Readings on Power and Power Structures

The following reading list is culled from the H-Grad email list, and it focuses on books that discuss and examine power at various historical moments. Key texts to notice are the works by Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Nicolo Machiavelli, and Paulo Freire. Others are reflective of more localized studies of power. All descriptions are by the individual list members who suggested the work in the original discussion thread.

Are there any readings on power that you would like to add to this list? Leave your suggestions in the comments section below.

• Blockmans, Wim on The Origins of the Modern State in Europe, 13th to 18th Century
• Discusses all aspects of power, representation, development of state and stately power and so on.
• Botsman, Daniel. Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan.
• An excellent analysis, influenced by Foucault but still transcending his theory, about criminal punishment and its underlying philosophy in Early Modern and Modern Japan.
• Bourdieu, Pierre and Jean-Claude Passeron. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. 2nd ed. London: Sage Publications, 1977. Print.
• Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish 
• History of Sexuality, volume 1
• Security, Territory, Population
• Society Must be Defended
• Birth of Biopolitics
• Foucault, Michel. “Governmentality.” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. 87-194. Print.
• Foucault, Michel. Power and Knowledge. Ed. Colin Gordon. Trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, and Kate Soper. New York: Vintage Books, 1980. Print.
• Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 2000. Print.
• Lukes, Steven. Power: A Radical View. 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print.
• Lukes argues that supreme power is not to directly force or coerce, but to “shape preferences” so that subordinates do what dominants want them to do without knowing it.
• Headrick, Daniel R., Power over Peoples: Technology, Environments, and Western Imperialism, 1400 to the Present (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
• This recent reference explores Western imperialism’s complex relationship with technology over the last 600 years, and how indigenous peoples often successfully resist that power.
• Holloway, John. Change the World Without Taking Power (2002) – Link to free online text
• Kidd, Benjamin, The Science of Power (London: Methuen & Company, Ltd, 1918).
• This classic but often overlooked reference explores power in Western civilization, often employing a Darwinian context in considering German and other international competition.
• Liell, Scott. 46 Pages: Thomas Paine Common Sense and the Turning Point to Independence. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2003.
• I recommend this historical contexts about how the American Revolution got its beginning through the “power” of words from a piece of literature where others failed to accomplish previous to this works publication.
• Machiavelli. The Prince and Discourses. Link to free online text of The Prince
• McCarthy, Cameron and Greg Dimitriadis. “Governmentality and the Sociology of Education: Media, Educational Policy, and the Politics of Resentment.” Race, Identity, and Representation in Education. Eds. McCarthy, Crichlow, Dimitriadis, and Dolby. 321-335. Print.
• Mills, Carmen and Trevor Gale. “Researching Social Inequalities in Education: Towards a Bourdieuian Methodology.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education Vol. 20, No. 4, p. 433-447. Web.
• Powell, Linda. “The Achievement (K)not: Whiteness and “Black Underachievement,” in Michelle Fine, et al, eds., Off White: Readings on Race, Power, and Society (1997).
• Powell reports on her experience as an instructor of a post-graduate Harvard seminar on urban education. She noted that her students’ performances in this classroom were directly related to the color of their skin. Her darker-skinned students, unquestionably bright, became intellectually frozen when trying to express ideas over which they had negative personal experiences. Powell also discovered, however, that these same underserved students successfully broke down these intellectual barriers once the class processed through these past experiences.
• Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Print.
• Swartz, David. Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1997. Print.
• Wills, Garry. The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power (latest edition: New York: Mariner Books, 2002; originally published 1982).
• This is a study of how personal power, and the drive for it, distorted the Kennedy presidency and handicapped the careers of all three brothers. Wills is largely a cultural historian, so not everyone may buy what he’s selling, but his paradigm can be very useful.