У ОДБРАНУ ПАРСОНСОВОГ СХВАТАЊА МОЋИ
IN DEFENCE OF PARSONS` POWER CONCEPTION

Summary/Abstract: In Parsons` opinion, power is generalized capacity to secure the performance of binding obligations by units in a system of collective organization when the obligations are legitimized with reference to their bearing on collective goals. Power is exercised within the context of norms. Norms are at the root not only of all exercise of power but of all social conduct. Power, rather than being a conflictual mechanism which is opposed to social order, is both enabled by and constrained within that social order because of its normative basis. The threat of coercive measures, or of compulsion, without legitimation or justification, according to Parsons, should not properly be called the use of power at all, but is the limiting case where power, losing its symbolic character, merges into an intrinsic instrumentality of securing compliance with wishes, rather than obligations. Parsons` conception of power also was not to be a “zero-sum” game in which one could only ever win at the expense of another. On the contrary, he sought to show how power contributed to the general accomplished of order and civility.

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