Clarification and Visual Representation of the Concept of Power(1)

Power-related phenomena are one of the most difficult things to understand in social sciences and the field of conflict resolution as well. What is power and how power works are never obvious for many people as well as social scientists. So far, scholars and researchers tried to define power in many ways and there is considerable accumulation of research on power. However, during the last several decades, discussions about the concept of power became unnecessarily complicated and confusing. According to Kazuo Seiyama, the current situation of power study is “absurdly chaos” (おそろしく混沌としていて) and that “variously different concepts of power stand together in a disorderly way.” (さまざまに異な った「権力」概念の乱立). The purposes of this paper are twofold: firstly, to provide clearer concept of power by clarifying some aspects of power concept; and secondly, to visually demonstrate concepts and processes regarding power. The author’s concern is that how ordinary people and college students can effectively learn and understand the concept of power, which is based on sound theoretical framework. For this purpose, first, some definitions on power made by major scholars were referred to; second, several aspects of power were examined according to author’s own understanding about power phenomenon; and third, diagrams and conceptual formula on power were developed. In following the principle of Occam’s Razor (i.e., ‘in explaining a thing, no more assumptions should be made than are necessary’), the resource-based power approach which is described in this paper seems one of the parsimonious ways to understand the power phenomena. However, further field testing of the model and diagrams need to be done to improve those diagrams and conceptual formula