Power, Social vs Personal Relations

[Gordon Fitch]

Carrol says:
> >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.

catherine.driscoll at adelaide.edu.au:
> Superstition?
> Carrol, I just don't think these "two contexts" are this separable (let 
> alone this easily separable). Show me an operation of social power which is 
> not instantiated in personal relations, or the other way around. I just 
> don't buy it.

Someone has a lot of money in the bank.  Now, it's true that
the social power of the money will be instantiated through a
series of personal relations of a sort, but these may be
very transitory and abstract.  For instance, they buy a lot
of real estate, thus depriving other of the use of it and
driving up prices, but the transaction and its effects are
not specifically personal.

-- Gordon