Systems, Instabilities and Change

Abstract

From the previous chapter, it may be seen how critical understandings of power relations and the dynamics of change or transformation may interconnect. Inherent within the definitions of power relations discussed so far are dynamics of conflict, opportunity or transformation. Power itself may be defined as the capacity to bring about, or prevent, shifts in positioning with regard to pre-existing discursive, material or emotional contexts. In this chapter, I explore how processes of change have been understood within (and at the margins of) modernist thought — for example, within systems theory — and within those critical approaches that have identified conflict and contradiction as a motive force for personal and social transformation.