The Signature of Power

Buildings, Communications, and Policy

Harold D. Lasswell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351474184
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture Design

Advanced industrial societies are becoming aware of the impact of what they do to the physical and biological environment, and also what that environment does to individuals. In The Signature of Power, Harold D. Lasswell examines the symbolic use people make of their surroundings and the complexity of the way they interpret an altered environment. Transformed habitats can change experiences and behaviors. All people seek to maximize their preferred events, such as power and wealth, when they use the environment be it through glass skyscrapers or Gothic estates. In all cases, physical structures give expression to the perspectives of influential individuals and groups.This volume considers the complex interplay between the material and the symbolic. Physical changes introduced for political purposes by architects, planners, and engineers are guided by the perspectives of designers. These and other interactions in human society are simultaneous acts of communication and collaboration. Regardless of whether physical resources are used to transmit messages, such interactions nevertheless have a degree of communicative impact.Physical structures may be profoundly affected by the purposes, assumptions, and identities of those people who plan or change them. Environmental design, says Lasswell, is an instrument of political power.

Part I

Analysis

1

The Military Arena: The Encircling and the Encircled

We begin by calling attention to the differential impact of military and civil arenas. Looking at world politics as a whole, we see that nation states, intergovernmental organizations, political parties, pressure groups, and other voluntary associations and individuals impinge on one another in a setting in which the expectation of violence is assumed. Each nation-state, on the contrary, conducts its internal affairs on a different assumption, namely, the peaceful acceptance of specific decisions made in the context of a general body of legal doctrine. Disregarding the ups and downs over short periods, it is relevant to speak of the world as a military arena, and of each nation-state as a civil arena.

Can it be demonstrated that the expectation of violence affects the natural environment?

The expectation of violence leads people to scrutinize their environment for the purpose of locating a potential source of threat, or of finding a place where initiatives may be taken to defend or extend control. Restricting ourselves for the moment to defense—to the potential use of power to preclude deprivations of power or of other values—the inference is that body politic A will seek to adapt itself to its total environment in such a manner that every part of the “surround” will be equally secure. Defensive policies are in accord with “the indifference principle,” since the fundamental aim is to optimize one’s value position by achieving equal degrees of invulnerability in any sector.¹

What does this suggest for environmental control? One implication is that special attention is likely to be directed toward strengthening defenses between the self (body politic A) and the principal threat.

The source of threat will be perceived according to many more particularized perspectives than the highly generalized expectation of violence to which reference has been made. These specific expectations include assumptions about the nature and strength of potential attack (the size of forces, training, equipment, strategy).

Until quite recently, the technology of weaponry supported the assumption that assault would be surface-to-surface, rather than from above-to-beneath, or from beneath-to-above; and that attacks would be staged from relatively nearby positions, rather than from great distances. In the past, even microvariations of level might be perceived as decisive. Hence, defenders were preoccupied with the command of heights, or with discovering natural formations that could be relied upon as barriers, or turned into effective barriers with little outlay.

A principal objective of systems of defense is precaution against surprise. Hence, attention is directed toward any likely avenue of attack. Historically the unaided human eye has been the chief instrument of surveillance; hence, natural elevations have been used or artificial elevations have been built for the observer.² The most common resulting form is the watchtower. Towers may also be utilized for many other purposes, such as mounting harbor lights to aid navigators, or for weather observation. Towers are also practical means of storing water, grain and other supplies. Towerlike edifices are likely to be put up wherever land values are high. The protective significance of the watch-tower confers high symbolic value upon it, which favors the adaptation of the form to such purposes as the enhancement of respect, or the worship of higher and invisible powers. (From the modern probing of unconscious processes we have also learned how widespread is the imputation of masculine potency to the vertical.) The occurrence and diffusion of the tower motif, though fostered by the lookout function, is far from being totally dependent upon it.

The requirements of defense often favor the use of devices of invisibility or inaccessibility. Pygmies rely upon unceasing mobility, in the course of which they cross streams by bridges fashioned from jungle vines and trees, but these bridges are immediately abandoned. Nomadic peoples search out hiding places in remote oases or mountain fastnesses. We have ample evidence of the adroitness of early man in exploiting the protective possibilities of natural caves and ravines. Ancient or modern camouflage takes the form of matching contour, color, texture, and, especially, dissimulating approaches. A maze of trails is another means of misleading the enemy; incidentally, it provides a prototype capable of being developed into formal gardens as well as into labyrinthine passages and chambers.³

