Power: A Concept For Information And Communication Sciences (science, Society And New Technologies Series: Concepts To Conceive 21st Century Society Set)

A 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.-- Provided by publisher Content: Cover Half-Title Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents Preface Acknowledgements Introduction PART 1. Epistemological Foundations Introduction to Part 1 1. Political Power, Institutions and Socio-economic Organizations 1.1. Explanations of the emergence of political power 1.2. The State, the achieved form of political power 1.3. The State as outdated form of political power: the new social powers 1.3.1. The relationships between economic power and politicalpower 1.3.2. Displacement of the capacity for action from the State to multinational corporations? 1.3.3. Technological proliferation and organizational mutations: the emergence of new powers?1.3.4. The emergence of a fourth power through the development of new collective, discursive and decisional spaces: the media? 2. Subjective and Intersubjective Power 2.1. The concept of relational power, a concept of subject or subjects? 2.2. Interactions, translations and exchanges: locations, situations and manifestations of relational power 2.3. A desirous subject driving a relational power 3. Discursive Power: Words, Languages, Controls and Arguments 3.1. The active power of language in and of itself3.1.1. The efficacy of words 3.1.2. Terminological mastery and the power of knowledge 3.2. The power of language in operation 3.2.1. Performative speech acts? 3.2.2. The construction of discourse within rhetoric 3.3. The predominance of social frameworks in the exercise of linguistic power 3.3.1. The control of language and the resulting conflict 3.3.2. Linguistic competence, an instrument of social reproduction 3.4. The symbolic and analogic power of language: acting on the imagination, feelings and desire PART 2. Mobilizing the Concept of Power in ICSIntroduction to Part 2 4. Linguistic Power in ICS 4.1. Authority figures 4.1.1. The genesis of the concept of the figure 4.1.2. The power of the authority figure 4.2. The circulation of epic stories and the instrumentalization of metaphors 4.2.1. Stories and the construction of representations 4.2.2. Metaphors, invocation, and naturalization 4.3. The stimulation of desire, the manipulation of self-esteem, and the instrumentalization of identities 4.3.1. Individual identity: recognition and instrumentalization of the relation to the self 4.3.2. Collective identity: the manipulation of the desire to belong4.4. The concealment or even prohibition of alternative language 4.4.1. The dominance of authorized language 4.4.2. Naturalization and unthought 4.4.3. The control of discursive spaces 4.5. The fields and spaces for the exercise of communicational influence 4.5.1. The marketing approach in light of the "publicness" principle17 4.5.2. The manipulation and influence of actors in organizations 5. Power, Society, and Developments in ICT 5.1. The emergence of the "information society."