C H A P T E R

Power
Nivedita Menon

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Introduction 149
Conceptions of Power 149
Power as Exploitation 151
Authority, Legitimacy and Hegemony 152
Feminist Theories of Power 154
Foucault on Power 155
Conclusion 157
Points for Discussion 157

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INTRODUCTION
This chapter begins with an overview of the debates centred on the different conceptions
of power, which leads to the idea that power is an ‘essentially contested’ concept. This is
followed by the consideration of power in different forms—as exploitation, as legitimate
power and authority, and as hegemony. Thereafter, feminist theories of power are briefly
discussed. The chapter concludes with Foucault’s conception of power, which marks a
radical break with the earlier notions.

CONCEPTIONS OF POWER
Power in ordinary usage is understood as an ability, strength, or capacity; for instance, in
the term ‘electric power’. In social and political theory, however, power refers to the ability
to do things and the capacity to produce effects within social interaction. In this sense, power
is a type of behaviour and specifically derives from the existence of social relationships and
organized social interactions.
The most well-known definition of power is given by Robert Dahl—‘A has power over
B to the extent that A can get B to do something which B would not otherwise do.’ This
definition assumes two things about power:

(a) power is an attribute of individuals which is exercised over other individuals, and
(b) power is domination over others, that is, power is used to make others do what one
wants, against their own will.

But both these assumptions are challenged by other theorists. There are those, for ex-
ample, who locate power at the collective level, and attribute it to collectivities and structures.
Marxist theory views power as distributed unequally in a class-divided society, such as a
capitalist society, where the ruling classes own the means of production and exercise power
over the working class, which owns no property, but produces surplus value through its
labour power that is appropriated by the capitalists. Similarly, feminist theorists understand
power as located within structures of patriarchy, which ensures that there is a systematic
domination of women by men. In both analyses, power is seen as located within structures,
and individuals derive power from their location within a structure.
The second assumption is challenged by theorists who view power not simply as dom-
ination; that is, not only as power over but as power to—power as an enhanced capacity
emerging from collective action. This view is associated with Hannah Arendt, who theor-
izes power as enabling and generated when people communicate and act together in a
shared enterprise. In this sense, having power is the basis of being able to act as a morally
responsible human being.

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Power as power to can be understood in a different way, too. Renowned sociologist Talcott
Parsons developed an account of political power, which treated it as the analogue of money
in economic systems. That is to say, he thought of power as something that circulates in
society the way money does. In this sense, just as the possession of money enables the
capacity to secure economic goods and services, so the possession of power enables the
capacity to secure the performance of political obligations. Just as money circulates, so
does power. Parsons, thus, emphasized on both the facilitative dimension of power—that
is, its capacity to get things done—as well as its systemic character, that it is a property of
the entire social system, not merely of individuals.
In view of the debates on the notions of ‘power’, Steven Lukes suggests that power is an
‘essentially contested’ concept. This notion was first outlined by W. B. Gallie. The argument
is that there are concepts, the very description of which are value laden. For example,
when you term something as an ‘art’ or when you refer to a ‘democracy’, you are not
merely objectively describing it, you are ascribing a value to it. That is, non-art and non-
democracy are implicitly devalued in this description. William Connolly points out that
when we describe something we ‘characterize a situation from the vantage point of certain
interests, purposes and standards’. That is, any description, however value-free it may
appear, is subjective to the extent that it has embedded in it the intention with which the
thing is described. In that sense, every description is made with some interest or purpose
in mind, and assumes some standard. Thus, when you describe something as a ‘lever’, you
are ruling out other descriptions of the thing as a piece of wood or iron, or when you refer
to a tulsi leaf, for example, as a ‘medicine’, you are ruling out its description as a green
leaf. Similarly, when you describe a women as ‘tall’ you have a standard of height in mind.
This means that to choose one description as more appropriate over another depends on
the purpose which the description is to be put to. Values are involved in choosing the
‘correct’ description. The choice is not made in a vacuum, nor is it dependent on some
inherent objective quality that the concept possesses.
According to Lukes, there are three dimensions of political power, which explains why
he considers power to be an essentially contested concept.

(a) At the most explicit level, power may be exercised to ensure that a more powerful
set of interests prevails over others. This is closest to the view of power, as expressed
by Dahl, which we began with.
(b) Less obviously, power may be exercised to ensure that certain issues and options
never come up for debate at all. That is, power can shape the setting of the agenda
for debate itself, and exclude certain issues from the beginning. This view of power
is put forward by Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz. They argue that if political
theorists look for power only at the explicit level, they will remain unaware that
even in situations of apparent equality among participants, power may already
have been exercised. That is, power may have been used to prevent the articulation
of certain demands and views. These demands and views then never reach the
public domain, which can as a result appear to be homogeneous and equal.

