Power Is A Very Important Issue For Sociology

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Power is a very important issue for sociology

Introduction

This essay aims to discuss the theme of power, a very important issue for sociology since it is present in all relations between people and different groups of societies and companies. To address the issue I rely on the French philosopher Michael Foucault, who talks about the theory of power in his different books. The structure of this essay is first composed from the conceptual description of power based on the theory addressed by the aforementioned author. Secondly, a legal and economic interpretation of the power in which the question is raised is established: Can the analysis of the power be deducted in some way from the economy? To do this, it responds based on two perspectives and designates a name to the definition. Thirdly, power relations, criteria and methodological precautions established by Michael Foucault. Fourth is based on the emergence of power and through which means are exercised. Fifth and last place is a synthesis of the information collected describing in the conclusion of the essay.

Developing

The term power comes from the Latin Possum Potos Potui, which generally means being able, having strength for something, or what is the same, being powerful to achieve the domain or possession of a physical or concrete object, or for developmentmoral, political or scientific. Using in this way, the aforementioned verb identifies with the word Potestas that translates power, power, power, which is used as a faculty counterpart that means possibility, capacity, virtue, talent. The term Possum includes the idea of being powerful or capable but also refers to influence, impose itself, to be effective among other interpretations. Point out that intimately linked to power are the concepts of imperium (the supreme command of authority), of arbitrium (the will or will in the exercise of power), of power (force, power or effectiveness of someone) and by authoritas(Authority or moral influence emanating from its virtue) mayz- Vallenilla, and.

When the power is analyzed, the important thing for the author is to determine what their mechanisms, their implications, their relationships, the different power devices that are used at different levels of society are determined. One of the questions Foucault tries to answer is the possibility that power can be deduced from the economy. This approach makes it by virtue of finding two conceptions of power in history;One, the legal and liberal conception of political power, which can be found in the philosophers of the 18th century and the second Marxist conception, to which the thinker attributes the name of economicism of the theory of power or economic functionality of power of power.

In this order of ideas, the legal or non -economic conception establishes that power is a right that one possesses as a good and that may transfer or alienate, totally or partially through a legal act. Power is the one that every individual possesses and that can assign totally or partially to establish a political power or sovereignty. In the other case, political power would have in the economy its reason for being history and the beginning of its current functioning.

Foucault also had in his ideas, a historical vein that explored to the maximum. As the same expressed: deep down I am nothing more than a historian of ideas. But a historian of the ideas he wanted to renew his discipline, who has undoubtedly wanted to give him that rigor that so many other descriptions, quite neighboring, have recently acquired Foucault M. The history of ideas is directed to all that game of representations that happen among men, is the analysis of opinions rather than knowledge, of errors rather than truth, not of the ways of thinking but of the types ofmindset. It has as its scope, the historical field of sciences, literature and philosophies;In short, the history of ideas is the discipline of beginnings and the end.

Legal and economic interpretation of power

When studying power, the theoretical issue that would be raised would be, what are its mechanisms, its effects, their relationships, the different power devices that are exercised, at such different levels and modalities, in areas and with so different extensions in society. So when establishing the question: Can the analysis of being able to deduce in some way from the economy?, The author responds from two perspectives: one, the legal and liberal conception of political power, which we find in the 18th century philosophers, and two, the Marxist conception;Both perspectives have an intersection zone, that is, they have something in common. This intersection between these two sets is what the author designates with the name of economicism in the theory of power.

How to analyze the power relationship?

Power relationships include actions on actions: incite, induce, divert, facilitate, hinder, expand or limit, make more or less likely. These are the categories of power. Power relationships are characterized by the ability to "some" to "conduct" the actions of others. It is a relationship between actions, between subjects of action.

The analysis of power relations requires that a certain number of points be established:

• The system of differentiations that allow acting on the action of others: legal or traditional differences of status and privileges;economic differences in the appropriation of wealth and goods;differences of positions in production processes;linguistic or cultural differences. Any power relationship uses differentiations that at the same time constitute conditions and effects.
• The type of objectives pursue.
• The forms of institutionalization: these can combine traditional provisions, legal structures, usual or fashion phenomena (as observed in the power relations presented by the family institution);They can also adopt the appearance of a closed device on itself with their specific places, their own regulations, their carefully defined hierarchical structures, and relative functional autonomy (example of them are school or military institutions);They can also form very complex systems provided with multiple devices, as in the case of the State that is to establish the general envelope, the global control instance, the principle of regulation and, also to some extent, of distribution of all relations ofPower in a specific social group.
• Rationalization degrees: since the use of power relations as an action on the field of possibility can be more or less elaborated according to the effectiveness of the instruments and the certainty of the result. The exercise of power is not a gross fact, an institutional element or a structure that is maintained or breaks: it is made, it is transformed, organized, acquires more or less adequate procedures.

