The Power Manual: How to Master Complex Power Dynamics

Liberate yourself by understanding and mastering power dynamics

All social relations are laden with power. Getting out from under dominant power relations and mastering power dynamics is perhaps the most essential skill for change agents across all sectors seeking to ignite positive change in the world.

This concise action manual explores major concepts of power, with a focus on the dynamics of domination and liberation, and presents methods for shifting power relations and enacting freedom. The Power Manual:

• Clearly distills the major theories of power from post-modern and feminist theory to business management and developmental psychology, and beyond
• Examines key ways that power is deployed and transformed in society
• Presents a new theory of power based on enactment-the bringing of something to life through one’s actions
• Explains how to refuse powerless identities and enact powerful ones
• Helps readers choose egalitarian interactions over domination
• Demonstrates mastering the process of power expansion
• Features workshop games and group activities for identifying and shifting power relations.

This accessible action manual is ideal for change agents, leaders, and activists across all nonprofit and business sectors aiming to understand, master, and shift power relations.

Table of Contents

Section One: Power + Identity – Refusing Powerless Identities
Chapter 1: Effective Interactions -Supremacist Power and Liberatory Power
Chapter 2: Interaction Patterns – Patterns of Domination and Patterns of Resistance
Chapter 3: Transmission of Affect – Life-affirming and Life-draining Affects
Chapter 4: The Sources of Power Relations – Developmental Stages and Mind Forms
Chapter 5: Powerless and Powerful Identities – Hegemony and Supreme Power

Section Two: Power + Choice – Triggering Choice
Chapter 6: Decision and Choice – The Efficient Unconscious and the Effort of Intention
Chapter 7: The Social Aspects of Choice – Participation in Decision Making
Chapter 8: Supreme Choice – Mastery Over Inner Experience

Section Three: Power + Thresholds – Creating the Self
Chapter 9: Rites of Passage- Self-formation in Liminal Space
Chapter 10: Theater as Interaction and Identity Creation – High-status and Low-status Characters

Section Four: Power + Games – Playing with Power
Chapter 11: The Purpose of Play – Play as Evolution
Chapter 12: The Structure of Games – Ordering Interactions
Chapter 13: The Party Game – Sign Reading
Chapter 14: The Stand, Sit, Kneel Game – Deconstruction
Chapter 15: The Tongue Twister Game – Reconstruction
Chapter 16: The Meisner Game – Reconstruction
Chapter 17: The Yes, But/Yes, And Game – Sign Reading, Deconstruction
Chapter 18: The Circle Game – Reconstruction
Chapter 19: The Lane Game – Reconstruction
Chapter 20: The Body Language Game – Sign Reading
Chapter 21: The Switching Game – Reconstruction
Chapter 22: The Status Master Game – Sign Reading, Deconstruction, Reconstruction
Chapter 23: The Scene Study Game – Deconstruction
Chapter 24: The Character Study Game – Reconstruction