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20 Changing Definitions of Politics and Power

they may involve blood, tears, even questions of life and death, political

disputes are rather superficial and ephemeral viewed in the light of the
deep and necessary tendencies towards justice of the civil sphere itself.
Durkheim ’ s foundational work should be seen alongside that of Marx

and Weber as influential on political sociology. In fact, it gains in impor-
tance in contemporary political sociology because of the importance
Durkheim gave to how symbolic meaning is implicated in the constitution
of social relations. There is evidence, for example, that Ferdinand de
Saussure, a crucial figure in the formation of contemporary political soci-

ology – we will consider the significance of his work towards theorizing
cultural politics in section 1.5 below – was directly influenced by Durkheim.

As Alexander points out, even if there was no direct influence, the reso-
nances of Durkheim ’ s ideas about symbols in Sassure ’ s “ semiotics ” are
substantial (Alexander, 1998 : 4 – 5). Just as important as a good grasp of
symbolic meanings to contemporary political sociology, however, are

workable definitions of power and politics that enable us to map how
meanings are contested by concrete social actors and with what effects in
constituting identities and perspectives across the social fi eld. For this, we
turn to the work of Michel Foucault. As we shall see, Foucault does not
give us everything we need to conceptualize cultural politics: in particular,
he neglects the importance of cultural meanings. Nevertheless, his radical
break with previous sociological conceptions of power and politics takes
us some way towards a framework for thinking about cultural politics.

1.4 Focauldian Definitions of Power and Politics

Foucault ’ s definition of power is the single most important theoretical
contribution to rethinking contemporary political sociology. Foucault
himself has rather a paradoxical relationship to contemporary political
sociology: although he is the theorist whose work has been most infl uen-
tial in its development, and although he was actively engaged in various
political activities, including campaigns for prisoners ’ rights and gay activ-
ism, he professed himself to be much more interested in ethics than in
politics (Foucault, 1984a ). This preference for ethics, which he saw as a
matter of self - creation rather than of principles of right and wrong, is
related to his distaste for systematic theorizing. Foucault refused to provide
a map of social and political institutions with which to understand con-
temporary politics, but his work can be used to analyze the working of
power in unexpected places and unexpected ways.