ABSTRACT
This chapter is an exploration of agency and structure, power and empower ment. The arguments here are based upon a description of the circumstances surrounding the investigation of a complaint against the governors of a small rural primary school in the UK. This is an empirical study of a local struggle in which the role of the researcher as a prisoner in a web of power is highlighted. The case is first analysed using structural and functional understandings of power; however, the voluntary nature of the individual engagement of the actors in the case highlights the role of the individual’s interpretative frameworks-both in operation and as explanatory mecha nisms. Structural and functional analyses of power do not appear to fully account for aspects of this situation, and therefore a distinction between the poetic and the rhetoric is considered as part of the explanatory mechanism. This account suggests that ‘power’ can be seen as an individually interpreted quality, and highlights the tension between individual agency and organisa tional structure.
