Introduction
*last updated on January 22, 2026
What is power? The answer to this question will depend on the context: testing a hypothesis (statistical power), describing an output of an engine (horsepower), authorizing a representative (power of attorney), or using an appliance (a power on/off button). These are just a few applications of this versatile concept. Different meanings can be attached to it whether we talk about mathematics, physics, economics, or politics.
Of special importance for us is power as a feature of relationships between human beings. Scholars that study people and their relationships share the understanding that power has something to do with how much different individuals and social groups are able to influence one another. However, multiple theories explain the said influence in complementary or contradictory ways. Foucault’s power that “comes from everywhere,” Weber’s distinction between Macht and Herrschaft, Nietzsche’s contested “will to power,” Gramsci’s hegemony, Bourdieu’s symbolic power, Arendt’s account of power as collective capacity, and Dahl’s minimalist definition of power are all distinct frameworks for interpreting a broadly similar set of social phenomena.
To complicate the matter even further, the idea of power is related to notions that have kept numerous thinkers busy for centuries: free will, agency, responsibility, and the social system (to name a few). For example, free will can be interpreted as the capacity to act without constraint. Across disciplines, scholars disagree about where social constraint ends and free action begins; the agency–structure debate is one reason it is difficult to specify how free individuals really are in their choices. If we are not truly free as elements of the social system, how can we talk about responsibility for our actions? On the other hand, people are not mindless robots: they have agency (even if it amounts to only a small “wiggle room”), and they do make multiple decisions throughout their daily lives. Power, as a concept used to describe these tensions, can help illuminate paradoxes of the human condition and social co-existence.
Of special importance for us is power as a feature of relationships between human beings. Scholars that study people and their relationships share the understanding that power has something to do with how much different individuals and social groups are able to influence one another. However, multiple theories explain the said influence in complementary or contradictory ways. Foucault’s power that “comes from everywhere,” Weber’s distinction between Macht and Herrschaft, Nietzsche’s contested “will to power,” Gramsci’s hegemony, Bourdieu’s symbolic power, Arendt’s account of power as collective capacity, and Dahl’s minimalist definition of power are all distinct frameworks for interpreting a broadly similar set of social phenomena.
To complicate the matter even further, the idea of power is related to notions that have kept numerous thinkers busy for centuries: free will, agency, responsibility, and the social system (to name a few). For example, free will can be interpreted as the capacity to act without constraint. Across disciplines, scholars disagree about where social constraint ends and free action begins; the agency–structure debate is one reason it is difficult to specify how free individuals really are in their choices. If we are not truly free as elements of the social system, how can we talk about responsibility for our actions? On the other hand, people are not mindless robots: they have agency (even if it amounts to only a small “wiggle room”), and they do make multiple decisions throughout their daily lives. Power, as a concept used to describe these tensions, can help illuminate paradoxes of the human condition and social co-existence.
Image credit: Pixabay
Notably, some scholars discuss this complexity without treating the term “power” as central to their work. Of special interest for me is symbolic interactionism, a sociological framework that describes meaning-making as the interpretive process through which people act toward things based on meanings that are formed and revised in social interaction. By focusing on these processes, symbolic interactionism highlights a central tension that can also be described in the language of power: individuals interpret their environment, experiences, and other people, and they act on the basis of these interpretations, yet the meanings they rely on are continually shaped through interaction with others. Unaware of these processes, we often take for granted the foundations of our worldviews (“this is just how things are”) and do not notice how the ideas that form these foundations intertwine with one another. Meanings that guide individual actions can be difficult to fully comprehend and challenge, even though they can become more visible through closer attention to everyday communication practices.
Some scholars have drawn connections between different ideas about power or tried to categorize them. Examples include Lukes’s influential “dimensions” of power, Wrong’s effort to map power’s forms and bases, and the Powercube framework, which organizes power across levels, spaces, and forms. Other widely cited attempts to define or sort power include Bachrach and Baratz’s distinction between different “faces” of power, French and Raven’s typology of the bases of social power, Clegg’s “circuits of power” framework, and Barnett and Duvall’s four-part taxonomy of power in international politics. Despite this rich body of work, genuinely synthetic accounts that integrate insights across disciplines—rather than within a single field or tradition—seem relatively rare.
This fact is not just an academic detail. It matters because public conversations about power often borrow fragments of theory while flattening the complexity those theories were built to address. An interdisciplinary approach can help keep multiple dimensions of power in view at once—coercion and consent, structure and agency, institutions and everyday interaction—and can therefore clarify what is being claimed when people use the word “power” in moral and political arguments.
