Prospectus

This course examines the concept of power. This is a nuts and bolts course, examining basic tools in any social scientific enterprise. The basic questions include: is power a relationship or an attribute of an actor or something else (if so, what?)? Is it proper to say an actor has power if it is latent? Must power be exercised intentionally to be power? Is it necessarily conflictual or consensual? Should power be conceived as narrowly coercive or more broadly as positive or productive?  How these questions are answered have specific implications for how one conducts social inquiry, and the emphasis will be on the practical application, that is, how would one study events differently depending on the view of power one has and how would one know whether the claims made in each analysis are true or false?