6. Rethinking Power and Resistance

In this chapter we turn our attention to dominant conceptions of power and resistance that have tended to inform the discourse on means, and we demonstrate the need to adopt more expansive conceptions of both. Debates over the means of social change tend to be premised on agonistic conceptions of power that are deeply entrenched in Western thought. When power is conceived only in these narrow terms, it obscures mutualistic forms of power that can be potent forces for transformative social change. These latter forms of power play an especially significant role in constructive programs that seek to prefigure a more mature social order characterized by mutualism, cooperation, nurturing, contributive justice, and shared prosperity. They are powers of attraction, not coercion; they are characterized by abundance, not scarcity; they are creative, not destructive. When we adopt this more expansive conception of power it expands, in turn, our understanding of resistance. In the face of a movement that draws on the creative, attractive, and mutualistic powers of the human spirit to construct a more just social order, resistance denotes the efforts of those who seek to preserve the old social order by attempting to repress the constructive program. A more expansive conception of power thus helps us recognize that resistance is a bidirectional concept. In this regard, transformative constructive programs are not “the resistance.” Rather, they should expect to encounter resistance.