/tags/how-power-works/ Recent content in how power works on Jennifer R. Overbeck, PhD Hugo -- gohugo.io en Thu, 29 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000 /blog/2021-07-29-coercive-power/ Thu, 29 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000 /blog/2021-07-29-coercive-power/ First, a note on terminology In my recent theoretical writing, I’ve wrestled with the terms for these ideas. Nate Fast and I have devised the terms associative power, or power with, versus dissociative power, or power against. But these terms are a bit specialized for use in a blog post. More familiar, but still academic, are the terms collaborative versus coercive or functional versus dominant…and scholars and writers use many more than this! /blog/2021-07-29-helix/ Thu, 29 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000 /blog/2021-07-29-helix/ Writing about power is full of binaries. Any number of writers and thinkers have argued that power has two faces–one coercive, destructive, and dominating; the other collaborative, constructive, and functional. At times, theorists have debated which is “the correct” way to think about power. Is it fundamentally about conflict and exploitation? Or is it fundamentally about working functionally with other human beings to get something done? Bertrand Russell argued for a kind of lifecycle of (societal) power.