The Question of Power: Quijano vs. Giddens on Modernity

• In Event: History of Sociology and Social Thought Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Roundtable 2: Rethinking Power and Hegemony in Social Theory

Abstract

The dominant perspective in the social sciences has long viewed modernity as, despite its negative or even disastrous consequences, intellectual and political progress that originated in the West and subsequently spread to other parts of the world with varying degrees of success. Two social theorists who adopt a more nuanced standpoint are Aníbal Quijano and Anthony Giddens. Rather than emphasizing progress, Quijano focuses on domination and control, and approaches modernity as a new global model of power. Giddens also rejects the notion of progress and draws on the idea of the juggernaut and, later, the runaway world to capture the contradictory and inexorable impacts of modernity.
But there are also important differences between them. Quijano’s account of modernity is largely about the exercise of power by one group over others for the purpose of colonial conquest and capital accumulation. In his analysis, race is both a product and an instrument of domination involving not just physical violence but also the control over knowledge production. Giddens’ theory is not so much about domination by human agency as about the ever-present, inevitable risk of catastrophe faced by humanity as a whole, emanating from the impersonal dynamics of the time-space structuring of human action as well as the unintended consequences of such action. The differences between these two authors also represent two different ways of theorizing the relationship between power and modernity. Quijano highlights the intentional aspect of domination and emphasizes its role in the formation of modernity and I will refer to it as agency based-domination. In contrast Giddens conceptualizes modernity as impersonal forces the movement of which cannot be dictated by human intentionality, and I will call it abstract domination. Through a comparative study of Quijano’s and Giddens’ conception of modernity, I will examine the relationship between agency-based domination and abstract domination, and the ways in which these different forms of power constitute modernity.

Author

• Wai Kit Choi, California State University, Los Angeles