In power analysis, Foucault establishes 5 methodological precautions:

1. It is not about analyzing the regulated and legitimated forms of power in its center;Its general mechanisms. It is on the contrary to take power in its limbs, in its last confines, where it becomes capillary, where it adopts the form of techniques and provides instruments of material intervention, eventually even violent.
2. It is not about analyzing power in the field of intention or decision, or asking: who holds power and what intention has? It is rather studying it, where its intention if you have it is invested inside real and effective practices, where it is in direct and immediate relationship with its object, its target, its field of application;where it produces real effects, at the level of continuous and uninterrupted processes that submit the bodies, guide gestures, behaviors govern. That is, try to know how they have really constituted, materially, the subjects from the multiplicity of the bodies, of the forces, of the energies, of the materialities, of the desires, of the thoughts, etc.
3. Not to consider power as a phenomenon of massive and homogeneous domination of one individual over others, of one group over others, of one class over the others;but keep in mind that power has to be analyzed as something that circulates, as something that does not work but in chain. It is not located here or there, it is not in the hands of some, it is not an attribute such as wealth or a good. Power works, it is exercised, through a reticular organization. Individuals circulate in these networks, but they are also always in a situation of suffering or exercising that power. They are never the inert or consistent white of power, nor are the connection elements always. Power transits transversely, is not still in individuals. In practice, which makes a body, gestures, speeches, desires identified and constituted as individuals, is in itself, one of the first effects of power. The individual is an effect of power, and his connection element circulates through the individual who has constituted.
4. When we say that power circulates, form networks, it is true to some extent. We all have some power in the body, but it is not the best distributed thing in the world. An ascending analysis of power must be done, start from the infinitesimal mechanisms that have their own history, their own journey, their own technique and tactics, and then see how these mechanisms of power have been and are invested, colonized, used, extended, extended,etc., for more general mechanisms and for forms of global domination.
5. Which accompanies power are not ideological productions;ideologies. Is much less and much more. They are instruments of training and accumulation of knowledge, observation methods, registration techniques, inquiry and investigation procedures, verification devices. This means that power, when exercised through these subtle mechanisms, cannot do so without forming, without organizing and putting a knowledge, or better, devices of knowing that they are not ideological constructions.

But where does power arise?

Foucault tries to analyze the mechanisms where power arises;The way in which power is exercised (military, school, labor, prison). That is: disciplinary practices.

Foucault extracts the following theses:

• Power passes through dominated and dominant.
• Power is not a property (it is not possessed);It is a strategy (it is exercised).
• Power and knowing are of different nature, but interact.
• The power in essence is not repressive. It is productive.

Power forces are defined by their ability to affect others. In turn, they have resistance capacity. Each force can affect and be affected by another. Diagrams are established. The diagram is not a structure. It is the exposure of the relations of forces that make up power, articulating diagrams of impositions:

• In monitoring and punishing the diagram is disciplinary (tasks or behaviors are imposed).
• In the will to know the diagram is of management in life control (exercised by education).

The notion of diagram as a temporary space multiplicity is key. Each society, each era, has its own diagram. To ours corresponds to that whose function is the disciplinary. In the diagrams, in turn, specific agencies or devices act: jail, school, factory, barracks, hospital. Such devices are integrated from qualified substances, (condemned, child, worker, soldier, sick, etc.), And from functions: control, education, production, discipline, hygiene. There is also a non -totalizing global integration from the State. The devices or agency are concrete, while the diagram is abstract, although the diagram acts in materiality through technologies.

One of the key concept in the development made by Foucault, regarding the question of power, is the notion of device, which appears well developed in the book of Edgardo Castro the vocabulary of Michel Foucault. Says: The device is the object of the genealogical description. Foucault will talk about disciplinary devices, jail device, power devices, knowledge devices, sexuality device, alliance device, subjectivity device, real device, etc.

The Foucaltian device notion can be delimited as explained below:

1. The device is the network of relationships that can be established between heterogeneous elements: speeches, institutions, architecture, regulations, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral, philanthropic propositions, what was said and what did not say.
2. The device establishes the nature of the link that can exist between these heterogeneous elements. For example, discourse may appear as a program of an institution, such as an element that can justify or hide a practice, or function as a subsequent interpretation of this practice, offering a new rationality field.
3. This is a formation that at one time has had to respond to an urgency. The device thus has a strategic function, such as the reabsorption of a floating population mass that was excessive for a mercantilist economy.
4. In addition to being defined by the structure of heterogeneous elements, a device is defined by its genesis. Foucault distinguishes two essential moments: a first moment of predominance of the strategic objective;a second moment of constitution of the device itself.
5. The device, once constituted, remains such as a process of functional determination takes place: each effect, positive or negative, loved or uninoked, enters resonance or contradiction with others and demands a readjustment. On the other hand, we find a process of perpetual strategic filling.

conclusion

Power is an asymmetric relationship that is constituted by two entities: authority and obedience, and would not be a pre -existing object in a sovereign used to dominate its subjects, it is also a strategic situation that occurs in a given society: powerincite, raise and produce.

In the formation of power there are two elements, which are cooriginal and interdependent, dominated and the dominant, that more than possessing power, since this cannot be acquired, shared or losing, because it is not an elementphysical. These factors have been given throughout history and are currently present, dominated and dominant are manifested in each area in which we live, either in the family, work even in friendship;They are the basis of any relationship and all action and allow to guide the possibility of behavior and put in order its possible effects.

Foucault postulates that power is not located, in effect, it is a set that invades all social relations. Power is not subordinated to economic structures, it does not act by repression but by normalization, so it is not limited to exclusion or prohibition, nor is it expressed or this law. Power is the basis of any relationship, possibly of humanity, but paradoxically it does not exist since it is found in all places and cannot be acquired, power is simply.