Anthropologies and histories : essays in culture, history, and political economy /

The essays in this extremely stimulating volume involve ideas first explored by the author in his Coffee and Capitalism in the Venezuelan Andes (CH, Sep'84) and subsequently elaborated in journal articles and book chapters (five of the eight chapters here are revised versions of these previous contributions). Ethnographic reality is characterized by uneven development in the context of unequal power. The author details the inadequacies of present anthropological models for capturing that unevenness; and through commentaries on a number of recent anthropological essays, he develops an argument for a specific political economic approach of greater theoretical inclusiveness. There are a variety of proponents for specific "correct" anthropologies, similarly for histories; hence the title. Clifford Geertz has been a significant cult figure in recent anthropology, but the author argues that this school reduces culture to the produced, and ignores its production. Acknowledging a general intellectual debt to Eric Wolf and Raymond Williams, the author proceeds to propose a variant of Marxist analysis that allows the researcher to deal with cultural meaning and action in the context of unequal power. The argumentation is rich and provocative, and codifies a new departure point. Essential as reference for a wide range of social scientists. Excellent references and index; good notes (45 pages in all). Advanced undergraduates and up. D. L. Browman Washington University