Power, Social vs Personal Relations

[Carrol Cox]

"Social relation" is ambiguous, in that it can be used to describe two
quite different, even opposed, kinds of relation. The ambiguity can be
arbitrarily resolved by distinguishing _personal_ from _social_
relations. This is commonly done in practice. Should students and
faculty have sexual relations? This has been widely debated, and the
debate turns precisely on whether or not it is legitimate for a social
and a personal relation to coincide. Or consider the old council against
loaning money to friends. Lender/borrower is a social relation, while
friendship is a personal relationship. The confusion of the two may be
prohibited -- or in this case, demanded by some. Plato's conception of
lending was that it should occur _only_ between friends, and that was
his motive for arguing that the state should not enforce the collection
of debts: the state should not interfere in personal relationshps. This
distinction has also arisen in debates over segregation: segregation is
legal in _personal_ relationships but illegal in social relations. (Fur
flies over this of course.)

I'm not sure that personal relationships are of any interest or
relevance to the study of social relations, for social relations are
determined _behind the back_ of the actors as it were, and the personal
beliefs, feelings, etc. of the actors does not and cannot change the
social relation. This thread or bundle of threads began with a question
(posed I believe by Ian) over a question of social power, not personal
power. It is playing words, engaging in superstition, to regard "power"
in "power in society" as being the same word as "power" in "power in
personal relations." We _can_ talk of the way in whcih social relations
influence personal relations (or vice versa), and we can note the
operation of power in each -- but still we must not think that we are
talking about the same thing with the word power in the two contexts.

Carrol