POLS 374 Foundations of Global Politics

People Matter

People Matter

• Authors covered a great deal in their book, some of which you may agree with, some or which you entirely dismiss

• In their last chapter, they provide a summation of their framework, which brings us back to some key concepts, one of the most important of which is power.

People Matter

• Power, they emphasize, is not merely based on force or stuff, but, instead, is fundamentally the ability to get things done, to influence and persuade, to convince people that a particular project is worth doing and that they ought to join in

• This is what they mean by power-with.

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• If one is to appreciate the argument the authors have made, it is essential to understand this critical aspect of power

• One reason why this concept is so critical is this: Power-with tells us that power is everywhere and that we all have potential to exercise power.

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• This is a good thing, although we all know that power, even power-with, can be exercised for destructive and oppressive reasons. Consider the example of Hitler and Nazi Germany: Hitler

was successful because he tapped into the vast potential of the German nation; moreover, once he did this, he was able to create a “social body” that, in a sense, took on a life of its own. As the authors put it, once bound into a social body, individuals and groups found it exceptionally difficult to escapte the demands of a regime built from both peer pressure and state sactions—forces.

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• The case of Nazi Germany was a regime of power.

• Regimes of power are common. They exist wherever we see routinized beliefs and social practices in which we all engage, often quite unthinkingly.

Gender and patriarchy are another example of a regime of power.

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• When we hear terms such as regime of power, and when we discuss examples, it is easy to conclude that these regimes are inherently oppressive. But this isn’t necessarily the case.

• Regimes of power can, in fact, be tremendously productive and freeing: human rights has, in many important respects, become a regime of power. And there are many other examples.

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• Unfortunately, as the case of Nazi Germany illustrates, negative forms of power not only persist, but also often dominant.

• Even more, these negative forms of power are often disguised; they don’t seem like power at all.

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• One example of this is the movement toward rational decision-making. This form of power tells us that important policy decisions should be left to experts, to those who really know what they’re talking about.

• How is this a regime of power?

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• It’s a regime of power because the appeal to “experts” is not fundamentally meant to reflect a neutral, apolitical decision-making process, but, instead, is meant to legitimize the interests of those already in power and to eliminate debate and discussion on issues of importance to a broad range of citizens.

• In short, it is a regime of power designed to eliminate politics.

People Matter

• On this point, it is important to emphasize how the authors define politics. They adopt a broad definition, which sees politics “as debating about what kind of society we would like to live in and how we should go about trying to make it happen.”

• Increasingly, these debates rarely happen. This is not because the debates aren’t important, but because the “forms of power circulating through the social body (our social body) lead people to accept the status quo as ‘natural’ and as difficult, if not impossible to change.

People Matter

• So, what can be done? Can anything be done?

• To answer this question, it’s essential to see the world through the authors’ eyes.

People Matter

• To start, though, one thing they warn us against is to simply come up with a long “to do” list of big things that ought to be done. Such lists go nowhere, in part because they are too abstract, seemingly too big, and, to many people, “unrealistic.”

• They also go nowhere because they contradict the social body: We have been taught that people do not matter where the “big things” are concerned. It’s best to leave things to the experts, those whose jobs are to “govern.”

People Matter

• In fact, one of the most important, but very subtle, regimes of power at work today is “governmentality.”

• This boils down to the idea that all our problems can and should be managed by the proper authorities.

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• Back to the question: What can be done?

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• The first step is to remember that politics is not primarily about the exercise of power-over, but is, instead, about how and to what ends power is to be used.

• The second step is realize that power is diffused throughout society; that it is not only oppressive, but always potentially productive.

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• Both steps allow us to understand that the creation of new regimes of power is always possible

• These new regimes can challenge, even if only in a very small, seeming insignificant way, the web of governmentality.

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• “Challenges” to dominant power structures, it is important to understand, does not imply replacing exiting arrangements with new ones, or creating different arrangements of governmentatilty (reform). Rather, it is about generating new or different webs of power.

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• As the authors put it, it is about producing new forms of power.

• This then raises the question: How are new forms of power produced?

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• The simple answer: through speech and action.

• “Speech and action challenge exactly those principles, practices, and policies that seek to ‘manage’ both populations and nature even as they undermine and destroy them.”

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• “Speech” implies dissent and an emotional commitment to change that is not purely rational.

• Action implies a collective or social movement, which can start off very small but has the potential to grow into something very big.

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• The potential power of speech and action lies in their non-rational basis: because they are based on principled commitment that is inherently independent of a unitary construction of self-interest, they can persist in even the face of seemingly unchallengeable odds.

• This is key.

People Matter

• The authors’ recommendation can be summed up in another way as well. We should, as they put, be political. In fact, we should be “too political.”

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• “Too political” means challenging what we think of as normal, especially if what is normal results in injustice, unfairness, violence and repression. Too political means not accepting the status quo as inevitable or natural. Too political means speaking out, asking different questions—not just, “What is the most efficient way to do this or that?” but “Why are we doing this or that, and what are we not doing because we are doing these other things?”