Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Maurice PDF
Maurice PDF
Maurice PDF
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Dialectical Anthropology.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 103.27.164.7 on Tue, 16 Feb 2016 15:43:37 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Dialectical
? Elsevier
I (1975)
81-98
Anthropology
Scientific Publishing Company,
- Printed
Amsterdam
in The Netherlands
COMMUNICATIONS
TOWARD A MARXIST ANTHROPOLOGY
Maurice
OF RELIGION
Godelier
are
societies which
of humans.
Primitive
thought personifies
?
and unconsciously
and
spontaneously
as
such
real?
objective
projects
personifications
ities which appear to be both transcendent and
nature
to the naive
consciousness
appears
from things themselves, albeit in a
mysterious way, is, in reality, crystallized
labor, the product of social relations. All
categories
same fetishism, which
money,
value:
Godelier
Laboratoire
inaccessible
consciousness
of those living in
spontaneous
capitalist society is the internal structure of
social relations. The mechanism
of surplus
?
value
the
fact
that
wages are not
specifically,
the equivalent of the value the worker creates,
and the fact that profit is not payment for
?
as the
presents itself to consciousness
of
this
hidden
but
opposite
profound reality.
Value, which is a social relation, presents itself
work
of production
social
humans
share this
capitalism
in the idea of
culminates
at the
is Professor of Anthropology
Sociale, of the College de France
d'Anthropologie
11 Place Marcelin
and of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes,
Berthelot, Paris.
Maurice
remains
But what
the
capital;
I, 1, p. 158)
as stem?
ming
of mercantile
Value
alienate
themselves
This content downloaded from 103.27.164.7 on Tue, 16 Feb 2016 15:43:37 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
look for a
82
theoretical
critique
held. But
we must
of religion than to
conceptions
go the other way and show how the real condi?
tions gradually became clothed in these clouds."
these ethereal
band
women
members
activities
based
error
which
small molimo
protection
for death )
a band, a
to ask for the
ritual is performed
of the forest. Therefore,
and bounty
This content downloaded from 103.27.164.7 on Tue, 16 Feb 2016 15:43:37 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
83
religion is both a daily act and an activity that
in
at each critical moment
makes its appearance
of the individual and in the
the development
life of the band
as a whole,
defined
as an
more
In the
morning,
not as
the molimo
nor
as
individuals,
particular families, nor even
as a local band. Rather it is as Mbuti ? human
beings living a certain type of life in a particular
?
environment
tl^at the ritual finds its deepest
The Mbuti
celebrate
expression.
In religious representations
imaginary causes
replace real ones. Or at least real causes are
into the effects of imaginary,
causes personified by an omni?
transformed
transcendent
accumulated
relations.
of their social
life; indeed,
the sacred,
of social rela?
consists
Even
positive
of the divine,
in the hidden articulation
of
real content
The
and anxious
have
in daily
realistically,
on the contradictions
they
environment.
resentation
manent
cause
the
acts. In a certain perspective,
the
final
constitutes
point of
religious practice
on
of the
contradictions
the
actions
all political
a personified
unintentional
religious
consciousness,
cause
to which is attributed a
a will, and an intention ? an
reality, a god.
What, then, is religious alienation? When the
immanent emerges as transcendent, when the
anthropological
This content downloaded from 103.27.164.7 on Tue, 16 Feb 2016 15:43:37 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
the
84
that is, as
appears as superhuman,
an omnipresent being ? this represents aliena?
tion in the form of religion.
nonhuman
the shaman
gathering societies one encounters
access to the divine, and who
who monopolizes
is best equipped
to mediate
the imaginary con?
ditions for the reproduction
of the system. He
can summon the rain, or recall vanishing game,
and so on. The shaman has a superior status; he
to penetrate into the space which
humans
from the gods; he finds him?
separates
self a little above others because he is a little
has begun
closer
to the gods. He
is above
the
without
for exploitative
violence,
social relations. Even so, among the Caddoans
the chief still represented his people to the gods,
and was
the incarnation
common
of a
and development
in?
and political
economic
tradition;
equality remained limited.
The Inca were a different
The
story altogether.
is no longer the represen?
to the gods,, but of the gods
of
are
now constitutes
religious, political,
equality on an economic,
and symbolic level is found here.
If one
the means
chief, therefore,
to assure the welfare of
It might
fragment.
a society, and each member
even cease
would
to exist as
have
to join
to these relations. As
local community,
conditions of existence
each
soon as each
individual,
imagines that it owes its
to the supernatural
the divine
instrument of reproduction
and
here
inside
the
Religion operates
prosperity.
relations of production,
This content downloaded from 103.27.164.7 on Tue, 16 Feb 2016 15:43:37 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
85
the type of information that the members of
society have at their disposal about the nature
of their system. In turn, this type of informa?
tion determines the actions of groups and
need
social relations
the mode
in history.
symbolic
and labor.
a theoretical
For
I have
Translated
the
even
and history
to unfold in a
the multiple
particular way. To understand
forms of social evolution and the different func
the French
by Stanley
Maurice.
"Fetichisme,
religion et theorie gene'rale de
in
(1970). Reprinted
l'ideologie chez M&ix" Annali
en anthropologie.
Paris: Maspero,
Horizon,
trajets marxistes
1973.
Godelier,
here: Marxism
is not evolutionism
is not a seed which is predestined
from
BIBLIOGRAPHY
the Mbuti,
accelerating development
equalities was inevitable.
Diamond
part is left
theories.
trompe-Voeil.
sequence seems to suggest that the later develop?
ment of the pervasive socioeconomic
inequality
to which
to be con?
a theory remains
noted, the main
relations,
class, the
basically in an
labor, commanded
by the
of
the
the
dead
and
of
supernatural powers
gods, and consuming vast amounts of material
resources
Such
as Marx
undone.
dominated by a politico-religious
response of the Indians consisted
immense
structed;
Lincoln:
Marx, Karl
-.
University
and Frederick
1964.
Schocken,
Sur les Societes
1970.
theHorse
on
the Plains:
precapitalistes.
A Study of
Indians.
New
Paris: Editions
York:
Sociales,
in English as
Turnbull, Colin. Wayward Servants.
(Published
The Forest People. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961.)
This content downloaded from 103.27.164.7 on Tue, 16 Feb 2016 15:43:37 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions