Outline and assess the view that the exercise of power inevitably involves negative consequences for some individuals.

Authors Avatar

Laura Rogers 13.5

 

Outline and assess the view that the exercise of power inevitably involves negative consequences for some individuals.

Many sociologists have different views of power and Marxists have a negative view of power and believe that power has consequences for some individuals. However, functionalists believe that power has positive consequences for some individuals. Also other sociologists see it both ways and believe that power has positive and negative consequences for individuals.

Weber is a sociologist who sees it both ways. Weber believes in the Zero-sum view of power which implies that the exercise of power has negative consequences for some individuals and groups as it involves repression, coercion and constraint. An example of this would be when a police officer arrests a criminal. He also believed that power can be split into three type of authority which are: Charisma, Tradition and Rational-legal.  Weber’s types of authority are ‘ideal types.’ it means that they are pure but not the best. So the purest type is the ideal type. An example of this is that charismatic authority may contain aspects of traditional and rational-legal authority. This is a useful way for describing, classifying and comparing things in the real world. Also Weber came up with the zero-sum view of power which implies that the exercise of power involves negative consequences for some individuals because it involves repression, coercion and constraint. An example would be a police officer arresting a criminal. This is a similar view to that of the Marxists.

Join now!

The Marxists believe that power develops from social relations of production which characterise the economic system of production found in capitalist societies. A product of the working class position in social structure is the lack of power that they experience. Their only resource is labour power or their ability to work for others. The social relations that characterise the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are unequal as the capitalist class acquires wealth by appropriating the surplus values that are generated by labour power of the workers. Althusser argues that the cultural dominance is achieved through the bourgeoisie ...

This is a preview of the whole essay