Social power in exchange theories: Homans's and Blau's considerations of the relationship between the power and the exchange

Mentus, Vladimir (2014) Social power in exchange theories: Homans's and Blau's considerations of the relationship between the power and the exchange. Sociološki pregled, 48 (2). pp. 165-182. ISSN 0085-6320 eISSN 2560-4880

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Abstract

Since social exchange is one of the key concepts in the social life, the exchange theory can be one of the most important within sociology. Also, another crucial concept to the social reality and social sciences is social power. The theory of social exchange has provided a significant contribution to the study of power, however, this contribution of theorists who belong to exchange paradigm is completely neglected within scientific literature. Therefore, the subject of this paper is social power from the perspective of the exchange theory, particularly the theories of George Homans and Peter Blau. The structure of the paper is as follows: first, the basic principles of the exchange theory are briefly described, then the relationship between concepts of social power and exchange is presented, and finally Homans's and Blau's interpretations of that relationship are exposed, along with the critical scrutiny of these interpretations.

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