Power relations are everywhere. So every time
we interact with somebody else, power
relations are apparent in the interactions.
Doesn’t mean that the people interacting
are
conscious of those power relations, but they,
they are evident if you analyse the interactions.
And so power relations are also evident at
a broader social level, societal level. So
that one
can think about everybody being positioned
within society
in relation to power, and those relations shifting.
Power permeates everything. It permeates everything
that we do. I think it permeates every
relationship we have with somebody else. There
are these complex networks of power going on.
And also that the power is not necessary,
surely, a good thing or a bad thing, there’s
nothing inherently good or bad in power, it’s
what you do with it and what it’s, what
the effect
of exercising power is.
In a research project that I’m doing together
with Wendy Hollway and with Heather Elliott
on
the transition to motherhood, we find that
some of the women talk about how willing their
husbands are to help with childcare, and that
they have to be the ones that wake their
husbands up to change the nappy or to do the
feed. So it means that they never get a clear
night’s sleep, because even if it’s not
their turn, say at the weekend, when their
husbands are
around, they have to take responsibility for,
for waking up and so on, and they very much
see
it as helping rather than being in full-time
partnership. Now, what’s power relations
got to do
with that? Well if we think about the notion
of power relations, we can see that that situation
comes to be taken for granted as natural,
as normal, to be reproduced in many households
because there are already differential power
relations in society.
Where’s mummy going? Where’s mummy going?
We’re not talking about the kind of power
relations that are forms of domination, just
negative
oppression, monolithic. We’re talking about
power relations as ongoing processes that
can
have positive as well as negative effects.
Micropower. It flows in all directions, in
many
different ways and therefore has almost an
infinity of different effects.
Power is relational in that in a different
context, different people can actually take
power so that
it is shifting. And what I mean by that is,
for example, take parents and children. Now
parents
undoubtedly tend to have more power than do
their children, but there are situations in
which
children switch that. In, for example, public,
children will sometimes know that their parents
can’t shout at them and that they can get
back at their, their parents by doing certain
things,
within certain limits maybe, by doing certain
things that their parents can’t retaliate
about. Or,
that they can say something about their parents
that will make their parents feel excruciatingly
embarrassed. So they have a lot of power in
that situation.
It’s contextual, it’s situated, it’s
not everywhere and at all times, but it means
that power is not absolute.
