ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the relations between people and place might be shaped by power relations between different social groups and individuals. Power is partly about the ability of the state to control how people ought to act in different places. This control is enforced through policing, surveillance and regulation carried out by agencies and institutions of the state. Power is about self-management and regulation, with people expected to monitor their own behaviour in accordance with ideas about what is desirable and culturally valuable. It is instilled in place through a complex range of laws, norms and expectations reflected in its design and appearance which encourage us to adopt particular bodies and behave in particular ways. Rather than being fixed and 'natural', such norms are arbitrary, needing constant maintenance by dominant groups, and varying over space and time. Power is not unidirectional, with all people having the potential to resist dominant ideas of what is good and right.
