An Oversimplification of Power

Looking back at my diagnostic paper, I am surprised to see that I actually cited three different sources in it. I remember actually having a hard time defining power on my own, so I automatically looked to the opinions of scholars to help me write my paper. However, when I read my paper, I feel like I did not really make an argument of my own. I did not come up with my own definition; rather I used the opinions of the scholars I cited. My paper was pretty much a paraphrasing of the three works that are cited on the last page. The only “argument” I made in my paper was that power is hard to define, and that in order to define it you must take the four parts of power defined by Dahl into consideration. I did not come up with my own genuine opinion on what power is; I restated what others had to say on the matter. Plus, the definition that I gave was a pretty general one. When comparing my definition of power with the examples of power that we have seen in this class this semester, I feel like I oversimplified and generalized what power is in my paper. For example, I did not even mention power from religious ideology, which is something that we talked about a lot during class. The temple was able to take the surplus from the people of Uruk because of the ideological justification: the people were providing for the gods. Kings of ancient Mesopotamia were able to justify many of their actions, such as waging wars, by saying that they had the support of the gods. The kings, priests/priestesses, and the “temple” derived a lot of power from their religious ideologies.