The Concept of the Mode of Production in Hunter-Gatherer Societies

Abstract

An increasing number of anthropologists have come to conceive the discipline [anthropology] as that part of historical materialism which is concerned with the construction of the different modes of production required to produce the knowledge of the ‘primitive’ social formation (Llobera, 1974, p. 23). This statement is not open to dispute. Whether all anthropologists agree with this ‘trend’ or would want to be associated with it is quite another matter, and one which I do not intend commenting upon here. Neither do I intend discussing the tendencies and general state of affairs within the discipline itself that have led to the renewed interest in Marx’s work over the last few years,1 except to point out that this ‘revival’, as far as British anthropology is concerned, has been influenced directly by the recent tendencies in French anthropology. There, the work of Louis Althusser, which showed that Marxism was relevant to societies other than those dominated by the capitalist mode of production, stimulated such anthropologists as Meillassoux, Terray, Rey, and others, in their attempts to apply the general concepts of historical materialism to ‘primitive’ societies, while others, such as Maurice Godelier, moved in a closely related direction by combining Marxism with the other main influence in French anthropology, the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss.