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Authority

The concept of authority varies among religious, political, and cultural traditions and may be perceived and encountered according to the order and arrangement of each society. In a dynamic world, the perception of the locus and operation of authority in society varies similarly. Since authority is closely related to power and legitimacy, where and how it is encountered affects everyone who is involved in the exercise of authority. From their roots in Latin, the terms author (Latin auctor) and authority (Latin auctoritas) have associated meanings. A significant distinction is that an author can operate in isolation but authority requires a social context. Consequently, authority unlike authorship cannot exist or operate without more than one party. These parties minimally involve those who claim authority and those who refer to that authority with acceptance, implying the possibility of rejection. The experience of authority in human communities can have all the complexity of human interactions, involving perceptions, differences in power, and roles or positions in societies. It is possible to view ultimate authority in temporality not only in communities but also in nature, as well as other than in temporality.

Perceptions

Recognition of authority arises when power is exercised to issue and enforce laws or norms. Authority then operates to bring order into a society. At the same time, since authority is not unique to an individual or otherwise singular but plural, both in its location and in its operation, in any societal context, there are multiple immediate or mediated authorities that arrange themselves dynamically. For instance, there can be a plurality of religious authorities as well as civil authorities all contemporaneously operating in a single societal context. Where a society has competing authorities, the exercise of authority could be perceived as a crisis that some people, following Jürgen Habermas, might refer to as a deficit of legitimacy.

The perception of authority is of course conditioned by the cultural experience—the location and power of the observer in particular contexts. A powerful person who is vested with authority would reasonably have a different experience of that authority and other authorities than a weaker person in the same context regardless of culture. Additionally, views of what constitutes order can be culturally different. For example, in some cultural contexts, order and coexistence and hence authority exist and are maintained by a sense of duty rather than as individual or human rights, as may be found in other societies.

With a multiplicity of authorities in a given society, according to some scholars, in particular Asian contexts, coexistence in society may be established through a social valuation of harmony rather than through concepts of pluralism, as in some Western societies. The concept of harmony itself may be a cultural value.

The Exercise of Authority

Authority can operate systemically, as in the act of naming. In such a process, to name involves selecting descriptors and applying classifications or names. The act of naming itself being an exercise of power, to name that which is named is a capacity to make a selection; it provides a foundation for the exercise of authority by all parties.

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