Maurice Bloch

This book examines the uses made of anthropology by Marx and Engels, and the uses made of Marxism by anthropologists. Looking at the writings of Marx and Engels on primitive societies, the book evaluates their views in the light of present knowledge and draws attention to inconsistencies in their analysis of pre-capitalist societies. These inconsistencies can be traced to the influence of contemporary anthropologists who regarded primitive societies as classless. As Marxist theory was built around the idea of class, without this concept the conventional Marxist analysis foundered. First published in 1983.

The History of a Relationship

Marxism and Anthropology

What is human sociality? How are universals such as truth and doubt variously demonstrated and negotiated in different cultures? This book offers an accessible introduction to these and other fundamental human questions. Bloch shows that the social consists of two very different things. One is a matter of continual adjustments between individuals who read each others' minds and thus, as in sex and birth, "go in and out of each other's minds and bodies." The other is a time defying system of roles and groups. Interaction at this level is created by ritual and is unique to humans. What is referred to by the word "religion" is a part of this, but it is not separate. The study of "religion" as such is therefore theoretically misleading. A second major theme is the way truth is established in different cultures. Bloch's arguments go against recent approaches in anthropology which have sought to relativize ideas of the social and religion.

Theory of Mind, Evolution, Truth, and the Nature of the Social

In and Out of Each Other's Bodies

Jonathan Parry

This collection is concerned with the symbolic representation of money in a range of different societies, and more specifically with the moral evaluation of monetary and commercial exchanges. It focuses on the different cultural meanings surrounding monetary transactions, emphasizing the enormous cultural variation in the way money is symbolized and how this symbolism relates to culturally constructed notions of production, consumption, circulation, and exchange.

Money and the Morality of Exchange

Reflecting the first evaluation among British and American anthropologists of the relevance of Marxist theory for their discipline, the studies in this volume cover a wide geographical and social spectrum ranging from rural Indonesia, Imperial China, Highland Burma and the Abron kingdom of Gyaman. A critical survey assesses the value of some key ideas of Marx and Engels to social anthropology and places in historical perspective the changing attitudes of social anthropologists to the Marxist tradition. Originally published in 1975.

Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology

Da preda a cacciatore. La politica dell'esperienza religiosa

This volume provides a collection of some of Maurice Bloch's most important work, including influential essays on power, hierarchy, death and fertility.

Selected Papers in Anthropology

Ritual, History and Power

It is a classical anthropological paradox that symbols of rebirth and fertility are frequently found in funerary rituals throughout the world. The original essays collected here re-examine this phenomenon through insights from China, India, New Guinea, Latin America, and Africa. The contributors, each a specialist in one of these areas, have worked in close collaboration to produce a genuinely innovative theoretical approach to the study of the symbolism surrounding death, an outline of which is provided in an important introduction by the editors. The major concern of the volume is the way in which funerary rituals dramatically transform the image of life as a dialectic flux involving exchange and transaction, marriage and procreation, into an image of a still, transcendental order in which oppositions such as those between self and other, wife-giver and wife-taker, Brahmin and untouchable, birth and therefore death have been abolished. This transformation often involves a general devaluation of biology, and, particularly, of sexuality, which is contrasted with a more spiritual and controlled source of life. The role of women, who are frequently associated with biological processes, mourning and death pollution, is often predominant in funerary rituals, and in examining this book makes a further contribution to the understanding of the symbolism of gender. The death rituals and the symbolism of rebirth are also analysed in the context of the political processes of the different societies considered, and it is argued that social order and political organisation may be legitimated through an exploitation of the emotions and biology.

Death and the Regeneration of Life

Pourquoi le symbolisme de la mort est-il au centre de tant de rituels de purification, de guérison, d'entrée dans la vie ? Pourquoi l'image du rapt, voire du viol, est-elle présente dans nombre de rituels de mariage ? A ces questions classiques de l'anthropologie, Maurice Bloch fournit ici des réponses nouvelles et en ajoute une, centrale: pourquoi des pratiques religieuses, telles que le sacrifice ou l'initiation, qui nécessitent dans un premier temps abnégation et humilité, mènent si souvent à un retour agressif vers le monde profane ?C'est en s'appuyant sur des exemples ethnographiques tirés de différentes parties du monde que l'auteur démontre comment une première violence dirigée vers soi-même, "rebondit" et devient, dans des conditions militaires favorables, un idiome d'agression. Il avance que cette double violence, justifiée individuellement par un fort sentiment religieux, découle de la nécessité politique de relier des êtres vus comme éphémères à des institutions vues comme éternelles. Maurice Bloch est professeur d'anthropologie à la London School of Economics and Political science. Spécialiste de Madagascar, il s'intéresse également aux liens entre anthropologie et sciences cognitives.

La Violence du religieux

Maurice E.F. Bloch

Maurice Bloch has for many years been developing an original and influential theory of ritual. In this book he synthesizes a radical theory of religion. Rituals in a great many societies deny the transience of life and of human institutions. Bloch argues that they enact this denial by symbolically sacrificing the participants themselves, so allowing them to participate in the immortality of a transcendent entity. Such sacrifices are achieved through acts of symbolic violence, ranging from bodily mutilations to the killing of animals. The theme is developed with reference to rituals of many types, from a variety of ethnographic sources, and Bloch shows that even exogamous marriage rituals can be reinterpreted in the light of this thesis. He concludes by considering the indirect relation of symbolic and ritual violence to political violence.

Maurice Bloch

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