Jeannette Marie Mageo is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Washington State University. She has lived and done extensive fieldwork in the Pacific, and she writes about self, power, transvesticism, spirit possession, moral discourse and body symbolism.

'This sparkling collection of essays addresses the ways in which subjects experience power, both as agents of social process, and as the objects of such processes … As a collection these papers are remarkably well synthesized, presented a variety of approaches … many of the papers speak to one another, and actually illuminate complimentary perspectives … I found each of these papers interesting and rewarding …'. Cambridge Anthropology

• Foreword Gananath Obeyesekere; 1. Introduction: Theorizing power and the self Jeannette Mageo and Bruce Knauft; Part I. Power Differentials in the US: 2. The genocidal continuum: peace time crimes Nancy Scheper-Hughes; 3. Intimate power, public selves: Bakhtin's space of authoring William S. Lachicotte; Part II. Transitional Psychologies: 4. Playing with power: morphing toys and transforming heroes in kids' mass culture Ann Allison; 5. Consciousness of the state and the experience of self: the runaway daughter of a Turkish guest worker Katherine Ewing; Part III. Colonial Encounters: Power/History/Self: 6. Spirit, self, and power: the making of colonial experience in Papua New Guinea Douglas Dalton; 7. Self models and sexual agency Jeannette Mageo; Part IV. Reading Power against the Grain: 8. Eager subjects, reluctant powers: the irrelevance of ideology in a secret New Guinea male cult Harriet Whitehead; 9. Feminist emotions Catherine Lutz.