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(c) Steven Lukes goes even further and presents what he considers to be the most rad-
ical view of power. The second view still depends on observable conflict, but Lukes
argues that power should be understood as structural, and working in various ways
to shape the very perceptions of people. Power can work in a way that what people
consider to be in their interest is, in fact, what is desired by those in power—
people’s real interests are hidden from them. In this view, power should be assumed
to be operating even when there is no apparent conflict. This view is closest to the
Marxist view of power.

Why Lukes calls power an essentially contested concept is because whether we agree
that the second and third dimensions also express power relations will depend on our over-
all understanding of politics, morality, and ethics. That is, you might disagree that the third
dimension can be recognized at all as power, because you believe that society is plural and
equitable, that everybody has the opportunity to be powerful, and that there is no hidden
dimension that hides from people what is in their best interests. Thus, Lukes suggests that
since people differ in their understanding of how society functions, and what is just or un-
just, equitable or not, we will not be able to arrive at a mutually and rationally agreed-upon
notion of what power is. It is in this sense that power is an ‘essentially contested concept’.

POWER AS EXPLOITATION
Exploitation is a specifically Marxist understanding of power. In any society in which
technological advancements have made possible the production of a surplus—when more
is produced than the minimum need for survival of the population—this surplus is appro-
priated by or taken over by one section of the population. Exploitation occurs when the
surplus produced by one section of the population is controlled by another section.
In the Marxist understanding of history, society develops through several modes of pro-
duction. In such a situation, exploitation takes place in specific ways. Under capitalism,
exploitation takes the form of extraction of surplus value from the working class mainly
by the industrial capitalists, but other fractions of the ruling class also share in this appro-
priation of the surplus.
Capitalism differs from other non-capitalist modes of production in that exploitation
can take place without the direct intervention of force. Thus, exploitation is hidden from
the participants by the language of the contract, in which every individual is equal. In
a capitalist society, the myth of free and equal exchange between equal partners to the
contract is perpetuated by law and the state, through juridical equality (which implies that
everybody is equal under law). For Marxists, this is a fiction because freedom of contract,
equality before the law and the right to vote are all severely restricted in the absence of eco-
nomic democracy. To quote a saying in 19th century England, ‘Everyone is free to sleep under
the bridges of London, from the King to the pauper’—the point being that the king would
never have to sleep under the bridges, and the pauper does not have the corresponding
right to sleep in a palace!

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In the previous modes of production, exploitation was transparent. For example, the
peasant had to give a part of the crop produced to the landlord, or work for a fixed number
of days in the landlord’s fields. If the peasant did not do so, the landlord would use force
to extract what was expected. Such modes of exploitation continue even today in many
parts of our country. The modes of extraction of surplus value involved force, which can be
referred to as extra-economic coercion.
Under capitalism, however, the coercion is purely through economic means—since the
contract involves a wage paid in exchange for the labour performed, the exchange is seen
to be equal. In the Marxist understanding, however, the surplus produced by labour far
exceeds the wage paid for it in exchange and is appropriated by the capitalist. This appro-
priation is exploitation.

AUTHORITY, LEGITIMACY AND HEGEMONY

When rules are complied with or obeyed, it suggests that it has the consent of the citizens;
that they affirm a belief in legality. Such a system is assumed to be legitimate, and power
that is complied with because it has legitimacy is termed authority.
Max Weber’s discussion of authority is the classic one. He distinguished between three
kinds of authority—rational-legal, traditional, and charismatic.
Rational-legal authority is characteristic of the modern industrial bureaucratic state. Here,
those who occupy positions of power, exercise their power and are obeyed on the basis
of impersonal rules that can be justified on rational grounds. Thus, when you stop at a
signal from the traffic police, you are not obeying that particular person, but what s/he
represents—the rules of traffic in an urban society, where the absence of such rules would
spell chaos.
Traditional authority exists because of historical and cultural reasons. Instances of trad-
itional authority are those vested in tribal chiefs and religious leaders.
Charismatic authority exists because of some personal quality possessed by an individual
who may not have either modern official status or traditional authority. Jesus, Mohammed,
Hitler and Gandhi would all be examples of those wielding such authority.
Weber presented these types of authority as ‘ideal types’, that is, theoretical devices to
help in social analysis, rather than as descriptions of empirical reality. So, no one institution
or individual in authority exemplifies one type entirely—charismatic authority often draws
on tradition; rational-legal authority and charismatic authority may go together, and so
on.
A related distinction is between de facto and de jure authority. The latter refers to the
authority that has legal sanction, while the former refers to the person or institutions actually
exercising power. This is best exemplified in the situation of coup d’etat in which an elected
government is overthrown by the military. Here, the deposed government represents the de
jure authority while de facto authority is exemplified in the military dictator and the army.
However, David Held is one of those who questions the equation of obedience to a system
with legitimacy. Held points out that the reason or ground for obedience is not necessarily
normative agreement amongst everyone about what a society as a collective should do. Only

