Arash Abizadeh, "Agential Power and Structural Power, Causal and Non-Causal"
Channel: Center for Global Ethics and Politics
Date: 2022-12-31

Arash Abizadeh, McGill University

Center for Global Ethics and Politics on October 13, 2022

Agential Power and Structural Power, Causal and Non-Causal

Many theorists of social power assume that agents’ power operates only by way of their intentional actions and their causal role in effecting outcomes. The former assumption is true of agential power, the latter of causal power, but neither is true of the social power of agents in general. Distinguishing between agential and structural power, I defend a notion of structural power as a type of non-intentional, passive power agents have in virtue of their position in a social structure and independently of their intentional actions. Distinguishing between causal and non-causal power, I also defend a non-causal type of power by which agents effect or elicit outcomes without causing them. Agential and structural power, moreover, are internally related: structural power is in certain contexts latently agential.

The Center for Global Ethics and Politics is part of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at The Graduate Center, CUNY.