I. Marxism as a Reaction against Formalists/Substantivists

A. Substantivists vs. formalists

1. Universal human nature vs. specific cultures
2. Substantivists: universal assumptions = ethno-centrism
3. Formalists: humans do seem to operate in similar rational, economic ways

B. Unresolved questions: where do culture and social organization come from? Why does change occur?
C. Karl Marx (1818-1883)

1. Similar to substantivists

a. economic systems embedded in social formations
b. capitalism is historical condition
c. people make economic decisions based on social institutions

2. formalist logic: production and class structure shape human economic behavior universally
3. Formalist logic with substantivist details

 

II. Marxism: The Connection between Modes of Production and Culture

A. Grundrisse (Foundations of Political Economy) and Precapitalist Economic Formations (1857-8)
B. Goal: laws and mechanisms propelling economic development, appearance of capitalism
C. Mechanism: change in the social relations of production

1. Historical stages result from relations to property, means of production
2. Work creates human consciousness
3. Consciousness is created by social existence: "The mode of production in material life determines the general characteristics of the social, political, and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness" (The Critique of Political Economy, 11-12).
4. Two aspects of society

a. Base: tools, technologies, skills, social groups, relations of production (inequality, classes)
b. Superstructure

i. legal and political system
ii. ideological superstructure: religion, cultural concepts that justify economic system (i.e. homo economicus idea justifies capitalism)

D. Base determines superstructure
E. Contradictions between superstructure and base propel history

 

III. Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1881) Anthropological Support for Marx

A. Evolution of human society in terms of culture and social organization
B. Morgan, Ancient Society (1877)

1. Society develops through development of "arts of subsistence" and accumulation of knowledge
2. Three stages

a. savagery: hunting and gathering/group marriage/animism
b. barbarism: settled agriculture, animal husbandry, and iron smelting/pairing marriage/polytheism
c. civilization: writing/monogamy/monotheism

C. Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

1. The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, 1884
2. Morgan: who and what; Engels: how and why
3. As technology changes, family structure changes because family is primary unit of labor in pre-industrial societies
4. Transition from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture

a. private property: men domesticate animals, cultivate land
b. men want to secure patriliny and paternity
c. Impose monogamy on women = "world historical defeat of the female sex"

D. Legacy: domestic mode of production, investigate households as unit of production, gendered divisions of labor, intra-household relationships

 

IV. Alexander Vasilevich Chayanov and the Peasant Mode of Production

A. Peasant households as production and consumption units

1. own land
2. produce for subsistence
3. don't sell or hire labor
4. dominant form in Asia and South America, common in Europe

B. Chayanov: Peasant Mode of Production

1. goal of production: secure family's needs
2. no profit motive
3. labor - consumer balance, limits of the stomach

a. labor is drudgery
b. additional labor valued only if it leads to additional consumption

4. Household life cycle, ratio between laborers and consumers

a. early married years: 2 producers, 2 consumers
b. early childbearing: more consumers than producers, work is hardest, landholdings increase
c. later childbearing: consumer-labor ratio declines as children start to work
d. later married years: couple's labor declines, landholding decreases, children support separate families

5. "Chayanov's rule": intensity of labor per worker will increase in direct relation to the domestic ratio of consumers to workers

C. Chayanov's theory best for sparsely populated areas
D. Problems with Chayanov's assumptions about peasant households

1. not always self-sufficient, agricultural labor demands vary seasonally
2. ignores larger community structures
3. peasantry isn't historical situation, exists in feudalism and capitalism

 

V. Gender and Intra-Household Inequality

A. Feminist anthropologists rediscover Engels
B. Mitzi Goheen, Nso agricultural communities in Cameroon

1. women farm, surplus goes to men for trade
2. men hunt, wage war, trade, use material goods to get status
3. different interpretations

a. men control the material wealth women produce, supports Engels
b. men depend on women
c. women have community organizations, can hold political protests, not confined to household

4. Gender relations depend on context: capitalism has improved men's status, weakened women's (i.e. privatization of land in Cameroon has jeopardized women's access to their fields)

C. Peasant and domestic modes of production assume character of gender relations

1. Engels: antagonistic, women inferior
2. Chayanov: households are loving, nurturing

D. Goheen: empirical investigation shows that households can be both, simultaneous harmony and discord
E. To understand intra-household relations, look to inter-household community relationships