Social power is a political relation shaping people’s status, not mere capacity

Evidence

If crisis is the dominant medium of the visibility of racial rule, power is its mode, its defining condition. … The social power to act, however, is not to be defined simply in terms of capacity; it is more fully the potency to affect the standing of other people. Social power accordingly is not merely a capacity but a relation of relative capability, at basis a political relation. It is the active shaping of people’s social standing, or the social positioning and possibility so to shape. The state effects social accessibility and status by way of its institutionalized apparatuses. It does so not only in class terms but interactively also in racial and gendered ones. Race in particular delimits acknowledgment of the grounds of such social (in)accessibilities, attributing them to the force of individual or group (in)capacities (Sartre 1976:720). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1734

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines social power relationally as the shaping of standing, distinguishing it from simple capacity.
• XREF: Race-as-misattribution-of-capacity parallels vault claims about merit discourse masking structural causes. — connects to: Political power takes its shape from a distinct rationality, not from social structures — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise…, 92; Social power is the capacity to shape other people’s standing, exercised through state institutions. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1735; Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Social power is the capacity to shape other people’s standing, exercised through state institutions. #expands (0.92) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1735
• Competence, not power, determines status in functioning societies. #contradicts (0.85) — Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life An Antidote to Chaos, 910
• Political power takes its shape from a distinct rationality, not from social structures #complicates (0.82) — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, 92
• Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy #qualifies (0.80)
• Humans are constituted by their social relations rather than an intrinsic essence #expands (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2517