A Study of Power ... PDF Download

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authority
Languages : en
Pages : 1072

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Author: Paul F. Kisak
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781519718549
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
In social science and politics, power is the ability to influence or control the behavior of people. The term "authority" is often used for power perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to humans as social beings. In business, power is often expressed as being "upward" or "downward". With downward power, a company's superior influences subordinates. When a company exerts upward power, it is the subordinates who influence the decisions of their leader or leaders.The use of power need not involve force or the threat of force (coercion). At one extreme, it more closely resembles what English speaking people might term "influence", although some authors distinguish "influence" as a means by which power is used.Much of the recent sociological debate about power revolves around the issue of its means to enable-in other words, power as a means to make social actions possible as much as it may constrain or prevent them. The philosopher Michel Foucault saw power as a structural expression of "a complex strategic situation in a given social setting" that requires both constraint and enablement.Potestatemology is the study of all the categories that influence power such as ideology, politics and the psychology of power. This book is about the study of power.

Author: Kerry Brown
Publisher: Icon Books
ISBN: 1785788086
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Although Xi Jinping came to power a decade ago, he remains an enigmatic figure in the West. His priority has always been to keep Chinese society as stable as possible, steering a course through a period of astounding economic growth, while ensuring that nothing challenges the political status quo. But with unrest stirring in Hong Kong, reports of human rights abuses taking place in the Xinjiang region and, devastatingly, the outbreak of a virus that would change the world, suddenly understanding Xi's China is more important than ever before. In this short and timely book, academic and author Kerry Brown will examine the complexities behind the man, explaining the impact that his rule is already having on the West. But who is Xi really, and what is his vision for China's future? And, crucially, what does that mean for the rest of the world?

Author: Kerry Brown
Publisher: Icon Books
ISBN: 1785789392
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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'Kerry Brown's Xi is the perfect primer for understanding Xi Jinping's status as China's greatest ruler since Mao and as this century's least assailable statesman' John Keay, author of China: A History 'A valuable primer for anyone looking to get up to speed on Xi Jinping's rise to global power' Jeff Wasserstrom, Guardian 'Offers a nuanced and thorough explanation of Xi's China and why the Communist Party, for all its flaws, has long life in it' Oliver Farry, Irish Times Although Xi Jinping came to power a decade ago, he remains an enigmatic figure in the West. His priority has always been to keep Chinese society as stable as possible, steering a course through a period of astounding economic growth, while ensuring that nothing challenges the political status quo. But with unrest stirring in Hong Kong, reports of human rights abuses taking place in the Xinjiang region and, devastatingly, the outbreak of a virus that would change the world, suddenly understanding Xi's China is more important than ever before. In this short and timely book, academic and author Kerry Brown examines the complexities behind the man, explaining the impact that his rule is already having on the West. But who is Xi really, and what is his vision for China's future? And, crucially, what does that mean for the rest of the world?

Author: William R. Luckie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Easy-to-use self-teaching manual teaches students from elementary to medical school develope vital skills that help in every stage of learning.

Author: Dick Pels
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134660839
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Property and power perform a key role in social and political theories of class inequality and social stratification, however, theorists have yet clearly to define these concepts, their mutual boundaries and scopes of application. This book answers the property/power puzzle by undertaking a broad historical inquiry into its intellectual origins and present-day effects through a series of case studies, including: Marxism vs. anarchism * the fascist assertion of the primacy of the political * social science as power theory * the managerial revolution * the knowledge society and the new intellectual classes

Author: Bertrand Russell
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415325073
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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In this remarkable book, regarded by Russell as one of the most important of his career, he argues that power is man's ultimate goal and is, in its many guises, the single most important element in the development of any society.

Author: Edward Schatz
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226736784
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Scholars of politics have sought in recent years to make the discipline more hospitable to qualitative methods of research. Lauding the results of this effort and highlighting its potential for the future, Political Ethnography makes a compelling case for one such method in particular. Ethnography, the contributors amply demonstrate in a wide range of original essays, is uniquely suited for illuminating the study of politics. Situating these pieces within the context of developments in political science, Edward Schatz provides an overarching introduction and substantive prefaces to each of the volume’s four sections. The first of these parts addresses the central ontological and epistemological issues raised by ethnographic work, while the second grapples with the reality that all research is conducted from a first-person perspective. The third section goes on to explore how ethnographic research can provide fresh perspectives on such perennial topics as opinion, causality, and power. Concluding that political ethnography can and should play a central role in the field as a whole, the final chapters illuminate the many ways in which ethnographic approaches can enhance, improve, and, in some areas, transform the study of politics.

Author: Jonathan Nitzan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134022298
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
Conventional theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis: after centuries of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is. Liberals and Marxists both think of capital as an ‘economic’ entity that they count in universal units of ‘utils’ or ‘abstract labour’, respectively. But these units are totally fictitious. Nobody has ever been able to observe or measure them, and for a good reason: they don’t exist. Since liberalism and Marxism depend on these non-existing units, their theories hang in suspension. They cannot explain the process that matters most – the accumulation of capital. This book offers a radical alternative. According to the authors, capital is not a narrow economic entity, but a symbolic quantification of power. It has little to do with utility or abstract labour, and it extends far beyond machines and production lines. Capital, the authors claim, represents the organized power of dominant capital groups to reshape – or creorder – their society. Written in simple language, accessible to lay readers and experts alike, the book develops a novel political economy. It takes the reader through the history, assumptions and limitations of mainstream economics and its associated theories of politics. It examines the evolution of Marxist thinking on accumulation and the state. And it articulates an innovative theory of ‘capital as power’ and a new history of the ‘capitalist mode of power’.

Author: Joseph Haroutunian
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725226790
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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This book is a study of the misuse of power, which has become the chief social problem of our time. The usual attitude towards will to power is that it is a source of evil and should be held in check as much as possible. There is also the contrary attitude that will to power is a natural impulse that is indispensable for a good life. Our judgment in this matter depends upon whether it is we who seek power, or someone else. There is a natural love of power for a good end. There is also an unnatural lust for power that makes the exercise of power an end in itself. This lust is the corruption of love by a radical distemper in the human soul. It cannot be explained in terms of the quest for security, freedom, prosperity, or any other rational good. It is not caused, either by biological traits or by any particular environment. It is generated by man's despair with his destiny, by the "power of death" and the anxious guilt that prevail in human existence. Lust for Power is primarily a description of the process by which love of power is changed into lust for power, with special emphasis on the new power available in our technological society and upon the despair evoked by "the modern world." In the last chapter, faith and culture are presented as the double antidote to lust and as the conditions of a life at once natural and good.