Big Ideas Event: How To Grasp Power (A Brief Guide) on 29 April 2008
4 April 2008 – 6:29 pm by The Big Ideas Team
We hear and see the word power in a political and social context almost every day. Politicians come into power, hold power and lose it. People are seen as powerful by virtue of a perceived ability to get other people to do what they want. But what is power really and how does it work? Can it be identified and described? Or is it something altogether more hidden and nebulous?
Danny Rye, a graduate research student and sometime tutor in the School of Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck College , introduces the main schools of thought and helps to reveal why this apparently straightforward term is in fact a hotly contested one.
We’ll meet upstairs at The Wheatsheaf in London on 29 April, 7.30 onwards. Admission is free and open to all.
[UPDATE: If you missed the event, or if you want to get deeper into the subject, you can now read Danny’s notes.]
The image is an altered version of a photograph by William Nielsen of a diorama of the Bolshevik Revolution in Kirov. It’s a Creative Commons image with some rights reserved.