Perhaps the most elementary means of protection against assault is provided by a wall barrier.⁴ Such a walled enclosure is the fundamental pattern of a fortification. The wall blossoms into such elaborate structures as the barriers constructed by the Romans to shut the barbarians of North Britain out of the empire.⁵ Like a tower, a protecting wall is adaptable to many purposes and is able to draw support from deep human experiences. Walls restrain not only people, but animals; not only living forms, but raging waters, billowing sand, wind, rain, snow and fire. Walls also block light and heat from the sun. In some situations walls are so invested with symbolic meaning that they appear to defeat the more obvious requirements of safety and economy. The exuberance of construction work in stone among the Inca, for instance, appears to have far exceeded the requirements of defense.⁶

Walls have a double function: they interpose barriers, and they usually put defenders in a superior position to attackers. Approaches are spread in patterns that increase the vulnerability of the assaulting force. The upward-winding stair or the corkscrew roadway are prototypes of this arrangement. (A famous example is at Tiryns.)⁷

Unless avenues of retreat are open to the defenders of a walled place, or the defenders are entirely sealed off from an enemy, provision must be made for counterattacks. This poses severe problems to an architect, since the requirements of protection and of egress are contradictory. In this context, the gateway is the key, since its function is to afford protection while retaining the possibility of sallying forth against the attacker. Vast ingenuity has gone into the building of portals, and the historic significance of the portal has enhanced the prestige of whatever is connected with it. An indication of the prestige of the gateway is the detachment of the gate (as well as the tower) in the form of a freestanding archway to form a triumphal monument.⁸

The passage-and-portal system, when extended to an entire region, becomes a network of roads, barriers, towers, and gateways. The system is dominated by the vital centers (and subcenters) and by the chief sources of anticipated attack. Thus the Roman road system provided facilities for the rapid movement of troops between Rome and the sectors of the frontier most vulnerable to major enemies. In this way, the chief center of power was adapted to anticipated challenges anywhere at the periphery, with special regard given to the zones considered most dangerous. The Inca Empire created a series of spokes radiating from the hub at Cuzco. The results were peculiarly impressive and enduring because of the use of stone and the defiance of topography. The Inca road and bridge builders surmounted barriers; they rarely went around them.⁹

When the territories of a body politic are separated by water, the defensive system takes a distinctive pattern. In place of continuing roadways, a sequence of bases is connected by ships (harbors, coaling stations, repair facilities, stores). Intermediate installations are oriented according to the most valued centers of the body politic and the anticipated line of hostile action. For a long time, India was regarded by the British as the most valuable noncontiguous component of the empire subject to major threat (from the Russian Empire). Therefore. British policy was to accelerate the speed of transportation and communication between the British Isles and India, and to multiply and secure intermediate bases and routes. Hence, the attractiveness of the Suez (an alternative to South Africa) and eventually of the land route (surface and air) between the Mediterranean and various points along the path to India.¹⁰ The most general point of interest is that the enclosing function of construction is employed for the purpose of protecting all values within the domain of the body politic as a whole.

When small bands of hostile groups become aware of one another, they show in the way they deploy men and facilities the influence of power considerations which, when stabilized, bring forth architectural forms and styles. Some bands flee and search out unknown or relatively inaccessible places. High points may be scaled or built for surveillance purposes. Barriers may be thickened, heightened, and connected by routes of transport and communication. Portals may be improvised for purposes of counterattack. In a word, the responses displayed by small fighting bands exhibit the fundamentals of power balancing in a military arena (in addition to flight), namely: confrontation, flanking, and penetration. At some phase of hostile action, the participants may actually be aligned in a relatively static pattern of encircled and encircling powers.¹¹

Think, for instance, of the tactics of a wagon train under attack by Indian war parties during our expansion westward. Wagons were drawn up in a circle that was intended to interpose a barrier, and also to provide platforms for defending marksmen. Scouts were already detached from the main body for surveillance purposes. In order to penetrate the wagon circle, the attacking Indians might shoot flaming arrows in a high trajectory to start fires. At some point in the fighting, mounted sorties from the wagons would be made against the war party (sometimes continued against an encampment in a counterencirclement move).

Enduring relations of hostility among peoples who occupy fixed territory produce characteristic environmental alignments. Bodies politic cut down their vulnerability by constructing towers, walls, and garrisons and by exploiting natural barriers (mountains, deserts, marches, and waters). The Maginot Line was ample testimony to the state of Franco-German relations. All the effective, as distinct from the formal, boundaries of a nation are likely to give a symbolic, as well as a material indication of their enclosing function.¹²

Specific means of defense, as suggested earlier, depend on the anticipated forms of hostile enounter, as well as on the direction, strength and magnitude of potential deprivation.¹³ With changes in weapon technology, expectations concerning the efficacy of protective devices also change. Thus the flying board (the airplane) has taken the place of earlier vehicles (land or water boards) and provided a platform for missiles of many kinds. Before the airplane, it was possible to penetrate defenses from above only when they were situated on elevations lower than the attacker, or when an attacker could lob missiles over vertical walls. But the vertical front has had less impact on modern architecture than might have been anticipated. It is true that, to some extent, targets have been dispersed and driven underground. Roof-shields of “shatterproof” glass have been used for limited purposes (as in observation posts), but these blisters have not been applied to the task of sealing over entire cities or regions. Nuclear weapons (especially as missile warheads) are emphasizing the vertical front without producing great architectural revolutions to date, presumably because of pessimism concerning presently known means of protection, combined with some lack of confidence in the efficacy of an attack on widely scattered target systems. No doubt there is the still small voice of doubt, nourished by an undertone of chronic optimism, that the all-out attack will ever materialize.

