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6 - Mann's theory of ideological power: sources, applications and elaborations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

By
Philip S. Gorski
Edited by
John A. Hall  and
Ralph Schroeder
Philip S. Gorski
Affiliation:
Professor of Sociology Yale University
John A. Hall
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
Ralph Schroeder
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

Even in its current, unfinished state, The Sources of Social Power is probably the single most ambitious work of historical sociology to appear during the last thirty years – years in which historical sociology has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance throughout the English-speaking world. The aims of The Sources of Social Power are grand in scope and three in number: (1) to challenge reified conceptions of society and determinist theories of history; (2) to reconceive sociology as the study of social power; and (3) to re-write Western history as a history of the growth and transformation of social power. No mean task!

This chapter does not attempt to recount or evaluate the arguments of The Sources of Social Power in their entirety; that is more than one chapter – and this author – can do. Rather, it focuses on one type of social power, what Mann refers to as ‘ideological power’. It asks three questions: (1) What are the theoretical sources (and silences) of Mann's concept of ideological power? (2) What role does ideological power play (and not play) in Mann's interpretation of Western history? (3) How might we elaborate and improve on Mann's theory of ideological power? Its aims, in other words, are exegetical, evaluative and (re-)constructive.

My answers to these questions will become clearer below, but it may be useful to anticipate them here.

Type
Chapter
Information
An Anatomy of Power
The Social Theory of Michael Mann
 , pp. 101 - 134
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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