Figure 1
Categories used for organising reviewed power scholarship.
Table 1
Overview of authors and approaches included in mapping.
| ANALYTICAL FOCUS | AUTHORS | KEY THEMES AND CONCEPTS | HIGHLIGHT | NO. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agency-oriented approaches (1) | ||||
| 1.1 Power as possessive | Machiavelli (1532); Hobbes (1651); Rowlands (1995, 1997) | Power as strategic; power to, power as centred, ‘episodic power’; power within | Feminist and queer scholarship | 1–4 |
| 1.2 Power as relational | Weber (1904, 1921); Barnes (1988) | Domination, rule, authority; power as relational, capacity for action | – | 5–11 |
| 1.3 Power as constraining | Dahl (1957, 1986); Bachrach and Baratz (1962); Lukes (1986, 2005) | Power over, power as constraining; causal conception of power; agenda-setting; intentional preference shaping, conflict, repression of objective interests | – | 12–17 |
| Structure-oriented approaches (2) | ||||
| 2.1 Social structures constraining/enabling agency, reproduction of structures | (Marx & Engels, 1976a, 1976b, 1978, 1979, 1986, 1987, 1996) | Social structures that constrain (and are reproduced by) agency | – | 18–20 |
| Agency-and-structure approaches (3) | ||||
| 3.1 Structuration, internalised structures/externalised interactions, interplay of context and conduct | Giddens (1984); Bourdieu (1989); Davis et al. (1991); Hay (2002) | Structuration (reproducing, enabling, and constraining); power as capital, ‘habitus’; construction of gender; power as conductand context-shaping | Feminist and queer scholarship | 21–25 |
| Post-structural approaches (4) | ||||
| 4.1 Power as diffused, productive, regulative, recursive | Gramsci (1932/1975); Foucault (1977, 1980, 1982, 1984); Connell (1995, 2007, 2013); Spivak (1988); Butler (1990); Digeser (1992); Chatterjee (1993, 2008); Chakrabarty (2000); Jessop (2005, 2008) | Hegemony (domination by consent); subjectivities, power as diffused; hegemony of masculinities, gender relations; subalternity, ‘othering’, resistance, agency; power over and power to as recursive; power as relational, norms and values; class and social hierarchies, colonial legacies; hegemony of Western ideals and concepts (modernity, progress); strategic selectivity | Feminist and queer scholarship; Postcolonial and decolonial scholarship | 26–46 |
| 4.2 Collective power, solidarity, emergent spaces | Arendt (1972); Allen (1999); McKittrick (2020); Simone (2022) | Collective power (power with); power-over (domination), power to (resistance) and power-with (solidarity); interstitial places, anticolonial methods | Feminist and queer scholarship; Black (feminist) scholarship | 47–52 |
| Cross-cutting approaches (5) | ||||
| 5.1 Colonial continuities, politics of knowledge, decolonisation, counter-hegemonic practices, pluralistic knowledge systems | Escobar (1991, 1995, 2015); Santos (1995, 2007, 2014); Mamdani (1996); Quijano (2000, 2007); Chandhoke (2000, 2009a, 2009b, 2021); Mbembe (2001); Mkandawire (2001, 2005); Ndlovu- Gatsheni (2012, 2013) | Politics of knowledge, decolonial, institutions as fundamentally political, resistance through ‘otherness’; counter-hegemonic practices; colonial continuities reproduced by institutions, institutions as containers of power; Western hegemony, pluralistic knowledge systems; power of civil society; power and its relationship to colonialism, race, and violence; institutions embedded in complex networks of power relations, ‘institutional monocropping’; subjectivation, global coloniality | Postcolonial and decolonial scholarship | 53–72 |
| 5.2 Intersectionality, complex networks of power relations | hooks (1981, 2000a, 2000b, 2014); Crenshaw (1989, 1991); Tsikata (2009, 2011, 2016); Shiva (2016, 2019); Hill Collins & Bilge (2020) | Intersectionality; political and gendered nature of institutions; globalization, capitalist patriarchy | Black (feminist) scholarship; Feminist and queer scholarship | 73–84 |
Table 2
Examples of power questions included in mapping.
| ANALYTICAL FOCUS | AUTHORS | KEY THEMES AND CONCEPTS | EMPIRICAL QUESTIONS | HIGHLIGHT | NO. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agency-oriented approaches (1) | |||||
| 1.1 Power as possessive | Hobbes | Power to, power as centred, ‘episodic power’ | How do actors instrumentalize power to achieve their ends? Which abilities do they possess? | 3 | |
| Rowlands | Power within | How do (or can) individuals increase their internal power (to become empowered)? | Feminist and queer scholarship | 4 | |
| 1.2 Power as relational | Barnes | Power as relational, capacity for action | Who perceives whom as powerful, and why? | – | 10 |
| 1.3 Power as constraining | Dahl | Power over, power as constraining | Who is (visibly/overtly) exercising power over whom, i.e. formally or informally in a position to take decisions that affect others? | – | 12 |
| Lukes | Intentional preference shaping, conflict, repression of objective interests | How and to what extent is consensus oppressive and conflict emancipatory (and vice versa) in process of change? | – | 16 | |
| Structure-oriented approaches (2) | |||||
| 2.1 Social structures constraining/enabling agency, Engels reproduction of structures | Marx & Engels | Social structures that constrain (and are reproduced by) agency | How do structures constrain or enable actor’s power? | – | 18 |
| Agency-and-structure approaches (3) | |||||
| 3.1 Structuration, internalised structures/externalised interactions, interplay of context and conduct | Bourdieu | Power as capital, ‘habitus’ | What are the different types of capital through which actors attain power, and in which ways do they enable/disable the different actors to realise their intentions? | – | 22 |
| Davis et al. | Construction of gender | How are structures and identities produced and reproduced through multi-layered meaning in conversation and interactions (moments of structuration)? | Feminist and queer scholarship | 23 | |
| Post-structural approaches (4) | |||||
| 4.1 Power as diffused, productive, regulative, recursive | Foucault | Subjectivities, power as diffused | How is knowledge mobilised as an instrument for enabling/ constraining change? | – | 30 |
| Spivak | Subalternity, ‘othering’, resistance, agency | Which embedded discursive practices in language, culture, and ideology are used to exclude subaltern voices from dominant discourses and narratives? | Post- and decolonial scholarship | 33 | |
| Butler | Power over and power to as recursive | Which structures are individuals subjected to, how does this affect their capacity to act, and how do these acts in turn influence social structures? | Feminist and queer scholarship | 35 | |
| 4.2 Collective power, solidarity, emergent spaces | Arendt | Collective power (power with) | How do groups wield power collectively? | – | 47 |
| Allen | Power-over (domination), power-to (resistance) and power-with (solidarity) | Under what conditions can (individual) empowerment and (collective) solidarity transform into resistance that can actually challenge dominant power structures? | Feminist and queer scholarship | 50 | |
| Simone | Interstitial places, anticolonial methods | Which institutional arrangements occupy emergent, in-between spaces of power? | Black (feminist) scholarship | 52 | |
| Cross-cutting approaches (5) | |||||
| 5.1 Colonial continuities, politics of knowledge, decolonisation, counter- hegemonic practices, pluralistic knowledge systems | Escobar | Politics of knowledge, decolonial, institutions as fundamentally political, resistance through ‘otherness’ | How do dominant systems of power ‘other’ marginalised groups and ideas and therein regulate social relations, and normalize certain practices and values over others? | Post- and decolonial scholarship | 56 |
| Santos | Counter-hegemonic practices | In which way can counter-hegemonic practices (social movements, legal activism, cultural production) challenge dominant power structures? | Post- and decolonial scholarship | 58 | |
| Mamdani | Colonial continuities reproduced by institutions, institutions as containers of power | How do specific historical and social contexts, in which institutions operate, influence their relationship with existing power structures? | Post- and decolonial scholarship | 60 | |
| Quijano | Western hegemony, pluralistic knowledge systems | How can we decolonise knowledge and shift towards a more pluralist understanding of the world that adequately recognises and appreciates non-Western perspectives? | Post- and decolonial scholarship | 65 | |
| 5.2 Intersectionality, complex networks of power relations | hooks | Intersectionality | Beyond a white, middle-class perspective of feminism, how do intersecting identities, particularly race and gender, influence an individual’s power, privilege, and oppression in society? | Black (feminist) scholarship | 73 |
| Tsikata | Political and gendered nature of institutions | How do patriarchal power relations shape institutions in a manner that disadvantages women and perpetuates gender inequality? | Feminist and queer scholarship | 80 | |
Figure 2a
‘Heat map’ overview of power questions mapped to IADF elements.
Figure 2b
Detailed ‘heat map’ of sub-categories of power questions mapped to IADF elements.
Figure 3
Mapping four post-structural power questions onto the IADF (adopted from Ostrom, Gardner & Walker, 1994 and Ostrom, 2005).