The Power Paradox

A Toolkit for Analyzing Conflict and Extremism

By (author) Anna Bennett

Publication date:

13 April 2012

Length of book:

168 pages

Publisher

University Press of America

Dimensions:

236x158mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780761857969

The Power Paradox: A Toolkit for Analyzing Conflict and Extremism reveals how mainstream views of power restrict the conceptual insights needed to resolve conflict. Anna Bennett insightfully explores Michel Foucault’s work on power and discourse in order to advance conceptual and contextual tools for understanding power dynamics. Through an examination of a range of extremist, terrorist, and counter-terrorist rhetoric, as well as various theories of power, Bennett analyzes the widespread problems associated with assuming that power is only repressive and competitive. This limited view reinforces — often unwittingly — divisive dynamics and stubborn polemics, which serve to continue conflict. By offering a comprehensive and constructive view of power struggles, The Power Paradox argues that power is a relational dynamic. Bennett identifies fascinating contradictions within discourses of power and relational dynamics, acknowledging the enduring quandary of power struggles: we are all implicated within them.

Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction

Part I: The Theory of Power
1. Power and Resistance
2. Foucault’s Legacy
I. His Work
II. Developments & Inconsistencies
3. The Notion of Power
4. Re-cognising Power

Part II: Politics, Power and Extremism
5. The American Militias
6. Waco
7. Hansonism
8. The Unabomber
9. Terrorism and the War Against It

Conclusion: Power as Generative: The Ongoing Work of Insight and Reflection
Bibliography
Index

An interesting thesis about the influence of what the author terms as a society’s 'power dynamics' in shaping the way conflict and extremism are analyzed. In the book’s first part, the author bases her conceptual framework on Michel Foucault writings on power and discourse, where she finds that mainstream views of power relations, especially where power is used repressively, tend to restrict the conceptual insights needed to resolve conflict, whereas in situations where power is used progressively, there is greater understanding of how such conflicts can be resolved. In the book’s second part, this conceptual framework is applied to examining the case studies of American far right militias, the Branch Davidian standoff against the FBI in Waco, Texas, Pauline Hanson’s far-right and anti-government party in Australia, Theodore Kaczynski (the Unabomber), and the United States-led 'war on terrorism.' The author is a teacher of foundational sociology at the University of Newcastle, Australia.