Mills and Hawley on Power

Abstract

C. Wright Mills and Amos H. Hawley have both done extensive research on the concept of power in social systems. Beginning from two different intellectual traditions, Mills building on Max Weber and Hawley employing human ecology, their respective research has produced a number of points of convergence. Both regard power as a system property. Within any social system power may be more or less concentrated, and the degree of concentration has implications for the functioning of the system. Power is seen as being distributed among units in the systems that result in a hierarchy that can be more or less steep. Mills was concerned with the social implications of power in a political sense, whereas Hawley focused on the ability of a system to meet basic functional requirements of coordination and sustenance production. Their differences notwithstanding, their points of convergence have sharpened our understanding of power in social systems.