Controlling Processes: Lectures and Reflections

by Laura Nader

Controlling Processes offers a penetrating anthropological analysis of how power operates through cultural mechanisms in agrarian and modern industrial societies.

Drawing on decades of research and teaching, Laura Nader

The multiple meanings and ideological frameworks embedded in dominant conceptions of science, technology, progress, energy, and the environment.
A compelling critique of groupthink, illuminated through George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, revealing how consensus can mask coercion.
The systemic oppression of women through body politics and the global diffusion of patriarchal norms.
Cultural relativism and the politics of representation, with incisive discussions of Orientalism, Islam, and the West's positional superiority.
A model of critical pedagogy inspired by Paulo Freire, exemplified in Nader's influential University of California, Berkeley course, Anthropology 139: Controlling Processes, whose syllabus is included as a practical guide.
Strategies for recognizing and resisting the subtle, often invisible, controlling processes embedded in education and public discourse.

This volume is essential reading for scholars of anthropology, sociology, political science, and education seeking to understand the cultural dimensions of power and the possibilities for emancipatory critique.

156 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2026

About the author

Nader's current work focuses on how central dogmas are made and how they work in law, energy science, and anthropology. Harmony, Ideology_Injustice and Control in a Mountain Zapotec Village (1990) and The Life of the Law: Anthropological Projects (2002) indicate a wide range of interests in law that has moved from village sites into national and international arenas. Energy Choices in a Democratic Society (1980) is the initial work that has continued on in the area of energy and resources culminating in Naked Science_Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge (1996). This work reflects a theoretical perspective that crosses disciplinary boundaries. Essays in Controlling Processees (1994, 1996, 2002) is ongoing work that attempts to synthesize contemporary work on power and control. Nader is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1995 the Law and Society Association awarded her the Kalven Prize for distinguished research on law and society.



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