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in this case can we say that obedience to rules proves that the system has legitimacy. Held
argues that, in fact, the reasons for obedience to rules can be varied—people may obey
because of coercion, because they do not question tradition, or simply because of apathy.
We have already seen how the Marxist concept of exploitation offers a similar challenge
to the idea that obedience to a system proves that it is legitimate. It provides an alternative
understanding of how obedience to power is enforced through legal codes. Economic com-
pulsion is an important medium of ensuring obedience—modern capitalism has created a
mass of propertyless wage workers who have no option but to sell their labour to owners
of capital in order to survive. This ensures conformance and obedience to rules.
Another dimension of legitimacy is provided by the notion of hegemony. This concept
was developed by the Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci. Hegemony is the control of society
by purely cultural means. Thus, he distinguished between the repressive function of state
power on the one hand, and the ability of the ruling class to control society by generating
consent on the other. In this understanding, power is not exercised only through ‘coercion’,
but is complemented by the ‘direction’ provided by the ruling classes. Thus, the consent of
the ruled is a crucial part of the power exercised through hegemony.
In this understanding, therefore, the state has a wider, more organic meaning than the
simpler Marxist understanding of the state as a coercive apparatus serving the interests of the
ruling classes. The state in Gramsci’s sense is understood as an equilibrium between ‘political
society’ (the coercive apparatus) and ‘civil society’. (Located therein are a multiplicity of
private associations, both ‘natural’ and ‘contractual’—such as the family, Church, schools,
and so on. These generate a web of social relations and ideas that create and re-create the
hegemony of the dominant class, which, in Marxist understanding, is the class that owns the
means of production.) Thus, in Gramsci’s view, ideology does not simply reflect or mirror
class interest. But a dominant hegemonic ideology provides a coherent systematic worldview
that influences the entire population. A whole complex of institutions, public and private,
legitimize bourgeois dominance, rendering its values universal.
A striking illustration of hegemony is provided by the following example by Gramsci.
When we look at a map of the world we know immediately which direction is North
and which is South. We understand this to be a simple physical fact of nature. Gramsci
illustrates this understanding with Bertrand Russell’s statement that though we could not
think of the cities of London or Edinburgh without the existence of man on earth, we could
still think of the existence of two points in space, one to the North and one to the South,
where Edinburgh and London now are.
Gramsci’s objection to this common sense understanding is that locating fixed points
on the globe as north/south or east/west is not a fact of nature but a convention or a
‘historico-cultural construction’. He puts it like this: ‘What would north–south or east–
west mean without man? They are real relationships and yet they would not exist without
man and without the development of civilization. Obviously, east and west are arbitrary
and conventional, that is, they are historical constructions, since outside real history every
point on the earth is east and west at the same time.’
Is this not true, that since the earth is roughly spherical, every point on it is simultaneously
east and west, north and south? But we always look at the globe or a map only from a

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particular direction or angle. This is, in fact, the viewpoint of the European imperialist na-
tion-states. That is why West Asia is the ‘Middle East’ (even to people in India for whom it
is on their immediate West) or Australia is ‘Down Under’ (but if we look at the globe from
the perspective of Australia, it is the rest of the world which is underneath!) Through this
illustration, Gramsci shows us that east and west are historically constructed conventions
reflecting power relations—the ‘world-wide hegemony’ of ‘the European cultured classes’,
whose point of view was naturalized across the globe. Such a point of view that reflects and
is produced by power relations and is made to appear natural and innocent of power—this
is how hegemony operates to produce consent.

