In the beginning of our discussion about power, we saw how Charon made some distinctions among potential, actual, and exerted power. In this section we want to look at how power becomes actual and exerted. It's like the difference between the power that is present in the electric wall outlet and making it real by plugging it in.
On one level, we have been looking at how power works all along, as we have considered the sources of power. Power works through deference and demeanor rituals, power works through exchange principles, power works through culture and economic concerns, power works through organizations and the control of resources, power works through authority, and so on. But in this section we want to look explicitly at how power works in three arenas: school/peer interactions, significant relationships, and political institutions.
The on-line reading concerning school/peer interaction is a report on a study in 1999. Now because this is a report on a piece of research, there is a lot of technical language. We don't want to get bogged down in that language. So in your reading, sift through the methods and data sections of the report and try and find out what is going on conceptually. The article is worth the trouble because it synthesizes a great deal of research on the techniques or strategies that are used to achieve power in face-to-face interaction, and it implicitly poses a question for us about our own strategies.
The second reading concerns the power that significant others have in defining our self. The first reading looks at the explicit use of power, but this second reading talks about the implicit use of power. Sometimes we intend to influence people; other times it isn't a conscious decision but we nonetheless do influence them.
The textbook reading addresses the issue of political power. While that is something that we looked at in our Chapter 7, this reading gives us some additional information concerning how power works at the institutional level. This reading presents three ways of understanding how power works in politics. Which one is the right one? In reality, they are all three working at the same time.
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