ABSTRACT
An anthropological political economy was developing that relied on the ideas of Karl Marx, another was developing among exemplars whose ethnographic interpretations ignored, rejected, and avoided Marx's ideas. In anthropology a Marxist political economy developed largely in response to the influence of neoclassical economic ideas. This chapter considers the political economy of political anthropology in three contexts. One shows how Karl Polanyi's idea of redistribution came to incorporate ideas of production. Another explores how Marx's idea of a mode of production related to politically directed economic practice. The third uses a neo-Marxist, or cultural Marxism/Gramscian approach, to consider the role of ideology in political economic processes. McDonald has developed an extensive literature in the cultural Marxism of political economy in political anthropology. Hegemonic culturation is a political process that relies on Antonio Gramsci's ideas of hegemony and culture to provide an alternative explanation to coercion for political economic processes.
