ABSTRACT
The term ‘power’ is widely used, and misused, in a rather global manner to refer to a variety of different capacities and effects. I want to try to avoid this through a short analysis of ‘power’ as a concept. The term derives from the Latin potere, ‘to be able’ —the capacity to achieve some end. Yet power in human affairs generally involves control ‘over’ others. This distinction between ‘power to’ and ‘power over’, between power as capacity and as a relationship between people, is fundamental to all that follows (Isaac 1992:47; Pred 1981). But it is the former of these which is primary. According to Rorty (1992:2) ‘Power is the ability…to define and control circumstances and events so that one can influence things to go in the direction of one’s interests’. The ‘capacity’ to imagine, construct and inhabit a better built environment is what we mostly mean by empowerment here. The capacity to appropriate a room, choose a house, walk to a beach or criticize an urban design scheme are all forms of empowerment. When we say that someone is empowered, we mean their capacity to act is increased. Empowerment is linked with ‘autonomy’ and ‘freedom’, both of which imply a ‘liberation’ from arbitrary forms of power over us. The primacy of power as capacity stems from the fact that power over others has a parasitic relation with power as capacity (Isaac 1992:41). Power over others is largely driven by the desire to harness the capacities of others to one’s own empowerment. These two forms of power, as capacity and relationship, are reciprocal. Yet power as capacity is both the source and the end of this relation.
