polity
First published in German as Was ist Macht? © Philipp Reclam jun. GmbH & Co. KG, Stuttgart, 2005
This English edition © Polity Press, 2019
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1613-1
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When it comes to the concept of power, theoretical chaos still reigns. While the existence of the phenomenon itself cannot be doubted, the concept remains altogether ambiguous. For some, it means repression; for others, it is a constructive element in communication. Legal, political and sociological notions of power remain unreconciled. Power is sometimes associated with freedom, sometimes with coercion. For some power is based on common action, for others on struggle. Some draw a sharp line between power and violence. For others, violence is just a more extreme form of power. At one moment power is associated with the law, at another with arbitrariness.
Given this theoretical confusion, we shall look for a flexible concept of power that is able to unite these divergent ideas. Thus, the task is to formulate a basic form of power from which we can, by modifying its inner structural elements, derive the different forms in which power may appear. This is the theoretical approach the book pursues, and the book aims, in this way, to deprive power of that power it has on account of the fact that we do not fully understand what it actually is.1