Rule making

Q. Critically examine the statement, "just as rule making is a strategy of domination, so is rule
breaking a strategy in challenges to domination".

To answer this question, I have taken reference from the essay 'rule making, rule breaking and
power' by Frances fox Piven and Richard Cloward.
This essay highlights the concept of power and authority and explore why men and women break
the rules of their society and why they break a particular rule, only these questions are examined
because it illuminates the dialectic of power that is of domination and resistance. In this essay the
writer has also discussed about understanding of power as embedded in interdependent social
relations and the emergence of challenges to the rules. The main crux of the argument is the
statement, "just as rule making is a strategy of domination, so is rule breaking a strategy in
challenges to domination". Rules are the most elementary features of the society, people
everywhere both conform to the rules that organize social life and violates them.
The study of rule breaking has been dominated by the eld of 'deviance'.
However, when thinkers tried to understand why people break rules of their society, they were
preoccupied with the connection between rule breaking and threat to established order or to the
constituted authority. Aristotle, Machiavell, Hobbes and the grand theorist of sociology wrote in
the midst of social and political turmoil of the second half of nineteenth century. All of them came
to the conclusion that rule breaking and rule making are at the core of the struggle for power in
human society.
Now, let us look into the understanding of power through the argument of theorists. Max Weber
understands power as 'the chance of man or a number of men to realize their own will in a social
action even against the resistance of others who are participating in the action'. R.H Tawney's
de nition to some extent is similar to weber but it is characterized more as explicitly reciprocal
de nition. He de nes power, a capacity of an individual or group of individuals, to modify the
conduct of other individual, in manner which he desires and prevent his own conduct from being
modi ed in the manner in which he does not. This understanding of power is inherently con ictual
and referred to as the zero-sum conception. Bertland Russell on the other hand de nes power the
production of intended e ects. It also contrasts with Parsonian communal understanding of
power According to Giddens, the relationship between power and con ict is contingent because
power presupposes con ict only when resistance has to be overcome. Thus, power is inextricably
linked with con ict in actual social life because it implies 'zero-sum' contest. However, the zero-
sum view of power leaves much unsettled dispute as whether power is a latent capacity etc. there
are several such disputes and these disputes have given rise to many re ned rede nition, but for
our answer the important argument in discussion of power,
"what are to be regarded as power resources?" According to weber, the concept of power is
sociologically amorphous. This de nition is widely accepted because it does not specify the
probability on which exerting power rests. AlL conceivable qualities of a person put him in a
position to impose his will in a given situation, that position prevents the possibility of analyzing
patterned. distribution of power in any society. Etizoni has a utilitarian perspective however, Tilly
has economic view emphasizing on factors of production land, labour, capital. Moreover, Mills
make an additional point that the truly powerful are those who occupy the command posts of
major institution. Hence, the distributional view of power states that if all things matter as
resources, almost everyone has something that can be used to in uence somebody however, the
key resources are not widely distributed but are concentrated at the top of the social hierarchy.
This is what Giddens intended to convey by identifying allocative and authoritative resources as
the bases for power.
According to Mills de nition the power is concentrated at top because wealth prestige and the
instruments of physical coercion are all reliable bases for dominating others, these traits and
goods are distributed by social ranks and it appears that people with higher social rank have more
power than people with lower social ranks. Nonetheless, if we examine the distributional view of
power, it is not completely wrong, most of the time people with wealth and prestige. technical
skills or gun do dominate other who have none of these things. Riches, prestige and skills tend to
ow together creating a class hierarchy.
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 But if this pattern of power was entirely true what about the people at the lower level in the social
hierarchy, trying to exert power by breaking the rule, will then their actions would be considered
useless?
While interpreting rule breaking and rule making, it is important to think in di erent ways about
resources of power. Initially, we saw power to be dependent on material resources, but now in this
structural perspective we will view power to be dependent on speci c relationships that make a
particular traits or things useful and important. The idea about the power resources that enable
