Agential Power and Structural Power, Causal and Non-Causal Arash Abizadeh (McGill University)
Thursday, October 13, 6:30 p.m.
(ET)Political Science Lounge, GC Room 5200
And online
via ZoomCo-sponsored by the GC Political Theory Colloquium
We are excited to welcome political philosopher Arash Abizadeh as our second colloquium speaker of Fall 2022, in collaboration with the GC Political Theory Colloquium. The talk will be followed by a Q&A with the speaker.
This is an in-person event that will allow for virtual participation via Zoom. The in-person talk will be followed by a reception with wine and light snacks.
If you plan to attend virtually, please
register in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining.
Members of the public who wish to attend should email us. They may enter the GC if they show proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test taken within 7 days prior to the visit.
Abstract
Many theorists of social power assume that agents’ power operates only by way of their intentional actions and their causal role in effecting outcomes. The former assumption is true of agential power, the latter of causal power, but neither is true of the social power of agents in general. Distinguishing between agential and structural power, I defend a notion of structural power as a type of non-intentional, passive power agents have in virtue of their position in a social structure and independently of their intentional actions. Distinguishing between causal and non-causal power, I also defend a non-causal type of power by which agents effect or elicit outcomes without causing them. Agential and structural power, moreover, are internally related: structural power is in certain contexts latently agential.
Speaker Bio
Arash Abizadeh is Professor in the Department of Political Science and Associate Member of the Department of Philosophy at McGill University. His research focusses on democratic theory; democracy’s relation to identity, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism; immigration and border control; social and political power; and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy, particularly Hobbes and Rousseau.
