Page 16 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

2 Changing Definitions of Politics and Power

graffiti in an East London park that I interpret as a tribute to the new
beginning offered by Obama ’ s presidency: “ Anti - Americanism is a con-
spiracy against radicalism. ”
Obama ’ s election cannot properly be understood without addressing
how culture and politics are intertwined. Contemporary political sociol-
ogy is concerned with cultural politics as what we might call the “ politics
of politics. ” From this perspective, what events mean to those who inter-
pret and act on them is what matters. What counts as “ political ” in terms

of content and style must first be made political; it must be made visible
and relevant to visions of how social relations are and could be organized.
Processes of politicization in this respect are very far from under the
control of professional politicians and public relations experts, however
hard they try to set the agenda. But contemporary political sociology is
also concerned with cultural politics in a wider sense: what is made
“ political ” is not simply confi ned to what takes place within government,
political parties, and the state. The perspective of cultural politics also
helps us make sense of how the meanings of social relations and identities
are consistently challenged wherever they are framed as unjust, exclusion-
ary, and destructive of the capacities of individuals and groups.

Understanding “ politicization ” across the social field has not typically
been the subject matter of political sociology until fairly recently. Political
sociology has never been easily distinguishable as a field of research from

others in the discipline of sociology. In general terms, however, it has been
seen as concerned, above all, with relations between state and society.
Most practitioners would probably agree with Orum ’ s broad defi nition:
political sociology directs attention toward “ the social circumstances of
politics, that is, to how politics both is shaped by and shapes other events
in societies. Instead of treating the political arena and its actors as inde-
pendent from other happenings in a society, [political sociology] treats
that arena as intimately related to all social institutions ” (Orum, 1983 :
1). In principle, given the wide range of this defi nition, it might be
expected that political sociologists would be interested in power as at least
a potentiality in all social relations, and to have elaborated a conception
of politics as an activity conducted across a range of social institutions.
In practice, however, although they have sometimes gestured toward such
an approach, the focus of political sociology has been politics at the level
of the nation - state. It has shared what may be seen as the prejudice of
modern sociology for taking “ society ” as the unit of analysis and treating
it as a distinct, internally coherent, and self - regulating entity, organized

around the nation - state. The most infl uential definition of power in sociol-
ogy is that of Max Weber: power is “ the chance of a man or a number