An Analysis of Social Power

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5250591
AutoresRobert Bierstedt (autor correspondente)
Ano1950
Volume15
Fascículo6
Páginas730
Data de publicação1950-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAmerican Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0003-1224 • E-ISSN: 1939-8271
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2086605
OpenAlexW2317642849
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas82

EW PROBLEMS in sociology are more perplexing than the problem of social power. In the entire lexicon of sociological concepts none is more troublesome than the concept of power. We may say about it in general only what St. Augustine said about time, that we all know perfectly well what it is-until someone asks us. Indeed, Robert M. MacIver has recently been induced to remark that There is no adequate study of the nature of social power.1 The present paper cannot, of course, pretend to be a reasonably adequate study. It aims at reasonableness rather than adequacy and attempts to articulate the problem as one of central sociological concern, to clarify the meaning of the concept, and to discover the locus and seek the sources of social power itself. The power structure of society is not an insignificant problem. In any realistic sense it is both a sociological (i.e., a scientific) and a social (i.e., a moral) problem. It has traditionally been a problem in political philosophy. But, like so many other problems of a political character, it has roots which lie deeper than the polis and reach into the community itself. It has ramifications which can be discerned only in a more generalized kind of inquiry than is offered by political theory and which can ultimately be approached only by sociology. Its primitive basis and ultimate locus, as MacIver has emphasized in several of his distinguished

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