ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the value of a strongly materialist, Marxist approach in anthropology. In Marxist anthropology, one finds implicit analogues of both Sartrean and Habermasian dialectics. "Sartrean" views of social formation reproduction conceive of this process "holistically," while "Habermasian" views distinguish ontologically between cultural or semiotic processes and political economic ones; these are said to "interact" in social reproduction. There are dangers for Marxist anthropology in both the Habermasian and the Sartrean approaches to dialectics. Sandra Wallman's work implies the possibility of a kind of emic or semiotic empiricism as a way to a theory of work. The standard anthropological argument would proceed by establishing a particular ethnographic context and demonstrate how the construct developed illuminates this context better than competing constructs. The general tendency of contemporary Marxist approaches to work appears to be to avoid the dangers of either semioticist or political economist reductionisms by opting for an extremely broad concept of work.
