Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-kwt9d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-14T14:32:17.197Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Culture: Panacea or Problem?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Eric R. Wolf
Eric R. Wolf*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Herbert H. Lehman College, City University of New York, Bronx, NY 10468
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Cultures are not integral wholes carried by social isolates. We must distinguish between reality culture and ideology-making, and recognize that the creation or dismantling of cultures always goes on within extensive social fields, structured by the dominant modes of production. It is suggested that ideology-making derives from the prevalent mode of production and is entailed in its operations.

Information

Type
Forum
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , April 1984, pp. 393 - 400
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

References Cited

Adams, Richard N. 1975 Energy and Structure: A Theory of Social Power. University of Texas Press, Austin and London.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland 1972 Mythologies. Paladin, St. Albans.Google Scholar
Bloch, Maurice 1977 The Past and the Present in the Present. Man 12: 278–292.Google Scholar
Boahen, A. Adu 1971 The Coming of the Europeans (c. 1440-1700). In The Horizon History of Africa, edited by M. Josephy, Alvin Jr., pp. 305–327. American Heritage, New York.Google Scholar
Colletti, Lucio 1973 Marxism and Hegel. New Left Books, London.Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto 1976 A Theory of Semiotics. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and London.Google Scholar
Eisenstadt, S. N. 1965 Essays on Comparative Institutions. John Wiley and Sons, New York.Google Scholar
Flannery, Kent V. 1982 The Golden Marshalltown: A Parable for the Archaeology of the 1980s. American Anthropologist 84: 265–278.Google Scholar
Fried, Morton H. 1966 On the Concepts of “Tribe” and “Tribal Society.” Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Series 2, 28: 527–540.Google Scholar
Friedman, Jonathan 1979 System, Structure and Contradiction: The Evolution of ‘Asiatic’ Social Formations. Social Studies in Oceania and South East Asia, vol. 2. National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford 1957 Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example. American Anthropologist 59: 32–54.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford 1973 The Interpretation of Culture. Harper and Row, New York.Google Scholar
Gluckman, Max (editor) 1964 Closed Systems and Open Minds: The Limits of Naivety in Social Anthropology. Aldine, Chicago.Google Scholar
Hickerson, Harold 1962 The Southwestern Chippewa: An Ethnohistorical Study. American Anthropological Association Memoir 92. American Anthropological Association, Menasha.Google Scholar
Hickerson, Harold 1970 The Chippewa and Their Neighbors: A Study in Ethnohistory. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.Google Scholar
Inikori, J. E. 1977 The Import of Firearms into West Africa, 1750-1807: A Quantitative Analysis. Journal of African History 18: 339–368.Google Scholar
Kroeber, Alfred L. 1948 Anthropology. Harcourt, Brace, New York.Google Scholar
Kroeber, Alfred L. 1952 The Nature of Culture. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Leach, Edmund 1954 Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study ofKachin Social Structure. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Leach, Edmund 1961 Rethinking Anthropology. London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology No. 22. Athlone Press, University of London, London.Google Scholar
Levi-Strauss, Claude 1966 The Savage Mind. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London.Google Scholar
Levi-Strauss, Claude 1969 The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Beacon Press, Boston.Google Scholar
Lewis, Oscar 1942 The Effects of White Contact Upon Blackfoot Culture: With Special Reference to the Fur Trade. American Ethnological Society Monographs No. 6. J. J. Augustin, New York.Google Scholar
Lowie, Robert H. 1937 The History of Ethnological Theory. Rinehart, New York.Google Scholar
Naroll, Raoul 1964 On Ethnic Unit Classification. Current Anthropology 5: 283-291, 306–312.Google Scholar
Quain, Buell 1937 The Iroquois. In Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples, edited by Mead, Margaret, pp. 240–281. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York.Google Scholar
Richards, W. 1980 The Import of Firearms into West Africa in the 18th Century. Journal of African History 21: 43–59.Google Scholar
Service, Elman R. 1968 War and Our Contemporary Ancestors. In War: The Anthropology of Armed Conflict and Aggression, edited by Morton, Fried, Marvin, Harris, and Robert, Murphy, pp. 160–167. The Natural History Press, Garden City.Google Scholar
Sorokin, Pitirim 1967 Causal-functional and Logico-meaningful Integration. In System, Change and Conflict, edited by Demerath, N. P. and Peterson, R. A., pp. 99–114. Free Press, New York.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. 1971 The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century. Past and Present 50: 76–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, Max 1946 Essays in Sociology. Translated and edited by Gerth, H. H. and Wright Mills, C.. Oxford University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Wolf, Eric R. 1980 They Divide and Subdivide, and Call It Anthropology. The New York Times, November 30, 1980, Section E: 9.Google Scholar
Wolf, Eric R. 1981 The Mills of Inequality. In Social Inequality: Comparative and Developmental Approaches, edited by D. Berreman, Gerald, pp. 41–57. Academic Press, New York.Google Scholar
Wolf, Eric R. 1982 Europe and the People Without History. University of California Press, Berkeley.Google Scholar