T1 Defining POWER

Well, what is: ‘Power’?

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1. First, I want you to work quietly on your own to record your own thoughts on power…. (10 minutes maybe).  Do this however you want:

• spider diagrammes
• DIY brainstorming
• personalisation – what evidence of power is there in and upon your life etc.

2. Your task is then to work in pairs or teams of three to brainstorm / free-think around the word ‘power’ and then to engineer your thoughts into ‘a Team Definition’ which we can then use in our work together examining ‘power’ as seen in the English-speaking media.   We will ‘pool’ the attributes of your team definitions and organise them to make a ‘Master Definition’.

3. We will then compare our definition with those of ‘expert’ and ‘recognised’ sources:-

• how good is our definition compared to the experts?
• are there subtle improvements and refinements we can make to our Master Definition in the light of expert views.

We will then use this throughout the programme …. I would suggest that you learn it and make sure you are capable of explaining what it is and why it is so good by reference to other definitions.  Whatever CAPES exam question you get on ‘power’, you are bound to have to define what it actually is  and to defend your definition.

So….some thoughts to get you going.

• Definitions usually start with the ‘WHAT’ (and the poorest definitions finish with it!)
• Better definitions go on to consider the:
  • WHO,
  • WHEN,
  • WHERE,
  • WHY and
  • HOW….

… so try to double-check your eventual definition to ensure that it contains all these these components.

This is not a simple task. The reponse to the big Q: ‘Who?’, for example could entail issues/subquestions like:

• who is the origin of the power?
• who wields the power
• who are the agents of the exercise and enforcement of the power
• over whom is power wielded

As a principle, we should always define our terms, and in terms of this Unit, our key terms are:

• power  (primary subject)
• representation (further subject focus for analysis)
• media (context)
• US and UK media (Geographical foci for context)

So we haven’t finished………….!