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Power: A Structural View
Clarissa Rile Hayward, Professor of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis
Abstract: This paper makes the case that attending to the mutual constitution of social structure and social action helps explain both why many power relations are exceedingly difficult to challenge and to change, and also how people nevertheless sometimes succeed in transforming them. It begins by considering the logic and the limits of what I characterize as a classic, agent-centric approach to conceptualizing power. It then turns to three characteristics of social power, understood in more structural terms. First, power has no mastermind; it does not wear the face of a powerful agent, who controls and directs it. Second, power shapes action, not only by prohibiting and constraining human actors, but also by habituating them. Third, power has a protean quality; social structures intersect with and reinforce one another in ways that often shift and mutate over time. Attending to these three characteristics can help us understand what makes structural power relations so difficult to change and how it is that people sometimes nevertheless do transform them, and it can enrich accounts of responsibility for structural power.
Clarissa Rile Hayward is a contemporary political theorist whose research and teaching focus on theories of power, democratic theory, theories of identity, and American urban politics. Hayward's research and teaching focus on questions central to understanding and evaluating political life: “What is social power, and how does it shape human freedom?” “What does democratic government entail, and what are its practical and institutional implications?” “How do social actors create and maintain identities?”
Her most recent book, How Americans Make Race: Stories, Institutions, Spaces (Cambridge University Press, 2013), was co-winner of the American Political Science Association's prize for the Best Book in Urban Politics in 2014. Hayward is also author of De-Facing Power (Cambridge University Press, 2000) and co-editor (with Todd Swanstrom) of Justice and the American Metropolis (University of Minnesota Press, 2011). In addition, she has published many articles in edited volumes and in journals, such as the American Political Science Review, Constellations, Contemporary Political Theory, the Journal of Politics, Polity, and Political Theory. Her research has been supported by the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard, and Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.
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