Wow! eBook
The Power Paradox: A Toolkit for Analyzing Conflict and Extremism
Author(s): Anna Bennett (Author)
- Publisher: University Press of America (UK)
- Publication Date: 13 April 2012
- Language: English
- Print length: 158 pages
- ISBN-10: 0761857966
- ISBN-13: 9780761857969
Book Description
The Power Paradox reveals how mainstream views of power restrict the conceptual insights needed to resolve conflict. Bennett identifies fascinating contradictions within discourses of power and relational dynamics, acknowledging the enduring quandary of power struggles: we are all implicated within them.
Editorial Reviews
Review
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.
About the Author
Anna Bennett, Ph.D., is an academic student advisor and teaches foundational sociology at the University of Newcastle, Australia.
