In this review article, the authors consider the recent collection of articles, edited by David Seddon (and translated by Helen Lackner), in Relations of Production, Marxist Approaches to Economic Anthropology. Rather than examining the articles per se, they use them as a starting-point for a general assessment of French Marxist anthropology, as a school with a given problematic, as it has developed over the last twenty years. They try to see the kind of research it has elicited, the sort of problems it has encountered, and the concepts it has used. They also put forward a number of criticisms of the basic assumptions of the school. The argument divides into two major sections. The first traces the emergence of French- Marxist anthropology from its constitution in the early 1960s, with the early contributions of Meillassoux and Godelier, to its consolidation in the 1970s, in the work of writers like Terray, Rey, Auge, etc. The second section sets out a number of assumptions common to the school, and raises three important questions: what do we mean by a materialist interpretation? what is Marxist anthropology? what is the proper relation between structural and historical analysis within a Marxist perspective? Relations of Production. Marxist Approaches to Economic Anthropology, edited by David Seddon. London: Frank Cass & Co., 1978. Pp. xv + 414. No index. £12.50 cloth, £5.50 paper.
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