POL 3910:
HONORS SEMINAR: AMERICAN POLITICS:
THE ELITIST-PLURALIST DEBATE

The Third Face of Power:
John Gaventa (1982).  Power and Powerlessness:  Acquiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley.

Now we’re going to pause after all these various theories to look at one study at length.

What is Gaventa's basic argument?

• First, he takes from Steven Lukes the idea that there is a third face of power not recognized by previous analysts.
• Second, he argues that there is a progression through the three faces of power, where the overt force is replaced by nondecisions, which give rise in their turn to people’s misunderstanding of their needs.
• Third, he argues that the operation of each type of power can be seen in the system he studied: they are not “hidden”.

The first dimension: “who participates, who gains & loses, who prevails in decision-making” (Polsby). Assumptions:

• focus on behavior
• grievances are recognized
• grievances are acted-upon
• participation occurs in decision-making (i.e., political) arenas
• these arenas are open to all organized groups
• leaders are not autonomous elites but just representatives for the organized groups
• inaction represents passivity or happiness
• “blaming the victim” concept: it’s their own fault for not participating

The second dimension: how the public agenda is regulated. Assumptions:

• people are aware of their interests

This is our first exposure to the so-called “third face” of power.

• What is the third face of power? “A has power over B if A affects B contrary to B’s interests”
• How does it differ from the first two faces? (1) Influencing, shaping, or determining wants (i.e., people’s very conception of issues) (2) Can occur even when no observable conflict appears.
• What are the various mechanisms by which it is exerted?

Another way of raising the same question is to ask what Gaventa means by the following passage (p.12, citing Steven Lukes Power: A Radical View [London: Macmillan, 1974], pp.24, 38):

Thirdly, the analysis of power must avoid the individualistic, behavioral confines of the one- and to some extent the two-dimensional approaches. It must allow ‛for consideration of the many ways in which potential issues are kept out of politics, whether through the operation of social forces and institutional practices or through individuals’ decisions’. In so extending the concept of power, Lukes suggests, ‛the three-dimensional view . . . offers the prospect of a serious sociological and not merely personalized explanation of how political systems prevent demands from becoming political issues or even from being made’.

Question: Gaventa claims to have overcome the empirical problems raised by the 2^nd and 3^rd faces of power. I don't believe it. What normative claims does he make or require for his analysis and conclusions? Auxiliary question: What normative claims does Crenson make?

TEACHING GAVENTA

Don't assign Gaventa the first day. Rather, start off with a description of the nature of the third face of power. Distinguish it from the first two. Give a couple of examples and ask students to identify them as belonging to the first, second, or third faces of power. Go through the list of mechanisms belonging to the third face. Tell students to read Gaventa and make up a list of examples of power mechanisms, giving citations and saying which face each is.

Possible examples:

• Denial of visas to speakers from communist countries

A SECTION-BY-SECTION OUTLINE OF GAVENTA

PART I INTRODUCTION

1          POWER AND PARTICIPATION

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1.1       The Nature of Power and Roots of Quiescence

xx

1.2       The Mechanisms of Power

xX

1.3       Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion--A Tentative Relationship

Note Figure 1.1 on p.21 (shown / adapted below). It tries to lay out specific mechanisms of power. Horizontally it shows the three dimensions of power. Vertically it shows the three aspects of this relationship: (1) the nature of A’s power over B; (2) the way that B experiences that power; and (3) what form B’s rebellion against that power takes.

Note that as we go across the first row, control gets cheaper and cheaper.

Note basic (& related) issues: falsifiability (28/2/7); false consciousness (and concept of “true” interests) vs. bad idea (28-29)

Study quiescence in the face of inequalities as needing explanation.

Look at what / whether “power barriers preclude their [= new consciousness & action] development” (27).

Notice on p.27 Gaventa raising (subtly) the subject-object distinction: his methods see the people as subjects, not objects.

● “not as objects of scrutiny” (27/1/4)

● “participate in ideas or action” [praxis!] (27/4/2)

            That's why he defines the third face of power around the issue of whether the miners had adequate information for making their judgment in the first place. For that, all he needs to show is what he already does in the book: that Boyle was spreading myths about Yablonski and that the miners only had one source of information (that they trusted, anyway). So the issue becomes not whether they'rereally right ‒ after all, even a clock that doesn't work is right twice a day ‒ but rather whether they had enough information to form a reasoned opinion.

            Of course, even this requires a normative (or at any rate a subjective) judgment that the miners should have gotten more information, that they required more information. Perhaps they had adequate information given the time and attention they had available for the issue.

The best example of the third face of power is Chapter 7, esp. Section 7.4 (pp.192 ff.).

2          THE CASE OF A CENTRAL APPALACHIAN VALLEY

Conclusion:  the Valley is not unique.

PART II THE HISTORICAL FORMATION OF POWER RELATIONSHIPS

3          THE IMPACT OF INDUSTRIAL POWER: THE SHAPING OF A COMPANY VALLEY

This chapter contains a miniature model of the origins, mechanisms, and effects of imperialism / colonialism.

3.1       Pre-Industrial Appalachian Society

xx

3.2       The Economic Demands of the Metropolis

What are the origins of imperialism / colonialism?

