POWER

AN EXTENDED DEFINITION

• Power has the capacity to change things … it is a means of constraining people and reducing their freedom, or increasing the freedom of action of the agents who possess it … it can either be restrictive or enabling …

• Giddens, A, 1993, Sociology

DEFINING POWERFUL

• Defining powerful...• Powerful

• 1. Having much power or strength

• 2. Politically or socially influential

DEFINING POWERLESS

• Powerless

• 1. Without power or strength

• 2. Wholly unable

• All definitions are from the Australian Oxford Dictionary, 1999.

TYPES OF POWER

• Personal Power

• Institutional or Structural Power

• Social Power

PERSONAL POWER

• Personal Power is the power a person feels when they make decisions and choices such as to take or not to take action.

• Personal Power is the power a person has when they know what they want and they know what they need to do to get what they want.

INSTITUTIONAL POWER

• Institutional / Structural Power is inherent in the practices and meanings of institutions such as the law, marriage, language, family, political system and so on.

• Institutional / Structural Power can also be expressed by active discrimination, omission, silence and the enforcement of ideologies.

SOCIAL POWER

• Social power is the power dynamics displayed in the day to day relations between people in social situations.

• This power can be derived from things such as educational background, positions of authority, status, gender, sexual orientation, race and so on.

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

• There is an old saying that knowledge is power.

• Without knowledge and understanding you cannot have power because you can’t understand the dynamics, the structures or yourself.

• Gaining knowledge (and then gaining power) is called Empowerment.

EMPOWERMENT

• Empowerment is having personal power.

• It is understanding the situation.

• It is about using your personal power to take actions.