Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
health information. By not acting they avoided a potentially expensive
legal settlement and prodigious clean-up/remediation costs, and a legal
case of their own against Martin Marietta. But, from the perspective
of aggrieved local citizens, by not acting they failed to exercise their
powers responsibly, with tragic human consequences.
For more detail see Richard Fleming's feature article 'Hard to swal-
low' in the
Denver Westword News
, 1994:
http://www.westword.com/
1994-08-31/news/hard-to-swallow/
, accessed 1 July 2012.
If these resources aren't mobilised then power is latent - mere potential -
is only meaningful if the converse is realised on more than an occasional
basis. This is why several analysts of power have distinguished between
'power to' and 'power over'. The latter involves
actualising
the capacity to
'affect the attitudes or actions of another', though there are, depending on
the situation, no guarantees that the desired effects will be achieved. As
Nye puts it, 'Having
...
power doesn't always ensure that you will get what
you want' (2001: 10). In part, this is because those on the 'receiving end'
of a power relationship may have the capacity to resist or ignore whatever
inducements, pressures or sanctions come their way. As Amelie Oksenberg
Rorty once observed, 'Power is relational
...
: it is [usually] exercised in a
field of counter-forces' (1992: 5).
This field metaphor (derived from magnetics) helps us distinguish social
power from other capacities and actions that might feasibly be included
in the ecumenical definition of power offered above. Having your wallet
stolen at knifepoint on the street one unlucky evening is not an example
of
social
power in action. Nor is the bullying of one person by another, in
(say) a school or a workplace. Social power is operative when those who
are empowered inhabit institutions, assume roles or enjoy a status which
transcend/s their individual characteristics. It is 'power with' insofar as any
empowered individual is drawing their capacity from a wider network of
people and a wider pool of symbolic or material resources, knowingly or
otherwise.
Power shift: from 'hard' to 'soft'?
Several analysts of power have argued that many societies worldwide have
experienced a historical shift. They argue that 'hard' forms of power, such as
the public execution of dissidents by a monarch, have given way to 'softer'
forms of power based on the creation, dissemination and application of
(often esoteric) knowledge, norms, standards, values and information. In
Chapter 3
, I summarised this as 'power
over'
and 'power
in
' communica-
tion, following Luigi Pellizoni (2001).
Soft power
seeks to 'elicit cooperation
