Power, Knowledge and Domination

This scholarly work, "Power, Knowledge and Domination," by Raymond Daniel Gordon, is presented in a paperback binding and is in good condition. The book offers a theoretically sophisticated and empirically detailed account of power relations within the heavily bureaucratized New South Wales Police Service. It examines the Service's endeavor to integrate post-bureaucratic structures, policies, and systems, particularly in a context rife with corruption. The initial aim of these post-bureaucratic reforms was to enhance social control through the facilitation of democracy. Despite significant institutional changes, Gordon's incisive analysis reveals how, at a deeper social and political level, the Service paradoxically maintains an authoritarian and closed structure. The author's comprehensive review of existing literature on power within organizations delineates two primary streams of analysis: the idealist and the pragmatist. He convincingly demonstrates that the Service's reform program ultimately failed because it was premised on a taken-for-granted idealist view of power. Utilizing genealogy as a methodological exemplar, the book develops a robust pragmatist analytical frame. This framework elucidates how relations of domination can be continuously reproduced, regardless of institutional transformation. Gordon posits that power is intricately tied to the rationalities, modes of sense-making, practical consciousness, knowledge, truths, and the general ontological 'being in the world' that social agents discursively produce. This process, he argues, is subject to historically constituted structures of dominancy that perpetually legitimize acts of domination and foster a prevailing sense of despotism, thereby undermining any genuine move towards democracy. The book concludes with the compelling argument that the organization remains vulnerable to corruption precisely because those in positions of dominance are at liberty to rationalize their own versions of rationality, making this a critical read for students and practitioners of public administration, sociology, and criminology.

• Author: Gordon, Raymond Daniel
• Publisher: Liber
• Year: 2007
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Good
• ISBN: 9788763001960