FEMINIST THEORIES OF POWER

Feminism is a political viewpoint that holds that the oppression and subjugation of women
is not simply a matter of individual behaviour, or individual strength and weakness. Rather,
a category of human beings called ‘women’ are systematically dominated, subjugated, and
denied equal access to resources through the structural operation of patriarchal ideology.
Patriarchy is a key category in feminist analyses of power, and refers to an overarching sys-
tem of male dominance operating at every level—economic, political, and cultural. An under-
standing of patriarchy enables us to see that power or powerlessness cannot be explained
in terms of individuals alone.
Under patriarchy, it is possible that individual women may have some power, but it would
be strictly within the limits set by patriarchal rules. Thus, in the South Asian context, for
example, women as mothers-in-law may have some power, but not as daughters, wives or
sisters (of men). Note also that women in this understanding are defined entirely in terms
of their relationship to men. Single women are, thus, invisible and disempowered.
Patriarchy is not understood to be a single homogeneous structure, rather feminist scholars
now think in terms of patriarchies—differentiated over historical epochs, geographical
regions, and cultural communities. In addition, patriarchy overlaps and interacts with other
Different
patriarchies in all systems of oppression—on the basis of class, caste, imperialism, race, etc.—and produces
over all the world. specific effects. Thus, a white woman in the USA is affected by patriarchy differently from
Patriarchy overlaps
and interacts with a Dalit woman in India, and feminist scholarship and politics attempts to negotiate these
other structures. differences in complex ways.
It is also important to note that there is not one feminist analysis of power; feminists
coming from varied political traditions analyse the sources of patriarchy differently. Liberal
feminists would try to show the deficiencies of liberal conceptions of liberty, equality, and
justice to the extent that they do not take into account gender, while Marxist feminists would
produce a critique of the gender-blindness of class analysis. Radical feminists hold gender
to be the primary category of analysis, and argue that all later forms of power imitate the
original power relationship of men over women. At the same time, liberal feminists would
have a critique of Marxist analyses, and Marxist feminists of liberal philosophy—there are
more debates within feminism than there are between feminists and non-feminists.

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FOUCAULT ON POWER
Michel Foucault radically reconceptualized the notion of power. According to him, power
is not repressive—that is, in the modern era, power does not operate by preventing us from
doing what we want. Rather, Foucault sees power as productive—power produces identity
and subjectivity. Further, power does not emanate from a single source, whether the state
or the ruling classes. Power is conceptualized by Foucault as capillary—flowing throughout
the system like blood in the capillaries of our body. At first glance, then, there may appear
to be similarities between Arendt’s understanding of power as power to, and Parson’s con-
ception of power flowing like money through the system. But both terms—productive
and capillary—have entirely different meanings in Foucault’s conception of power. In his
understanding the identities produced by power are ways of controlling through naming,
and this control is exercised in a variety of locations, in our everyday lives. How does this
happen?
Through the mechanisms of what Foucault calls ‘governmentality’ (also see Chapter 11),
we are produced as the subjects of governance. By governmentality he refers to the in-
creasing homogenization and organization of society in modern times—through a huge
bureaucratic machinery that evolves endless ways of classifying people. This subject is cre-
ated and subjected to classification and surveillance through all sorts of things we take for
granted—identity cards, passports and so on—through which we can be tracked, and in
which we have to state who we are—Indian/Pakistani, Hindu/Muslim, educated/illiterate,
etc. But we are also produced as subjects by discourses of medicine (healthy/sick), psychiatry
(sane/insane), biology (male/female) and by legal discourses that judge your identity on the
basis of the authority of these discourses. So, the mechanisms of governmentality are not
located at the level of ‘government’ in a narrow sense, but operate through a variety of dis-
courses. Governmentality operates through normalization, by which Foucault means the
processes through which every individual is made to conform to the dominant norm.
Note the pun on the word ‘subject’, which means both the independent actor or agent,
the thinking person (‘I’ as Subject) as well as that which is ruled (for example, the ‘subject’
of a monarch). What this means is that the moment you are produced as subject you are also
subjected to the mechanisms of governmentality.
Thus, when asked—‘Who are you’?—which is a question about your identity, every
single answer you can possibly give is the result of different systems of classification that
you don’t think about, but which are produced by the mechanisms of governmentality.Take
one possible answer, which appears to be ‘purely biological’, that is, natural—I am a man, or
I am a woman. This identity is, in fact, produced by the language of the biomedical sciences,
which use the notions of chromosomes, hormones, and organs to determine what you are.
However, there is enough evidence to show that no human being fits exactly a two-sex
model—this is the reason that ‘gender verification tests’, which were commonly conducted
for the Olympic games, were suspended in 2000. It emerged after years of conducting the tests
that atypical chromosomal variations are so common that it is impossible to judge femininity
and masculinity on the basis of chromosomes. Similar evidence is available for hormones

