Bloch - Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology

Routledge Library Editions

MARXIST ANALYSES AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Routledge Library Editions

Anthropology and Ethnography

THEORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY

In 10 Volumes

MARXIST ANALYSES AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

EDITED BY MAURICE BLOCH

First published in 1975

Reprinted in 2004 by
Routledge
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Transferred to Digital Printing 2009

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1984 Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology
ISBN: 0-415-32556-0 (set)
ISBN: 0-415-33060-2

Miniset: Theory of Anthropology

Series: Routledge Library Editions Anthropology and Ethnography

Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology

Edited by Maurice Bloch

First published in 1975 by
Malaby Press Limited

First published in paperback in 1984 by
Tavistock Publications
11 New Fetter Lane
London EC4P 4EE

Published in the USA by
Tavistock Publications
in association with Methuen, Inc.
733 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

1984 Association of Social Anthropologists
of the Commonwealth

Printed in Great Britain by
J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd, Bristol

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Marxist analyses and social anthropology.

(Studies Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth)

1. Ethnology 2. Communism and ethnology
I. Bloch, Maurice II. Series

306 GN316
ISBN 0-422-79500-3

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:

Marxist analyses and social anthropology.

(ASA studies)
Based on a session held Jul. 7, 1973, of the decennial conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth at St. John's College, Oxford.

Originally published: London: Malaby Press, 1975.

Includes bibliographies and indexes.

1. EthnologyCongresses. 2. Historical MaterialismCongresses. I. Bloch, Maurice. II. Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth. III. Series.

MAURICE BLOCH

MAURICE GODELIER

Translated by Kate Young and Felicity Edholm

RAYMOND FIRTH

STEPHAN FEUCHTWANG

EMMANUEL TERRAY

Translated by Anne Bailey

JOEL KAHN

JONATHAN FRIEDMAN

Translated by the author

MAURICE BLOCH

ASA Studies is a new series largely based upon selected sessions of the special Decennial Conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth, entitled, New Directions in Social Anthropology, and held at St John's College, Oxford, 411 July 1973.

The last special conference had taken place at Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1963, and a preliminary word should be said about it, to provide a suitable perspective. Those who convened it had, as they later wrote, two main purposes in mind: to provide a joint, organized stock-taking between British and American social anthropologists, and to reflect the problems and views of a younger generation of anthropologists. It was pointed out that between 1946 and 1962 the Association of Social Anthropologists had increased its membership from under a score to over one hundred and fifty. In retrospect, the 1963 Cambridge Conference can be seen to represent on the one hand a kind of coming-of-age of the ASA as an organization (in its rather awkward seventeenth year) and, on the other, an awareness of changes to come in the aims, interests, and personnel of the formerly close-knit British branch of the subject. The four volumes that emerged from that Conference were entitled The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology, Political Systems and the Distribution of Power, Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, and The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies (published by Tavistock, 19646) each with a general Introduction by Max Gluckman and Fred Eggan, from which my quotations here and later come.

It was that occasion which provided the base-line for the 1973 Decennial Conference. The ASA committee, under the Chairmanship of Professor Meyer Fortes, wished the 1973 Conference to play the same kind of role in its period as the previous one had done in its own time. The task was, however, quite complicated. The membership of one hundred and fifty or so of ten years before had now risen to several hundreds, while the Conference was this time to be international, not merely Anglo-American. Furthermore, although new directions were to be emphasized as far as possible, subjects which had in recent years been covered by the regular annual ASA conferences (and thus published), or were already scheduled for the future, were to be excluded. Eventually the Committee chose eleven topics, each to be covered in a half-day session, and invited a convener to organize each of them. Finally, the Conference was placed by the Committee under my general convenership. This, I should emphasize, was seen as largely an organizational task, which I have been invited to continue here as General Editor of these volumes. The session-conveners had a free hand in the choice of contributors on their topics, within certain limits of numbers and finance, and each session-convener decided the structure of his own half-day session.