Power: A Radical View

Description

Steven Lukes' Power: A Radical View is a seminal work still widely used some 30 years after publication. The second edition includes the complete original text alongside two major new essays. One assesses the main debates about how to conceptualize and study power, including the influential contributions of Michel Foucault. The other reconsiders Steven Lukes' own views in light of these debates and of criticisms of his original argument. With a new introduction and bibliographical essay, this book will consolidate its reputation as a classic work and a major reference point within social and political theory.

Steven Lukes is Professor of Sociology at New York University, USA. He has previously held professorships at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK, the University of Siena, Italy, the European University Institute, Italy, and Balliol College, Oxford, UK. His many published works include Moral Conflict and Politics, Marxism and Morality, Essays in Social Theory, Individualism, and Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work.

'Like the first edition, which it includes, this is a truly superb volume. It will, in thirty years' time, remain a - possibly the - classic treatment of power in the English language.' - Professor Colin Hay, University of Birmingham 'This wonderful extended version - effectively a new book - deepens and refines the conceptual, empirical and moral attributes of Power...No one concerned with politics can afford to miss this masterful clarification of power as capacity.' - Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University 'Three decades after the publication of his classic essay on power, Lukes has pulled off one of the rarest feats in social science. He has written a new and better edition of a classic. He does this by drawing from a major critical movement he had neglected (feminism), addressing the most influential alternative new explanations of power (Foucault and James Scott), and most importantly, incorporating recent seminal arguments (especially Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum's about universally necessary 'human capabilities') he is able to reformulate and strengthen his original thesis about the existence of a third dimension of power; the social construction of practices, ideologies and institutions that secure a consent to domination and call for strategies that simultaneously disempower and empower.' - Alfred Stepan, Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, Columbia University 'Thirty years ago, Steven Lukes stirred up an intellectual firestorm with his radical analysis of power. Now he is doing it again. Thank heaven!' - Professor Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University 'Like the first edition, which it includes, this is a truly superb volume. It will, in thirty years' time, remain a - possibly the - classic treatment of power in the English language.' - Professor Colin Hay, University of Birmingham 'Three decades ago, Steven Lukes elucidated why and how we should study power. His 'radical view' quickly achieved must-read status. This wonderful extended version - effectively a new book - deepens and refines the conceptual, empirical and moral attributes of Power...No one concerned with politics can afford to miss this masterful clarification of power as capacity.' - Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University 'Like the first edition, which it includes, this is a truly superb volume. It will, in thirty years' time, remain a - possibly the - classic treatment of power in the English language.' - Professor Colin Hay, University of Birmingham. 'This wonderful extended version - effectively a new book - deepens and refines the conceptual, empirical and moral attributes of Power. No one concerned with politics can afford to miss this masterful clarification of power as capacity.' - Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University. 'Three decades after the publication of his classic essay on power, Lukes has pulled off one of the rarest feats in social science. He has written a new and better edition of a classic. He does this by drawing from a major critical movement he had neglected (feminism), addressing the most influential alternative new explanations of power (Foucault and James Scott), and most importantly, incorporating recent seminal arguments (especially Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum).' - Alfred Stepan, Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, Columbia University. 'Thirty years ago, Steven Lukes stirred up an intellectual firestorm with his radical analysis of power. Now he is doing it again. Thank heaven!' - Professor Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University.