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too, that every human being has both kinds of hormones in their bodies, and large num-
bers of bodies cannot be rigidly classified as either male or female on the basis of hormones.
But whenever such cases are encountered, medical dis-courses are brought into play to
treat them as diseased, treated, and made ‘normal’. This rigid classification of all bodies as
belonging to one or the other sex means that a large range of bodies are rendered invisible.
We have no language to refer to trans-gendered people (He? She?), and babies that are born
with no clearly determined sex are made to undergo invasive surgery.
This subjection through the production of governable identities is even more obvious
when we think of identities based on race, caste, religion and so on.
Thus, the construction of subjectivity by those who tell us the ‘truth’ of about who we
are—doctors, psychologists, the law—is at the same time a subjection to the power they
exercise.
Hence the concept of ‘power/knowledge’ in Foucault; he does not simply mean that know-
ledge is power. Rather, he means that knowledge is already a function of power relations—
knowledge is produced and gained in order to be put to certain use; in order to achieve
power. ‘Far from preventing knowledge, power produces it’, he says. Understanding power
as being merely repressive means failing to see that what needs to be explained—how the
knowledge required for controlling the human body and labour have emerged. Foucault’s
study of history is intended to show that the human body could have been constituted as
labour-power only if there were a technology or knowledge of the body that made it pos-
sible to organize and subjugate bodies into useful and docile roles. Further, this subjugation
is not imposed by one class on another—it permeates and characterizes all aspects of society.
Power is not a thing or substance, it is not embodied in an institution or a group of
people—power is exercised as a technique. The only way it can be identified is when it is
exercised by some people over others. This is why, for Foucault, an important indication of
the existence of power is a display of resistance to it. ‘At the very heart of the power relation-
ship, and constantly provoking it, are the recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence
of freedom.’ It is clear, then, that while at first glance Foucault’s understanding of power
might appear to offer no way out, in fact, he suggests quite the reverse—that wherever
there is power, there is the possibility of resistance.
In Foucault’s understanding, there are three types of struggles against power:

(a) Against ethnic/social/religious domination—typical of feudal societies.

(b) Against exploitation (which separates individuals from what they produce)—typical
of 19th century capitalist societies.
(c) Against forms of ‘subjection’ (meaning both ‘to be a subject’ and ‘to be subjected to’).
In this kind of struggle, the attempt should be to promote new forms of subjectivity
through the refusal of the kind of identity and individualization linked to the state
and to governmentality.

At each stage, of course, the earlier forms of struggle continue alongside the new ones.

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CONCLUSION
To conclude this discussion of the various debates around the idea of power, it can be argued
that political theory cannot be restricted to the study of institutions of the state or to the
laying down of norms of public behaviour. Such an understanding must be complemented
by an awareness of how power operates to produce both institutions, as well as apparently
universal and neutral norms. In short, an awareness of power must inform the theorizing
of politics.

Points for Discussion

1. Do you think power is an ‘essentially contested concept’? Do you agree with the argument that all
concepts in political theory are essentially contested?
2. Discuss the idea of legitimate power. How does the concept of hegemony complicate the notion
of legitimacy?
3. How would you relate the Marxist conception of exploitation to Steven Lukes’ view of power?
4. How does Foucault’s conception of power as productive and capillary differ from earlier conceptions
of power both as repressive as well as power as ‘power to’, in the sense in which Hannah Arendt
and Talcott Parsons used the term?
5. How would you relate the feminist conceptualization of patriarchy to the concept of hegemony?
6. A ‘map projection’ is a way of projecting the three-dimensional spherical earth on to a flat two-
dimensional surface, such as the page of an atlas. Search the Internet for Peter’s Projection, which
is a map projection that produces a completely different map of the world than the one which we
are accustomed to, which is called Mercator’s Projection. How would you relate the issues raised
by the debate over Peter’s Projection to the discussion on hegemony above?

Reading List

Arendt, Hannah, ‘What Is Authority’, in Between Past and Future (London: Faber, 1961).
Barnes, Barry, ‘Power’, in Richard Bellamy (ed.), Theories and Concepts of Politics (Manchester, UK:
Manchester University Press, 1993).
Bottomore, Tom (ed.), A Dictionary of Marxist Thought (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1991).
Connolly, William, The Terms of Political Discourse (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1983).
Dahl, Robert, A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956).
Foucault, Michel, ‘Power, Right, Truth’, in Colin Gordon (ed.), Power/Knowledge (Brighton: Harvester,
1980).
———, ‘Truth and Juridical Forms’, James D. Faubion (ed.), Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984
(London: Penguin Books, 2000).
Held, David, ‘Power and Legitimacy’, in Political Theory and the Modern State: Essays on State, Power and
Democracy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989).
Hoy, David Couzens (ed.), ‘Power, Repression, Progress’, in Foucault: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1986).
Lukes, Steven, Power A Radical View, second edn (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

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