Distinguishing between power-over and power-to is misleading.
Let's say that I have "power over" my son/lover/students and they have "power to" recognise or not, participate or not, act on or against my power or not... it makes their power less important than mine in some categorical way. A range of institutions and discourses make my power-to more significant than their power-to, but those effects are specific to those situations. It's not my power- over any of them that gives me the capacity to use my power more effectively than them in a given situation -- it's the institutional/discursive field that comprises that situation.
Catherine
Quoting Ian Murray <seamus2001 at attbi.com>:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "frank scott" <frank at marin.cc.ca.us>
> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
> Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 4:59 PM
> Subject: Re: power
>
>
> > "...More discussion and argument
> > by all means, but power and violence are the problem, not the solution."
> >
> > agree about violence, of course, but let's be careful about
> > power...rather nice and necessary to have it, exercised democratically,
> > and especially not exercised against people, or over people, but in
> > common...the word can have many definitions, but lets be careful not to
> > confuse it with oppresion and other things that are not inherent in
> > power, but in its exercise...
> > fs
>
> ====================
>
> I find the distinction of power-over [coercive capacity either individual
> or institutionally backed -class, state etc.] vis a vis power-to
> [neo-Hegelian theories of positive liberty, Robert Hale -an under
> appreciated power-to and power-over theorist, Amartya Sen's "capabilities"
> approach, Foucault etc.] rather helpful. I was intending the first in the
> context given above. I think the whole anti-power discourse is clearly
> directed at the notion of power-over for the sake of enlarging the scale
> and scope of power-to. In the latter sense social expressions of
> dignity/dignifying behavior are forms of power.
>
>
> Ian
>
>