This chapter is an attempt to develop a framework for nonessentialist power analysis. By 'non-essentialist analysis' I mean analysis which does not understand its object in terms of an allimportant essence (like the economy, the state or the creative individual). As Barry Hindess describes it:

Essentialism ... refers to a mode of analysis in which social phenomena are analysed not in terms of their specific conditions of existence and their effects with regard to other social relations and practices but rather as the more or less adequate expression of an essence (Hindess, 1977, 95).