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The Poverty of Eros in Plato’s Symposium (Bloomsbury Studies in Ancient Philosophy)
by Lorelle D. LamascusThe Poverty of Eros in Plato's Symposium offers an innovative new approach towards Eros and the concept of Eros in the Symposium. Lorelle D. Lamascus argues that Plato's depiction of Eros as the child of Poverty (penia) and Resource (poros) is central to understanding the nature of love. Eros is traditionally seen as self-interested or acquisitive, but this book argues instead that Eros and reason are properly in accord with one another. The moral life and the philosophical life alike depend upon properly trained and directed Eros.Lamascus demonstrates that the presentation of the nature of Poverty is essential to the nature of Eros in the Symposium, doing this through in-depth discussion of the major twentieth century interpretations of Platonic Eros. The book shows that poverty provides an appropriate directing of Eros towards eternal and unchanging goods (and away from an age geared towards material items and wealth), and thus that Plato's mythical treatment of Eros in the Symposium lays the groundwork for understanding the soul's embrace of poverty as a way of living, loving, and knowing.
The Poverty of Historicism
by Karl PopperOn its publication in 1957, The Poverty of Historicism was hailed by Arthur Koestler as 'probably the only book published this year which will outlive the century.'A devastating criticism of fixed and predictable laws in history, Popper dedicated the book to all those 'who fell victim to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny.' Short and beautifully written, it has inspired generations of readers, intellectuals and policy makers. One of the most important books on the social sciences since the Second World War, it is a searing insight into the ideas of this great thinker.
The Poverty of Historicism
by Karl PopperOn its publication in 1957, The Poverty of Historicism was hailed by Arthur Koestler as 'probably the only book published this year which will outlive the century.'A devastating criticism of fixed and predictable laws in history, Popper dedicated the book to all those 'who fell victim to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny.' Short and beautifully written, it has inspired generations of readers, intellectuals and policy makers. One of the most important books on the social sciences since the Second World War, it is a searing insight into the ideas of this great thinker.
The Poverty of Our Freedom: Essays 2012 - 2019
by Axel HonnethThere is no normative concept more appealing today than the idea of individual freedom. Political party manifestos are drawn up, legal reforms are defended, military interventions are undertaken, even decisions in personal relationships are justified – all in the name of individual freedom. But our understanding of freedom is impoverished if we try to grasp its essence merely in terms of the subjective rights of the individual.In his new book, Axel Honneth shows that we still have a lot to learn from the tradition of philosophy about a rational concept of freedom. Honneth begins by re-examining the work of Hegel and Marx in order to clarify the concept of freedom. He then explores various social problem areas in which the ideals of freedom are directly confronted by contemporary obstacles. Honneth ends by examining potential forces which could give new impetus to our struggle for freedom.This new book by one of the leading social and political philosophers writing today will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy, political theory, social theory, and the social sciences and humanities generally.
The Poverty of Our Freedom: Essays 2012 - 2019
by Axel HonnethThere is no normative concept more appealing today than the idea of individual freedom. Political party manifestos are drawn up, legal reforms are defended, military interventions are undertaken, even decisions in personal relationships are justified – all in the name of individual freedom. But our understanding of freedom is impoverished if we try to grasp its essence merely in terms of the subjective rights of the individual.In his new book, Axel Honneth shows that we still have a lot to learn from the tradition of philosophy about a rational concept of freedom. Honneth begins by re-examining the work of Hegel and Marx in order to clarify the concept of freedom. He then explores various social problem areas in which the ideals of freedom are directly confronted by contemporary obstacles. Honneth ends by examining potential forces which could give new impetus to our struggle for freedom.This new book by one of the leading social and political philosophers writing today will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy, political theory, social theory, and the social sciences and humanities generally.
