Synopses & Reviews
After being widely rejected in the late 20th century the work of Karl Marx is now being reassessed by many theorists and activists. Karl Marx, Anthropologist explores how this most influential of modern thinkers is still highly relevant for Anthropology today. Marx was profoundly influenced by critical Enlightenment thought. He believed that humans were social individuals that simultaneously satisfied and forged their needs in the contexts of historically particular social relations and created cultures. Marx continually refined the empirical, philosophical, and practical dimensions of his anthropology throughout his lifetime. Assessing key concepts, from the differences between class-based and classless societies to the roles of exploitation, alienation and domination in the making of social individuals, Karl Marx, Anthropologist is an essential guide to Marx's anthropological thought for the 21st century
Review
"This is a timely reminder of both the Enlightenment background and holistic nature of Marx' anthropology, which concerns not merely understanding classical industrial capitalism but also such diverse issues as the modern age of empire, human origins and non-Western political systems."--Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, University of Cambridge
Synopsis
After being widely rejected in the late 20th century the work of Karl Marx is now being reassessed by many theorists and activists. Karl Marx, Anthropologist explores how this most influential of modern thinkers is still highly relevant for Anthropology today. Marx was profoundly influenced by critical Enlightenment thought. He believed that humans were social individuals that simultaneously satisfied and forged their needs in the contexts of historically particular social relations and created cultures. Marx continually refined the empirical, philosophical, and practical dimensions of his anthropology throughout his lifetime. Assessing key concepts, from the differences between class-based and classless societies to the roles of exploitation, alienation and domination in the making of social individuals, Karl Marx, Anthropologist is an essential guide to Marx's anthropological thought for the 21st century
About the Author
Tom Patterson is a distinguished professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of California at Riverside. He is author of many publications including Marx's Ghost: Conversations with Archaeologists (2003) and A Social History of Anthropology in the United States (2001).
Table of Contents
Ch. 1 Early Enlightenment Thought * The World Historicized * The New Anthropology of the Enlightenment * Rousseau's Historical-Dialectical Anthropology * The Scottish Historical Philosophers * The Institutionalization of Anthropology * Kant's Pragmatic Anthropology * Herder's Historical-Dialectical Anthropology * Göttingen: Beyond “Anthropology for Doctors and Philosophers” * Hegel's Critical-Historical Anthropology * Ch.2 Marx's Anthropology * What are Human Beings? * The Corporeal Organization of Human Beings * “Ensembles of Social Relations” and Human Beings as Social Individuals * History * Praxis * Ch. 3 Human Natural Beings * Charles Darwin and the Development of Modern Evolutionary Theory * Darwin's Metaphors and Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection * The Problems of Variation and Inheritance * The Modern Synthesis and Beyond * Human Natural Beings: Bodies That Walk, Talk, Make Tools, and Have Culture * Engels's “The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man” * Fossils and Proteins * Demography and Population Structure * Ch. 4 Anthropology, History, and Social Formation * Marx's Historical-Dialectical Conceptual Framework * Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production * Primitive Communism * The Asiatic Mode of Production and the Slavonic Transition * The Ancient Mode of Production * The Germanic Mode of Production * The Feudal Mode of Production * Societies and Cultures * Pre-Capitalist Societies: Limited, Local, and Vital * Ch. 5 Capitalism and the Anthropology of the Modern World * The Transition to Capitalism and its Development * The Articulation of Modes of Production * Property, Power, and Capitalist States * * Ch. 6 Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century * Social Relations and the Formation of Social Individuals * Alienation * Domination, Exploitation, and Forms of Social Hierarchy * Resistance and Protest * Anthropology: “The Study of People in Crisis by People in Crisis” * Notes * Bibliography *