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 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.