Lost Geographies of Power || Power Through Mobilization: From Mann's Networked Productions to Castells's Networked Fictions

✍ Scribed by Allen, John

• Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Ltd
• Year: 2003
• Weight: 137 KB
• Category: Article
• ISBN: 0631207287
• DOI: 10.1002/9780470773321.ch3

✦ Synopsis

In contrast to the more familiar idea of power as something that is held or possessed, abused even, the conception of power developed in this chapter is far less intuitive. It is, after all, far less obvious to think of power as a medium which is brought into being through the mobilization of collective or individual resources than to accept that it is something which is held in reserve and hung on to at all costs. On this view, power is generated to achieve certain outcomes, and thus it makes little sense to talk of power as contained' within things or stored' ready for use. If power is an effect which is produced through the actions of groups or individuals, then it is not something which may be held in reserve: it can only be mobilized on what is often a loose and tenuous basis.

Power, on this account, far from appearing solid in form, is thus represented as a rather fluid, amorphous medium which may evaporate just as easily as it may fill out. The ability of people to define themselves in terms of dress or bearing, for example, and impose this definition upon the minds of others, rests upon their ability to mobilize resources ± symbolic in this instance ± and to use them as an expression of their particular interests. Where no such collectivity existed before, their very constitution comes into being through the power of naming, of designating, of making people see and believe in a world where they exist in contrast or in opposition to others groupings (following Bourdieu 1989(following Bourdieu , 1991)). In this way, groups, whether conceived in terms of class or constructed around other stylistic possibilities relating to place, ethnicity, sexuality or whatever, may actively empower themselves through the collective mobilization of resources. Equally, however, they may lose their power the moment that they fail to act together or diminish its effect once collective, short-term goals have been won. Crucially, there is no locatable reserve' or store' of power available to be tapped when needed.

Having said that, power, on this view, need neither be associated with particular interests, nor tied directly to the practices of opposition and domination. The mobilization of resources may take place, as Talcott Parsons and Anthony Giddens have both argued, in the context of simply enabling things to get done. Power here is seen as facilitative, or rather transformative, in so far as it `makes a difference' to eventual outcomes. In the context of a wide range of institutions, from the governance of schools and hospitals to the running of multinational enterprises, power may be thought of as more a means to achieve outcomes, and rather less an instrumental ability to get one's way despite resistance. Power, as such, is not considered as merely something which is capable of being held over others; it may also be enabling. In the hands of Hannah Arendt, this understanding of power, as we shall see, was considered as empowering in and of its own right, as a positive gesture in which all those involved benefit in some way, yet only for as long as the effective mobilization lasts.

In the light of all this, it is perhaps not altogether surprising to note that such a fluid medium is relatively difficult to locate, especially in comparison with power which is said to be `centred' in social bodies. Significantly, it is the instantiation of power in social action which gives it the appearance of an amorphous entity. Its lack of shape does not mean that it lacks spatial definition, however, since it is understood that power is produced through networks of social action and indeed may expand or decrease in such networks. It is this process, the mobilization of resources through such networks, which provides the basis for a particular spatial vocabulary of power.

In this chapter, this spatial vocabulary is explored through Michael Mann's prodigious work, as well as that of Manuel Castells, where a spatial lexicon is more or less explicit, although in other more resource-based versions of mobilized power it is often only barely traceable. Even where acknowledged, however, it is the notion that power is something that may be generated at different sites and locations across the networks and projected unproblematically between them that, I argue, loses sight of the difference that spatiality makes to the exercise of power. It is simply a fiction to believe that power flows merely because it is a `fluid' medium.

However, before we consider the relationship between spatiality and networked power, it is important, to be clear about what is meant by power as a medium.