Chapter 3: Making Sense of Power

Introduction

Climate disasters, political upheavals, pandemics, and other crises lay bare our broken economic and political systems. People’s uprisings give voice to community demands and conflicts related to power around the world. Struggles over who and what matters play out everywhere from our politics to our families.

How do we resist the consolidation of autocratic, destructive and divisive forms of power on the one hand, and build more inclusive, democratic forms of power on the other? Developing effective strategies together in times of upheaval and opportunity demands a fresh examination of power.

What can we observe about power?

• Power is in dispute in all spaces and places, from formal decision-making to public opinion and debate, and from the most intimate to the most public parts of our lives. Conflicts and contestation over values, ideas, and beliefs play out in our own relationships, organisations, and communities as well as society at large..
• Unequal power dynamics are institutionalised and embedded in social structures in keeping with the deep systemic logics of capitalism, patriarchy, structural racism², and colonialism–imperialism. These systems and their assumptions function like an underlying operating system and are harder to perceive and disrupt than other forms of power.
• Inequities and oppression related to class, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, and location create structural fault lines of discrimination and inequities of power and privilege among us. But forging solidarity across diverse identities offers the basis for building power with others and envisioning liberation.
• Political violence and the threat of violence are essential features, not aberrations, of the overarching systems of unequal power. When dominant forms of power fear the loss of their legitimacy, they turn to violence and fear to silence dissent. Specific strategies and organising approaches are needed to address fear and violence.
• Practices of radical reimagination are vital to envisioning the future and shifting narratives, as we define the values, practices, demands, and proposals at the heart of our transformational efforts.

This chapter is divided into six themes, with concepts and processes to help us understand power more deeply.

Theme 1: What and Where is Power?
We know a lot about power from lived experience and our efforts to make change. To build power, we need to understand that it is not solely negative and that it means more than simply policy change, elections, or better communications.

Theme 2: Multiple Forms and Arenas of Power
There are many ways of thinking about power. In this chapter, we introduce tried and tested frameworks for analysis and strategy built around these concepts:

Four arenas of power: visible or formal power (decision making and enforcing the rules); hidden power (influencing and setting the agenda); invisible power (shaping norms and beliefs); and systemic power (defining the underlying logic of all structures and relationships)
Transformative power: four interconnected kinds of generative power necessary for transformative change – power within (dignity, self-esteem), power with (solidarity and collective action), power to (capacity to act), power for (vision and values)

Theme 3: Systemic Power
Many of us have long analysed power at three levels: visible, hidden, and invisible. Unfolding crises across the world have opened up renewed interest in ‘systems thinking and systems change’ that can help us better see patterns and interconnectedness among things happening. Naming a fourth layer – systemic power – means we can analyse the underlying logic or ‘operating system’ defining power relations as they show up in institutions, social structures, and ways of thinking. Here, we explore how capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy or structural racism , and colonialism shape systems of oppression and demand broader systemic and visionary alternatives.

Theme 4: Power and Interconnected Identities
Gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, ability, age, location, and other factors intersect to define our different experiences of structural discrimination and oppression, and also our possibilities for change and liberation. We experience the positive and negative impacts of these identities in intimate, private, and public arenas.

Theme 5: Power, Conflict, and Violence
The coercive and violent side of power over involves political violence, threats of violence, hostility, criminalisation, and fear as instrumental strategies that uphold the ‘operating systems’ of power. Drawing on our own and others’ experiences of conflict, violence, and fear, we introduce a typology of forms of violence to help us identify and navigate violence – as well as to better protect ourselves.

Theme 6: Analysis to Strategy
We analyse power so that we can develop effective strategies that navigate, disrupt, resist, influence, and build power for social justice and transformation. Under this theme, we introduce essential considerations for making strategic choices that both respond to urgent opportunities of the moment and build power over the long term to build a more inclusive, sustainable world.