Culture, Economy, Power: Anthropology As Critique, Anthropology As Praxis (S U N Y Series in Anthropological Studies of Contemporary Issues)

320 Pages·2002·9.61 MB·English

by  Winnie Lem

Lem-Leach:Culture,Economy,Power page i
Culture, Economy, Power
Lem-Leach:Culture,Economy,Power page ii
SUNY series in Anthropological Studies of Contemporary Issues
Jack R. Rollwagen, editor
Lem-Leach:Culture,Economy,Power page iii
Culture, Economy, Power
Anthropology as Critique,
Anthropology as Praxis
EDITED BY
Winnie Lem and Belinda Leach
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEWYORK PRESS
Lem-Leach:Culture,Economy,Power page iv
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2002 State University of New York
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Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Culture, economy, power : anthropology as critique, anthropology as praxis / edited
by Winnie Lem and Belinda Leach.
p.cm.—(SUNY series in anthropological studies ofcontemporary issues)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN0-7914-5289-1 (alk.paper)— ISBN0-7914-5290-5 (pbk.: alk.paper)
1.Marxist anthropology. 2.Political anthropology. I.Lem, Winnie.
II.Leach, Belinda, 1954– III.Series.
GN345.15.C852002
306—dc21 2001032250
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Lem-Leach:Culture,Economy,Power page v
For Bill Roseberry
In Memory
Lem-Leach:Culture,Economy,Power page viblank
Lem-Leach:Culture,Economy,Power page vii
Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction
Winnie Lem and Belinda Leach 1
Part 1:Nations and Knowledge
Chapter 2. Bicentrism, Culture, and the Political Economy
of Sociocultural Anthropology in English Canada
Thomas Dunk 19
Chapter 3. The Political Economy of Political Economy in
Spanish Anthropology
Susana Narotzky 33
Chapter 4. Anthropological Debates and the Crisis of
Mexican Nationalism
Guillermo de la Peña 47
Chapter 5. Political Economy in the United States
William Roseberry 59
Chapter 6. “A Small Discipline”: The Embattled Place of
Anthropology in a Massified British
Higher Education Sector
John Gledhill 73
Part 2:States and Subjects
Chapter 7. Sentiment and Structure: Nation and State
Dipankar Gupta 91
Chapter 8. Communists Communists Everywhere!: Forgetting the
Past and Living with History in Ecuador
Steve Striffler 107
Lem-Leach:Culture,Economy,Power page viii
viii Contents
Chapter 9. “We Were the Strongest Ones Here”: Transformed
Livelihoods in Contemporary Spain
Claudia Vicencio 121
Chapter 10. The Italian Post-Communist Left and Unemployment:
Finding a New Position on Labor
Michael Blim 136
Chapter 11. The Language of Contention in Liberal Ecuador
A.Kim Clark 150
Part 3.Hegemonies and Histories
Chapter 12. The Decline of Patriarchy? The Political Economy of
Patriarchy: Maquiladoras in Yucatan, Mexico
Marie France Labrecque 165
Chapter 13. Remembering “The Ancient Ones”: Memory, Hegemony,
and the Shadows of State Terror in the Argentinean Chaco
Gastón Gordillo 177
Chapter 14. Class, Discipline, and the Politics of Opposition in Ontario
Belinda Leach 191
Chapter 15. Militant Particularism and Cultural Struggles as Cape
Breton Burns Again
Pauline Gardiner Barber 206
Chapter 16. Acquiescence and Quiescence: Gender and Politics in
Rural Languedoc
Winnie Lem 221
Chapter 17. Red Flags and Lace Coiffes: Identity, Livelihood, and
the Politics of Survival in the Bigoudennie, France
Charles R.Menzies 235
Chapter 18. Out of Site: The Horizons of Collective Identity
Gavin Smith 250
References 267
Contributors 289
Index 293
Lem-Leach:Culture,Economy,Power page 1
1
CHAPTER
Introduction
Winnie Lem and Belinda Leach
The philosophers have only interpretedthe world ...: the point is to
changeit.
—Marx,Theses on Feuerbach
Provoked by Marx’s well-known, oft-cited statement, countless scholars have
committed their intellectual labor toward deciphering the inner workings ofthe
modern world with the view that such endeavours might serve in some way to
transform it.Among those incited by this declaration ofpurpose and challenged
by Marxist analysis are numerous anthropologists whose efforts in ethnography
and theory have been devoted toward generating a critical body of knowledge,
directed ultimately at contributing toward political programs ofchange.In Cul-
ture,Economy,Powerthe work ofsome ofthose anthropologists is presented.This
volume brings together a group of scholars who share the view that anthropo-
logical knowledge implies critique—a critique of the modern world and a cri-
tique of capitalism—and that to engage in and with anthropology represents an
act ofpraxis.As such, our work in anthropology is committed to the emancipa-
tory projects that find their origins in historical materialism, the critique of po-
litical economy, Marx’s thoughts on class conflict and programs for social equal-
ity. Indeed, such ideas have laid the foundations for the massive social and
economic transformations that have been inaugurated in many different national
contexts in the twentieth century.Yet as we live in our contemporary world, in a
period that extends well beyond the lifetime of Marx, such ideas and programs
for change have become discredited. Indeed, the decline of socialism and the
triumph ofa neoliberal political and economic order in recent years have fanned
the flames of criticism ignited by Marx’s detractors and supporters alike. But
criticisms of his framework and declarations that he was wrong are as old as
Marxist thought itself. Turn of the twentieth century populist and liberal cri-
tiques, as well as more recent poststructuralist, feminist, and Foucauldian assaults
on Marxist analysis (and also responses to them) have come to be so familiar,
and to some extent mantric, that to review them here would be an exercise in
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