PHA-Exchange> Food to confront a submissive thought

[claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn]

Human Rights Reader 76

WHY POWER ONLY YIELDS TO COUNTER-POWER.

1. Power is to be understood here as the submission of some to the will of 
others. When power leads to the advancement of an individual’s or a minority 
group’s own interest, it becomes linked to exploitation and thus to the 
violation of human rights (HR).

2. Duty bearers manage or control ‘authoritative resources’ that result (flow) 
from the established and given organization and distribution of power in a 
given society.

3. Existing structures and institutions embody relationships of power; they 
are the manifestation and materialization of power. Furthermore, social and 
political organizations are designed specifically to distribute power in a 
given way. (Note that organizational charts represent relationships of power!).

4. In HR work, we are called to uncover the structural determinants of 
people’s-condition-of-oppression so as to help them transcend these 
conditions; this means increasing their bargaining power and aiming at their 
emancipation. (This is the only sensible way out since the existing social 
system and class relationships, embodying key human relations of power, do 
constraint people’s actions).

5. Emancipation takes place whenever people are able to overcome past and 
present restrictions (and overcome their rights being violated). In a way, to 
emancipate means to invert the poles. For this to happen, there is no need for 
more money; people just have to impose fairer rules.

6. We, therefore, need to assert ourselves against the current powers of 
control and find and create such a fairer balance. (J. K. Galbraith)

7. It behooves HR activists to identify the political distortions being used 
by the (minority) power holders and to uncover how these distortions (often 
disguised in a whole new jargon or ”newspeak”) result in oppressive and 
exploitative power relations.

8. Power can be, and often is, socially malign; it is linked to conflicts of 
interest
and counter-power is the means by which these (dialectical) conflicts 
are resolved.

9. Moreover, power is often hidden. For instance, solutions based 
on ‘compensatory power’ offer incentives and rewards; those based 
on ‘conditioned power’ change beliefs through persuasion and education. 
Only ‘coercive power’ wins submission by directly, more openly and more 
blatantly, violating people’s rights.

10. Resolving conflicts and balancing competing interests brought about by 
these three powers is the art of politics.

11. People’s participation in social networks can (and does) become a critical 
source of power; actually, these networks are to be seen, first and foremost, 
as the most viable vehicle to build people’s power. (Remember that ‘divided-we-
beg, united-we-demand’
). 

12. In the confrontation of networks against hierarchies, HR activists should 
use the art of politics to get involved in creating these social networks and 
helping them mobilize to effectively place their claims.
 
13. Whining about the North or the rich being too powerful long ago ceased to 
stir any pangs of conscience. The only chance to become a player, not a ball, 
in the game of eradicating HR violations is to try and build up countervailing 
clout. (F. Nuscheler) 

14. But this clout cannot stay only at the level of protesting (e.g., at the 
WTO or the WB/IMF meetings); a newly acquired clout will only take us to 
higher levels if it makes viable, constructive (new) propositions
and in HR 
work we can make plenty those propositions: re-read your old HR Readers


Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn 
==================================
Through much of this Reader I distilled arguments found in several issues of 
D+C the German development journal, the book ‘The Hidden Connections’, by 
Fritjof Capra, the book ‘Heading South, Looking North’ by Ariel Dorfman and 
the book ‘Refugiado del Iraq Milenario’ by Claudio Sepulveda.



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