Abstract
Steven Lukes and Clarissa Hayward have been at the forefront of the debate surrounding the relationship between power, structure, and agency. Yet certain weaknesses beset their conceptualization of power and its relationship to structure and agency. Both Lukes’s and Hayward's conceptualization of structure is problematic, and neither theorist shows fully how power is instantiated in both structure and agency. Consequently, there are empirical instances that cannot be explained satisfactorily within one or the other framework. This article offers an in-depth critique of Lukes’s and Hayward's conceptualizations of power, especially their understandings of its relationship with structure and agency, and sets out an alternative realist conceptualization of power that offers a way to avoid or minimize the weaknesses and tensions identified in their work. This approach, I argue, can help inform radical strategies that aim at freedom by transforming and transcending, rather than merely ameliorating, existing power relations and states of affairs.
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Notes
Although see Ian Shapiro, “On the Second Edition of Lukes’ Third Face,” Political Studies Review 4 (2006): 146–55.
For example, Lukes and Hayward write, “contemporary social and political theorists (especially, but not exclusively, theorists who self-identify as postmodernists or poststructuralists) have problematized the relation among [power, structure and agency]” in Clarissa Hayward and Steven Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot? Power, Structure and Agency: A Dialogue,” Journal of Power 1 (2008): 5–20, at 5. Despite Hayward's earlier discussion of realism and power in Clarissa Hayward, De-Facing Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), Chapter 2, realist work is ignored completely in this latter debate.
Steven Lukes, “Power and Agency,” British Journal of Sociology 53 (2002): 491–96; Lukes, Power; Clarissa Hayward, “De-Facing Power,” Polity 31 (1998): 1–22; Hayward, De-Facing Power; Clarissa Hayward, “On Power and Responsibility,” Political Studies Review 4 (2006): 156–63; Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?”; see also Steven Lukes, Essays in Social Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).
Rom Harré, “Powers,” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 21 (1970): 81–101; Rom Harré and E.H. Madden, Causal Powers (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975); Ted Benton, “ ‘Objective’ Interests and the Sociology of Power,” Sociology 15 (1981): 161–84; Jeffrey C. Isaac, “Beyond the Three Faces of Power: A Realist Critique,” Polity 20 (1987): 4–31; Jeffrey C. Isaac, Power and Marxist Theory: A Realist View (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987); Derek Layder, “Power, Structure and Agency,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 15 (1985): 131–49.
See, for example, Margaret Archer, Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Roy Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science (Brighton: Harvester, 1978); Roy Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism (London: Routledge, 1998); Douglas V. Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” in Critical Realism: Essential Readings, ed. Margaret Archer, Roy Bhaskar, Andrew Collier, Tony Lawson and Alan Norrie (London: Routledge, 1998), 339–55.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 5–6.
Lukes, Power, 63.
Lukes, Power, 65.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 7.
Lukes, Power, 66.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 14.
Lukes, Essays, 29; see also Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 5.
Lukes, Power, 68–69; see also Lukes, Essays, Chapter 1.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 12.
Lukes, “Power and Agency,” 492 and 494, emphasis in original.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 11.
Lukes, Essays, 29.
Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory (London: Macmillan, 1979), 91.
Layder, “Power, Structure and Agency,” 378.
See Hayward's argument in Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 10–11.
Layder, “Power, Structure and Agency,” 377.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 12.
Lukes, Essays, 10.
Layder, “Power, Structure and Agency,” 377.
Layder, “Power, Structure and Agency,” 375.
Layder, “Power, Structure and Agency,” 377–78.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 8.
Layder, “Power, Structure and Agency,” 378.
Giddens, Central Problems, 69–70, emphasis in original.
Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 344.
Alex Callinicos, The Resources of Critique (Cambridge: Polity, 2006), 189.
Layder, “Power, Structure and Agency,” 386.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 11.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 3.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 10.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 3.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 34.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 4–7.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 5.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 6.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 7, emphasis in original.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 38.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 31.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 39.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 15, emphasis in original.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 6.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 11.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 30.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 5.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 31.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 16, emphasis in original.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 30.
Lukes, “Power and Agency,” 492.
Layder, “Power, Structure and Agency,” 372.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 15.
Porpora “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 339.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 16.
Hayward, “On Power and Responsibility,” 160–61.
Porpora “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 339.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 15.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 8.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 159–60, emphasis in original.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 30.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 15.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 7.
Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 351, emphasis in original.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 15.
Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 353.
Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 346.
Porpora “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 340.
Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 347.
Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 339.
Callinicos, Resources of Critique, 189.
Margaret Archer, “Introduction,” in Critical Realism: Essential Readings, ed. Margaret Archer, Roy Bhaskar, Andrew Collier, Tony Lawson and Alan Norrie (London: Routledge, 1998), 189–20.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 26.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 23.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 32–33.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 33.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 33–34.
Hayward, De-Facing Power, 34.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 6–7.
Harré, “Powers”; Harré and Madden, Causal Powers.
Harré, “Powers,” 85.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 12.
Lukes, Essays, 9.
Hugh Ward, “Structural Power—A Contradiction in Terms?” Political Studies 35 (1987): 593–610, at 600.
Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 343.
Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 346.
Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 344.
Isaac, “Beyond the Three Faces of Power,” 22.
Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 349.
Layder, “Power, Structure and Agency,” 378.
Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 353.
Benton, “‘Objective’ Interests and the Sociology of Power,” 175.
Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism, 80–81.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?,” 12.
Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 353.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 11.
Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 344.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 10.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 15.
Porpora, “Four Concepts of Social Structure,” 352.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 9.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 17.
Peter Morriss, Power: A Philosophical Analysis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 41–42, emphasis in original.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 10–11.
See Morriss, Power, 36–42.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 8, 12.
Lukes, Power, 68.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 7.
Hayward and Lukes, “Nobody to Shoot?” 12.
Roy Bhaskar, Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 76, emphasis in original. As such, Hayward is mistaken in arguing that realists implicitly conceive of freedom as negative liberty and as “a state in which action is independently chosen and/or authentic.” Hayward, De-Facing Power, 4 and Chapter 6.
Bhaskar, Philosophy, 76.
Andrew Collier, Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar's Philosophy (London: Verso, 1994), 195.
Collier, Critical Realism, 194.
Collier, Critical Realism, 197.
Callinicos, Resources of Critique, 190–92.
Layder, “Power, Structure and Agency,” 371.
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I thank Lou Cabrera, Mark Goodwin, Will Leggett, David Marsh, Liam Stanley, Colin Thain, Daniel Wincott, the Social and Political Theory Group at the University of Birmingham, the class of 2009 on my Power in Britain module and, especially, Laura Jenkins, for various discussions concerning power and for useful advice on earlier versions of this article. I also thank the three anonymous reviewers and the editors of Polity for their helpful comments and guidance.
Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).