Power Notes
All of the definitions of power that include notions
of ability are based on a metaphor that social power is
physical power, and fail to distinguish between acting on
the physical world and acting strategically, failure to
distinguish a situation where what you get is the direct
result of the application of knowledge and execution to
results, e.g., building a house, building an A-bomb,
playing the piano; and a situation in which what you get is
a result of not only what you do, but what someone else
does in response, all human interaction, from conquering
the world to playing chess.
formal games: we must distinguish between knowing
the rules well enough to play, and being able to take on
all comers. Knowing how to play chess me is not at all
like knowing how to play the piano, except at the most
trivial level, that depressing a key makes a sound = moving
a piece without violating a rule constitutes a move. Chess
is always a game of strategy, while playing the piano never
is, altho both can become resources in contests.
even substituting probability for ability does not
change the definition at all, it only acknowledges that
performance is statistical. But having said this, all
notion of causation is hidden: what has been a question of
how is it possible to get one’s way in the world becomes a
question of how often it is possible to get one’s way in
the world. So once again, it is a matter of strategic
relations: who gets their way more often. Without
causation, we act as tho the future will be just like the
past. And if social causation IS physical causation, the
future will be exactly like the past. Yet physical
causation is not probabilistic in the sense used here.
That is merely our limited understanding being represented:
if we assign X probability of an event occuring, it is
either because we know the complete range of possibilities
and deny cause (flipping a coin) or we simply use induction
(B has happened pretty often, and I think that’s how often
it always happens).
In the face of resistance. Now it gets even harder
to measure anything. In its pure form, we’re back to
chess, total resistance, resistance at the limit of one’s
ability at the formal level (barring for the moment issues
of how we might know someone is “trying to let the other
person win”). And recognizing the strategic component
again, we generally abstain from the notion of power over
the other person, or power to achieve victory, or the like.
But as is so well known, even at the point at which
physicality is foremost in the relationship, it cannot
replace strategy where agency matters: if all you need to
do is kill someone to achieve your goal, say to take their
property as your own, then you do so and that’s it, just
the physical contest. But if your goal depends on the
other person doing anything at all, the physical metaphor
breaks down. While breaking a neck and playing a piano are
identical at this point – people do it more or less well –
in most ways this is the least important point: the
possible physical struggle leading up to the murder
necessarily has features of a contest. Torture is not the
whole answer, punishment is not the whole answer, and these
are not technique or art, tho we extend these metaphors to
into strategic relations. The final reality is that no one
can determine another person’s behavior in the same sense
or way we can determine the behavior of objects in the
physical world.
Power remains a post hoc explanatory device that bridges
this gap with the metaphor that social causation is
physical causation. We know it is not “absolutely true”
but we hope or fear that it is “close enough.”
Then we can follow Latour in his sense of how things
that people want others to do, get done.
The current versions of Weberian power in use are
incompatible with current notions of agency. Changing the
notion of “ability” to “probability” doesn’t change the
issue, only the point of view, so that the more power one
gets, the higher the probability: but in any event, we can
only measure probability from past performance of strategic
interactions; probability doesn’t turn strategic
interaction into quantum mechanics.
The difference between concepts of power and influence are
critical. Power seems to deny agency, while influence
retains it in usages that are not substitutes for
probability of an outcome. Influence in this way is still
an after the fact observation, and there may be many
competing or reinforcing influences. But the influences
are not determinate, they are stirred and applied within an
agent’s mind. Iago was skillful in influencing Othello,
but he did not have Othello in his power, and he did not
make Othello murder Desdemona. At least the possibility of
agency remains in some conceptions of influence, where it
does not and cannot with power.
On subjective component of Weberian definition: why does
the notion that power triumphs over opposition/resistance
matter at all? How is it power to get one’s way when it
involves someone who resists = doesn’t want to see you get
the result you are aiming at (vs. get your way?)? Is it
not power when there is no opposition, no resistance? How
can it be that the power you have not only depends on what
the other does, but the attitude the other takes toward
your initiative: not power if they too want what you do,
power if they don’t; power if you get your way, not power
if you don’t (= they have more power than you do, so do you
have to do what they want?)