Power, conflict and consensus

Conflict theory, the major rival to functionalism, centered on power (Bartos and Wehr 2002), especially as developed by Ralf Dahrendorf (1959). Dahrendorf had incorporated important aspects of Weber’s (1978) work into a basic schema derived from Marx (1976). From Weber, Dahrendorf derived the concept of authority lodged in imperatively coordinated association as the fundament

‘Power to’ conceived as a functionalist relation

1. Power as a circulator y medium Power is similar to money, says Parsons (1964): both are circulatory media. Just as money functions as a generalized mechanism or means for securing satisfaction of desires within the economy – without money you may want things but you cannot buy them because you lack ‘effective demand’

Giddens’ conflict critique of Parsons’ functionalism

Parsons’ theory was sophisticated – but at odds with the experiences of liberal democracies in the 1960s characterized by civil rights demonstrations, race riots, student demonstrations, and the ‘Paris Events of 1968’ which marred General de Gaulle’s last year as president of France. All of these events questioned existing author- ity rather than obeying

Niklas Luhmann’s system building, revising Parsons’ analogies

Giddens was not the only contemporary European theorist to find ideas from Parsons useful; at least two other theorists beat a path to Parsons’ intellectual door. The first of these we shall consider was a German, Niklas Luhmann, another grand theorist with a desire to create a total system of thought. He does so

Michael Mann’s historical functionalism

Parsons displayed little historical sensitivity, preferring to construct vast synthetic schemes that were similar to Russian dolls: open one box and you will find it replicated inside, all the way from the state to the psyche.3 They were all boxes in Parsons’ schema and any historical or substantive material could be squeezed into them.

‘Power over’, in one dimension, conceived as a mechanical relation

Parsons saw himself as explicitly addressing Hobbes’ problem of order – how society is possible – while the others did not choose to do so through the approach to power that he pioneered. They accepted the Hobbesian question but not the Hobbesian tools.6 Hobbes’ tools were fashioned from the dominant intellectual resources of his

‘Power over’: two faces and three dimensions

In an influential critique that was published in 1970, two American political scien- tists, Morton Bachrach and Peter Baratz (1970), argued that power has two faces. One face concerns the outcomes of decisive battles between different actors over specific issues. It corresponds to the diagram of power in Figure 7.4 . The other face

Four dimensions of power

What characterizes the three-dimensional view of power is that these dimensions, as Lukes (1974) conceived them, are dimensions of the same essentially contested concept – the underlying notion of power as A getting B to do something that they would not otherwise do. Lukes did not seek to synthesize disparate conceptions of power that

Power and subjectivities

Clearly subjectivity is important in the discussion of power, but unfortunately neither Lukes’ discussion nor its extension in Hardy’s work quite grasps what is important in subjectivity. The basic point of reference for any contemporary discussion of subjectivity has to be Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) Hegemony and socialist strategy. It was this work that

To have or have not: power as a relation in space, not a thing

1. Digging deep into power The dimensional view of power resolutely dissects power into layers. Analytically, the imagery is of the theorist digging deeper into the topic, but the topic is rather static. Nothing much flows. Power is all about stopping things happening in this radical view of power. Lukes’ account of power moved

Foucault’s power

1. Reading Foucault Something termed ‘the Foucault effect’ (Burchell et al. 1991) has been noted, not always favorably. It is perhaps not surprising, given the undoubted influence of Foucault’s work on power, that such a powerful effect should have been noted. A vast critical industry is now addressed to Foucault’s oeuvre.1 Foucault has become

Actor network theory

Actor network theory (ANT) is a misnomer, for it offers not so much a theory as a method. Analytically, it owes a great deal to the tradition of ethnomethodology that was initiated by Garfinkel (1967), in as much as it starts from the premise that ordi- nary actors in everyday situations must already be

Circuits of power

1. The Aalborg case Foucault says: ‘power produces knowledge … power and knowledge directly imply one another . . . there is no power relation without the creative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations’ (1977: 27–8). In such a

Engaging Foucault’s critics

1. Preamble Perhaps the single most important outcome of the trajectory that runs through Follett to Foucault on the axis of positive power is to shift attention away from an over-concentration on power as a negative and zero-sum phenomenon. At the out- set of this book we discussed how analysis of power in terms

Repositioning Foucault

1. Life-paths How might we use Foucault? We shall suggest some applications developed from human geography, namely the idea of life-paths as developed by Hannah (1997) from the work of Hägerstrand (1970), to show how Foucauldian ideas might oper- ate outside the confines of institutions – and in more open organizations. The life- path

Irony in the academy

1. CMS and the emergence of ‘critters’ So where did CMS come from? While this may seem like something of an odd question, it is an important one in terms of understanding the potential of the philosophical framework that CMS represents. Charles Perrow, for example, has described CMS as ‘an oxymoron’, alluding to the

CMS’s theoretical auspices

1. Critical Theor y In this section we will briefly discuss Critical Theory in sociology and outline its history and broad characteristics. Critical Theory is a cohesive body of work that has been highly influential across the social sciences and more broadly in the new left and other left-leaning social movements. We will begin

Critical Theory and European CMS

1. Borrowings and linkages Critical Theory was an obvious theoretical resource for the nascent CMS to draw on, but surprisingly there was very little explicit borrowing or homage for some time. Burrell and Morgan (1979) did introduce Critical Theory explicitly to the canon of organization analysis but, on the whole, the Frankfurt School remained

CMS as critique rather than Critical Theory

1. Situating CMS today In this section, we will examine some exemplars from the broad stream of litera- ture that has collected under the banner of CMS but which does not grow out of the tradition of Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School. This eclectic mix of per- spectives shares almost nothing beyond some

Wittgenstein and the linguistic turn

In earlier chapters we have seen the gradual expansion of the subject of power from the person conceived as a body, with a soul, to one with a mind. In discourse analy- ses we see the mind reconceptualized in terms of a speaking, writing, spoken and written subject that discourses through public language. The