1169 || power structures + how to claim yours

Make Your Damn Bed

Yesterday I rambled on about power structures and today I want to clarify some of those thoughts.

Primarily when it comes to the definition of Power.

When a concept is this abstract it carries a different meaning for different individuals - based on our experiences and situations. There are so many words that carry different meanings for people: power, democracy, equality - but the more we can discuss the different meanings and narrow down our definitions, the easier it is to communicate effectively, act effectively, and create change effectively.

Luckily the commons library had plenty of valuable information to share and that’s where I stumbled upon: Srilatha Batliwala, All About Power: Understanding Social Power and Power Structures, where she acknowledges the nuance of understanding power in it’s many forms while also recognizing that we have to understand it fully to really achieve any kind of social change - regardless of our specific areas of work.

Srilatha begins with this: “As activists, we are concerned about the injustice, inequality, marginalization, exclusion, discrimination, stigma, and violence that we see around us. But do we always recognize that power is at the heart of each of these, and at the heart of every social problem? Do we realize that injustice and inequality of every kind is actually an expression of power or a symptom of power structures? The fact is that power lies at the heart of human relationships and of how societies are organized. So when activists try to change people’s lives, or tackle the injustices they face, we are actually trying to change power equations.”

RESOURCE: https://creaworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/All-About-Power.pdf

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