Geoscience Reference
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interests (economic, religious, cultural, political) and goals. Gramsci
argued that dominant groups had to operate in a 'force field' such
that give-and-take was often required, and clever means of persuasion
necessary in order for these groups to realise their perceived interests.
Ideologies can thus go well beyond 'class' issues and are not monop-
olised by the bourgeoisie, but, equally, society is not pluralistic in the
sense some political scientists later came to represent it - that is, com-
posed of multiple actors who enjoy relatively
similar
rights (through
the democratic process) to have their agendas taken seriously by oth-
ers. For instance, today we might say that the idea that 'government-led
regulation
+
=
environmental sustainability' is hegemonic
in the West. While there are plenty of radical critics of this idea,
Gramscians point out that they have not won the war of position with
big business, national government or libertarian think tanks.
For a more textured appreciation of Marx and Gramsci on ideol-
ogy and hegemony, see the early chapters of Terry Eagleton's
Ideology
(Eagleton, 1991).
technology
Apart from advancing a 'decentred' conception of social power ('[L]et
us not look for the headquarters,' he once memorably said (Foucault,
1981: 95)), Foucault also famously described modern social power as 'pro-
ductive'. Consider this much-quoted passage from his book
Discipline and
punish
:
We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative
terms: it 'excludes', it 'represses', it 'censors'
...
it 'conceals'. In fact, power
produces: it produces reality, it produces domains of objects
...
(Foucault, 1979: 194)
Likewise, in the essay collection
Power/knowledge
he argued that:
What makes power
accepted is simply the fact that it doesn't only weigh on
us as a force that says 'no', but that it traverses and produces things, it induces
pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a
productive network which runs through the whole social body
...
...
(Foucault, 1980: 119)
This conception of
productive power
is useful insofar as it stops us from
fixating on overtly 'disciplinary' institutions (like criminal courts or pris-
ons) and the epistemic communities that sustain them. As I intimated in
Chapter 3
, it also encourages us to see the everyday 'subject positions' com-
prising all selves as the media of power, rather than already established
cault again: 'individuals are the vehicles of power, not [merely] its point
of application' (ibid.: 98). What's more, his notion of power obliges us