My investment in power is not purely intellectual. It is connected to a practical concern: in contemporary public discourse, complex relationships between individuals and social systems are often discussed through simplified templates. This is visible in the United States, but it is not limited to it; many societies are experiencing forms of polarization that reward moral certainty and discourage careful interpretation. One influential template draws on Marxist accounts of conflict between social groups. In its popularized form, this framework encourages people to interpret society as divided into groups that are structurally advantaged and groups that are structurally disadvantaged, and to treat power primarily as a property of those group positions.
In this interpretation, power is often described through a binary: one either has it or does not. Power can also appear stable—fixed in identities or categories rather than shifting with context, relationships, and constraints. When power is framed as a zero-sum relationship between “oppressors” and “oppressed,” dialogue and collaboration can look futile in advance. This project takes these social stakes seriously while also arguing that power is better understood as a paradox: it can operate through both constraint and agency, and it can vary across levels of social life. The goal is to complicate binary thinking about power without shifting blame or ignoring urgent social problems.
My current focus on power emerged out of the interpretive exploration that led to my first book, Media Is Us: Understanding Communication and Moving Beyond Blame. The project began with a broad question about communication and influence and gradually shifted toward the problem of how power operates in everyday relationships. In that book, I developed a framework I call the theory of micro- and macropower, drawing on ideas associated with Foucault’s account of power, symbolic interactionism, social constructionist approaches to reality, debates about media influence, Gramsci’s hegemony, and Clifford Geertz’s image of humans as “animals suspended in webs of significance” they themselves have spun.
The micro- and macropower framework starts from a simple observation: power looks different depending on the scale of analysis. At the level of a specific relationship between specific people in a specific situation, it is often possible to identify who has more ability to shape outcomes. I call this level micropower. But when we zoom out—toward wider networks of relationships, institutions, histories, and indirect influences—the picture becomes less stable. Individuals who appear powerful in one interaction may also be constrained by forces that are not visible at the micro level. I call this wider plane macropower. The point is not that micro-level dynamics are unreal, but that a fuller view of power requires moving between levels that cannot be cleanly separated outside a thought experiment.
This focus on scale opened the door to a second, related line of inquiry that I now describe as power and powerlessness as intertwined. What looks like power at one level can coexist with real forms of constraint at another; similarly, what looks like powerlessness in one context can include meaningful “wiggle room” in another. Importantly, I treat power and powerlessness as analytical categories—terms we use to describe patterns in human relationships—rather than as objects people simply possess or lack. Using these terms does not commit us to a binary worldview; it is a way to examine how influence and constraint circulate through relationships, meanings, and social structures, often at the same time.
The title of this project reflects its two guiding commitments: the meanings of power and the power of meanings. I use power as an analytical lens not because I am interested in power as a thing people possess, but because questions of influence, responsibility, and agency surface whenever people try to explain conflict and social problems—whether or not anyone uses the word power. In everyday disagreements, in public debates, and in institutional settings, the same underlying issues recur: who is able to shape outcomes, who is constrained, whose account of reality becomes taken for granted, and what forms of accountability are reasonable to demand. “Power” and related terms provide a vocabulary for examining patterns in human relationships that would otherwise remain scattered across different conversations.
At the same time, this project treats meaning-making as an equally central theme. People do not respond to the world as a set of raw facts; they respond to interpretations—categories, stories, values, and assumptions—that feel natural while remaining historically and socially shaped. Those meanings can enable understanding and cooperation, but they can also harden into “common sense,” justify cruelty, and block dialogue. This is why the project is also about the power of meanings: the ways ideas organize perception, shape interaction, and distribute empathy. This hypertext book is ultimately about human relationships: how people connect and disconnect, understand and misunderstand each other, and respond to conflict and harm. My aim is to explore these dynamics using “power” as an analytical lens and meaning-making as the everyday interpretive process through which people navigate one another and their social worlds.
If you would like to keep reading this nonlinear book, you can browse completed pages.
Notably, some scholars discuss this complexity without treating the term “power” as central to their work. Of special interest for me is symbolic interactionism, a sociological framework that describes meaning-making as the interpretive process through which people act toward things based on meanings that are formed and revised in social interaction. By focusing on these processes, symbolic interactionism highlights a central tension that can also be described in the language of power: individuals interpret their environment, experiences, and other people, and they act on the basis of these interpretations, yet the meanings they rely on are continually shaped through interaction with others. Unaware of these processes, we often take for granted the foundations of our worldviews (“this is just how things are”) and do not notice how the ideas that form these foundations intertwine with one another. Meanings that guide individual actions can be difficult to fully comprehend and challenge, even though they can become more visible through closer attention to everyday communication practices.
