Can anthropology become the theory of peripheral class struggle? : reflexions on the work of Pierre Philippe Rey

Underlying Pierre Philippe Rey's specific theoretical contributions on the articulation of modes of production is a more general conception of the nature and project of anthropology and of the political role of the anthropologist in the class struggle of Third World peasants and proletarians. After discussing Rey's view of anthropology as the theory of class struggle in the periphery of the contemporary capitalist world system, the author considers the specific constraints and potentialities of modern anthropological fieldwork, the ways in wich relations of intellectual production in anthropology itself influence, reflexively, the anthropologist's understanding of relations of production studied in the field, and finally Rey's own contributions to the empirical study of ideology. Notes, ref