ABSTRACT
The concept of power remains elusive despite the recent and prolific outpourings of case studies on community power. Its elusiveness is dramatically demonstrated by the regularity of disagreement as to the locus of community power between the sociologists and the political scientists. This chapter contends that the pluralists themselves have not grasped the whole truth of the matter; that while their criticisms of the elitists are sound, they, like the elitists, utilize an approach and assumptions which predetermine their conclusions. Its argument is cast within the frame of a central thesis: that there are two faces of power, neither of which the sociologists see and only one of which the political scientists see. A fresh approach to the study of power is called for, an approach based upon a recognition of the two faces of power. Under this approach the researcher would begin by investigating the particular "mobilization of bias" in the institution under scrutiny.
