tive, both Formalists and Substantivists had entirely missed the point, because all their debates had been about distribution and exchange. To understand a society, they argued, one must first of all understand how it continues to exist—or, as they put it, “reproduces” itself—by endless creative activity. This was quite different from functionalism. Functionalists begin with a notion of “society,” then ask how that society manages to hold itself together. Marxists start by asking how what we call “society” is continually being re-created through various sorts of productive action, and how a society’s most basic forms of exploitation and inequality are thus rooted in the social relations through which people do so. This has obvious advantages. The problem with the whole “mode of production” approach, though, was that it was developed to analyze societies with a state: that is, in which there is a ruling class that maintains an apparatus of coercion to extract a surplus from the people who do most of the productive work. Most of the real triumphs of the MoP approach—I am thinking, for example, of Perry Anderson’s magisterial “Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism” (1974a) and “Lineages of the Absolutist State” (1974b)—deal with outlining the history of different modes of production, many of which can coexist in a given society; the way in which the dominant one provides the basis for a ruling class whose interests are protected by the state; the way that modes of production contain fundamental contradictions that will, at least in most cases, ultimately drive them to turn into something else. Once one turns to societies without a state, it’s not clear how any of these concepts are to be applied. One thing Marxism did introduce was a series of powerful analytical terms—exploitation, fetishism, appropriation, reproduction... —that everyone agreed Marx himself had used brilliantly in his analysis of Capitalism, but that no one was quite sure how to apply outside it. Different scholars would use these terms in very different ways and then would often end up quar-

Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value

To this point, the anthropology of Christianity has largely failed to develop. When anthropologists study Christians, they do not see themselves as contributing to a broad comparative enterprise in the way those studying other world religions do. A close reading of the Comaroffs’ Of Revelation and Revolution illustrates the ways in which anthropologists sideline Christianity and leads to a discussion of reasons the anthropology of Christianity has languished. While it is possible to locate the cause in part in the culture of anthropology, with its emphasis on difference, problems also exist at the theoretical level. Most anthropological theories emphasize cultural continuity as opposed to discontinuity and change. This emphasis becomes problematic where Christianity is concerned, because many kinds of Christianity stress radical change and expect it to occur. Confronted by people claiming that radical Christian change has occurred in their lives, anthropologists become suspicious and often explain away th...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/508690

Continuity thinking and the problem of christian culture : Belief, time, and the anthropology of christianity

This paper argues that the national populisms of Northern and Western Europe form a distinctive cluster within the wider north Atlantic and pan-European populist conjuncture. They are distinctive i...

Between nationalism and civilizationism: the European populist moment in comparative perspective

Preface Introduction Part I. Overseeing Democracy: 1. Vigilance, denunciation, evaluation 2. The overseers 3. The thread of history 4. Legitimacy conflicts Part II. The Sovereignty of Prevention: 5. From the right of resistance to complex sovereignty 6. Self-critical democracies 7. Negative politics Part III. The People as Judge: 8. Historical references 9. Almost legislators 10. The preference for judgement Part IV. Unpolitical Democracy: 11. The sense of powerlessness and symbols of depoliticization 12. The populist temptation 13. Lessons of unpolitical economy 14. Conclusion: the modern mixed regime.

Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust

In recent years, the sociology of religion has been consumed by a debate over secularization that pits advocates of a new, rational-choice paradigm (the so-called religious economies model) against defenders of classical secularization theory. According to the old paradigm, the Western world has become increasingly secular since the Middle Ages; according to the new paradigm, it has become increasingly religious. I put these two images of religious development to the test through a detailed examination of religious life in Western Europe before and after the Reformation. I conclude that the changes in social structure and religious experience that occurred during this period were considerably more complex than either the old or new paradigms suggest and, indeed, that the two paradigms are neither so opposed nor so irreconcilable as many of their defenders contend. It is possible, indeed probable, that Western society has become more secular without becoming less religious. I discuss the limitations of the two competing paradigms and sketch the outlines of a more adequate theory of religious change

Historicizing the secularization debate : Church, state, and society in late medieval and early modern Europe, ca. 1300 to 1700

L'A. postule que, dans nos societes, notre epoque se caracterise par une reduction des conflits (recul du modele revolutionnaire, recul de la revolte adolescente, reaction de rejet de la violence physique). Cet « apaisement » est d'origine economique (paradoxe : les trente glorieuses, au meme titre que la crise) et sociologique (changement dans l'education et dans la sexualite). Il se penche sur la nature de l'individualisme contemporain, base essentiellement sur la desinstitutionnalisation de la famille. Des changements dans la socialisation accompagnent cet individualisme : on passe ainsi d'une personnalisation des adhesions a un individualisme de desengagement. L'A. decrit ensuite trois âges de la personnalite : la premiere, traditionnelle, peut etre considere comme sans inconscient puisque regie explicitement par le symbolique. La seconde, moderne, comporte une forte interiorisation de la norme, c'est une personnalite a surmoi, a responsabilite et a culpabilite. La personnalite conformiste servirait de transition vers la personnalite contemporaine, deconnectee du tout. Des pathologies nouvelles sont associees a cette personnalite : sentiment de vide interieur, peur et evitement d'autrui, actes de rupture

Essai de psychologie contemporaine. I : Un nouvel âge de la personnalité

La redéfinition des âges de la vie

Il n’y a pas plus difficile a penser que la chose politique. Son evidence nous trompe. Quelle est sa place au juste dans le fonctionnement de nos societes ? Nous vivons a cet egard sur une illusion que la prophetie marxiste du deperissement de l’Etat n’a fait que porter a ses dernieres consequences. La societe est destinee a se suffire a elle-meme en se debarrassant du carcan du politique. Le marxisme est mort en tant que theorie revolutionnaire, mais sa prophetie est en train de gagner dans les esprits. Ne nous repete-t-on pas tous les jours qu’a l’heure de la mondialisation et de l’economie sans rivages les Etats-nations ont fait leur temps et sont voues, sinon a la disparition, du moins a la marginalisation ? La postmodernite se veut postpolitique. A l’oppose de ce nouveau sens commun, ce livre plaide l’idee que le politique continue d’etre ce qu’il a toujours ete : ce qui tient les societes ensemble. Il l’a ete, simplement, selon des manieres et par des voies tres differentes. Ce sont ces configurations fondamentales qu’explorent les etudes reunies ici, du refoulement initial du politique par le religieux jusqu’a ses transformations modernes et ultramodernes sous l’effet de l’orientation vers l’avenir et de la dynamique de la societe et de l’histoire. La mesure de cette diversite permet de mieux apprecier le role cache qu’il remplit aujourd’hui. L’eclipse du politique est au cœur de la desorientation actuelle des democraties. Elles n’en sortiront pas sans se delivrer de la chimere de son depassement. Ce dont nous avons le plus besoin pour nous orienter au milieu de ce desarroi, c’est une intelligence renouvelee de notre condition politique.

Marcel Gauchet

Papers

Essai de psychologie contemporaine. I : Un nouvel âge de la personnalité

La redéfinition des âges de la vie

La condition politique

L'enfant du désir

La condition historique