In the eye of the potentially non-confirm-structuring beholder: agent-centred reading of four-dimensional model of power

ABSTRACT

This article examines Haugaard’s four-dimensional model of power through his reconstructive reading of Giddens’ theory of structuration. In other words, to use early Haugaard to shed light on the aspects of his contemporary work which have, gradually, shaded into the implicit in later writings. It begins with introduction of Haugaard’s reformulation of Giddens’ theory of structuration which focuses on the importance of structuring others in for both the maintenance and augmentation of social systems, then outlines his re-inscription of various strands of thought in power theory into a four-dimensional model and provides an agent-centred reading of the four-dimensional power framework.

KEYWORDS:

• Social power
• political power
• (re)structuration
• 4-D power
• agency
• Haugaard

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the reviewers for really engaging comments that helped to focus the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. To select a few examples from this Journal: dialogues between Hayward and Lukes (2008), Pansardi and Morris (Morriss 2012, Pansardi 2012) or Battegazzorre (2017).

2. The term ‘tacit knowledge’ is often described in contradistinction to formal, codified or explicit knowledge. It is the kind of knowledge that is transferred through experience and observation rather than symbolically through the language. Even though agents can use this knowledge, they cannot codify it in the language without difficulties. This process has also been subject to extensive research within psychology of cognition and memory that further corroborate this element of Giddens’ account (cf. Schacter 1992, Ullman 2004).

3. For Giddens, the social structures are always enabling and constraining at the same time. The structures enable specific forms of agency by imposing limitations (constraint) upon possible options open to actors within the context of structured interaction (cf. Giddens 1984, 25–28, 169–180).

4. Although elaborated extensively by Giddens, the notion of ontological security can be traced to the Laing’s ([1960] 2010) The divided self: an existential study in sanity and madness, published more than a decade before Giddens’s first book. While there is a significant overlap between how these authors use the concept, what differs is their respective foci. Laing used the concept to investigate the difference between the stable and schizophrenic individuals, Giddens uses it to explain structural reproduction.

5. See Haugaard (1992, pp. 101–120) for a detailed discussion or Javornicky (2016, pp. 91–94) for the abbreviated version of this argument.

6. ‘What makes action specifically classifiable as social action is the probability that others will behave in a particular fashion and a consequent taking account of that probability in your action’ (Haugaard 1992, p. 123). This sociability goes beyond simple stimulus-response relationship found in animal kingdom and presupposes shared socialized meaning between interacting agents. Such operational definition allows social theorist to make distinction between meaningful, structured, social interaction oriented towards others and non-social action in relation to outside phenomena.

7. While the term restructuration is not feasible to denote the practice of confirm-structuration, I would like to propose to reserve the term for the baseline theoretical framework from within which Haugaard understands the remaining theoretical contributions of power theory. This is because it captures both, the nature of the phenomenon it describes and its relationship towards its theoretical origins.

8. According to Haugaard’s theoretical position, the structural reproduction does not occur at random or by accident even if it is an unintended outcome of the intentional action. The modalities of structured interaction outlined above serve to elucidate the conditions under which social structures become reproduced.

9. It is important to stress at this point that when Haugaard uses the conception of power as zero or positive-sum phenomenon, he has in mind the sociological, rather than normative, use of the terms zero and positive which are well in line with Parsons’ discussion of the differences of amount of power rather than its normative valence. To be sure Parsons has since been interpreted as a theorist of power as power-to, which ascribes a positive normative valence to the phenomenon of power, but Haugaard argues that such reading actually goes against the grain of Parsons’ article (Haugaard 2012, p. 36).

10. The full, often used, quote is: ‘All forms of political organization have a bias in favour of the exploitation of some kinds of conflict and the suppression of others because organization is the mobilization of bias. Some issues are organized into politics while others are organized out’ (Schattschneider 1960, p. 71).

11. See the Haugaard’s discussion of private language in the first part of the paper.

12. The concept of false consciousness in Marxist theory has been criticized for privileging the perspective of the observer with regard to what counts as the real interests. To overcome this, Lukes does not propose a single prescriptive account of what real interests are. Rather, drawing upon theorists like Nussbaum (2000) and Sen (2001), he advocates for a conception of real interests as ‘ … a way of identifying “basic” or “central” capabilities which existing arrangements preclude’ (Lukes 2005, p. 148). That is by identifying some set of external criteria for human flourishing that can be considered agreeable to the agents under investigation if their knowledge was not misled. And it proposes that it can be empirically shown by looking for cases where some members of the dominated group attempt to remedy their situation in a way which shows they consider their situation illegitimate. This paradoxically leads him to look ‘ … for symptomatic behaviour that the social subjects are not really suffering from false consciousness’ (Haugaard 2008b, p. 103). But, when it comes to evaluation of the genuine cases of false consciousness, Lukes’ position commits him to appeal to a normative conception of real interests and legitimacy external to the dominated group, which is in tension with his explicitly sociological account of the operation of 3-D power .

13. Haugaard (2008a) argues there is a significant tension between the normative and sociological conception of legitimacy of power. As it stands, Lukes’ normative conception of power as domination in fact describes the sociological account of legitimacy from the perspective of agents in what can be considered genuine cases of false consciousness. His description of the relationship between knowledge and willing subordination is explicitly sociological, but his definition of power is deeply normative as is evident from his open intent to designate power as domination even though he recognizes that the discussions of power as capacity-to-act have merit (Lukes 2005, Hayward and Lukes 2008).

14. It even has the potential to shade into the 4-D (ontological dispositions) as the unavoidability of the conflict becomes embodied in sort of emotional apathy. This is evident in Gaventa’s (1982) classic study of the mining communities, or in the research conducted on learned helplessness (Hiroto and Seligman 1975, Abramson et al. 1978) which show that in some cases the discursive barriers can be internalized into the kind of embodied pessimism. Also, see TenHouten (2017) in this journal.

15. Weber (1978) speaks of the traditional, value-rational and affective types of social action as being in some way conflicted with the instrumental rationality of modern bureaucratic state.

16. Giddens developed his model of the self through the works of Freud and particularly Erikson (1963).

17. Useful overviews of the relationship between power and emotions in sociology can be found in Heaney and Flam (2016) or in the recent special issue of Journal of Political Power (cf. Baaz et al. 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Irish Research Council [GOIPG/2014/501].

Notes on contributors

M. Javornicky

M. Javornicky completed a PhD in Sociology in 2019 and currently teaches sociology at NUI Galway. His work is focused on theoretical and methodological aspects of studying power relations in contemporary Ireland.