Two Faces of Power

"The concept of power remains elusive despite the recent and prolific outpourings of case studies on community power. Its elusiveness is dramatically demonstrated by the regularity of disagreements as to the locus of community power between the sociologists and the political scientists. Sociologically oriented researchers have consistently found the power is highly centralized, while scholars trained in political science have just as regularly concluded that in "their" communities power is widely diffused. Presumably, this explains why the latter group styles itself "pluralist," its counterpart "elitists."

     What this paragraph is trying to encapsulate is the idea that the concept of power is a well-known controversy, yet it is hard to define. The are two groups at hand, one being the "Elitists"who believes that power is centralized, being drawn at one point under the government. While the other group the "Pluralists" believe that power is spread out and controlled by different groups of individuals. Scholars have concluded that the communities that they live in, power is not centralized, but more diffused to the people allowing some sense of "equality."

        The reason as to why I chose this passage, is because the idea that the concept of power can be seen by two different points of views interests me. The fact that two groups see power as either something controlled under one government, or another saying the power is controlled by the people is astounding. This introductory passage just really stands out to me as it introduces a very interesting topic about power and its two faces.