The Power Manual

How to Master Complex Power Dynamics

Cyndi Suarez

• Publisher: New Society Publishers
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781771422697
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

Liberate yourself by understanding and mastering power dynamics

All social relations are laden with power. Getting out from under dominant power relations and mastering power dynamics is perhaps the most essential skill for change agents across all sectors seeking to ignite positive change in the world.

This concise action manual explores major concepts of power, with a focus on the dynamics of domination and liberation, and presents methods for shifting power relations and enacting freedom. The Power Manual:

• Clearly distills the major theories of power from post-modern and feminist theory to business management and developmental psychology, and beyond
• Examines key ways that power is deployed and transformed in society
• Presents a new theory of power based on enactment-the bringing of something to life through one's actions
• Explains how to refuse powerless identities and enact powerful ones
• Helps readers choose egalitarian interactions over domination
• Demonstrates mastering the process of power expansion
• Features workshop games and group activities for identifying and shifting power relations.

This accessible action manual is ideal for change agents, leaders, and activists across all nonprofit and business sectors aiming to understand, master, and shift power relations.

Section Four

Power + Games

Playing with Power

Power + Games Intro

Playing with Power

What is the purpose of games, particularly in relation to power and status? What aspects of games are important? How do they relate to the patterns of resistance outlined in chapter 2, Interaction Patterns?

Chapter 11, The Purpose of Play, begins with Stuart Brown’s discovery of the evolutionary purpose of play. Brown outlines the features of play, one being the creation of potential future events that allow one to practice at one’s edge and preadapt, or fine-tune one’s consciousness a priori. Another feature of play is the engaging of difference. His conclusive definition of play is: a state of mind composed of pleasure, creativity, and innovation; a tuning in to others in the pursuit of something meaningful. Brown also found that people have play personalities, or a preference for certain types of play, and proposes that there are at least eight. Thomas S. Henricks further identified play as one of the four pathways for experience, along with work, communitas, and ritual. Within play, he describes four patterns of self-location, or how one positions oneself vis-à-vis others: privilege, subordination, marginality, and engagement.

Chapter 12, The Structure of Games, delves into the function of games, which is, according to Henricks, to order and reorder interactions with others. It looks at how status impacts the types of games people play and orders interaction patterns between players. Finally, E.M. Avedon provides a summary of the structural elements of games, or the factors to consider in exploring the way power is ordered in games.

Chapters 13 through 24 offer 12 power games that provide practice for the patterns of resistance outlined in chapter 2, Interaction Patterns: sign reading, deconstruction, and reconstruction.

During the process of finishing this book, I had a vision in which my spiritual teacher showed me the Earth. It was off balance. She told me my work was to help rebalance Earth. Overwhelmed with the idea that I could fulfill such a mission, I asked her how I would do this. She responded, “through play.” At the time, I wondered how something as small as play could be up to such a task. I set out to explore play and games and am beginning to understand how this could occur.

The Purpose of Play

Play as Evolution

What?

Play, or recreational activity, abounds in nature. The more developed the species, the more it seems to play. Play researchers have observed animals choose play over food and wondered, Why would a living being choose something seemingly extraneous, like play, over something necessary for survival, such as food? Does play have a purpose?

Before exploring the purpose of play, it helps to clarify what play is. This is not simple. One person’s play may be another person’s oppression, literally and metaphorically. Play researchers have, however, managed to identify what appear to be features of play.

Pleasure is a feature of play. Play is fun. It energizes. Play takes one to the edge of body and mind. Play heightens the senses and alerts the mind for the unexpected, body pumping, ready for action. Yet play is also calming because it is relatively safe space for engaging the unexpected, since the outcome does not generally have serious consequences. “It is just a game,” after all. This engaged, calm excitement is pleasurable.

Another feature of play is that it catalyzes creativity and innovation. Play allows experimentation with different potential realities. Through play, one creates and experiences potential future events and preadapts; that is, one practices and fine-tunes one’s response a priori, before the event. Even daydreaming leaves an imprint on the brain. Innovation can be dangerous. One might fail and lose status or, worse, one’s life. Trying things out first in play space increases the chances of successful innovation in the structured space of everyday life.

Further, play is about tuning in to the environment and others and engaging difference. Through play, one learns to decipher the intentions of others, for one must anticipate the other in play, either to protect one’s move, reduce the options of the other, or support the other in building something together. This act of moving toward the other reduces conflict. It sharpens understanding of fairness and rearranges relationships because it requires sensitivity to the other. As such, play is mutual delight, for this challenge, or support, of the other must be enough to keep the other engaged, because the fourth and final feature of play is that it is always chosen, never imposed. Play’s reward is poise — spontaneity, grace, and fulfillment.

Ultimately, play is a state of mind, not simply an activity. Its correlating mind state is flow, considered the optimal state of mind. Optimal states occur not when one is making little effort but when one is working at the limits of the self, that is, when one is stretched beyond current capacity, while in the pursuit of something that is challenging and meaningful. Challenging is defined as having skills that are adequate, a task slightly beyond one’s reach, and a feedback loop that lets one know how one is doing against clear rules or guide posts. Challenges are meaningful when the endeavor is in the pursuit of one’s goals. The cumulative effect of experiences in which one meets and overcomes a challenge is mastery in the ability to determine the content of one’s life, how one shapes, as well is shaped by, experiences.

Thus, play is a state of mind composed of pleasure, creativity, and innovation, a tuning in to others and the external environment, and choice in pursuit of something meaningful and challenging.

Why?

What is the purpose? More specifically, why is the play mind state important in the life of human beings?

Emotions figure prominently in considering mind states, or states of mind. An emotion is a mental state that arises spontaneously and is accompanied by physiological changes. Emotions connect the body and the mind. Examples of emotions are joy, sorrow, fear, hate, and love.

Despite the range of emotions available to human beings, one generall...