Conflictual (power) relationship

From Geography

Latest revision as of 01:06, 24 October 2012

Max Weber analysed social relationships into three forms of which conflict relationships are the first type.

In this relationship, action is oriented intentionally to carrying out the actor's own will against the resistance of the other party or parties.

In order to succeed and achieve domination,it is necessary to exercise "power", based not just on coercion and economic power, but also prestige (status) and legitimate authority.

There are all manner of continuous transitions ranging from the bloody type of conflict which, setting aside all rules, aims at the destruction of the adversary, to the case of the battles of medieval chivalry, bound as they were to the strictest conventions, and to the strict regulations imposed on sport by the rules of the game. The treatment of conflict involving the use of physical violence as a separate type is justified by the special characteristics of the employment of this means and the corresponding peculiarities of the sociological consequences of its use.

Conflict presents itself in varying degrees, from unregulated physical combat to carefully controlled competitive interactions.

The term "peaceful" conflict will be applied to cases in which actual physical violence is not employed. A peaceful conflict consists in a formally peaceful attempt to attain control over opportunities and advantages which are also desired by others. A competitive process is "regulated" competition to the extent that its ends and means are oriented to an order. The struggle, often latent, which takes place between human individuals or types of social status, for advantages and for survival, but without a meaningful mutual orientation in terms of conflict, will be called "selection". If it is a matter of the relative opportunities of individuals during their own lifetime, it would be considered "social selection" and if it concerns differential chances for the survival of inherited characteristics, "biological selection".

All typical struggles will lead to a selection of those who have in the higher degree, on the average, possessed the personal qualities important to success. What qualities are important depends on the conditions in which the conflict or competition takes place.

Foucalt (1983) names six characteristics of struggles in power relations. - Firstly they are transversal. Struggles aren't bound to certain countries, but they don't develop in the same way in different countries. - Struggles aim at the power effects of the relations. They want to prevent uncontrolled power. - The struggles are immediate. They are pointed at the ones who exercise power directly on the individuals. - The struggles question the status of the individual. They assert the right to be different but they are against they are against the things that separate individuals, in other words they are against the government of individualization. - They question the way in which knowledge circulates and functions and its relation to power. - The final characteristic is that in all struggles the question is asked about who we are individually. They refuse the determination of who we are by science or administration.

Basic points for analysing power relationships

One can analyse such relationships by focussing on carefully defined institutions. Concretely the analysis of power relations demands that a certain number of points be established:

• 1: The system of differentiation

Doing this, this permits one to act upon the actions of others: differentiations determined by the law or by traditions of status and privilege: economic differences in de appropriation of riches and goods, shits in the processes of production, linguistic or cultural differences, differences in know-how and competence. Every relationship of power puts into operation differentiations which are at the same time its conditions and its results

• 2: The types of objectives

Objectives pursued by those who act upon the actions of others: the maintenance of privileges, the accumulation of profits, the bringing into the operation of statutory authority, the exercise of a function of a trade

• 3: the means of bringing power relations into being

According to whether power is exercised by the threat of arm, by the effects of the word, by means of economic disparities, by more of less complex means of control, by systems of surveillance, with or without archives, according to rule which are or are not explicit, fixed of modifiable, with of without the technological means to put all these things into action

• 4: forms of institutionalization

These may mix traditional predispositions, legal structures, phenomena relating to custom of to fashion (such as one sees in the institution of the family); they can also take the form of an apparatus closed in upon itself, with its specific loci, its own regulations, its hierarchical structures which are carefully defined, a relative autonomy in its functioning.

• 5: The degrees of rationalization

The bringing into play of power relations as action in a field of possibilities may be more or less elaborate in relation to the effectiveness of the instruments and the certainly of the results or again in proportion to the possible cost. The exercise of power is not a naked fact, an institutional right, nor is it a structure which holds out or is smashed: it is elaborated, transformed, organized; it endows itself with processes which are more or less adjusted to the situation. (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983)

References:

Max Weber (1947). The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Oxford University Press, New York

Campbell, T. (1981) Seven Theories of Human Society. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Chapter 8: Max Weber: An Action Theory. pp. 169-189.

Foucault, M. (1983). Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, p. 208-266.

Contributors:

Links added and text eddited by Robbert Wilmink --RobbertWilmink 18:30, 11 November 2011 (CET)

Edited by Huub van der Zwaluw HuubVanDerZwaluw 17:23, 23 October 2012 (CEST)

Text edited by KamielNuijens 24-10-2012

Page enhance by KamielNuijens 24-10-2012