The Circular Structure of Power Politics, Identity, Community

by DYRBERG, TORBEN BECH

• ISBN13: 9781859841525
• ISBN10: 185984152X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-06-17
• Publisher: Verso
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Summary

A wide-ranging investigation of the concept of power. Few concepts in social theory have been used so extravagantly in recent years as the notion of power. Yet despite its inflated presence, the term is still unclear and undertheorized. In The Circular Structure of Power, Torben Dyrberg rises to the challenge of conceptualizing power through a philosophical examination of its uses in contemporary social theory. Drawing on the insights of Michel Foucoult, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Dyrberg brings this continental tradition into a creative dialogue with the Anglo-American tradition represented by figures such as Steven Lukes, William Connolly, Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz. Moreover, Dyrberg moves from such abstract considerations to their implications for political and democratic theory through an examination of the work of thinkers as diverse as Robert Dahl, John Rawls, JAYrgen Habermas and Nicos Poulantzas. Simultaneously engaging with and defying many of the dominant definitions of power, Torben Dyrberg destabilizes and undermines the conventional distinctions and polarities through which power is usually understood. The new perspective offered to us by this investigation is one which goes beyond the assumption that power can be based on and derived from either agency or structure, as if these categories themselves were not somehow constituted by power.

Author Biography

Torben Bech Dyrberg received his doctorate at Essex University and is currently a lecturer at Roskilde University, Denmark.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction	p. 1
Power as an Influence Term and Decision Making	p. 20
Power, Causality and Political Agency in the Community Power Debate	p. 50
Power, Identity and Political Authority: Foucault's Power Analytics	p. 85
The Presuppositionless Conception of Power: Power as Negativity	p. 116
Identity and the Politics of Subjective and Real Interests	p. 156
Democracy and the Politics of Interests and the Common Good	p. 183
Postscript on Conceptualizing Power	p. 238
Notes	p. 257
Index	p. 286
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