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Does power flow from the barrel of a gun?

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This week's readings were fascinating and specially Dennis Mumby's "Power and politics" as he laid down the relationships between power, communication and organization and traced the different perspectives on communication and organizational power. Applying to a health communication scenario there are many areas where it raises questions - a doctor-patient scenario, a health care organization (say a HMO), power relationship in a family where the mother-in-law or father-in-law or husband takes a health decision for the woman, power in the vulnerable populations searching for a better health, in typically "powerless" populations like migrant workers, foreign students, mestiza; people who live in borders, who defy classification and any classification would be an exercise in power. A critical question to engage with here is whether power inheres in the institutions, situations or in the individuals that manage the institutions (Foucalt) and if power can possibly inhere in the oppressed, in the punished, in the population under surveillance.

Take the case of a tribal woman in either Lalgarh or Dantewada or Narayanpatna who has lost her husband to police bullets, school going son in jail; what is her understanding of power? Her reaction to the "faces" of power, the police, the government, the judiciary. Can she be ever empowered (if there exists such a term)? If she defies these "power", should that be called a resistive act and so resistance?

Some terms/ concepts stand out for me in these articles and Mills "The Power Elite", the most important being "Hegemony", "Reification", "context" and "agency". These are intimately related to power and its conceptualization, discussions.

As basic Marxism informs us that the vulnerable are oppressed because their oppression leads to the benefits of the oppressor class/ the elites. They are oppressed not because they do not have a consciousness but because they live under the false consciousness brought about by the machinations of the hegemony, reified institutions supported by force/ power. And this power, as Chairman Mao said flows from the barrel of a gun. I am inclined to believe this today looking at the field scenario worldwide, the current repressions and oppressions and studying the alternative histories of indigenous people. So, do we accept it as a inevitable conclusion or entertain the critical question that, does power inhere in oppressed individuals (Foucalt)? And if yes, does that power manifest when they take the gun and become revolutionaries?

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