ABSTRACT
Critical anthropology has had a major influence on the discipline, shifting it away from concepts of bounded societies with evolutionary trajectories to complex analyses of interconnected economic, political, and social processes. This book brings together some of critical anthropology’s most influential writings, collecting classic articles and spirited rebuttals by major scholars such as Eric Wolf, Marshall Sahlins, Sidney Mintz, Andre Gunder Frank, and Michael Taussig. Editor Stephen Nugent positions these key debates, originally published in the journal Critique of Anthropology, with new introductions that detail the lasting influence of these articles on anthropology over four decades, showing how critical anthropology is relevant today more than ever. An ideal supplementary text, this book is a rich exploration of intellectual history that will continue to shape anthropology for decades to come.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|28 pages
Marxism in the American Anthropological Tradition
chapter Chapter 1|10 pages
On Defining the Marxist Tradition in Anthropology*: A Response to the American Anthropologist
part II|36 pages
The Debate about the Articulation of Modes of Production
part III|26 pages
Dependency Theory, World Systems Theory and Pre-history
part IV|40 pages
The Development of Peasantries under Capitalism
part V|22 pages
The Crisis of Representation and Writing Culture
part VI|46 pages
Working over History: Cultural Idealism and Materialism
chapter Chapter 10|32 pages
No History Is an Island: An Exchange between Jonathan Friedman and Marshall Sahlins *
part VII|24 pages
Fighting over Commodities and History