A switched reluctance machine has an array of poles attached to a stationary holding member to form a stator. The stator has no back-iron. The machine has two arrays of rotor poles, positioned on either side of the stator poles, and circumferentially aligned with each other. When a pair of rotor poles is aligned with a stator pole, a small airgap is formed at each end of the stator pole, across which flux can be driven to produce torque in a rotary arrangement or force in a linear arrangement. When the poles are in the unaligned position, the phase inductance is very low.