Power, Revisited

Power is a core theoretical construct in the field with amazing utility across substantive areas, levels of analysis and methodologies. Yet, its use along with associated assumptions – assumptions surrounding constraint vs. action and specifically organizational structure and rationality – remain pr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social forces 2011-12, Vol.90 (2), p.349-374
Main Author: Roscigno, Vincent J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Administrative Organization
Analysis
Bureaucracy
Class
Constraints
Death
Discrimination
Educational activities
Educational Researchers
Employment discrimination
Equal Opportunities (Jobs)
Gender discrimination
History, theory and methodology
Inequality
Interaction
Investigations
Methodology
Methods
Norms
Observational research
Organizational Climate
Organizational Structure
Power
Power (Philosophy)
Power structure
Power structures
Race
Racism
Rationality
Sex
Social Action
Social Class
Social classes
Social discrimination
Social inequality
Social movements
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION
Social Structure
Social structures
Social theories
Sociology
Sociology of organizations and enterprises. Bureaucracy and administration
Sociology of work and sociology of organizations
Theory
Translation
Weber, Max
Weber, Max (1864-1920)
Work place
Workplaces
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Description
Summary:Power is a core theoretical construct in the field with amazing utility across substantive areas, levels of analysis and methodologies. Yet, its use along with associated assumptions – assumptions surrounding constraint vs. action and specifically organizational structure and rationality – remain problematic. In this article, and following an overview of important divides on the topic, I develop a dynamic relational theory of power. My framework, which builds on several strands of literature and my own in-depth investigations of workplace discrimination, challenges prevailing top-down conceptions of bureaucratic organizational constraint and rationality (derived from Weber). It also makes explicit the constitutive interplay of structure, culture and action, and provides significant insight into the relational nature of power. Relational, in these regards, entails often-assumed interpersonal interactions but also the capacities of actors to invoke structure (and thus leverage) and legitimate inequality through a two-pronged process of symbolic vilification and amplification. Contemporary bureaucracy and its structural and cultural foundations can provide the leverage for doing so and in a manner whereby hierarchical projects surrounding race, sex, age and social class are systematically reified.
ISSN:0037-7732
1534-7605
DOI:10.1093/sf/sor034