ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how power can be understood through contextual definitions of physical culture. It outlines how an appreciation of power can actually lead to a more productive understanding. The chapter highlights the need to remember in all contexts individuals have 'power-to(o)'. It addresses an array of the theoretical problems germane to physical cultural studies (PCS) where power is placed at the center of analysis and praxis. The chapter also highlights how different power perspectives focus the investigations across three main areas of interest: broad scale and institutionalized; small group and subcultural; and, phenomenological/existential. The focus of power-to in literature germane to PCS scholarship is on the reproduction of cultural understandings of physical cultural normality articulated in the relationship between knowledge produced and concomitant understandings and practices. PCS research on power might well benefit by attending to existentialism's broad focus on the fabricated and anesthetic nature of human culture as a provider of purpose in life.
