Envisioning Power - Ideologies of Dominance and Crisis

"The book reconceptualizes power and explores factors that allow it to take on extreme forms. The three case studies are simply superb, each the most profound and most interesting I have seen on each of these examples of power in excess."—Robert B. Edgerton, author of Rules, Exceptions, and Social Order

"One of anthropology's master thinkers offers a sustained, empirically grounded meditation on questions that have concerned him through a long career: how, when, and why absolutizing ideas and organized power converge to cause human suffering. Our thinking about . . . power mongers . . . will never be the same." —Charles Tilly, author of Durable Inequality

List of contents

PREFACE

I
Introduction
2
Contested Concepts
3
The Kwakiutl
4
The Aztecs
5
National Socialist Germany
6
Coda

NOTES
REFERENCES
INDEX

About the author

Eric R. Wolf, (1923–1999) wrote Europe and the People Without History (UC Press), and numerous other books. He was Distinguished Professor of Anthropology (Emeritus) at H. Lehman College and Graduate School, City University of New York.

Summary

This text explores the historical relationship of ideas, power and culture. Looking at several case studies, it analyses how the regnant ideology intertwines with power around the pivotal relationships that govern social labour.

Product details

• Authors: Eric R Wolf, Eric R. Wolf, Eric Robert Wolf
• Publisher: University Of California Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 11.01.1999
• EAN: 9780520215825
• ISBN: 978-0-520-21582-5
• No. of pages: 310
• Dimensions: 150 mm x 225 mm x 25 mm
• Subjects: Education and learning > Teaching preparation > Vocational needs; Humanities, art, music > Education > Social education, social work; Sociology, PHILOSOPHY / Political, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General, social and political philosophy, Sociology & anthropology