7. Questioning authority
Historical setting
After 1968: radical politic climate, decade of revolutionary dreams
Late 1990s: the discipline of anthropology grows
Radicalisation -> Marxism
-> Feminism
But also: ethnicity studies
Socio-biology
Economic anthropology
Decade of controversies -> first time that anthropology had grown so vast and interconnected
The Return of Marxism
1950s-1960s: authors who are influences by Marx and scattered references to him, but the
ideologic climate was not receptive to Marxists
In the 1960s: change : more interest of students for Marxist theories -> not easy to graft the
theories onto anthropology, because Marx and Engels were too much influenced by
evolutionism. Nevertheless, Marx’ vision of the modern world could be used by
anthropologists of the 1970s as well.
 Marxism is more than a social theory, becomes a resource of political power
Several distinctive strands of Marxist anthropology:
1. cultural Marxism (superstructure studies) in the 1980s
 in anthropology via Said’s Orientalism (contra exotising ‘the other’)
2. structural Marxism
3. political economy
4. sensual Marxism
Structural Marxism
French Marxist Anthropology
Claude Meillassoux: Marxist analysis of subsistence production in agricultural societies
Empirical researcher, most sympathetic to the British school
Not only concentrated on economic life, but also on the social relations of production and
the technological and environmental means of production in Guro society.
Wants to extricate economics from kinship -> proposed “the domestic mode of production”
Louis Althusser: Pour Marx - Lire Le Capital
 Marxism introduced a measure of flexibility in the infrastructure-superstructure
relationship => suitable for anthropology
 Any social institution can be dominant, but whether it does so or not will be
determined by the infrastructure
Maurice Godelier:
 structuralism is a real scientific advance
 comparative study of different economic systems -> concerned with kinship ->
proposed a ‘formalised Marxism’ that looked for functions
British Marxist Anthropology
= largely a subsidiary of the French structural variety
Ex. Bloch, the most important British Marxist anthropologist, was French
=> fundamental problem with Marxism in anthropology is that it is essentially a theory of
capitalist society, and that its message about ‘precapitalist societies’ is couched in the
language of unilineal evolutionism.
The Not-Quite-Marxists
American Marxist-influenced Anthropology
(begin 1960s, flourish 1970s, high point early 1980s)
 some never really Marxists, others Marxist phase, but abandon it
Sahlins: (from cultural ecology via Marxism to a concern with symbolism)
- Stone Age Economics -> household-based production is a way of procuring necessities
Norm in tribal societies = logic of generalised reciprocity/sharing
- Hunter and gatherer societies represented ‘the original affluent society’
- Culture and Practical Reason -> contra Marxism for its reductionism and for not
treating symbolic culture as an autonomous realm
Marvin Harris: fieldwork in Mozambique, his politics were radicalised here
- “The material facts of economy and ecology determine culture directly.” (example of
the sacred cow of Hinduism)
- Cultural Materialism -> he is the strongest positivist materialist in American
anthropology, Marx ideas are non-scientific, inferior alternatives (just like eclecticism
and socio-biology)
- The Rise of Anthropological Theory -> history of the discipline as a unilinear
evolutionist narrative ending with cultural materialism.
Political Economy and the Capitalist World System
Highpoint of American Marxist Anthropology:
Eric Wolf:
- Europe and the People Without History (study of effects of colonialism)
- Peasants (destinies of localities are intertwined with large-scale processes)
 economic profit => capital accumulation in the centre, exploitation in the periphery
see also Wallerstein, The Modern World System; Galtung’s structural theory of
imperialism
Dependency Theory: (1970s)
- Exchange between rich and poor parts => capital accumulation in the north, deprivation
in the south
-
Mostly non-anthropologists, but also Worsley. Not that anthropologist were blind for
these problems, they studied millions of urban poor and semi-modern peasants (less
prestige).
Problems anthropology- neo-colonialism and Third World exploitation:
1. poor masses of the tropics generally considered as ‘too acculturated’ for anthropological
attention
2. single-people approach versus concern with global political economy
3. indifference of anthropologists to colonialism
4. difficulty of the notion ‘development’
 Solutions to these problems:
1.
2.
3.
