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Abstract
In this paper, I develop a functionalist theory of social domination to compete with current theories of this kind of social power that have arisen with and from the work of Philip Pettit. In the latter view, the basic structure of domination is seen as the capacity for ‘arbitrary interference’ of one agent in the life choices of another agent. According to this account, domination is performed by agents, acting arbitrarily, within structured social relationships, but is not seen as being caused by those social structures or systems themselves. On my alternative account, modern forms of domination need to be seen as outside of the interests of agents themselves and instead as part of the functions of the social systems and institutions within which agents are socialized, live, work, and to which they become adapted. In this view, domination becomes not a property of agency, but a central property of the social facts that make up the process of socialization itself. Domination is social and systemic, in this sense, and it persists because of the particular social forms that are held as legitimate by broad segments of any population.
Notes
1. This element of a functionalist explanation of domination is, therefore, distinct from the structuralist view where individuals come simply to internalize norms that produce ‘real interests’ in the norms and practices they perform (Isaac Citation1987, 72ff). Althusser (Citation1971), who refers to this process as ‘interpellation,’ also misses this element of what happens to the value orientations of individuals, instead providing a more mechanistic conception of the relation between subjects and their institutional contexts. The functionalist account sees the norms as originating in the institutional framework, but also shaping and adapting the agency of individuals, as well as their own justification of those institutional goals and norms, even if they are against their more object interests. In the end, this creates a more general predisposition to authority and even, in some spheres, an investment in forms of hierarchical relations.
2. Weber states that ‘a minimum of voluntary compliance, or an interest in obedience (whether external or internal), is implied by any genuine domination-relationship (Herrschaftsverhältnis)’ (Weber Citation1972, p. 122). Pettit’s account of domination, therefore, seems to me to capture more of an informal, pre-modern form of domination than the rationalized and institutionalized forms of control and subordination that pervade modern societies since, on his account, the dominated agent has his interests and preferences knowingly interfered with arbitrarily by another. See Costa (Citation2007) for a discussion of this weakness in Pettit’s theory.
3. Others have pointed to this problematic in Pettit’s work. Sharon Krause argues that ‘the requirement that interference must be “arbitrary” if it is to count as domination means that the non-arbitrary constraints on individual choice imposed by legitimate laws do not entail domination but are consistent with liberty’ (Krause Citation2013, p. 189).
4. I borrow these terms, although not the concepts attached to them, from Reath (Citation2006) who uses them in a very different way and within a very different context. Dahl (Citation1957) also uses similar language, but his typology of power relations leaves no room for the functionalist view of power that I am suggesting here. More specifically, the concept of a ‘source’ in my account will be rooted in the value systems that are used to secure power relations and these value systems come to inhere themselves within the consciousness of subjects making power relations valid in some basic sense – basic enough to allow the relation of authority to sustain itself. For Dahl, power is still formulated as: ‘A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do’ (Dahl Citation1957, p. 202–203). But, this still leaves open the problem of the capacity of social institutions to shape subjects and their values to see as valid forms of authority to the extent that B would not otherwise tend to do what A commands him to do, at least in some minimal and basic sense.
5. Effectively, when the source of domination no longer has potency, the domination relationship will dissolve, unless the subject is able to resort to force, coercion, or violence to maintain it. In pre-modern forms of domination, when the master no longer has legal authority to own his slaves, or the wife is allowed to divorce the abusive husband, the source of domination weakens and the object of domination is no longer under the power of the subject. But in modern domination, the source is the value or norm of legitimacy that both subject and object utilize to maintain the authority relation. But, once that belief or that norm breaks down, the systemic nature of control will also disintegrate. I think this counters Lovett’s argument: ‘the claim that beliefs themselves can literally dominate persons or groups should also be rejected because it is naïve. It tempts us to think that by merely sweeping away some false beliefs or other we can, by that act alone, liberate people from domination’ (Lovett Citation2010, p. 89). Modern forms of domination, I am arguing here, require the maintenance of such values, norms, and beliefs that allow modern hierarchical authority relations to sustain themselves. Resisting modern domination relations must, therefore, begin with the erosion of those sources of domination.
6. Isaac, for instance, correctly states that ‘the concept of domination thus refers neither to a contingent regularity nor to a mere social difference; it refers to a structurally asymmetrical relationship, whereby one element of the relationship has power over another in virtue of its structural power to direct the practices of the other’ (Isaac Citation1987, p. 84). However, Isaac then goes on to quote Weber’s thesis that for the ruler to have power over a subordinate only when ‘the ruled had made the content of the command the maxim of their conduct for its very own sake’ (Isaac Citation1987, p. 85). But this seems difficult to reconcile with the structuralist thesis that Isaac espouses, since Weber is referring to the neo-Kantian problem of the agent’s value orientations in coming to see the domination relation as valid and legitimate. It is not the case that the agent performs the practices and adopts the norms because they are simply repeated, but rather because they come to have a certain legitimacy that goes beyond merely following rules and norms. Indeed, these norms and practices, as well as the institutional contexts within which they are embedded, cease to be viewed as objects in need of justification or worthy of critique. In other words, they result from the fact that the agent comes to see them as legitimate.
7. For the former view, see Pettit (Citation1997) as well as the more derivative discussion by Lovett (Citation2010, 119ff).
8. For a neglected discussion of this phenomenon, see Lukács (Citation1971, 91ff), Mannheim (Citation1940, p. 45–51), as well as Thompson (Citation2012).
