Everyday interactions and the domestication of social inequality

Abstract

This article examines the distribution of relationships of power and authority as an activity in gossip sessions among members of a community in Pohnpei, Micronesia. The position of Bourdieu, that the interactionist approach cannot elucidate important aspects of the sharing of power in society, is used as a starting place to examine ways in which interactants in everyday conversations manipulate and organize gendered identities and the entitlements of certain classes of individuals to particular types of power.