Study Guide for ES Ch. 5, “Power” and readings on Ecofeminism
Important terms and concepts to know:
 Power vs. empowerment, and the related difference between “power over” and
“power to”
 Have a general idea what other kinds of power we can think about as listed in the textbook and in the Warren reading (on Moodle) (you don’t have to memorize all these verbatim, but have a good basic idea what they are)
 Strategies for empowerment and overcoming opposition (again, focus on having a good general understanding, not on memorizing definitions)
 Hegemony
 Legitimate vs illegitimate power
 Traditional, rational-legal, and charismatic authority (there is a lot of Weber in this chapter! Be VERY sure you’ve read the section about him in Ch. 1)
 Privilege
 Inequality
 Class, caste, and stratification systems
 Life chances
 Prestige
 Patriarchy
 Standpoint, standpoint theory, and intersectionality (these are very important concepts from feminist theory that we will revisit in future chapters)
 Ecofeminism
Important things to think about:
 There are a lot of concepts in this chapter that come from feminism, which is a kind of conflict theory that focuses on how women are still discriminated against in our society (and in others around the world) and on what should be done to end this discrimination. There is a LOT of overlap among feminism, the civil rights movement, the LGBT rights movement, the peace movement, and the environmental movement, both in the academic world and in the activist/political world.
 The most important thing to think about for this chapter is, “How and when is it acceptable and beneficial for people to exercise power and authority? When does exercising power and authority create more freedom and better life chances for everyone in a society, and when does exercising power and authority create

unacceptable inequalities by improving some people’s life chances at the expense of others’?”
 A privilege is something that makes your life easier than some other peoples’. o Some privileges are earned—for instance, I get to park right in front of Fayard because I’m faculty, and I get to be faculty because I have a Ph.D and a set of teaching skills, both of which I worked really hard to acquire and develop. o Some privileges, however, are things that we’re born into, and oftentimes these are things that make us less likely to be discriminated against or otherwise treated badly. So if you were born male, white, heterosexual, middle or upper class, able-bodied, Christian, etc., going about your everyday life is going to be easier for you as a result, because other people are less likely to be prejudiced or discriminatory in their attitudes and behaviors towards you. o So when we say that someone is “privileged,” that doesn’t mean that we think they’re a bad person, or that they don’t work hard or deserve what they have, or that they’re racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. We’re saying that their life chances started out better because of the statuses they were born into, which aren’t their doing or their fault. o This where the concept of intersectionality becomes very important.
Different people can be treated badly (or well) by different people at different times for different reasons. If you’re a Black man, for instance, you will often enjoy certain privileges from being male: you probably don’t have to worry too much about your safety when you walk to your car at night, for instance. BUT if you’re pulled over by a cop, chances are pretty good that you won’t be treated as well as a white man would. Likewise, if you’re a Black woman, you have to deal with being discriminated against because you’re Black AND because you’re a woman! White women, then, are kind of in the middle: we have the privilege of being white, but have to deal with the sexism that’s sometimes directed towards us for being female. You can analyze these issues for any combination of statuses: what would an upper-middle-class
Latino gay Christian man have in terms of privileges vs. discrimination issues, for instance? o So the important thing to take away from these concepts is that it’s vitally important to be AWARE of your privileges in life, whatever they may be and however they might manifest. If someone with a different social status tells you that they deal with some kind of prejudice or discrimination on a regular basis and you have trouble believing them because YOU don’t have to deal with that, stop and LISTEN to what they have to say. You may be amazed at what you find out about other people’s lives. o We’ll be dealing with the concept of privilege a LOT more in future chapters!!