95743 Chap.3 Power, Resistance and Intersectionality
Power, Resistance and Intersectionality
Power as a relationship
This chapter starts from two classic definitions, one stressing the ability to impose one's will despite resistance and one stressing that power can help or harm the interests of others.
It sets out the benefits the lecture associates with concentrated power, such as efficiency and order, against its dangers, from oppression to stratification.
Three faces and many layers
Lukes' model distinguishes control over visible decisions, control over what reaches the agenda and control over what people come to believe they want.
A layered framework adds situational, organisational and structural power, and intersectionality explains why people who belong to several disadvantaged categories experience compounded effects.
Resistance
Because control always invites push-back, the chapter closes with active resistance, which confronts power directly, and passive resistance, which withdraws cooperation, along with the risks each carries.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Weber and Lukes on power
- 02
Value and danger of concentrated power
- 03
Oppression, agency, privilege, framing and hegemony
- 04
Overt, covert and latent power
- 05
Situational, organisational and structural power
- 06
Intersectionality
- 07
Active and passive resistance
Worked example · free
Explain compounded disadvantage for one person using intersectionality
- 1Identify the categories: age, migrant status or ethnicity, gender and income all apply to the women at once.
- 1Show the overlap: each category alone may lower use, but together they compound, for example through language barriers combined with low data budgets and caring duties.
- 1Locate the power: the gap is partly organisational, because the service designed the app around its typical user, and partly structural, because income and language shape access across society.
- 1Draw the implication: a fix aimed at one category, such as translating the app, will not reach the overlap unless cost and caring time are also addressed.
Key terms
- Agency
- The freedom and ability of a person or group to initiate and control their own actions.
- Hegemony
- Predominance of one state or class over others; cultural hegemony means the ruling group's values come to seem like everyone's common sense.
- Covert Power
- Direct but hidden control in which one party sets the agenda and the other is unaware of the mechanism.
- Passive Resistance
- Non-violent opposition that refuses to cooperate with authority, such as boycotts, strikes or sit-ins, without directly attacking the power structure.
- Structural Power
- Power built into the way a society's systems work, rather than held by one person in one encounter.
Power, Resistance and Intersectionality FAQ
How do covert and latent power differ?
Covert power is still exercised by someone: a decision-maker quietly keeps an issue off the agenda while those affected are unaware. Latent power needs no such steering, because people have come to believe the existing arrangement serves their own interests, which makes it the most insidious of the three faces.
Why does the subject teach power in a health context?
The lecture gives three reasons: power shapes health policy, power is the same as a community's agency over its own health, and advocacy is the deliberate effort to shift power towards groups whose needs have been neglected, which is what the final group task asks you to plan.
What are the risks of active resistance?
According to the lecture, active resistance can alienate potential allies, invite retaliation from the power being opposed, and be framed as criminal or as a threat to peace, even when its cause is just.
What is the layered approach to power?
Alongside the three faces, the lecture describes a political economy framework that separates situational power in a particular encounter, organisational power held through institutions, and systemic or structural power built into how a society works. It helps explain why a problem can persist even when individuals act fairly.
Assessment move
Make a three-row table for the faces of power with one health example of your own for each, and practise telling covert from latent with short scenarios. Memorise the six terms on the terminology slide as pairs of term and one-line meaning. For the pitch, decide early which kind of power your community lacks and whether your event builds it through organising or improves the community's image through representation.
In workshops, be ready to discuss the open question the lecture leaves: whether every form of oppression is connected, or whether some causes pull against each other. Link each term to an example from your own community to make recall easier.
