Full Description
Reflecting the first evaluation among British and American anthropologists of the relevance of Marxist theory for their discipline, the studies in this volume cover a wide geographical and social spectrum ranging from rural Indonesia, Imperial China, Highland Burma and the Abron kingdom of Gyaman.
A critical survey assesses the value of some key ideas of Marx and Engels to social anthropology and places in historical perspective the changing attitudes of social anthropologists to the Marxist tradition.
Originally published in 1975.
Contents
Part 1: Empiricism and Historical Materialism1. Maurice Godelier Modes of Production, Kinship, and Demographic Structures2. Raymond Firth The Sceptical Anthropologist? Social Anthropology and Marxist Views on Society3. Stephan Feuchtwang Investigating ReligionPart 2: Class and Class Consciousness4. Emmanuel Terray Classes and Class Consciousness in the Abron Kingdom of Gyaman5. Joel Kahn Economic Scale and the Cycle of Petty Commodity Production in West SumatraPart 3: Dominance Determination and Evolution6. Jonathan Friedman Tribes, States, and Transformations7. Maurice Bloch Property and the End of Affinity
