The book argues that the main conceptions of power in political theory assume that it necessarily consists of one group or individual reducing the capacity of others to act freely, so that it has a sort of "face" by which it can be identified.
[2] Instead, Hayward builds on the post-structuralist work of Michel Foucault to argue that social power should be understood as a set or network of boundaries—consisting of patterns like laws, norms, and institutions—which can either constrain or enable action.
[3] Hayward's second book, How Americans Make Race: Stories, Institutions, Spaces, was published in 2013.
The book is partly motivated by a paradox in American racial inequality: how to reconcile the empirical reality of racial inequality with the pervasive norms against racism, and more broadly how to explain the tangible material consequences of identities if we understand identities only as cultural narratives that people associate themselves with.
[4] Hayward uses the case of residential real estate to illustrate how apparently non-political motivations for this ubiquitous behavior, such as a desire for comfort and security, have origins in stories about racial identity that American culture has historically relied on to ensure that racial categories have material consequences, through tools like neighborhood segregation and the development of exclusive suburbs.