Understanding power

Power relations exist in all aspects of our lives, as long as there is a relationship between two individuals, there is a power relationship. Power can be defined as the ability of one person/organisation to make another person/organisation do something even if they do not want to. The most obvious power relationships are those that occur in work environments between a boss and an employee. A pact is created whereby the former exercises power over the latter in exchange for financial compensation.

However, the power relationship also occurs in other less obvious environments such as in friendship, as a couple or even with the baker. Symmetrical relationships are never established where each party has equal influence over the other. This does not mean that domination relations are the norm. Rather, there is always a pact, not necessarily explicit, which revolves around the exercise of power and is the starting point of all social relations.

There are also ways of exercising power without the need to give orders. An example of this is Bentham's Panopticon. The idea, coined by the philosopher Michel Foucault, consists of a form of power that does not require direct power, but rather the sensation that one is being watched all the time. From an elevated, central position, a watcher is positioned in a panopticon, a building with 360º views. On the other hand, in the rest of the room, the subjects (let's say, employees) are positioned with their backs to the panopticon.

Illustration of Bentham's Panopticon

In this situation the feeling of constant surveillance makes all subjects work automatically for fear of being caught doing something wrong. This logic was followed by the British government during the Thatcher era, which invested a huge amount of pounds in the placement of security cameras throughout the country; in London alone the ratio is 76.8 cameras per 1000 inhabitants. Today, the most successful student of the Panopticon is China, a country with a figure of approximately 372.8 cameras per 1,000 people.

Power does not have to be given in an obvious way, a relationship A->B=C is not always established. There are non-explicit ways of exercising power, such as through ideology, religion, public morality or culture, which are elements that are directed to the subconscious and create patterns of behavior that are not always explicit. There are behaviors that we consider “normal” because they were established as such. And this does not mean that there is a hidden agenda or that we are dominated by some dark entity, no. It does not mean that society itself drinks from the subconscious. It means that society itself drinks from various sources that create patterns of behavior that are maintained with alterations through the generations. For example, the custom of uncovering your head when you are indoors as a gesture of respect or the custom of calling your child with names of the Catholic saints in the Spanish reality. Of course you can call your child Hasan Hussein but the response of society may be one of rejection or at least astonishment and thus social pressure is exerted.

The most unbalanced versions of power relations are considered to be domination. In these relationships, the dominant party exercises a power of subjugation over the dominated party. The latter lacks a margin of action with its own autonomy. This concept applied to relations between states, we would be talking about the relationship that exists between a metropolis and a colony or, to mention a recent case, the power exercised by Israel over the Palestinian territories. The control of borders, by land, sea and air, such as the checkpoints in Palestinian-majority neighborhoods or the penal code adapted with more severe penalties are some of the examples where this domination is exercised.