Beyond rule; trust and power as capacities

Abstract

Taking an approach that avoids comprehending power and trust as entities to be studied apart, the article insist on elucidating trust and power as they are enacted in their intimate and delicate relationship to each other and to other human and social phenomena of similar importance, such as knowledge and experience, gift-giving, hope, freedom and agency. To permit us to understand power and trust as interdependent dimensions, the article confronts the notions of power as command, coercion, control and calculation and develops a conception of power as a capacity. This permits to consider trusting as an exercise of power and an anticipatory affect. Trust is a resolve to bear an experienced risk by confiding in the new and unknown.

Foucault’s dispositive: The perspicacity of dispositive analytics in organizational research

“…This 'power to' is power understood as the ability to affect others in ways that influence their dispositions, meaning their ability and tendency to unfold themselves as they behave and act in specific ways (Raffnsøe, 2013). It is power analyzed as a 'mode of action upon actions' (Foucault, 1982: 220), as a capability to 'conduct conduct (conduire des conduites)' (Foucault, *1984a: 315), and thus power as closely associated with the exercise and the management of freedom (Foucault, 1982: 221).…”

“…It is power analyzed as a 'mode of action upon actions' (Foucault, 1982: 220), as a capability to 'conduct conduct (conduire des conduites)' (Foucault, *1984a: 315), and thus power as closely associated with the exercise and the management of freedom (Foucault, 1982: 221). It is also power conceived as a relational and pluri-directional capability to affect the dispositions within a social field, not only the dispositions of others but also our own (Raffnsøe, 2013).…”

The Foucault Effect in Organization Studies

“…Contrary to a thoroughly 'disciplined society', or a society in which everything happened in accordance with discipline, a 'disciplinary society' for Foucault is a society in which discipline has a decisive impact and plays the role of an important form of normativity, yet never fully rules, but exerts an influence, rivalling with other form of norms and dispositions (Raffnsøe et al, 2016b, p. 189-190). Even when discipline and surveillance may be ever-present, ubiquitous or even all-pervasive, they are only present as dispositional devices that may act on our actions or perceptions (Raffnsøe, 2013a).…”

Book Review: Sverre Raffnsøe The formation of a new relationship to oneself. The Confessions of the Flesh

“…Thus, as it becomes essential for the subject to constantly decipher and address the involuntary libidinal and erectile character of the will in itself , a new level of existence is established. The human subject begins to experience its own lust in the form of a continuing rise and a disobedience within itself against itself (Raffnsøe, 2013). From this point on, the experience that ‘his mind and flesh do not obey his will’ but instead risks dominating his will begins to form an overarching and defining experience for man.…”

“…The very same original involuntary rise against the will and what one ought to will marks the beginning of a ‘how-are-you-ness’ or a Sich-befinden as an irreducible dimension and crucial issue in human life, later to be articulated by Kierkegaard and Heidegger. This opens up the experience that we find ourselves situated with regard to a certain mood, resulting from the fact that we have already been affected in certain ways (Raffnsøe, 2013).…”