The Poverty of the World: Rediscovering the Poor at Home and Abroad, 1941-1968
by Sheyda F.A. JahanbaniIn the middle of the twentieth century, liberal intellectuals and policymakers in the United States came to see poverty as a global problem. Applying Progressive era and Depression insights about the causes of poverty to the post-World War II challenges posed by the Cold War and decolonization, they developed new ideas about why poverty persisted. The problem, they argued, was that the poor at home and abroad were alienated from the enormous opportunities industrial capitalism provided. Left unsolved, that problem, they believed, would threaten world peace. In The Poverty of the World, Sheyda Jahanbani brings together the histories of US foreign relations and domestic politics to explain why, during a period of unprecedented affluence, Americans rediscovered poverty and supported major policy initiative to combat it. Revisiting a moment of triumph for American liberals in the 1940s, Jahanbani shows how the US's newfound role as a global superpower prompted novel ideas among liberal thinkers about how to address poverty and generated new urgency for trying to do so. Their sense of responsibility about deploying American knowledge and wealth as a beneficent force in the world, produced such foreign aid programs as the Peace Corps. As Americans came to recognize the problem beyond the country's borders, they turned the idea of "underdevelopment" inward to explain poverty in urban neighborhoods and rural communities at home, inspiring Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty and his domestic peace corps, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). Drawing on a wide variety of archival material, Jahanbani reinterprets the lives and work of prominent liberal figures in postwar American social politics, from Oscar Lewis to John Kenneth Galbraith, Michael Harrington to Sargent Shriver, to show the global origins of their ideas. By tracing how American liberals invented the problem of "global poverty" and executed a war against it, The Poverty of the World sheds new light on the domestic impacts of the Cold War, the global ambitions of American liberalism, and the way in which key intellectuals and policymakers worked to develop an alternative vision of US empire in the decades after World War II.
The Poverty of the World: Rediscovering the Poor at Home and Abroad, 1941-1968
by Sheyda F.A. JahanbaniIn the middle of the twentieth century, liberal intellectuals and policymakers in the United States came to see poverty as a global problem. Applying Progressive era and Depression insights about the causes of poverty to the post-World War II challenges posed by the Cold War and decolonization, they developed new ideas about why poverty persisted. The problem, they argued, was that the poor at home and abroad were alienated from the enormous opportunities industrial capitalism provided. Left unsolved, that problem, they believed, would threaten world peace. In The Poverty of the World, Sheyda Jahanbani brings together the histories of US foreign relations and domestic politics to explain why, during a period of unprecedented affluence, Americans rediscovered poverty and supported major policy initiative to combat it. Revisiting a moment of triumph for American liberals in the 1940s, Jahanbani shows how the US's newfound role as a global superpower prompted novel ideas among liberal thinkers about how to address poverty and generated new urgency for trying to do so. Their sense of responsibility about deploying American knowledge and wealth as a beneficent force in the world, produced such foreign aid programs as the Peace Corps. As Americans came to recognize the problem beyond the country's borders, they turned the idea of "underdevelopment" inward to explain poverty in urban neighborhoods and rural communities at home, inspiring Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty and his domestic peace corps, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). Drawing on a wide variety of archival material, Jahanbani reinterprets the lives and work of prominent liberal figures in postwar American social politics, from Oscar Lewis to John Kenneth Galbraith, Michael Harrington to Sargent Shriver, to show the global origins of their ideas. By tracing how American liberals invented the problem of "global poverty" and executed a war against it, The Poverty of the World sheds new light on the domestic impacts of the Cold War, the global ambitions of American liberalism, and the way in which key intellectuals and policymakers worked to develop an alternative vision of US empire in the decades after World War II.
Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements
by Monique DeveauxThis is an open access title available under the terms of a [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International] license. It is free to read at [Oxford Scholarship Online] and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Poverty is not only about material deprivation, but also about the subordination and disempowerment of poor populations. So why isn't the emancipation and empowerment of the poor a core goal of ethical arguments for poverty reduction? Deveaux argues in this book that philosophers fail to prioritize these ends, and to recognize the moral and political agency of poor people, because they still conceive of poverty narrowly and apolitically as mere needs scarcity. By comparison, poor activists and critical poverty researchers who see deprivation as structural exclusion and powerlessness advocate a "poor-centered," poor-led, approach to reducing poverty. Stuck in an older paradigm of poverty thinking, philosophers have failed to recognize the power and moral authority of poor communities--and their movements for justice and social change. If normative ethicists seek to contribute to proposals for just and durable poverty reduction, they will need to look to the insights and aims of "pro-poor," poor-led social movements. From rural landless workers in Brazil, to urban shack dwellers in South Africa, to unemployed workers impoverished by neoliberal economic policies in Argentina, poor-led organizations and movements advance a more political understanding of poverty--and of what is needed to eradicate it. Deveaux shows how these groups develop the political consciousness and collective capabilities of poor communities and help to create the basis for solidarity among poor populations. Defending the idea of a political responsibility for solidarity, she shows how nonpoor outsiders--individuals, institutions, and states--can help to advance a transformative anti-poverty agenda by supporting the efforts of these movements.
Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements
by Monique DeveauxPoverty is not only about material deprivation, but also about the subordination and disempowerment of poor populations. So why isn't the emancipation and empowerment of the poor a core goal of ethical arguments for poverty reduction? Deveaux argues in this book that philosophers fail to prioritize these ends, and to recognize the moral and political agency of poor people, because they still conceive of poverty narrowly and apolitically as mere needs scarcity. By comparison, poor activists and critical poverty researchers who see deprivation as structural exclusion and powerlessness advocate a "poor-centered," poor-led, approach to reducing poverty. Stuck in an older paradigm of poverty thinking, philosophers have failed to recognize the power and moral authority of poor communities--and their movements for justice and social change. If normative ethicists seek to contribute to proposals for just and durable poverty reduction, they will need to look to the insights and aims of "pro-poor," poor-led social movements. From rural landless workers in Brazil, to urban shack dwellers in South Africa, to unemployed workers impoverished by neoliberal economic policies in Argentina, poor-led organizations and movements advance a more political understanding of poverty--and of what is needed to eradicate it. Deveaux shows how these groups develop the political consciousness and collective capabilities of poor communities and help to create the basis for solidarity among poor populations. Defending the idea of a political responsibility for solidarity, she shows how nonpoor outsiders--individuals, institutions, and states--can help to advance a transformative anti-poverty agenda by supporting the efforts of these movements.
Power: A Concept for Information and Communication Sciences
by Olivier DupontA polymorphous concept, power has imposed itself since ancient times. Whether it characterizes the phenomena of domination, exclusion or voluntary submission, it illuminates social relations and, since the 20th Century, interpersonal relations. This book offers, first of all, a daring panorama through its intertwining of different theoretical propositions relating to power, across time and across disciplines. It then presents the work of researchers in information and communication sciences who draw from these proposals the materials allowing them to develop their own analyses. These analyses revisit discursive power with respect to contemporary formations of communication and information. They investigate digital technologies by problematizing the phenomena of influence, control and access to knowledge. Finally, they reflect on the media in the light of inherent powers of social mediation, advertising and journalism.
Power: A Concept for Information and Communication Sciences
by Olivier DupontA polymorphous concept, power has imposed itself since ancient times. Whether it characterizes the phenomena of domination, exclusion or voluntary submission, it illuminates social relations and, since the 20th Century, interpersonal relations. This book offers, first of all, a daring panorama through its intertwining of different theoretical propositions relating to power, across time and across disciplines. It then presents the work of researchers in information and communication sciences who draw from these proposals the materials allowing them to develop their own analyses. These analyses revisit discursive power with respect to contemporary formations of communication and information. They investigate digital technologies by problematizing the phenomena of influence, control and access to knowledge. Finally, they reflect on the media in the light of inherent powers of social mediation, advertising and journalism.
Power: The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984
by Michel FoucaultThis book covers the topics Foucault helped make the core agenda of Western political culture - medicine, prisons, psychiatry, government and sexuality - emphasising Foucault's practical concern with discrimination, coercion and exclusion in human society.
Power: A New Social Analysis
by Bertrand RussellThe key to human nature that Marx found in wealth and Freud in sex, Bertrand Russell finds in power. Power, he argues, is man's ultimate goal, and is, in its many guises, the single most important element in the development of any society. Writting in the late 1930s when Europe was being torn apart by extremist ideologies and the world was on the brink of war, Russell set out to found a 'new science' to make sense of the traumatic events of the day and explain those that would follow. The result was Power, a remarkable book that Russell regarded as one of the most important of his long career. Countering the totalitarian desire to dominate, Russell shows how political enlightenment and human understanding can lead to peace - his book is a passionate call for independence of mind and a celebration of the instinctive joy of human life.
