Making Politics: Class, Ethnicity and Nation

Abstract

Politics everywhere is about power and the exercise of domination by some groups over others. Political conflicts reflect the tensions, alliances and negotiations which take place between groups in society. These conflicts are played out in the private and the public sphere — that is, within the framework of everyday social relations (for example, the workplace, the school and the family) and within the established arena for the resolution or mediation of conflict: the state. Most analyses of power and conflict from the perspective of political science concentrate on the state, with the result that some social scientists see politics as a struggle by contending social groups to control the state and thus assure the implementation of a particular model of development. There are many other arenas within the private sphere where domination is exercised or hegemony constructed because all social interaction has a political content. But in this chapter we concentrate on politics as it is played out in the public arena.