4.
nothing wrong with studying hybridised, mixed cultures
combination in-depth fieldwork with wider systemic and historical analysis is viable
relationship to colonial authorities is now irrelevant
“development”: has to be defined from within (emic approach)
Mintz: distinct regional focus on ‘the backyard’ of the USA
Sweetness and Power : cultural history of sugar
(much fieldwork in Latin America within a Marxist theoretical framework)
 structural Marxism left an imprint on anthropology: directed the attention to the
imperative material conditions for life
 boundary structural Marxism-political economy not always watertight: crossover
anthropologists, f.ex. Archetti (interest in the underlying logic of peasant societies and
their relationship to the outside world)
Feminism- and the Birth of Reflexive Fieldwork
1954 Return to Laughter Laura Bohannan (fictional woman on fieldwork)
1966 Stranger and Friend H. Powdermaker
1967 Diary of Malinowski is published -> scandal
1970 Women in the Field essays -> being a woman affects their work -> idea of
‘positioned’ fieldwork
 2 debates:
1. How should a fieldworker act? -> practical accounts
2. What role does gender play in social systems?
 Edwin Ardener Belief and the problem of women : the problem is the conspicuous
absence of women from the pages of most of the classics of anthropology
reasons : - male bias in Western society
-men are more easily approached, they dominate the public sphere
(women as a muted group)
 response: Woman, Culture and Society
1. Rosaldo vs domestic-public contrast
2. discussions about the ‘wild’ nature of women
( impact: thanks to its un-revolutionary tone)

-
Impact of feminism on anthropology:
series of ethnographies which focus on women
view that gathering is more important than hunting
more subtle effects -> cfr later
large numbers of female students in anthropology
Ethnicity
4 distinct centres:
1. Self-identification: DeVos and associates at Berkeley, they worked with ethnic
minorities in Europe, the USA and elsewhere
2. Plural societies:
-Smith: the groups of such societies are culturally distinctive, tight-knit
corporations competing for power.
- Debate: Are the ethnic groups that make up plural societies culturally discrete? ->
no definite conclusion
3. Urbanisation and social change:
4. Ethnicity is a social and political phenomenon: not a cultural one
Barth: ethnic boundary defines the group -> the relationship between groups, not the
culture of groups, gives them meaning. (see later: deconstructivist movement)
Practice Theory
Sherry Ortner: “practice theory”= the new, overarching theoretical paradigm in anthropology
Reason: outgrowth of the controversy between actor-oriented and structure-oriented
approaches, and the Marxist and feminist work
BUT this idea was not new -> Marx and feminism
 1990s rapprochement anthropology-biology
Anthony Giddens:
- Central Problems In Social Theory (aim= to unify ‘structure’ and ‘agency’)
- The Constitution of Society (distinction discursive and practical reason, and the
subconscious)
 more philosophical than ethnographic or sociological
Pierre Bourdieu:
Influence of Marx, Lévi-Strauss, Mauss, Durkheim and Weber
1. Idea of habitus : the permanent internalisation of the social order in the human body
2. model of symbolic culture: distinction opinion-doxa
Michel Foucault:
Study about ‘discipline’
 Whole new field of inquiry, focus on human body as central fact of all social existence
(~> connection with Turner etc. who explored the interface between biology and
sociology)
(~> connection with psychologists, linguists and cognitive anthropologists)
The Sociobiology Debate and Samoa
Socio-biology -> very hostile reactions
Edward Wilson: proposed to include social science in the evolutionary biology
 cultural phenomena have to be seen as biological adaptations (caused many uproar)
Idea of biological determinism was not new:
- at first: no strong presence -> Boas argued against it
- early 1960s : some anthrop. and biolog. want to develop a Darwinist science of culture
 irritation among professionals
 reactions:
-Harris: cultural variation due to ecological, demographic and technological factors
-Sahlin: The Use and Abuse of Biology
-Lévi-Strauss: demolished sociobiology
-Ingold: Wilson reinvents the 19th ct evolutionist comparative method
Margaret Mead: Coming of Age in Samoa
 Freeman: Margaret Mead and Samoa: The unmaking of an Anthropological Myth
(discrepancy between his research and the descriptions of Mead)
 Freeman becomes a persona non grata
 Most important is the degree of passion that anthropology aroused.