Bio: (1942-) British historian and sociologist. Michael Mann studied history at Oxford and taught at the University of Essex, the London School of Economics, and the University of California, Los Angeles. During the 1970s, in the first phase of his scientific work, Mann wrote three books that studied the working class in Britain. In these books, he viewed the working class as a force that has the potential to create a new order. He studied what the real life of members of the working class looked like. He concluded that the subjugation of workers, although they faced many difficulties and injustices, was less the product of indoctrination through the dominant capitalist ideology, but, much more often, it was the product of coercion and deception.

Mann became very popular in sociological circles thanks to the book The Sources of Social Power (1986). Over the next thirty years, he wrote three more volumes of this book (1993, 2012a, 2012b). Each of the four volumes of The Sources of Social Power deals with a different historical period. There is a significant theoretical difference between Mann's approach and other sociological directions, and this difference is reflected in the fact that Mann believes that the concept of "societies" as isolated and unitary entities is wrong because there are always relations and processes (cultural, political and economic) that connect different territories and societies. Thus he argues that “Societies are constituted of multiple overlapping and intersecting sociospatial networks of power” (Man, 1986).

The concept of power is most important for Mann's theoretical approach, where he sees power as the ability to achieve goals through mastery of the environment. He agrees with Parsons that power is a ''generalized means" for achieving one's goals. He believes that it is necessary to study how people enter into social ties and power relations. Mann distinguishes two main types of expression of power: “distributive power” - the ability to persuade other people to act in achieving the goals of those who have power; “collective power” - the ability of one group to control another group. He introduces two more pairs of ideal types by which the types of power are distinguished. The first pair refers to the way power is used, so there is “extensive power” - control over a large population and a large territory and “intensive power” - creating a strong organization and achieving great mobilization and support of subordinates. The second pair refers to the existence of authoritative and diffuse power, where “authoritative power” is reflected in giving direct commands that must be respected, while “diffused power” is exercised in indirect ways.

The first volume, which was and remains the most influential, gives a history of power from prehistory until 1760 AD. In this book, Mann examines how the four basic sources of power in society - ideological, economic, military, and political - have evolved and changed throughout history, from the Neolithic to the Industrial Revolution. Mann believes that each of these sources of power can be independent, so he studies why some sources of power became dominant at certain moments, that is, for example, why was the ideological source of power dominant in the period of the emergence of world religions. He believes that the ruling group is never able to fully control all power. As an example, he cites the demise of feudalism, which occurred due to the increase in the military, ideological, and economic power of the citizenry in the fourteenth century. The author offers a theoretical explanation of the emergence of the state and social stratification, as well as the role that classes and class struggles have played in history. Mann introduces the key concept of organizational “caging”. This term means the tendency of those who are ruled over to obey more often than to rebel. Lack of organizational resources leads to collective action becoming the only effective resistance of subordinates. The collective organization of subordinate strata (classes) may be able to take advantage of tensions and divisions among the ruling strata.

The second volume is dedicated to the emergence of modern classes and nation-states, from the beginning of the industrial revolution to the outbreak of the First World War. Mann believes that the emergence of true nation-states comes only with the industrial revolution, because, although "proto-nationalism" existed before, it was not separated from the dynastic and religious principles of political legitimacy. At the end of the eighteenth century, centralized states arose and political opposition was created in them, and both of these forces influenced the creation of nationalist rhetoric and the idea of ​​the sovereignty of the "people". With the emergence of nation-states comes the creation of new types of political participation, but also the creation of a unified national culture. The third volume of the book studies colonial empires and revolutions in the period from the end of the nineteenth century until the Second World War, while the fourth volume deals with the process of globalization after the Second World War.

Mann uses his vast knowledge of history and sociology in the study of fascism. In his book Fascists (2004), he reintroduces a class approach to the study of the origin and rise of fascism, through the analysis of six cases in interwar Europe. In all cases, the main features of fascism were: the existence of paramilitary formations, anti-statism, and nationalist ideology. He believes that fascism is a unique case in history that is related to the situation that existed in Europe between the two world wars and which does not have a great chance of recurrence. In Incoherent Empire (2003), Mann makes a very sharp critique of American foreign policy.

Main works

Workers on the Move (1973);

Consciousness and Action among the Western Working Class (1973);

The Working Class and the Labour Market (1979);

The Sources of Social Power, Vol. 1: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 (1986);

The Sources of Social Power, Vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation States, 1760-1914 (1993); 

Incoherent Empire (2003);

Fascists (2004);

The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (2004);

Power in the 21st Century: Conversations with John A. Hall (2011);

The Sources of Social Power, Volume 3: Global Empires and Revolution, 1890-1945 (2012a);

The Sources of Social Power, Volume 4: Globalizations, 1945-2011 (2012b).