Power: A New Social Analysis
by Bertrand RussellThe key to human nature that Marx found in wealth and Freud in sex, Bertrand Russell finds in power. Power, he argues, is man's ultimate goal, and is, in its many guises, the single most important element in the development of any society. Writting in the late 1930s when Europe was being torn apart by extremist ideologies and the world was on the brink of war, Russell set out to found a 'new science' to make sense of the traumatic events of the day and explain those that would follow. The result was Power, a remarkable book that Russell regarded as one of the most important of his long career. Countering the totalitarian desire to dominate, Russell shows how political enlightenment and human understanding can lead to peace - his book is a passionate call for independence of mind and a celebration of the instinctive joy of human life.
Power Algebras over Semirings: With Applications in Mathematics and Computer Science (Mathematics and Its Applications #488)
by Jonathan S. GolanThis monograph is a continuation of several themes presented in my previous books [146, 149]. In those volumes, I was concerned primarily with the properties of semirings. Here, the objects of investigation are sets of the form RA, where R is a semiring and A is a set having a certain structure. The problem is one of translating that structure to RA in some "natural" way. As such, it tries to find a unified way of dealing with diverse topics in mathematics and theoretical com puter science as formal language theory, the theory of fuzzy algebraic structures, models of optimal control, and many others. Another special case is the creation of "idempotent analysis" and similar work in optimization theory. Unlike the case of the previous work, which rested on a fairly established mathematical foundation, the approach here is much more tentative and docimastic. This is an introduction to, not a definitative presentation of, an area of mathematics still very much in the making. The basic philosphical problem lurking in the background is one stated suc cinctly by Hahle and Sostak [185]: ". . . to what extent basic fields of mathematics like algebra and topology are dependent on the underlying set theory?" The conflicting definitions proposed by various researchers in search of a resolution to this conundrum show just how difficult this problem is to see in a proper light.
Power and Crime (New Directions in Critical Criminology)
by Vincenzo RuggieroThis book provides an analysis of the two concepts of power and crime and posits that criminologists can learn more about these concepts by incorporating ideas from disciplines outside of criminology. Although arguably a 'rendezvous' discipline, Vincenzo Ruggiero argues that criminology can gain much insight from other fields such as the political sciences, ethics, social theory, critical legal studies, economic theory, and classical literature. In this book Ruggiero offers an authoritative synthesis of a range of intellectual conceptions of crime and power, drawing on the works and theories of classical, as well as contemporary thinkers, in the above fields of knowledge, arguing that criminology can ‘humbly’ renounce claims to intellectual independence and adopt notions and perspectives from other disciplines. The theories presented locate the crimes of the powerful in different disciplinary contexts and make the book essential reading for academics and students involved in the study of criminology, sociology, law, politics and philosophy.
Power and Crime (New Directions in Critical Criminology)
by Vincenzo RuggieroThis book provides an analysis of the two concepts of power and crime and posits that criminologists can learn more about these concepts by incorporating ideas from disciplines outside of criminology. Although arguably a 'rendezvous' discipline, Vincenzo Ruggiero argues that criminology can gain much insight from other fields such as the political sciences, ethics, social theory, critical legal studies, economic theory, and classical literature. In this book Ruggiero offers an authoritative synthesis of a range of intellectual conceptions of crime and power, drawing on the works and theories of classical, as well as contemporary thinkers, in the above fields of knowledge, arguing that criminology can ‘humbly’ renounce claims to intellectual independence and adopt notions and perspectives from other disciplines. The theories presented locate the crimes of the powerful in different disciplinary contexts and make the book essential reading for academics and students involved in the study of criminology, sociology, law, politics and philosophy.
Power and Education: Contexts of Oppression and Opportunity
by Antonia KupferEducation is a crucial influence early in life and is therefore inextricably linked with power. This book examines how education can limit opportunities and create social inequality as well as being an empowering force for good. Theoretical approaches on the relationship of power and education are discussed as are questions on power and knowledge.