● Needs (of the “capital center”) to invest surplus capital

● Needs (of the “capital center”) to control raw materials and market

3.3       The Initial Encounter: Land Acquisition

● coercion (burning people out)

● deceit (forging deeds of sale; arresting people and having them put their land up as surety for bail)

● court actions (get one person to sell his share of the rights, then demand others sell it, then have court declare the property indivisible and put it up for public sale, then buy it dirt cheap)

These unjust practices are now “naturalized”; internalized oppression, blaming the victim.

3.4       The Economic Boom: The Structuring of Inequalities

Use of power to fill a predetermined social structure (stratified society) consisting of the following elements:

● owners (absentee for the most part)

● managers (brought in from elsewhere)

● small businessmen, merchants, doctors, etc.

● workers (from the countryside)

3.5       The Political Apparatus

Note the Marxist view of politics as an infrastructure to support rule by the economic elite (“in the final instance”).

Use of “symbolic politics” — laws to protect the workers are on the books but ignored.

3.6       The Ideological Apparatus

Consolidation of power through ideology gives rise to the third face of power.

● common purpose — we all want the same thing

● all benefitted if they worked  [Not true;  or at least not equally, anyway.]

● this represented “progress” and was good;  "civilized";  better than before

● overcoming nature;  domination;  not ecological

● NOT coercion

● NOT rationality (but why not, i.e., how do you know it was not?)

● RATHER shaping consciousness without awareness of this shaping, through the following four mechanisms: 1. Demonstration of wealthy lifestyle and the implicit message that it's available to all.  2. Degradation of older lifestyle. 3. “Appropriation of local culture,”, e.g., renaming places to symbolize the power and virtue of the new. 4. Institutions’ functionaries served as missionaries in various guises (ministers; schoolteachers).

The point Gaventa is making is that no full hearing was ever given. (But when can such a hearing be given? Is he taking the normative position sub rosa that full acquiescence is necessary?)

3.7       The Consensus

All of this resulted in a consensus. Praise by the middle class of the structure. Evidently little lower class conflict.

3.8       The Collapse

3.9       Conclusions

xx

4          THE IMPACT OF UNIONISM: THE RISE AND QUELLING OF PROTEST, 1929-1933

Miners' movement to assert rights and unionize

4.1       Power in the Coal Camp

xx

4.2       The Emergence of Rebellion

xx

4.3       The Quelling of Rebellion: Arena and Scope

xx

4.4       The Quelling of Rebellion: Ideology and Consciousness

Framing of the conflict.  Communist agitators.

4.5       Protest and Power Within the Union

xx

PART III THE MAINTENANCE OF POWER RELATIONSHIPS

5          INEQUALITY AND CULTURE IN THE CONTEMPORARY VALLEY--AN INTERLUDE

Inequalities still a problem

Response to inequalities in local politics

6.1       A Non-Issue at the Courthouse: Non-Taxation of Corporate Coal Wealth

xx

6.2       Voting: A Power-Powerlessness Model

xx

6.3       Conclusions: Poverty Politics and Social Reform

xx

7          POWER WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION: REFORMERS IN THE UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA

Response to inequalities by challenging the UMWA:  Jock Yablonski vs. Tony Boyle

7.1       A Theoretical Note: Michels Reconsidered

xx

7.2       The One-Dimensional Approach

xx

7.3       The Two-Dimensional Approach

xx

7.4       The Three-Dimensional Approach

Here the emphasis is on how the miners were unable to get accurate information, given that the union publication(s) – the only one(s) they trusted – we controlled by Boyle. The issue here is not whether Yablonski was (or would be) better than Boyle but whether the miners were able to have information necessary to making an informed choice. This will always be a matter of debate at the margins, but here the issue seems quite clear: they didn't.

7.5       Conclusions

xx

PART IV THE CHALLENGING OF POWER RELATIONSHIPS

8          COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND COMMUNITY MEDIA: PRE-PROTEST ARENAS OF COMMUNITY CONFLICT

xx

8.1       The Community Organization in the Emergence of Protest: From Garbage Collection to Land Reform

xx

8.2       The Media in Community Change: “‛Cause They've Never Been Notified About It...”

xx

xx

9.1       Trying to Make the System Work: The Case of Buffalo Hollow

xx

9.2       Beyond the Clear Fork Valley: Community Protest and the Multinational

xx

9.3       Repercussions

10 CONCLUSIONS

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MY OWN CRITIQUES

Gaventa's argument doesn't hold water, I believe: in section 3.7 he says that OTHER miners bonded together, so therefore the [UNPROVEN] oppression of THESE miners must arise from false consciousness. (If convicts riot, do we say they have THEREFORE been subjected to oppression?)

In section 3.8:  If the groups rebel when the powerful are made powerless, does that not “suggest that the prior rules had not been based on consensus, but on something else, such as control” (p.76)?  But I say, why could it not be based on success, not now occurring? Why should the rebels be more virtuous than the previous powers?

● It is true that a new situation can be manipulated into existence. There is a third face of power.

● The question remains, should we care?  “Sure there's power being exercised. So what?”

Somehow (on pp.77-78) the presence of lawsuits and their defeat becomes for Gaventa evidence of the presence of power/domination. Why not of a rational legal system?

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