Integrates historical perspectives with classical anthropological treatments of political power and conflict 
Offers original anthropological takes on some of political science's and political philosophy's major themes: Western democracy, conceptions of freedom, the role of the public sector, bureaucracy, and modernity

Explores equality as an issue of negotiation and social control
The book aims to explain the emergence of the Norwegian-and to some extent, the Scandinavian-welfare state in historical and anthropological terms. Halvard Vike argues that particular forms of political grassroots mobilization contributed heavily to what he calls "a low level of gravity state"-a political order in which decentralized institutions make it possible to curtail centralizing forces. While there is a large international literature on the Nordic welfare states, there is limited knowledge about how these states are embedded in local contexts. Vike's approach is based on an ethnographic practice which may be labeled "in and out of institutions." It is based on ethnographic work in municipal assemblies, local bureaucracies, political parties, voluntary organizations, and various informal contexts.