Chapter 9: Power Is Already in the Relationship
Chapter 8 showed that every domain of care eventually raises questions of power. Power should not be understood only in its narrow and negative sense as domination over other people. Power can be used to protect or to exploit, to enable or to restrict, to develop capacity or to create dependency. It can make participation possible, alter an unjust condition and support repair; it can also silence, exclude and transfer consequences to those with less influence. Power is not inherently caring or uncaring. Its meaning becomes visible through how it is exercised, what it makes possible and whose agency and wellbeing it affects.
POWER
- Power is the capacity to influence what becomes possible, what is decided and who carries the consequences.
Power exists in every relationship. It is present wherever one party can affect the conditions under which another person perceives, decides, contributes, receives, carries cost or anticipates the future. Formal authority is one source of power, but it is not the only one. Information, knowledge, money, reputation, access, emotional influence, organisational memory, specialist capacity and the ability to refuse or leave can all affect what becomes possible within a relationship.
Power therefore becomes visible through practical questions:
- Who can initiate contact or define the issue?
- Whose interpretation is treated as credible?
- Who possesses information, resources or recognised knowledge?
- Who can decide?
- Who can influence which possibilities are considered?
- Who can refuse a request or question a decision safely?
- Who can change the conditions of participation?
- Who carries the cost, risk and consequences?
- Who can leave the relationship—and for whom would leaving carry a disproportionate cost?
These questions move power beyond position and title. A person may occupy a formally senior role while remaining dependent on a funder, public authority, board or essential partner. Someone lower in the formal hierarchy may hold knowledge, relationships or organisational memory without which the festival cannot continue. Power is therefore relational and situation-specific. It concerns the actual capacity of a party to affect what happens within a particular relationship and set of conditions.