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权力与知识

Foucault’s works analyze the link between power and knowledge. He outlines a form of covert power that works through people rather than only on them. Foucault claims belief systems gain momentum (and hence power) as more people come to accept the particular views associated with that belief system as common knowledge (hegemony). Such belief systems define their figures of authority, such as medical doctors or priests in a church. Within such a belief system—or discourse—ideas crystallize as to what is right and what is wrong, what is normal and what is deviant. Within a particular belief system certain views, thoughts or actions become unthinkable.

These ideas, being considered undeniable “truths”, come to define a particular way of seeing the world, and the particular way of life associated with such “truths” becomes normalized. This subtle form of power lacks rigidity and other discourses can contest it. Indeed, power itself lacks any concrete form, occurring as a locus of struggle. Resistance, through defiance, defines power and hence becomes possible through power. Without resistance, power is absent, but it would be a mistake, some recent writers insist, to attribute to Foucault an oppositional power-resistance schema as is found in many older, foundationalist theoreticians. This view “grants” individuality to people and other agencies, even if it is assumed a given agency is part of what power works in or upon. Still, in practice Foucault often seems to deny individuals this agency, which is contrasted with sovereignty (the old model of power as efficacious and rigid).

权力的理性选择框架

Game theory, with its foundations in the theory of Rational Choice, is increasingly used in various disciplines to help analyze power relationships. One rational choice definition of power is given by Keith Dowding in his book Power.

In rational choice theory, human individuals or groups can be modeled as “actors” who choose from a “choice set” of possible actions in order to try and achieve desired outcomes. An actor’s “incentive structure” comprises (its beliefs about) the costs associated with different actions in the choice set, and the likelihoods that different actions will lead to desired outcomes.

理性权力选择框架的应用

A rational choice framework of power can be used to model a wide range of social interactions where actors have the ability to exert power over others. For example, a “powerful” actor can take options away from another’s choice set; can change the relative costs of actions; can change the likelihood that a given action will lead to a given outcome; or might simply change the other’s beliefs about its incentive structure.

As with other models of power, this framework is neutral as to the use of “coercion”. For example: a threat of violence can change the likely costs and benefits of different actions; so can a financial penalty in a “voluntarily agreed” contract, or indeed a friendly offer.

卢克斯观点： 一维权力的三要素

The seminal work of Steven Lukes’ Power: A radical view (1974) was developed from a talk he was once invited to give in Paris. In this brief book, Lukes outlines two dimensions through which power had been theorized in the earlier part of the twentieth century (dimensions 1 and 2 below) which he criticized as being limited to those forms of power that could be seen. To these he added a third “critical” dimension which built upon insights from Gramsci and Althusser. In many ways this work evolves alongside of the writing of Foucault and serves as a good introduction to his thoughts on power.

One-dimensional:

1. Power is decision making

2. Exercised in formal institutions

3. Measure it by the outcomes of decisions

In his own words, Lukes states that the “one-dimensional view of power involves a focus on behavior in the making of decisions on issues over which there is an observable conflict of (subjective) interests, seen as express policy preferences, revealed by political participation”.

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