As modern weaponry grows more complex and impersonal, the affirmative involvement on the part of architects may be diminishing. The airplane could be humanized because the flyer took direct risk, however distasteful his mission. (Is this a factor in the breakthrough of innovative design when the Air Force Academy is concerned?) Little doubt, also that edifices aimed at the peaceful uses of nuclear energy can be approached with minimum inner value conflict. So far as most modern military instruments are concerned, architects may, in John Burchard’s words, believe that “architecture is itself a paradox in the face of destruction.”¹⁴

The line dividing defensive from offensive action and calculation is frequently crossed in the hope of achieving an overall defensive result. Defending forces mount counterattacks and “preventive” wars. The direct impact of offensive operations on the molding of environment is less pronounced than the impact of measures of defense, since attack emphasizes movement rather than strong static positions. Obviously, a major factor in obsolescing and improving defensive arrangements is the ingenuity of attacking forces. For a thousand years, the walls of Constantinople withstood the arrows, lances, swords, battering rams, and catapults of enemy forces, only to succumb promptly when the explosive potential of gunpowder was finally applied to warfare by the Turks. The effect of firepower was to alter the layout of fortifications by driving the defenders underground and producing a series of horizontal ranges.¹⁵ By obsolescing city walls, firepower opened the city to planned alternations of open and occupied spaces, and put a premium on wide, hard-surfaced highways.¹⁶

Before the coming of modern firepower, the most revolutionary innovations in the art of attack on land were connected with the use of animals. The mounted archers of inner Asia and the elephants employed in southern and eastern Asia tilted the balance against the foot soldier. The awe inspired by the mounted warrior, and especially by bodies of mounted cavalry, was explicitly reflected in sculpture and painting, and was indirectly acknowledged in architectural allusions to the human form mounted on pedestals of diverse designs.

At sea, the pirate’s craft has been a dynamic factor in the evolution of ships of trade and in defense of trade. One practical tactic is a hit-and-run operation executed by a small band, whose members would be annihilated if the victim were able to mobilize and apply his power promptly. Piratical forays depend on speed, daring, and the inaccessibility of bases; in pursuit of mobility, pirate ships have innovated (and provoked) important changes in sea vehicles and harbor arrangements.¹⁷

Throughout the history of warfare, the relative strength of attack and defense has fluctuated continually. Nevertheless, it appears that the defender has many fundamental advantages. Unless taken entirely by surprise, caught in a moment of internal division, or confronted by the weapons of an advanced science and technology, a defender is less exposed than an attacker. The fundamental fact about an attacker is that he must move through space to search out the defender and to assault his positions.¹⁸ While moving through space, one is usually more vulnerable than when holding a prepared position. It is obvious that architectural skill works chiefly for the benefit of defense, since architecture is less adapted to the protection of moving objects than of static objects. The defender is able to send out mobile forces to contest the approach and eventually withdraw to prepared positions.

Attempts to reduce the vulnerability of assaulting forces have been innumerable. Many partial solutions have bogged down under the weight of the materials used. Every warrior employs some device for defensive purposes (shield, helmet, body armor); at times the transformation of the body into a mobile fortress has gone so far that the over-burdened fighter is vulnerable to new tactics and weapons. Such was the fate of the armed knight of feudal Europe at Crecy and Poitiers.¹⁹ The point may apply to defending forces on a more lavish scale, especially when unwillingness to envisage the next war leads to overestimating the potential strength of defensive installations. The much-maligned “Maginot mentality” stands for this danger.

Notes

1. Arnold Wolfers, “The Pole of Power and The Pole of Indifference,” World Politics 4 (1951): 39–63; Ole R. Holsti, “The 1914 Case,” American Political Science Review 59 (1965): 365–78.

2. In Southern Arabia the urban Himyarites built fortified castles to protect themselves against Bedouin raids. The citadel was twenty stories high, the first skyscraper in history. It was built of granite, porphyry and marble. For more detail, P.K. Hitti, The History of the Arabs , 4th ed. rev. (London: Macmillan, 1949), p. 57.

3. The late Genro Saionji gave his estate to the University of Kyoto. His fear of assassination led him to construct a home consisting of a complex maze of corridors...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half title
• The Signature of Power
• copy
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I Analysis
• Part II Exhibits
• Illustrations