Power, networks and ideology in the field of development

Abstract

Power, the central notion in this text, has many definitions. My own conception is based on a combination of three different sources. For Richard Adams (1967), power is the control that one party posseses over another party’s environment. Of the several visions of Max Weber, I will retain that of power as the capacity to make people do things they do not want to do. Eric Wolf’s (1999) notion of structural power underscores the capacity historical relationships and forces—especially those that define access to social labour—have to create and organize settings that constrain people’s possibilities for action, and to specify the direction and distribution of energy flows. Power, thus, is about (a) to be the subject of one’s own environment, to be able to control one’s own destiny, i.e., the course of action or events that will keep one’s life as it is or will modify it, or (b) to prevent people from becoming such empowered actors. Since development is always about transformation (Berman, 1987), and typically occurs through encounters between insiders and outsiders located in different power positions, ownership of development initiatives is anchored in and influenced by situations where power inequalities abound. The difficulty of implementing change within the development community is intimately related to the fact that it is a power field.