Power With

In the last decades, the usage of the locution power with has emerged in a number of contributions to the study of power. Accounts of power with have been proposed predominantly by feminist theorists and social activists in order to describe a form of power that consists in the collective action of the group. Power with, then, widely recalls Hannah Arendt's conception of power as “the ability to act in concert,” and in the [Page 528]same way it is interpreted as a legitimate form of power. In this sense, it has been used mainly in opposition to the concept of power over; the latter interpreted as the illegitimate power wielded by the dominant group over the powerless mass. Power with, instead, is normally connected with the notion of empowerment, and it consists in that form of power that may arise when people try to resist and overturn a situation of domination.

Feminist theorists, in particular those focusing on the idea of self-empowerment—intended as the process in which powerless individuals succeed in acquiring the power to help themselves—define power with as the capacity to act together in order to obtain collectively what is impossible to obtain alone. Janet Townsend, analyzing the processes of empowerment in groups of women in rural areas of Mexico, defines power with as the power emerging from the collaboration within the group. Acting together not only empowers the group in order to obtain collective goals, but empowers each participant in the group, giving her a new awareness of her capacities through the experience of collaboration.

Social activist Julia Kraft, connecting the concept of power with to the idea of empowerment, offers a wider interpretation of its role in the redistribution of power within societies. Power over, interpreted as domination, is the form taken by the actual distribution of power. The power of groups that fight against political oppression is, on the contrary, power with. But power with is not only the form that power acquires when oppressed groups struggle to obtain a redistribution of power. It is, in Kraft's account, the form of power that should completely replace power over, because it provides a more legitimate base for the reallocation of power in the society: acting together not only empowers people in order to overturn a particular situation of domination, but teaches them how to live collectively, sharing the equal ability to shape their lives.

In her analysis of feminist interpretations of empowerment, Amy Allen relates the concept of power with with that of solidarity. She proposes to distinguish among power over, power to, and power with: the power of acting together cannot be described by the concept of power to, because it does not consist only in obtaining certain specific goals; nor can it be described by the concept of power over, because it does not consist merely in acquiring power over those who are in a position of dominance. According to her, however, power with is a descriptive concept that does not necessarily refer to a legitimate form of power: it could be used to indicate, for example, the power exercised by a military group over a population.

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