Jul/21/10//Cynthia Silva Parker//Networks, Race, Class, Power, Structural Transformation
photo by partie traumatic
“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This often quoted comment by Dr. King forms the foundation of Adam Kahane’s new book, Love and Power: A theory and practice of social change. Melinda Weekes and I attended a recent book talk by Adam, attracted to the topic because, at IISC we’ve been thinking through and practicing the connections among power, love, networks and collaboration for years now. Much of what Adam shared resonates with our thinking. The book builds on the thinking of theologian Paul Tillich. His definitions are worth taking a closer look:
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Jun/16/10//Linda Guinee//Race, Class, Power
A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog post about the constructive engagement of conflict – called Stay! Stay! Stay! It was some thinking sparked by reading the beginning of Bernie Mayer’s new book “Staying with Conflict“. I’ve been reading more of that book this week – and thinking as well about the work IISC is doing to become an anti-racist, anti-oppression, pro-liberation organization. (And yes, we do know that’s a mouthful!)
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May/12/10//Linda Guinee//Race, Class, Power
This is the fourth in a series of postings about power and group facilitation processes, based on research from a few years ago.� Today’s post is about how power is built into group narrative.
As I was doing research, I came across a batch of work about narrative theory by Sara Cobb and Janet Rifkin (cited below).� Cobb and Rifkin researched how a narrative is constructed and what impact it has on the ultimate outcome of mediation sessions.� They found that the first story told tends to be privileged and “colonize” later stories told.� By framing the discussion to come, this initial story tends to narrow and define the direction of the ensuing conversation.� Later versions are generally tied to the initial story and thus are unable to be fully developed.� And the outcome of mediation is generally tied to the initial story. Read the rest of this entry »
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May/05/10//Linda Guinee//Race, Class, Power
More about power and group processes.� There have been a mountain of books written about the “bases of power” and the “types of power”.� I’ve done some work to try to boil it down – and find thinking about this very useful in moving forward the conversation about how to address power issues in group processes.
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Apr/28/10//Linda Guinee//Race, Class, Power
One of the first questions you might ask when thinking about looking at power dynamics in group facilitation is what IS power anyway? This seemingly simple question, of course, is not really all so simple after all. What do you think? How would you describe power?
When I first started trying to answer this question for myself, I found that I was overwhelmed with material -� literally hundreds and hundreds of books about what power is, where it comes from, how it operates, etc.� For many, a definition of power has to do with the ability to force something to do something they wouldn’t have done otherwise – a coercive definition of power.� Feminist psychologist Jean Baker Miller described power as “the capacity to produce a change.” Others (and in fact, our common terminology) talks about power as a “thing” that can be divided, shared, owned, and transferred. Read the rest of this entry »
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