ABSTRACT
This chapter represents recent anthropological research on the political economy of Latin America. Mode of production analysis arises more nearly within the traditional concerns of economic anthropology as an attempt to conceptualize the specific forms of economic organization and rationality that clash and coalesce in the worldwide spread of capitalism. Mode of production analysis thus confronts directly the question of the impact of capitalism on other forms of economic and social organization. Much recent theorizing on the state has been carried out by political scientists and Marxist theorists. In the literature on Latin America, it has been carried out in the context of dependency analysis. And overall, theories of the state remain at a high level of abstraction. Nevertheless not only do such theories suggest important avenues of research (on the interaction, especially, between state interests), but theories of the state can themselves be enriched by the sort of close analysis to which anthropologists are trained.