one group or individual to dominate another are rmly rooted in ideas about patterned relationship
that binds them together.
Micheal Schwart while keeping in mind the concept of patterned interdependencies he writes: a
structure cannot function without the routinized exercise of structural power, any threat to
structural power becomes a threat to that system itself. It is a very important relationship between
structural power and those who are subject to it.
These observations suggests that the general perspective on resource for power is less static
than distributional because it explains why riches and status prevail and even succeed sometimes
and why the making and breaking of rules is central to the pervasive contest of social life
The resources for power are derived from the patterns of interdependence that characterize all
social life. Power resources are embedded in the patterns of expectation and cooperation that
bind people together, even when all that is expected or required of particular people in their
quiescence. Cooperation implies pattern of mutual dependence and mutual dependence implies
the possibility of using others for desired ends. Control over capital is an e ective resource for
exercising power over other. If people without wealth or status or technical skill sometimes prevail
then they must have some power, we ordinally consider them powerless. In a feudal system of
production not only do peasants need overlords, but overlords need peasants. There is no
production and no surplus for the overlord without peasant labor. It is not only the poor who
needs contribution from the rich; in a society of densely interdependent relations rich also needs
contribution from the poor.
The line of power, of domination and exploitation, tend to re ect not the actual value of the
contribution of services or bene ts to others as Blau argues, but rather di erence is in the
actionability of contribution. The basic power tactic that arises out of interdependency is to
withhold or threaten to withhold what others need. The problem of actionability is that some
contributions to interdependent relations are more liquid, more readily converted into power
resource that others. Moreover, some contributors who try to activate interdependencies risk
more than others, which matters greatly for the possibility of transforming interdependencies into
power.
Social rules inhibit the activation of interdependencies and hence restrict the wide exercise of
power. Rules are the basic postulate of collective life, but they are also achievement of social life,
they are created, enforced and violated by people. Rule making is a power strategy with which
some people try to make others do whatever they want. Rules do this by specifying the behavior
that permissible by di erent parties in interdependent relations therefore, rules are fashioned to
re ect prevailing patterns of domination. In the classical line of sociological thinking from
Durkhiem to Parsons, rules originate and persist in the e ort to solve these problems of collective
life. Thus. These age-old rules are endowed with sacred meaning that reinforce a pattern of
worldly hierarchy.
Perhaps the most rules govern the daily actions of people and regulating framework that make
group life possible. Although rules are basic to group life but, they play a role of power to use
other to achieve desired end. Perhaps the most important way that people try to use social
relationship is to achieve their ends overtime by rule making. Rule making is the exercise of the
power of some to neutralize the power of other in interdependent relations this exercise stabilizes
power by institutionalizing it. The force of tradition, the authority of group and state sanctions
against the rule violator are added to the exercise of power. Simmel commented in this context
arguing that rulers themselves becomes subject to the law he promulgates.
The classical sociological traditions explain rule breaking as a byproduct of a breakdown in a
larger society. But breakdown or disorganization, conceived of as weakening of socialization, may
open the way for de ance. The traditional sociological perspectives that deny agency and
conceive of social life as systems total domination. However, domination is never total, people do
challenge domination. Each instance of lawmaking as an exercise of power is paralleled by
instances of e orts of women and men to refuse, evade, or resist the constraints of law. For
example, the tradesman and artisan in small towns of medieval Europe also de ed feudal law and
took arms to secure their freedom from feudal obligation. Sometimes people do riot and burn and
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pillage, but the penalties for open de ance can be terrible. People those who are at the underside
of domination, that inclination takes form as resistance, defying the rules that have secured their
domination.
Through this reading I understood what is the concept power and various aspects of power that is
domination and resistance. Also, I learned about what is distributional and structural view of
power. I got know how rule breaking is action of resistance and challenges domination while, rule
making is an act of domination itself which includes material resources and interdependent social
relationships.

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