ABSTRACT
The main purpose of this chapter is to explore what power is and how it works so that, throughout the book, we are in a position to examine what holds together the changing institutions of the family, work, and social welfare to which many of us are attached. In particular, a major concern is to show how power in its various guises serves to integrate and stabilize these key areas of social life, although often in less certain ways than many would have us believe. That such institutions are always in the process of being ordered in one way or another, rather than simply fixed for all time, is something that you should bear in mind as you consider the nature of institutional power.
