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8 - Power and Relation

from Part III - Power, Cooperation, and Governance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2018

Yaqing Qin
Affiliation:
Foreign Affairs University, Beijing
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Summary

Chapter 8 reconceptualizes the concept of power, proposing that relation is power. Recognizing mainstream IRT's focus on power at the structural and agential levels, it points out that power also comes from relations. It is this intersubjective level that has been long neglected by Western IR literature. Unlike structural or agential power, relational power has three distinct features. The first is sharability, characterized by either shared ownership or shared accessibility; the second is exchangeability, for relational power, by definition, reflects an exchange relationship through the mechanism of "bao (roughly 'reciprocity')"; and the third is that it increases by use, for the best way of maintaining relationships is to enhance intimacy through keeping communications and contacts. Relational power, furthermore, is more likely to be "power to" rather than "power over", for it tends to indicate a co-empowering process during which social actors empower each other through sharability, reciprocity and complementarity. In this sense, power is no longer the ability to control others, but the ability to orchestrate relations for maintaining the process of co-empowerment.
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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  • Power and Relation
  • Yaqing Qin
  • Book: A Relational Theory of World Politics
  • Online publication: 03 April 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316869505.009
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  • Power and Relation
  • Yaqing Qin
  • Book: A Relational Theory of World Politics
  • Online publication: 03 April 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316869505.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Power and Relation
  • Yaqing Qin
  • Book: A Relational Theory of World Politics
  • Online publication: 03 April 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316869505.009
Available formats
×