279-296

On the redetermination of some leading terms in anthropological theory

• Τερζάκης, Φώτης

Believing that Social Anthropology should not remain a purely empirical science, but should be connected with what once used to be called a “philosophy of history”, it is urgent to redetermine some of its leading terms, so as to unify the specific perspectives of all the human sciences, as well as to find the proper connections with those of natural ones.For this reason we discuss at first two terminological couples, the one of substratum! superstructure, and the other of productive forces/productive relations, both coming from the Marxist literature. After examining the related perspectives of some prominent social theorists, such as Marx, Georg Lukacs, Max Weber, Marcel Mauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and those of the Frankfurt School, we see that no one-directional causality in the cultural phenomena, as the one indicated by the scheme of sub stratum!superstructure, can still be held; on the contrary, only through the dialectical scheme of productive forces/productive relations, which expresses a transversal function related with the former, we can attempt a synthesis and an enrichment of some basic terms of an anthropological theory.Apart from the productive forces/productive relations, we can have homologous couples at distinct levels, the following: At the level of social production, “Nature’’/“Labour” (including instruments and capital as well), on the first part, and “Social Relations” (including institutions), on the other; at the level of the formation of the individual, “Desire” (including habits), on the first part, “Character” (including worldviews), on the other; at the level of language (which always appears as a district level), the “Expressive Power” of language, on the first part, and its “Communicative Value ”, on the other. If we put all the first terms of the three couples in a column under the title “productive forces”, and the second terms in a column under the title “productive relations”, then we shall have a considerable enrichment of the initial scheme for describing all the possible actions in the space between Nature and Society, as well as a dialectical network of certain basic terms coming from different realms of the human sciences. Putting them in terms of interaction, we must be careful, however, not to ascribe to any of them a general leading function. No permanent hierarchy exists among things, and between the specific elements of this table we must imagine multilateral and two-way interactions, which only a concrete analysis as well as the experience on the part of the researcher of his living object can in each case capture in their unique motion.

• Social Sciences
• Other social sciences

• Ανθρωπολογία
• Κοινωνιολογία
• Επικοινωνία

Αποτελεί ανακοίνωση που έγινε στο Σεμινάριο Κοινωνικής Ανθρωπολογίας του Σωτήρη Δημητρίου, στα πλαίσια του Κέντρου Μελετών και Τεκμηρίωσης, στις 15 Δεκεμβρίου 1992., Περιέχει πίνακες, σχέδια και βιβλιογραφία