Power: A Study From The Perspective Of Social Space

The state power has withdrawn greatly from social fields after the reform and opening up, especially with the socialist market economy reform moving forward, and the individuals have gained more and more broad action freedom, as well as social space extending. However, further development will face much difficulties. On the one hand, the current society exists obvious "extreme privatization" after experiencing "extreme politicization", which lead the public life and social morality relatively being on the wane, public power and ill social behaviors harm social members' rights frequently, and spontaneous actions of society are confronted with various difficulties; On the other hand, the reform of transformative macro-institutions has become increasingly difficult without the organic linkage of civilian demands and dynamics. These difficulties highlight the causes not only from the macro-institutions, but also the immaturity of social development. This paper, from the perspective of social space, tries to analyze power in three aspects--its direction, magnitude and efficacy under the condition of social space and public space in order to respond and understand some political and social phenomenon in the current transformation period."Territory awareness" and "social animal" are the two fundamental hypotheses of the paper, as well as the logic starting point. Once the individuals who are in the situation of natural state formed a society, natural life expands to social life, and survival reason develops to social reason. People show and express themselves by existing social value systems, and it also is a process to form social space. The individuals being in social interaction identify themselves and guide their actions by their social position and "role". "Role" divides territory and broad each other and the status is an outstanding sign for one person to show occupying some position in the social space.Social space is the extension of social process in different levels. In a static view, it is all kinds of human and group relationships. Social space, based on laws, political settings, cultures and conventions, is institutional/cultural space, also known as a reference space, and its projection on individuals is self space. The objective practice of social space in fact is a realistic social process which takes institutions/cultural space as reference and self-space as scale to unfold. Generating a new social space means set up a new interpersonal or group relationship, and creating a new space is a high-level power technology, in which the creator come to change original social space to locate an advantageous position.Regulations are used to regulate the interpersonal and group relationships. Admitting the rules actually is recognition of its interaction or being about to interact with the statuses of the individual parties. Viewing from this perspective, no recognition, no power. Admitting one kind of regulation or culture means he has finished the transformation "from the customs to habits", "from admitting to identification". Then the structure of power comes into optimization.Power originates from many things which named as resource in this paper, such as various regulations, compelling forces, wealth, knowledge, information, status and networks of social relationship and position, even including the current situation. Power is the social space in practice and one kind of changing structure. Its practice depends on the following two premises: being in a same natural world and social space-time; the two sides is interdependence in function. Power being in operation factually strengthens the structural stability of social space and improves the expectation in the process of interaction and game. Everyone creates risk and non-expectation even if nobody likes them. Holding power means one can reduce his own losing in a certain scope and period. So, power, in one time-space system, is an imbalance interdependent relationship in function resulting from possessing imbalance resources.Order is not the primary object of politics, however, politics can't continue without it. Some politics move to failure ultimately because it can't set up a social space that all the members view it as criterion in the interaction process. Once the social behaviors haven't stable rules to obey, the blindness and non-anticipation of social behaviors, social conflict, and even political conflict ultimately result in the whole society out of order and durative. Rapid social development generates pluralism of interests and values and transformative changes. When the new social space come forth without the new political institutions and setting to renew the government behaviors at the same time, consensus can't obtain and conflict will be inevitably happen.Consensus can came into being through dialogue and participation. Civil society is an open society, and it also can be viewed as a multiple linked network drawing the outline and protection of the democratic constitutional government. Since the organized mass has changed their position in social space and has the bargaining ability, its members have more power. On the other hand, their behaviors will be more rational and expected because of clear organizational goals and self-restraint mechanism. Public space, including public opinions also can be seen as a social space with systematization. Taking the basic consensus as the premise, citizens can obtain more consensuses by dialogue, viewpoint competition and participation. Civil society has the ability to resist the power failure and political decline.Existing divarication is the reason why politics is necessary. One can use violence to threat the counterpart in the process of politics, however, politics will be interrupted once using violence. All kinds of legal interest demands should have enough space to express and find a acceptable way on the basis of dialogues and games. This is the way to get complementary and co-win during various interest groups, as well as the social harmony.