ABSTRACT
The processual paradigm provided anthropologists with a rich and novel perspective on politics. Its exemplars enhanced many ordinary political ideas with sharper and more insightful meaning than had existed previously. Exemplars of the processual paradigm made four major contributions to the field of political anthropology. First, they provided a definition of politics that emphasized process. Second, they provided a rich ensemble of concepts by which to analyze politics as process, and even, as F. G. Bailey (1969) did, showed how to participate in the process. Third, they placed conflict in the forefront of any analysis of politics. And fourth, they rejected political structures, such as governments and lineages, as the major focus for political analysis. The new ideas and strategies that Bailey presents provided the processual paradigm with a model for conflict and change that revealed the unending process that makes politics dynamic.
