1. Social Power Gerardo Otero Sociology/Anthropology and International Studies

2. Outline I. Premises and definitions II. Power organizations III. Interstitial emergence IV. Empowerment

3. Premises 4 societies are not totalities or systems 4 No theoretical primacy (economy or ideology)

4. Premises, cont’d 4 Four sources of power (ideological, economic, military and political relationships) 4 Organizations or institutional means of attaining goals.

5. Multicausality 4 social events or trends have multiple causes

6. Humans are social in that 4 they are able to achieve goals only by cooperation

7. Primacy 4 Not ends but means give us our point of entry into the question of primacy

8. Power A exercises power over B when A affects B in a manner contrary to B’s interests.

9. Social Power 4 General sense: ability to attain mastery of one’s environment: 4 mastery over other people 4 Collective aspect: persons in cooperation enhance joint power over third parties or over nature

10. Social Power, cont’d 4 distributive 4 collective 4 exploitative 4 functional 4 All aspects operate simultaneously in most social relations

11. Leaders 4 occupy supervisory and coordinating positions 4 immense organizational superiority over others

12. Why masses comply 4 lack collective organization 4 embedded within collective and distributive power organizations controlled by others

13. Society: a unitarian whole? 4 Marxists: “levels of society”, privilege economic subsistence 4 Weberians: “dimensions”, privilege meaning 4 but organizations function as both ends and means

14. For Michael Mann society is 4 “a network of social interaction at the boundaries of which is a certain level of interaction cleavage between it and its environment” (Man 1986:13)

15. Underneath stable networks: 4 “human beings are tunnelling ahead to achieve their goals, forming new networks...” (16)

16. Sources and organizations of power 4 Ideological 4 Economic 4 Military 4 Political

17. Ideology as organization 1. Monopolizing meaning (requires concepts and categories of meanings imposed on perceptions) 2. norms (necessary for sustained social cooperation) 3. aesthetic-ritual practices

18. Economic organization 4 Circuits of praxis 4 Classes 4 States (perform both economic and political functions)

19. Circuits of praxis are modes of 4 Production 4 Distribution 4 Exchange and 4 Consumption (no primacy of production is implied)

20. Why no primacy? 4 “Whereas production is high on intensive power,mobilizing local social cooperation to exploit nature, exchange may occur extremely extensively” (Mann 1986:25)

21. Class are formed thus: 4 “Economic power derives from the satisfaction of subsistence needs through the social organization of the extraction, transformation, distribution, and consumption of the objects of nature.” (Mann 1986:24)

22. Dominant class: 4 can obtain general collective and distributive power in societies

23. Economic organization 4 extraction 4 transformation 4 distribution 4 consumption of the objects of nature  Circuits of praxis

24. Military power 4 concentrated-coercive 4 intensive  militarism has yielded disproportionate results

25. Political power = state 4 centralized 4 institutionalized 4 territorialized regulation of social relations  geopolitical power is essential in social stratification

26. Tracklaying vehicles (Weber) 4 set the route for train tracks 4 “interstitial emergencies” or generalized means of history making (Mann) 4 empowerment, or what I would call “generative interstitial emergence”

27. Model of organized power (Mann) Original motor Humans pursuing goals Creation of multiple social networks

28. Major sources of social power Organizing means Institutional networks Interstitial networks

29. Ideology—Transcendence Economy—Circuits of praxis Concentrated-coercive—Military Centralized-territorial—state Geopolitical-diplomatic—states

30. Geopolitics

31. Empowerment or Political- Cultural Formation Class structural processes Mediations Political outcomes

32. Class structural processes between exploiters- exploited, Relations of production among the exploited and oppressed Relations of reproduction

33. Political-cultural formation: Mediating determinations Political outcomes Regional cultures State intervention Leadership types

34. Political outcomes Bourgeois- hegemonic Oppositional Popular- democratic