What is power?

    

The Reason why I find this quote so powerful, is because in many instances, many people live in this state of powerlessness and silence. I find Harriet Tubman's words so truthful,because I think that individuals that are born and raised in a situation where their way of thinking and living is controlled by other individuals of higher status; may not even know or even put themselves in this oppressed way of living. Because a status or certain role is assigned to an individual, he or she may oppress themselves ("Five Faces of Oppression"). 
  
 Chapter 5 of Experience Sociology, Describes different types of power in our society, as well as power tactics and everyday use. The reading Five Faces of Oppression, talks about oppression as a form of stripping someone of their powers and rights. The article explains Five kinds of oppression: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence. What I liked about this article, is that as I was reading it, I was able to make my own examples from historical knowledge. In chapter five, sociologist Patricia Hill Collins highlights the use of power to stand against oppression(p.111).The article also made me understand the video, in terms of how people have "power over" others as mentioned in chapter five. 

 The Milgram Experiment video, is an example where oppression is used through a means of violence and domination. In the experiment, the doctors gather people to conduct a series of shock therapy sessions on another person. This was a process in which the participants were given different roles of being "teachers" o "students". The people who were assigned as teachers were purposely given this role even though they were told that roles were given through a lottery. The student was always the same person, but the "teachers" were not aware of that. In the study, the "teachers" were to ask questions in a separate room where they were not able to see the student who was asked the questions. When a question was answered wrong, the patient would receive a shock. As the experiment progressed, the volts increased according to the number of wrong answers. The true story behind this experiment was to see how oppressive human beings are. Most people carried through the entire session, knowing that on the other side of the wall there was a person receiving electric shocks, which continued to escalate until it reached a max. Some people questioned the doctors who had the power over the participants. This was a test of whether individuals would obey the authorities even though the test went against their morals all in the name of science. Throughout the study, some questions began to raise an eyebrow, but what made these people continue and even participate in the first place? My observations were that: a)trusted authorities(scientists), b) the experiment was believed to be for a "good cause", c) increased obedience due to the constant presence of an authority figure, d)the participants believed their roles were randomly selected by playing a lottery, e) it made it okay, because the learner had signed a consent form. 

 I can also relate this experiment to what John French and Bertram Raven called expert power. expert power is one of the six bases of power described in chapter five(p.115), as the perception that an individual has superior knowledge in a particular area therefore, they have more power because of their trust worthiness. The fact that a person has a title for example a doctor or a teacher, does not mean that this person is an expert. In many cases people seem to have power of authority and knowledge when in reality they might be as ignorant as one that does not have the knowledge. This is one of the reasons why the participants in the experiment blindly obeyed the expected knowledgeable authority. They followed because the doctors know what they are doing.  

 The book also talks about domination, which is the ability that one(or several) individuals have over others. This approach can be seen from two different perspectives in my opinion. One that focuses on the dominance to accomplish a negative result against a certain group, or the power that a particular group forms through a means of domination to resist oppression and accomplish a positive result for the collective good of a group. Usually this approach involves the idea of conflict. on page 113, it is mentioned that Robert Dahl describes that power is exclusively seen in means of domination. He gives that example that "A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not do otherwise". This brings me back to the Milgram Experiment, because the doctors had the dominant authority over the participants,which triggered them to do something that these people would not do on a regular basis. They just did as they were told without questions. In a sense, I believe that the experiment made me realize that oppression happened to not only the learners, but as well as the teachers. As soon as they felt that the experiment was getting a little too extreme, they were told to continue even if they felt that this went against their morals. The authority figure had the power to push them as far as they desired and they were successful, because out of all the people they gathered as teachers only one stood up against the experiment. i recall that one guy saying that the test reminded him of the Nazi tortures during the Holocaust. That is the same way I felt as I was watching it.