ABSTRACT
Power has become a part of the conceptual framework of anthropology, and over the last several decades two broad claims about power characterize the anthropological literature. One claim views it as the property of social relations, locates it in institutions, and focuses on wide-ranging processes of exploitation to understand how different kinds of people live power on a daily basis. The other asserts that power is primarily an effect of de-centered discourses that shape the identities, behaviors, and feelings of individuals. The two claims are not mutually exclusive, and, as this review has shown, anthropologists have in some cases bumped up against their limitations to produce new insights. For more than a quarter century, transformations in relationships of power and powerlessness have reshaped the lives of people across the globe, beginning with the emergence of neoliberal capitalism in the 1970s and continuing with its expansion under the label “globalization” after China’s “capitalist turn” and the collapse of the Soviet sphere.
