations of support for those who wield power. These forms of power are:
As we have seen, the conceptions of social power are highly differentiated and influenced by the times in which we live, a simple conception of power would be to dominate another person, but today we understand power as a complex network of relationships. it shows us that we are always involved in power relations, every interaction we make will be characterized by existing power differences, so being aware of social power is a first step in avoiding its influence and not exercising it.