‘The fable of the Bs’: between substantialism and deep relational thinking about power

Abstract

The paper aims at drawing out concisely the differences and potentials for a dialogue between the two major understandings of relational approach to power, that the author dubs ‘the fable of the Bs’ and ‘trans-actionalism’. Compared to traditional substantialist approaches that overwhelmingly focus on the As (the powerful) ‘the fable of the Bs’ highlights the importance also of considering the contribution of the Bs (the powerless) in creating and upholding power relations. ‘Trans-actionalism’ or ‘deep relational thinking’ presumes the primacy of relations over entities. The elements of power relations are viewed not as being ‘given’ prior to those relations, but as being constituted within them.

Keywords:

• power
• relational approaches in the social sciences
• trans-actionalism
• inter-actionalism
• self-actionalism

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Tallinn University’s School of Governance, Law, and Society where I received my PhD in Government and Politics in 2011 and worked later as a senior research fellow and an associate professor, and the University of Tampere’s Institute for Advanced Social Research where I served as both a postdoctoral and senior research fellow in 2013–2015. In particular, I want to thank Risto Heiskala, Pertti Alasuutari, Jarkko Bamberg, Heikki A. Kovalainen, Anitta Kynsilehto, Nelli Piattoeva, Ali Qadir, Esa Reunanen, Kirsi Peltonen, Mari-Liis Jakobson, Vilma Sool, Hannele Mäkelä, Laura Huttunen, Priit Suve, Georg Sootla, Kersten Kattai, Ott Puumeister, Martin Mölder, Triin Lauri, Piret Peiker, Erin Crouch, and the reviewers and editors of Journal of Political Power for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1. In this paper, I only consider approaches that explicitly set analysis of power and governance at their core and mostly bracket relational approaches that deal mainly with other topics (identity, equality, etc.). Sometimes it is unavoidable to open the general background of the relevant intellectual movements (like, for instance, SNA) for which power is only one of very many research topics.

2. I skip the discussion of ANT-based approaches to power that, based on the criteria offered below, would definitely qualify as examples of trans-actionalism. See Clegg (1989, ch. 8), for an example of a framework for power analysis that draws heavily on ANT, and Munro (2009) for a general overview of ANT’s potential for power analysis. For an example of SNA-based approaches to power, see Knoke (1990). On attempts at building a general methodological/theoretical dialogues between SNA and ANT see Knox et al. (2006) and Mützel (2009).

3. Adapting various established understandings of ‘ontology’ and ‘methodology’ (Hay 2006, Bevir 2008) to our topic I see the former to be revolving around the question: ‘What is power?’ and the latter around the question: ‘How to study power empirically (given our ontological understanding of what power is)?’

4. Though see below on Emirbayer’s somewhat ambivalent attitudes related to positioning SNA.

5. Dahl’s/pluralists’ debt to Weber is widely recognized (see, for instance, Knoke 1990, ch. 1, Lukes 2005, ch 1).

6. For instance, most of the empirical analyses in Dahl (1961) concentrate on ‘the fable of the As’ (power base and means in Dahl’s [1957] sense).

7. They do include the theoretical points made in this paper in different chapters of their later book (1970, see, especially chapters 2 and 3) but these are unsystematically tied together, and in this book there is no furthering, let alone application, of the ‘relational’ framework of power they propose in 1963.

8. Cf. Hayward (2000) on a similar argument about ‘de-faced’ power.

9. For more extensive analyses of SNA from the perspective that is equivalent to ‘trans-actionalism’ as put forth in this paper see Emirbayer and Goodwin 1994, Knox et al. 2006, Fuhse 2009, Mische 2011, Erikson 2013.

10. See, for instance, Marsden (1983); also Knoke (2011) for an overview.

11. Methodologically, the empirical works of the founders of ‘faces of power’ debate (Dahl 1961, Bachrach and Baratz 1970) have strong ‘comparative static’ leanings.

12. Compare, for instance, White’s formalist work from the 1970s (White et al. 1976) with his second edition of Identity and Control (2008), which is often depicted as an instance of ‘relational sociology’ (see Fuhse 2009, Mützel 2009, Erikson 2013).

13. On the distinction between ‘simple’, ‘complex’ and ‘wicked’ problems see Roberts (2000) and Head and Alford (2015); also Rittel and Webber (1973) on the most eminent exposition of ‘wicked problems’.