Defining Power

I couldn’t even define power in my first essay. In my first essay, I talked about how even the common people has the power to change the world, not only the heads-of-state. I can already see the problems of my claim after spending the entire semester studying different forms of social power. First of all, I did not even define power. Secondly, I did not define what “common people” was. After spending the entire semester writing about the different forms of power and defining the different forms of states (city-states, territorial-state, empires), I can finally appreciate the need to define these larger- than-life terms that cannot be simply defined through a Webster’s. Terms like political, social, economic, and military power were the basis of the arguments of my previous two essays. By defining power, I avoided ambiguity and circular logic.

I can finally appreciate Mann’s “Sources of Social Power”. Mann saved me in writing every single one of my essay. Despite his long and very obvious claims, his definition of power is very uncontroversial. It is so neutral that it can be used to define power in my essays.

When I first thought of power, I did not think of how a head-of-state can achieve power. Military and economic power was a very obvious source for me. But I have never though of ideological and political power as a source.

At the risk of sounding pretentious, I will boldly and maybe naively make the next claim. Being more of a math and science person, I can finally appreciate the need for logic and vigorous analysis in writing research papers for a humanities class. I couldn’t “b.s.” my way out of the essays I wrote for this class. (That’s what I did for my first essay.) I actually had to do research and know my stuff. I had to form my analysis from the facts.

Farewell, Near Eastern Studies R1B. Thank you for the 3am nights before the due date of an essay.