3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

The course introduces the most prominent theories of power in the Western political theory canon and the ways in which defining this contested concept also configures our understanding of politics and social life. Theories of power are divided into three broad sections, organized by way of the different images of politics that they project. In the first part of the course, we cover theories of power that convey a conventional image of politics as an activity (conflictual or consensual) between political actors on the municipal, national, or international stage. Here, we will read both the classical theories of power as domination (‘power over’) and those that theorize power as a capacity for social action (‘power to’). In the second part of the course, we examine the theories of power that express an expanded image of politics, as that which permeates social life: from workplaces, schools, and hospitals, to families and romantic relationships. Here, we study the ways in which our modes of being and social life are constituted by both local (micro) and structural (macro) power dynamics. In the last section, we explore naturalist theories of power that convey the most expansive image of politics as a material activity of nonhuman and human actants alike, constitutive of the world itself. Here, we dive into both the classical and contemporary accounts of power that help us come to terms with the political agency of (nonhuman) animals, viruses, electrical grids, ocean currents, and forest fires.