Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
inducements (carrots) or sanctions (sticks), though it may relate to their
use in certain situations. It may thus not be perceived by those subject to
it as power at all, nor even by those exercising it. Ernest Gellner (1988)
suggested as much in his sweeping historical monograph
Plough, sword and
book
. More recently, Manuel Castells, discussing mainstream and 'alterna-
tive' media, has observed that 'The fundamental battle being fought in
...
society [today] is the battle over the minds of people' (2007: 238). Famously,
Michel Foucault, whose ideas I discussed briefly in
Chapters 1
and
3,
argued
that 'power-knowledge' began to be operative far beyond the realms of
organised religion, sovereign diktat or the national state during Europe's
Enlightenment period. It became 'dispersed' among a set of new (or signif-
icantly altered) institutions whose members gained authority on the basis
of their specialised or esoteric knowledges about some (or all) sections of
society. For Foucault, people became subject to power day-in, day-out and
not only on those occasions when, for example, somebody breaks the law
and is fined or imprisoned. He thus talked of power as 'capillary', as some-
thing that permeated the entirety of a society like his native France. Foucault
argued that 'power to' was not centred on just a few 'major' organisations
but distributed among many. Each created 'domains' in which knowledge
was manufactured and put to work (such as psychotherapy, commercial law
and 'special needs' children's education). 'Social power', he remarked on one
occasion, is 'coextensive with
every
social relationship' (Foucault, 1982: 224,
emphasis added). See
Box 6.2
for more on soft power.
BOX 6.2
AND 'HEGEMONY'
Aside from the writings of Michel Foucault, those of Karl Marx
(1818-83) and Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) have arguably done more
than most to shape Western academic conceptions of what I've called
'soft power'. Among his many intellectual and political contributions,
Marx argued that ideology was a key way in which social inequality
was concealed (specifically, that on which capitalism is predicated and
which it reproduces). If alive today he'd undoubtedly point too to
the concealment of huge environmental damage. Ideologies are a set
of beliefs, arguments and norms that cohere into a definite 'way of
thinking' that then informs social action (and inaction). Marx (like
Antoine Destutt de Tracy, the French aristocrat-turned-revolutionary
said to have coined the term 'ideology') was interested in how the
means of social communication could be monopolised so that the
mindset of a whole society could be influenced. By 'means of social
communication' I mean everything from the newspapers to the law
