SOC433H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Roscigno, Aetherius Society, Structural Dynamics
1
Roscigno “ Power, Sociologically Speaking”
What is power, sociologically speaking?
Who has power?
How do individuals and groups acquire power?
What does power do? How is it achieved, excercised and legitimated?
• In the social sciences power is seen as persuasiveness, the ability to get what one wants this is the
essence of the classic definition attributed to Max Weber
o applied across a host of institutional spheres and interactions,
o the criticism is that it obscures power’s fundamentally structural, cultural, and relational
nature.
o power is too often thought of as something that a particular leader or party has, rather
than something rooted in institutional practices, cultural supports,
• the problem of power is prime blind spot; the core, lower level topics of political science can
direct us away from larger questions about the ends toward which political influence is directed
The structured nature of power
• power derives from historically and culturally proscribed statuses (such as race and gender) and
organizational and institutional positioning
• Power is more complex than that, though, as institutional, organizational, and bureaucratic
structures confer greater or lesser leverage depending on position. Those of lower status are
constrained to playing by the rules much of the time, while those in higher positions might be
able to create or use even seemingly neutral rules in self-beneficial ways
• Culturally proscribed statuses and positions shape power and how that power is enabled or
constrained by structure.
• Politics and elections, even in an ostensibly democratic system, are not impervious to the
structural dynamics of power.
• Structure clearly constrains access, choices, agendas, and actual political decision making and
policy, regardless of citizens’ desires
• those in privileged positions will, by and large, hold the structural and institutional tools to
reinforce prevailing power hierarchies.
• The role of structure in bolstering power differentials is equally true of other institutional realms.
• In these regards, power is vested in the system—or, to be more precise, in how social relations are
structured and maintained within institutional and organizational contexts.
• we tend not to see large-scale abuses as unjust exercises of power so much as the unfortunate
results of an amorphous “bad social system.”
• this “unfortunately bad system” benefits those who constructed and control it in the first place.
• The abuse of power is placed on individual responsibility rather than identifying the problem with
the system as a whole
• structure bolsters power for some and mitigates it for others.
Cultural scaffolding and the legimitation of power
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