THE USES OF NATURE: SOCIAL POWER AND REPRESENTATION - Making Sense of Nature - page 192

made by the powers that be. Equally, it would be analytically and
politically unhelpful to regard such acts as themselves expressions of
social power akin to the capacities possessed by those whose power is
being opposed. This is because acts of opposition are sometimes only
symbolic, of temporary efficacy, or take a 'one-off ' form that's hard to
reproduce.
We should also note that the discourses of potentially powerful institu-
tions, like climate science (discussed in Chapter 8 ), may have little or no
effect, despite the hopes and intentions of their creators. This is because
others (e.g. politicians) are free to ignore or not act on the full implications
of these discourses.

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The study of social power and resistance to it are arguably implicated in that which
they analyse
For all his reflexivity, some critics have detected in Foucault's writings a
curious tendency to assume that social power exists 'out there', waiting to
be represented by the analyst clever enough to identify its hidden or hith-
erto unfathomed forms. But what if representations of power in the social
sciences and humanities are themselves part of the process whereby social
power is reproduced? Is it possible to have an 'objective' view of what
social power 'really is'? Is research into social power contributory to resis-
tance to it? Should the analyst of social power have a justified normative
stance on that which they study, identifying 'good' forms of social power
from 'oppressive', 'illegitimate' or 'harmful' ones? If so, should they crit-
icise the powerful and also lay actors who (in the analyst's view) fail to
understand how social power affects them?

Foucault gave different answers to these and related questions at different
points in his career. He seemed to recognise the tensions inherent in any
attempt to analyse and evaluate social power. There appears to be no way of
making sense of social power - either what forms it takes or how we should
judge them - that does not beg some very large questions about the analyst's
role (questions that won't admit of clear-cut answers).

How best to make sense of social power?
What can we learn from these debates about the nature and effects of social
power? There's clearly no consensus on what social power is or the means,
ends and outcomes of its operation . 8 In this light, we appear to have two
analytical options. On the one hand, we can accept that social power may
take several different forms whose nature and precise modes of operation
are still subject to debate. We can focus on one or more of these and argue
that the conception of social power that we are advancing is preferable to
all the others: in some way it's more 'accurate', 'truthful', 'perceptive' or
what-have-you. We thereby enter the fray and seek to shape the debate
from the inside. On the other hand, we can infer that different conceptions
of social power are themselves weapons in the process whereby both hard