Domination

Descriptive versus Normative Senses of Domination

It sounds strange to suggest that domination might be a normatively neutral concept, neither good nor bad. We tend to regard domination as implying [Page 204]harm and unjust treatment. But it can be argued that, to be useful for social analysis, a purely descriptive, normatively neutral concept is precisely what is needed. If relationships of domination are common features of our social landscape, then we need to be able to describe, analyze, and comparatively study these, dispassionately, before any normative evaluation of the relationships in question. Such a view seems to have informed one of the most influential figures on the social analysis of domination, the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920). Weber used the German word Herrschaft to identify relationships in which one actor can routinely expect his or her commands, whether explicit or implicit, to be obeyed, and even internalized as principles of action, by those they are directed at. Herrschaft has manifold connotations (domination, dominion, rule, authority, leadership) that are not easily translated into a single English word. Anglophone scholarship tends to vacillate between the terms domination and authority when translating from Weber, perhaps betraying ambivalence toward Weber's normatively neutral use of Herrschaft. The key point is that for Weber, the influence of a charismatic teacher on his or her pupils, conventions of deference between tenants and landlords in agrarian societies, the ability of an established democratic government to rule, or the cultivation of widespread nationalist fervor by a dictator were all equally instances of domination (Herrschaft), phenomena of the same type, regardless of how we might morally judge them. In keeping with this principle, Weber described most forms of domination as “legitimate,” meaning not that they should be approved of, but that those subject to domination frequently found that situation justifiable on some grounds, and that this was basic to the operation of domination. Thus, Weber spoke of legitimate domination, a phrase that has an oxymoronic ring for most English speakers. This linking of domination and legitimacy leads many to prefer the translation “authority” for Herrschaft, because we think of authority as inherently involving legitimacy.

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