ABSTRACT
Power, I said in the first chapter, was the great omiSSion from Niebuhr's influential typology of Christianity and culture. Written in a situation when the quantities 'Christ' and 'culture' could be taken for granted, the question seems not to have arisen for him. But if, as I have argued, 'culture' is a way of talking of what human beings make of their world materially, intellectually and spiritually how can we leave power out of this account? Some argue that hunter-gatherer societies are or were democratic and egalitarian but in every other society we know the rich thrive and the poor are sent empty away, and money and influence corrupt the operations of justice. Power is the thread which stitches the seams of the cultural garment. This second part of the book, then, examines power as a cultural matter. I begin with a discussion of ideology, proceed in the next chapter to hegemony, and conclude this second part with a discussion of cultural politics.