9. Mary Douglas comments on this dimension of institutions and subject formation that ‘[i]nstitutions systematically direct individual memory and channel our perceptions into forms compatible with the relations they authorize. They fix processes that are essentially dynamic, they hide their influence, and they rouse our emotions to a standardized pitch on standardized issues. Add to this that they endow themselves with rightness and send their mutual corroboration cascading through all the levels of our information system. No wonder they easily recruit us into joining their narcissistic self-contemplation’ (Douglas Citation1986, p. 92).
10. As Hayward argues on this point, ‘It is, after all, not only the force exerted by other human agents, but also the force exerted by deeply ingrained habits, by unexamined traditions, and by excessive routinization that Habermas and Habermasians oppose to ‘the force of the better argument’ (Hayward Citation2011, p. 484). The functionalist account agrees with this position, but holds that there is a deeper, more sustained problem in that forms of consciousness and value orientation come to be routinized internally by the social institutions that seek to secure domination relations.
11. Rousseau famously remarks on this point that ‘The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying this is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, ‘Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody’ (Rousseau Citation1959, p. 164).
12. As David Easton argues: if A sends a message to B and B adopts this message as the basis of his own behavior without evaluating it in terms of his own standards of what is desirable under the circumstances, we can say that A has exercised authority over B (Easton Citation1958, p. 179). Also, see the discussion by Wrong (Citation2002, 35ff).
13. Parsons argues on this point that authority is ‘an institutionalized complex of norms which do not involve the prescription, permission, or prohibition of particular acts, but which on a general level define the conditions under which, in the given social structure and given statuses and situations within it, acts of others within the same collectivity may be prescribed, permitted, or prohibited’ (Parsons Citation1958, p. 205). This means that modern forms of authority rely on the dominance of certain values that orient individuals toward compliance to others that occupy roles of authority assigned by the structure and function of any given institution.
14. Mary Douglas notes on this theme that ‘In most forms of society hidden sequences catch individuals in unforeseen traps and hurls them down paths they never chose’ (Douglas Citation1986, p. 42).
15. For the most part, individuals within domination or authority relations are unable to give coherent rationales for why they ought to, and why they ultimately do, obey those authorities. In this sense, the shaping of one’s personality toward the acceptance of authority is most clearly discernable. Hierarchical authority, or domination, is sustained in large part by those subject to domination. As Sidanius and Pratto argue: ‘within relatively stable group-based hierarchies, most of the activities of subordinates can be characterized as cooperative of, rather than subversive to, the system of group-based domination. Furthermore, we suggest that it is subordinates’ high level of both passive and active cooperation with their own oppression that provides systems of group-based social hierarchy with their remarkable degrees of resiliency, robustness, and stability. Therefore, seen from this perspective, social hierarchy is not maintained primarily by the oppressive behavior of dominants, but by the deferential and obsequious behavior of subordinates’ (Sidanius and Pratto Citation1999, p. 44). A parallel argument is made by John Searle ‘all political power, though exercised from above, comes from below. Because the system of status functions requires collective acceptance, all genuine political power comes from the bottom up’ (Searle Citation2007, p. 99–100).
16. In particular, Weber’s discussion concerns the move from ‘charismatic’ to ‘traditional’ forms of authority. Weber uses this to explain the transformation of religions based on charismatic authority of one person (Jesus, Moses, Muhammed, etc.) toward a stable belief system after their deaths. Routinization of charisma was the means by which authority over religious groups was maintained after the charismatic leaders were no longer there to maintain cohesion of the religious identity of the group. See Weber (Citation1922, p. 140–147).
17. Simmel makes a similar point: ‘Society confronts the individual with precepts. He becomes habituated to their compulsory character until the cruder and subtler means of compulsion are no longer necessary. His nature may thereby be so formed or deformed that he acts by these precepts as if on impulse, with a consistent and direct will which is not conscious of any law’ (Simmel Citation1950, p. 255).
18. In a different fashion, this is also pointed out by Rousseau: ‘For an arbitrary government to be legitimate, it would therefore have to be necessary in each generation for the people to be master of its acceptance or rejection. But in that event this government would no longer be arbitrary’ (Rousseau Citation1992, p. 34).
19. An interesting alternative view is put forth by Sharon Krause who argues, using racial exclusion as an example, that the ‘biased social cognitions and racial meanings that stigma entails set up a system of social interactions in which unfreedom emerges without any sovereign dominators’ (Krause Citation2013, p. 194). But this could be reversed in that structural forms of exclusion and power help shape and sustain value systems that orient biased social cognition, as when residential patterns under-socialize individuals to other races, and so on. The biased social cognition, therefore, comes to secure structural forms of bias and exclusion.
20. The subjective character and cognitive patterns of individuals must be stressed over the more mechanistic forms of action that seek to explain the domination relation. In this account, it is simply the recognition and following of rules within institutional contexts that grants power of some institutional agents over others (see Stahl Citation2011). However, the functionalist account maintains that the very subjective, character-based elements of the personality must be shaped in ways that affect the cognitive and cathectic relations to others in order for power to be granted. It is not enough that we construct others as having status functions; they need to have their values oriented toward that ‘legitimate’ authority behind which lies a hierarchy of extractive social relations.
21. Douglas claims correctly on this point that ‘[t]he shared symbolic universe and the classifications of nature embody the principles of authority and coordination. In such a system problems of legitimacy are solved because individuals carry the social order around inside their heads and project it out onto nature’ (Douglas Citation1986, p. 13). Of course, taking this in relation to my argument here, this shared symbolic universe is shaped and constructed by the forms of material power that individuals can wield.