Showing papers by "Maurice Bloch published in 1978"
TL;DR: The authors argued that kinship or religion dominates social organization and the thought of social actors when it functions as relations of production and as a framework for material action upon nature, and that it becomes impossible to oppose the dominance of kinship, religion, or politics to the hypothesis that everything is ultimately determined by economic relationships.
Abstract: The paper deals with the so-called problem of the dominance of superstructures-kinship, religion, politics-and supports the view that kinship or religion dominates social organization and the thought of social actors when it functions as relations of production and as framework for material action upon nature. Consequently, it becomes impossible to oppose the dominance of kinship, religion, or politics to the hypothesis that everything is ultimately determined by economic relationships. But this is only true if one can see in the distinction between infrastructures and superstructures a distinction of functions and not of institutions as most Marxists and non-Marxists usually do. A society has no top and no bottom, no levels, and the distinction between infrastructure, superstructures, and ideology has nothing to do with the various layers of a cake. Furthermore, "productive forces" include both the intellectual and the material capacities of men to act upon nature and therefore include an ideel and ideol...
83 citations