Legal empowerment for local resource control

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2.1. POWER AND LEGAL EMPOWERMENT
Empowerment is the process whereby disadvantaged groups acquire greater
control over decisions and processes affecting their lives. Legal empowerment
is empowerment brought about through use of legal processes.
2.1.1. Power
Power is at the heart of the concept of legal empowerment as used in this
study. It refers to the capacity to influence human behaviour. This capacity is
crucial to exert control over decisions and processes affecting one’s life.
The concept of power has been at the centre of a vast debate, which is
beyond the scope of this study (for clear and accessible reviews of this
debate, see Scott, 2001, and Vermeulen, 2005). Broadly speaking, there are
two bodies of literature on power, which represent different ways of
conceptualising it.
The first one refers to Weber’s definition of power as the capacity of one actor
to influence the behaviour of another. In this view, power is a capacity that
actors may or may not have (“powerful” and “powerless”), that is exercised (or
not) intentionally, and that is inserted in a relationship of subordination
between two or more actors (between “dominant” and “subordinate” actors).
Coercion, or threat of coercion, explicit or implicit, is the ultimate guarantor
of compliance. This model was subsequently developed by other writers (e.g.
through a reformulation in terms of capacity to alter the incentive structure
to which other actors respond).
The second way of conceptualising power focuses (not so much on the actors
involved in power relations but) on the way power is exercised in society. This
body of thought has been much influenced by the work of Foucault. This shows
that power is not a capacity in the hands of a restricted number of actors, but is
diffuse within society. The most effective form of social control, according to
Foucault, is not the threat or use of coercion, but the production of bodies of
knowledge and truths (“discourses”) which shape values and behaviour and
induce self-compliance. This process is not consciously controlled by a dominant
group or class, but unfolds through interactions throughout society. 2
2. Foucault’s ideas owe much to earlier thinkers, particularly Gramsci and his concept of “cultural
hegemony”. Gramsci emphasised that dominant classes exercised power largely with the consent of the
dominated, through controlling cultural formation that internalises the legitimisation of class domination
in the dominated. While Gramsci saw this process as consciously controlled by the dominant class, Foucault
saw power diffused throughout all groups in society.