Social power needs supporting structures to achieve lasting transformation.
Evidence
In sum, these examples show, first, that it may be necessary for leaders to use category definitions in order to create social power. However, social power is not sufficient for social transformation unless it is yoked to structures that function in such a way as to overcome resistance to the collective project. Where it is so structured, as in the case of the cooperative forum, new category definitions can lead to a new social reality in their image. Where it is not, as in the case of the Commune, new category definitions are discarded in favor of those which reflect existing realities. — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 122
Categorization
- XREF: Relates directly to the reader’s purpose: whether leader identity-work needs institutional/structural backing to make threat-framing stick as description rather than assertion. — connects to: SDS’s defining innovation was building movement structures that prefigured the desired society — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 82; Leaders convert social identity into social reality by initiating group and societal structures — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 118; Social transformation depends on care networks plus formal mobilization structures — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 443 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy
#expands(0.85) - Social transformation depends on care networks plus formal mobilization structures
#exemplifies(0.82) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 443 - Slow incremental corporatist reform can transform social structure without violent shocks
#qualifies(0.74)