Power and Feminist Agency in Capitalism: Toward a New Theory of the Political Subject
by Claudia LeebAccording to postmodern scholars, subjects are defined only through their relationship to institutions and social norms. But if we are only political people insofar as we are subjects of existing power relations, there is little hope of political transformation. To instigate change, we need to draw on collective power, but appealing to a particular type of subject, whether "working class," "black," or "women," will always be exclusionary. This issue is a particular problem for feminist scholars, who are frequently criticized for assuming that they can make broad claims for all women, while failing to acknowledge their own exclusive and powerful position (mostly white, Western, and bourgeois). Recent work in political and feminist thought has suggested that we can get around these paradoxes by wishing away the idea of political subjects entirely or else thinking of political identities as constantly shifting. In this book, Claudia Leeb argues that these are both failed ideas. She instead suggests a novel idea of a subject in outline. Over the course of the book Leeb grounds this concept in work by Adorno, Lacan, and Marx - the very theorists who are often seen as denying the agency of the subject. Leeb also proposes that power structures that create political subjects are never all-powerful. While she rejects the idea of political autonomy, she shows that there is always a moment in which subjects can contest the power relations that define them.
Power and Feminist Agency in Capitalism: Toward a New Theory of the Political Subject
by Claudia LeebAccording to postmodern scholars, subjects are defined only through their relationship to institutions and social norms. But if we are only political people insofar as we are subjects of existing power relations, there is little hope of political transformation. To instigate change, we need to draw on collective power, but appealing to a particular type of subject, whether "working class," "black," or "women," will always be exclusionary. This issue is a particular problem for feminist scholars, who are frequently criticized for assuming that they can make broad claims for all women, while failing to acknowledge their own exclusive and powerful position (mostly white, Western, and bourgeois). Recent work in political and feminist thought has suggested that we can get around these paradoxes by wishing away the idea of political subjects entirely or else thinking of political identities as constantly shifting. In this book, Claudia Leeb argues that these are both failed ideas. She instead suggests a novel idea of a subject in outline. Over the course of the book Leeb grounds this concept in work by Adorno, Lacan, and Marx - the very theorists who are often seen as denying the agency of the subject. Leeb also proposes that power structures that create political subjects are never all-powerful. While she rejects the idea of political autonomy, she shows that there is always a moment in which subjects can contest the power relations that define them.
Power and Freedom in the Space of Reasons: Elaborating Foucault’s Pragmatism (Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Philosophy)
by Tuomo TiisalaThis book argues that the received view of the distinction between freedom and power must be rejected because it rests on an untenable account of the discursive cognition that endows individuals with the capacity for autonomy and self-governed rationality. In liberal and Kantian approaches alike, the autonomous subject is a self-standing starting point whose freedom is constrained by relations of power only contingently because they are external to the subject’s constitution. Thus, the received view defines the distinction between freedom and power as a dichotomy. Michel Foucault is arguably the most important critic of that dichotomy. However, it is widely agreed that Foucault falls short of justifying the alternative view he develops, where power and freedom are essentially entangled instead. The book fills out the gap by investigating the social preconditions of discursive cognition. Drawing on pragmatist-inferentialist resources from the philosophy of language (Wittgenstein, Sellars, and Brandom), it presents a new interpretation of Foucault’s philosophy that is unified by his overlooked idea of “the archaeology of knowledge.” As a result, the book not only explains why and how power and freedom must be entangled but also what it means ethically to pursue and gain autonomy with respect to one’s own understanding. Power and Freedom in the Space of Reasons will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in social and political philosophy, critical theory, ethics, philosophy of language, and the history of 20th-century philosophy.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 license.Any third party material in this book is not included in the OA Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. Please direct any permissions enquiries to the original rightsholder.This research was funded in whole or in part by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [10.55776/COE3]. For open access purposes, the author has applied a CC BY-NC public copyright license to any author-accepted manuscript version arising from this submission.Published with the support of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): 10.55776/PUB1157
Power and Freedom in the Space of Reasons: Elaborating Foucault’s Pragmatism (Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Philosophy)
