《旅游管理专业英语》(第二版) 讲义 Lesson05 Definition

Sociologists usually define power as the ability to impose one's will on others, even if those others resist in some way.

Max Weber, Basic Concepts in Sociology

The imposition need not involve coercion (force or threat of force). Thus "power" in the sociological sense subsumes both physical power and political power, including many of the types listed at power. In some ways it more closely resembles what everyday English-speakers call "influence".

More generally, one could define "power" as the more or less unilateral ability (real or perceived) or potential to bring about significant change, usually in people’s lives, through t

Power manifests itself in a relational manner: one cannot meaningfully say (pace advocates of empowerment) that a particular social actor "has power" without also specifying the other parties to the social relationship.

Power almost always operates reciprocally, but usually not equally reciprocally. To control others, one must have control over things that they desire or need, but one can rarely exercise that control without a measure of reverse control - larger, smaller or equal - also existing. For example, an employer usually wields considerable power over his workers because he has control over wages, working conditions, hiring and firing. The workers, however, hold some reciprocal power: they may leave, work more or less diligently, group together to form a union, and so on.

Because power operates both relationally and reciprocally, sociologists speak of the balance of power between parties to a relationship: all parties to all relationships have some power: the sociological examination of power concerns itself with discovering and describing the relative strengths: equal or unequal, stable or subject to periodic change. Sociologists usually analyse relationships in which the parties have relatively equal or nearly equal power in terms of constraint rather than of power. Thus 'power' has a connotation of unilateralism. If this were not so, then all relationships could be described in terms of 'power', and its meaning would be lost.

Even in structuralist social theory, power appears as a process, an aspect to an ongoing social relationship, not as a fixed part of social structure.

subjectionOne can sometimes distinguish primary power: the direct and personal use of force for coercion; and secondary power, which may involve the threat of force or social constraint, most likely involving third-party exercisers of delegated power.

∙Delegated authority (for example in the democratic process)

∙Personal or group charisma

∙Expertise (Ability, Skills) (the power of medicine to bring about health, another famous example would be "in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king)

∙Persuasion

∙Knowledge (granted or withheld, shared or kept secret)

∙Money (financial influence, control of labour, control through ownership, etc)

∙Force (violence, military might, coercion).

∙Application of non-violence

∙Operation of group dynamics

∙Social influence of tradition (compare ascribed power)

The thought of Friedrich Nietzsche underlies much 20th century analysis of power. Nietzsche disseminated ideas on the "will to power," which he saw as the domination of other humans as much as the exercise of control over one's environment.

Some schools of psychology, notably that associated with Alfred Adler, place power dynamics at the core of their theory (where orthodox Freudians might place sexuality).

In the Marxist tradition, Antonio Gramsci elaborated the role of cultural hegemony in ideology as a means of bolstering the power of capitalism and of the nation-state. Gramsci saw power as something exercised in a direct, overt manner, and the power of the bourgeois as keeping the proletariat in their place.