Very good condtion with original jacket.

Political language and oratory in traditional society

Bloch, Maurice

Academic Press

Now available from Waveland Press, the first detailed ethnographic study of the dominant cultural group in Madagascar, the Merina- -a society of over one million of South East Asian origin. Placing the Dead contains the first full-length study of the two most famous aspects of the culture of Madagascar: the existence of massive megalithic tombs and the complex funerary rituals, which involve the exhumation of the recently dead.  Both of these aspects are explained in terms of their place in the belief system and social organization of the Merina people. The funerary rituals serve to reincorporate the Merina who have died--away from the traditional homeland-- into what they believe is the society of the ancestors by placing them in the tombs that stand on this traditional homeland. This reincorporation of the dead into an unchanging order based on kinship and traditional territorial association is the answer of the living to the precariousness of contractual ties in everyday political and economic life. Naturally, this study raises an interesting question: how do bilateral descent groups combine the element of choice with notions of descent? A close study of the relationship to tombs and the reinterpretive power of ritual provides the answer for the Merina case.

Placing the dead: tombs, ancestral villages and kinship organization in Madagascar (Seminar studies in anthropology, 1)

Seminar Press

Examining the writings of Marx and Engels on primitive societies and drawing attention to inconsistencies in their analysis of pre-capitalist societies, this study proceeds to evaluate the anthropological theories of the successors of Marx and Engels as well as linking the controversies concerning anthropology among Marxists and among Soviet anthropologists to the political evolution of Marxism. The book concludes with an exploration of the renewed interest in Marxist concepts displayed by contemporary American, British, and French anthropologists.

Marxism and Anthropology: The History of a Relationship (Marxist Introductions)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Oxford University Press

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.

Marxism and anthropology: The history of a relationship (Marxist introductions)

Marxism and Anthropology

Marxism and Anthropology: The History of a Relationship

Routledge

Reference

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 (ASA studies)

Malaby Press

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

Ritual, History and Power: Selected Papers in Anthropology (LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS MONOGRAPHS ON SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY)

Anthropology

UNKNO

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

Ritual, History and Power: Selected Papers in Anthropology (London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology)

Bloomsbury Academic

Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge (New Departures in Anthropology)

In this provocative new study one of the world's most distinguished anthropologists proposes that an understanding of cognitive science enriches, rather than threatens, the work of social scientists. Maurice Bloch argues for a naturalist approach to social and cultural anthropology, introducing developments in cognitive sciences such as psychology and neurology and exploring the relevance of these developments for central anthropological concerns: the person or the self, cosmology, kinship, memory and globalisation. Opening with an exploration of the history of anthropology, Bloch shows why and how naturalist approaches were abandoned and argues that these once valid reasons are no longer relevant. Bloch then shows how such subjects as the self, memory and the conceptualisation of time benefit from being simultaneously approached with the tools of social and cognitive science. Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge will stimulate fresh debate among scholars and students across a wide range of disciplines.

Cambridge University Press

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