The concept of power

Essentially Contested Concepts

*Great* stuff on the previous questions. Assuming I've got computer access on Tuesday, we'll take a look at some of your answers in more detail.

But we'll be moving on to the material that exlains, to a significant extent, how I think about the material in this course--the idea of essentially contested concepts.

We'll read the essay that coined the term and the concept (Gallie), and an essay that demonstrated what difficulties this concept causes for social science (Connolly). I think these are important essays, and the challenges that face those who analyze these sorts of concepts are made clearer by attention to this idea. Some questions to think about, as you're reading:

1) Why can't we simply settle all these contestations by looking it up in the dictionary?

2) What are Gallie's 5 conditions for essentially contested concepts? Other than the ones he discusses, what are some other examples?

3) What does it mean to refer to a concept as "appraisitive"? What particular challenges do these concepts provide for those who want to study them as impartial social scientists? What about those who study them as normative political theorists.

4) Some have suggested that if we grant that concepts like democracy and power are "essentially contested," we might as well throw up our hands and say "anything goes" when analyzing these concepts. Do you agree? Why or why not?

5) Connolly suggests that if we accept the idea of essentially contested concepts, it raises some serious concerns for how we do social science research. What does he mean? Is this true?

6) A different approach to concepts like "power," "democracy," and "art" might be to a)acknowledge that many people use many different definitions of these concepts, and b) argue that one group of people is simply correct about the definition, and the others are incorrect or confused in some way. Why, according to Gallie/Connolly, should we reject that approach?

(Feel free to post any other comments or questions on the Gallie and Connolly articles, or the idea of ECCs more broadly, in this discussion thread).

posted by David Watkins @ 2:23 PM