Follett's Pragmatist Ontology of Relations: Potentials for a Feminist Perspective on Violence
Rent from DeepDyve- Follett's Pragmatist Ontology of Relations:Potentials for a Feminist Perspective on Violence
Integration is both the keel and the rudder of life. . . . The activity of co-creating is the core of democracy, the essence of citizenship, the condition of world-citizenship.
—Mary Parker Follett, Creative Experience (1924, 302)
"Power is the legitimate, the inevitable, outcome of the life-process" (Follett 1924, 193) but "power" within patriarchy has often been tied to and understood in terms of "violence" and "domination." Gender-based violence having to do with the control of women's bodies, expectations about societal roles, female subordination in both public and private spheres, and the glorification of male privilege and male sex right is manifest through cultural mores, institutions, and practices. Violence within patriarchy has been part of a system that reproduces the subordination of women.
Violence against women has taken various forms—physical, psychological, sexual, and economic. One of the most prevalent forms of gender-based violence but one that often remains invisible is the abuse suffered by women from intimate male partners, especially within patriarchal structures of the family and institutions like marriage throughout the world.1 Because of the magnitude of the problem of violence against women, it comes as no surprise that feminist theorists have been very concerned with theorizing violence, that is, trying to provide theories for understanding these situations and ways of overcoming them. In fact, the very possibility of envisioning a new kind of social order seems to rest on trying to conceptualize the word power in a new way that would free it from its association with "violence" or "coercion" and emphasize its creative potential. Thus, in order to furnish the philosophical basis for a social justice movement, feminist theory must identify this issue as being central to its project. This essay is written in acknowledgment of such a need. [End Page 3]
This essay focuses on the ideas of Mary Parker Follett, who works within a pragmatist framework. I argue that there are resources in her work that can be very helpful in understanding situations of violence against women such as intimate partner violence in a unique way, such that these can be transformed. Her notions of "power-with," the ontology of "interweaving," and the theory of integration are particularly important for this purpose. Her perspective provides us with a way of thinking about women's situations that preserves individuality while also implicating social responsibility. Therefore it is able to provide us with an alternative theoretical grounding and starting place for activism related to bringing about changes in women's lives, as well as with a narrative of empowerment for the survivors of violence.
"Power-With" and the Process of Integration: An Analysis of Follett's Ontology
A key resource in Follett's work for effecting social change is her notion of power-with. In fact, it has now become popular in feminist literature to understand power more in terms of cooperation and less in terms of domination. In the foreword to Follett's book The New State, Jane Mansbridge shows that philosophers from diverse traditions work with the idea of power-with in their philosophical frameworks. She (1998, xvii) adds that this distinction, which has now become central to feminist theory, was first introduced by Mary Parker Follett in her essay "Power."
Introducing the distinction between "power-over" and "power-with," Follett writes, "whereas power usually means power-over . . . it is possible to develop the conception of power-with, a jointly developed power, a co-active, not a coercive power" (1942a, 101). The terms co-active and coercive constitute the core of Follett's distinction, and they, in turn, point toward two kinds of ontologies of relationships and to different ways of understanding the nature of the self and a situation.
Follett applies the physiological notion of a "circular response" and aspects of the Gestalt theory to social situations in order to emphasize the character of these as being functional unities or organic wholes.2 The new ontology of situations and of human relations that arises as a consequence does away with the dichotomous way of speaking about the subject acting on an object and vice...
