Linking the prepositions: using power analysis to inform strategies for social action

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article reviews longstanding debates about the relationship between power over and power to – often posed as the tension between domination and emancipation. It then turns to several frameworks which integrate these approaches to inform strategies for social action. In particular, it focuses on recent empirical studies which apply one such framework, the ‘powercube’, to glean insights into how social actors navigate across multiple forms, spaces and levels of power. In so doing, we gain clues into how relatively powerless groups develop the capacities for agency and action which challenge domination and in turn give new possibilities for emancipation.