Power’s quiet reach and why it should exercise us

Abstract

On a number of fronts, quieter registers of power–manipulation, dissimulation, inducement and displaced forms of authority–have assumed greater significance today, made possible by the topological reach into peoples’ everyday lives. This should exercise us, not least because you can miss these kinds of powerful practices as they do not always appear as such. When the ‘power to’ secure or influence outcomes may just as easily turn into the ‘power over’ others, we should at the very least be troubled, if not straightforwardly provoked.