Abstract

An expression like “Power without State” sounds ambiguous since it combines different things. Here it is used to indicate two distinct phenomena — those societies in which power is not located in a State or its apparatuses, and those forms of diffuse power within societies that do have a State, and which grew outside or against it. This may seem arbitrary rather than ambiguous since it attempts to couple cultures and histories which we have always been accustomed to consider separately — primitive societies and today's Western world. It is a juxtaposition based on a negative definition which, as such, is weak because its object remains blurred in no longer being anchored to the State and it is upon die state that our image of power is tied.