by Tuomo TiisalaThis book argues that the received view of the distinction between freedom and power must be rejected because it rests on an untenable account of the discursive cognition that endows individuals with the capacity for autonomy and self-governed rationality. In liberal and Kantian approaches alike, the autonomous subject is a self-standing starting point whose freedom is constrained by relations of power only contingently because they are external to the subject’s constitution. Thus, the received view defines the distinction between freedom and power as a dichotomy. Michel Foucault is arguably the most important critic of that dichotomy. However, it is widely agreed that Foucault falls short of justifying the alternative view he develops, where power and freedom are essentially entangled instead. The book fills out the gap by investigating the social preconditions of discursive cognition. Drawing on pragmatist-inferentialist resources from the philosophy of language (Wittgenstein, Sellars, and Brandom), it presents a new interpretation of Foucault’s philosophy that is unified by his overlooked idea of “the archaeology of knowledge.” As a result, the book not only explains why and how power and freedom must be entangled but also what it means ethically to pursue and gain autonomy with respect to one’s own understanding. Power and Freedom in the Space of Reasons will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in social and political philosophy, critical theory, ethics, philosophy of language, and the history of 20th-century philosophy.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 license.Any third party material in this book is not included in the OA Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. Please direct any permissions enquiries to the original rightsholder.This research was funded in whole or in part by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [10.55776/COE3]. For open access purposes, the author has applied a CC BY-NC public copyright license to any author-accepted manuscript version arising from this submission.Published with the support of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): 10.55776/PUB1157
Power and Influence: The Metaphysics of Reductive Explanation
by Richard CorryThe world is a complex place, and this complexity is an obstacle to our attempts to explain, predict, and control it. In Power and Influence, Richard Corry investigates the assumptions that are built into the reductive method of explanation—the method whereby we study the components of a complex system in relative isolation and use the information so gained to explain or predict the behaviour of the complex whole. He investigates the metaphysical presuppositions built into the reductive method, seeking to ascertain what the world must be like in order that the method could work. Corry argues that the method assumes the existence of causal powers that manifest causal influence—a relatively unrecognised ontological category, of which forces are a paradigm example. The success of the reductive method, therefore, is an argument for the existence of such causal influences. The book goes on to show that adding causal influence to our ontology gives us the resources to solve some traditional problems in the metaphysics of causal powers, laws of nature, causation, emergence, and possibly even normative ethics. What results, then, is not just an understanding of the reductive method, but an integrated metaphysical worldview that is grounded in an ontology of power and influence.
Power and Influence: The Metaphysics of Reductive Explanation
by Richard CorryThe world is a complex place, and this complexity is an obstacle to our attempts to explain, predict, and control it. In Power and Influence, Richard Corry investigates the assumptions that are built into the reductive method of explanation—the method whereby we study the components of a complex system in relative isolation and use the information so gained to explain or predict the behaviour of the complex whole. He investigates the metaphysical presuppositions built into the reductive method, seeking to ascertain what the world must be like in order that the method could work. Corry argues that the method assumes the existence of causal powers that manifest causal influence—a relatively unrecognised ontological category, of which forces are a paradigm example. The success of the reductive method, therefore, is an argument for the existence of such causal influences. The book goes on to show that adding causal influence to our ontology gives us the resources to solve some traditional problems in the metaphysics of causal powers, laws of nature, causation, emergence, and possibly even normative ethics. What results, then, is not just an understanding of the reductive method, but an integrated metaphysical worldview that is grounded in an ontology of power and influence.
Power and International Relations: A Conceptual Approach
by David A. BaldwinContrary to conventional wisdom, the concept of power has not always been central to international relations theory. During the 1920s and 30s, power was often ignored or vilified by international relations scholars—especially in America. Power and International Relations explores how this changed in later decades by tracing how power emerged as an important social science concept in American scholarship after World War I. Combining intellectual history and conceptual analysis, David Baldwin examines power's increased presence in the study of international relations and looks at how the three dominant approaches of realism, neoliberalism, and constructivism treat power.The clarity and precision of thinking about power increased greatly during the last half of the twentieth century, due to efforts by political scientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, philosophers, mathematicians, and geographers who contributed to "social power literature." Baldwin brings the insights of this literature to bear on the three principal theoretical traditions in international relations theory. He discusses controversial issues in power analysis, and shows the relevance of older works frequently underappreciated today.Focusing on the social power perspective in international relations, this book sheds light on how power has been considered during the last half century and how it should be approached in future research.