Re: S. Africa/mode of prod. debate

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Leo:

> As I think Jim D. and
> Chris B. have pointed out, this confuses the conceptual abstraction [mode of
> production] with the social reality [social formation].

I agree with you on the importance of the conceptual distinction above.

> Likewise, we should
> not assume that the relationship is necessarily antagonistic, with
> pre-capitalist modes of production simply being an historical anachronism
> that is being displaced by capitalism.

With regard to the early days of modern colonialism (when capitalist
relations were in the process of emergence), it's possible to speak
of two or more modes of production confronting one another (whose
relation may be antagonistic or complementary, depending upon the
circumstances), but as capitalism became *the* dominant & global mode
of production, it became impossible for any social relation --
including family -- to remain outside of it, everything being remade
in its image.  What was an external relation became an internal
relation, so to speak.  This metaphor is not quite satisfactory, but
I'm in search of vocabulary to distinguish (A) change from one mode
of production to another; and (B) changes within a mode of
production.  Discussion of South Africa in this & other recent
threads seems to me to be referring to B, not to A.

Yoshie

P.S.  I have a quibble with regard to a very common anthropological
perspective on the question of time -- what Johannes Fabian calls the
denial of "coevality": "Fabian argues that anthropology has
constructed the people it studies as 'Other' not only in behavior and
geography but in time -- imagining them to be representative of human
ancestors in the remote past.  The implication of Fabian's theory is
that anthropology should view its subjects as sharing historicity
with the researchers" (at
<http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~tomasek/Resources/Mexico.html>).