The Lie of Power: Empowerment as Impotence Monica Lee 1,2 The arguments in this paper are based upon an ethnographic description of the circumstances surrounding the investigation of a complaint against the Governors of a small rural Primary School. This is an empirical study of a local struggle in which the role of the researcher as a prisoner in a web of power is highlighted. The case is first analyzed using structural and functional understandings of power as described by Hardy and Clegg. However, the voluntary nature of the individual engagement of the actors in the case highlights the role of the individual’ s interpretative frameworks—both in operation and as explanatory mechanisms. Structural and functional analyses of power do not appear to fully account for aspects of this situation, and therefore Hopfl’ s distinction between the poetic and the rhetoric is considered as part of the explanatory mechanism. This paper suggests that “power” can be seen as an individually interpreted quality, and that feelings of “empowerment” are evoked by consonance between the poetic and the rhetoric, but that such consonance also signals impotence. KEY WORDS: power; school governance; participant research; ethnomethodology; voluntary workers; trade unions. INTRODUCTION Power requires understanding in its diversity even as it resists explanation in terms of a single theory. A theory of power does not, and cannot, exist other than as an act of power in itself .... One way out of this impasse is to explore the [hermeneutic] circle more completely and to investigate the relations and meanings that constitute it, by listening more carefully to the voices that normally populate it (e.g., Forester 1989) and unmasking the researcher that enters it. This approach advocates more empirical study of local struggles, focusing not on a monolithic conception of power, but on the strategic concerns raised by Machiavelli (1961) or the war of manouvre highlighted by Gramsci (1971) .... In so doing, we may privilege certain discourses . . . but, Human Relations, Vol. 52, No. 2, 1999 225 0018-7267/99/0200-0225 $16.00/1 Ó 1999 The Tavistock Institute 1 The HRD Pathway Unit, The Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YX, United Kingdom. 2 Requests for reprints should be directed to Monica Lee, The HRD Pathway Unit, The Man- age me nt School, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YX, United Kingdom. (e-mail: m.lee@lancaster.ac.uk)