Some scholars have drawn connections between different ideas about power or tried to categorize them. Examples include Lukes’s influential “dimensions” of power, Wrong’s effort to map power’s forms and bases, and the Powercube framework, which organizes power across levels, spaces, and forms. Other widely cited attempts to define or sort power include Bachrach and Baratz’s distinction between different “faces” of power, French and Raven’s typology of the bases of social power, Clegg’s “circuits of power” framework, and Barnett and Duvall’s four-part taxonomy of power in international politics. Despite this rich body of work, genuinely synthetic accounts that integrate insights across disciplines—rather than within a single field or tradition—seem relatively rare.
This fact is not just an academic detail. It matters because public conversations about power often borrow fragments of theory while flattening the complexity those theories were built to address. An interdisciplinary approach can help keep multiple dimensions of power in view at once—coercion and consent, structure and agency, institutions and everyday interaction—and can therefore clarify what is being claimed when people use the word “power” in moral and political arguments.
My investment in power is not purely intellectual. It is connected to a practical concern: in contemporary public discourse, complex relationships between individuals and social systems are often discussed through simplified templates. This is visible in the United States, but it is not limited to it; many societies are experiencing forms of polarization that reward moral certainty and discourage careful interpretation. One influential template draws on Marxist accounts of conflict between social groups. In its popularized form, this framework encourages people to interpret society as divided into groups that are structurally advantaged and groups that are structurally disadvantaged, and to treat power primarily as a property of those group positions.
In this interpretation, power is often described through a binary: one either has it or does not. Power can also appear stable—fixed in identities or categories rather than shifting with context, relationships, and constraints. When power is framed as a zero-sum relationship between “oppressors” and “oppressed,” dialogue and collaboration can look futile in advance. This project takes these social stakes seriously while also arguing that power is better understood as a paradox: it can operate through both constraint and agency, and it can vary across levels of social life. The goal is to complicate binary thinking about power without shifting blame or ignoring urgent social problems.
My current focus on power emerged out of the interpretive exploration that led to my first book, Media Is Us: Understanding Communication and Moving Beyond Blame. The project began with a broad question about communication and influence and gradually shifted toward the problem of how power operates in everyday relationships. In that book, I developed a framework I call the theory of micro- and macropower, drawing on ideas associated with Foucault’s account of power, symbolic interactionism, social constructionist approaches to reality, debates about media influence, Gramsci’s hegemony, and Clifford Geertz’s image of humans as “animals suspended in webs of significance” they themselves have spun.
The micro- and macropower framework starts from a simple observation: power looks different depending on the scale of analysis. At the level of a specific relationship between specific people in a specific situation, it is often possible to identify who has more ability to shape outcomes. I call this level micropower. But when we zoom out—toward wider networks of relationships, institutions, histories, and indirect influences—the picture becomes less stable. Individuals who appear powerful in one interaction may also be constrained by forces that are not visible at the micro level. I call this wider plane macropower. The point is not that micro-level dynamics are unreal, but that a fuller view of power requires moving between levels that cannot be cleanly separated outside a thought experiment.
This focus on scale opened the door to a second, related line of inquiry that I now describe as power and powerlessness as intertwined. What looks like power at one level can coexist with real forms of constraint at another; similarly, what looks like powerlessness in one context can include meaningful “wiggle room” in another. Importantly, I treat power and powerlessness as analytical categories—terms we use to describe patterns in human relationships—rather than as objects people simply possess or lack. Using these terms does not commit us to a binary worldview; it is a way to examine how influence and constraint circulate through relationships, meanings, and social structures, often at the same time.
The title of this project reflects its two guiding commitments: the meanings of power and the power of meanings. I use power as an analytical lens not because I am interested in power as a thing people possess, but because questions of influence, responsibility, and agency surface whenever people try to explain conflict and social problems—whether or not anyone uses the word power. In everyday disagreements, in public debates, and in institutional settings, the same underlying issues recur: who is able to shape outcomes, who is constrained, whose account of reality becomes taken for granted, and what forms of accountability are reasonable to demand. “Power” and related terms provide a vocabulary for examining patterns in human relationships that would otherwise remain scattered across different conversations.
At the same time, this project treats meaning-making as an equally central theme. People do not respond to the world as a set of raw facts; they respond to interpretations—categories, stories, values, and assumptions—that feel natural while remaining historically and socially shaped. Those meanings can enable understanding and cooperation, but they can also harden into “common sense,” justify cruelty, and block dialogue. This is why the project is also about the power of meanings: the ways ideas organize perception, shape interaction, and distribute empathy. This hypertext book is ultimately about human relationships: how people connect and disconnect, understand and misunderstand each other, and respond to conflict and harm. My aim is to explore these dynamics using “power” as an analytical lens and meaning-making as the everyday interpretive process through which people navigate one another and their social worlds.
If you would like to keep reading this nonlinear book, you can browse completed pages.