The uses of class: A Latin American anthropological reading of Marxist debates in the twentieth century

Abstract

The article takes up six Marxist-inspired debates that substantially impacted LatinAmerican anthropological thought toward social classes in the twentieth century.The aim is to provide a summary of these uses and to situate their possible currentapplications. We will begin by covering Marxist discussions and categories, presentinga concise review of Marx?s debates on class, and their re-readings by Europeanauthors such as Lukacs and Gramsci. Then, we will discuss Weber?s principalcriticisms of these arguments, referring to the theoretical underpinnings of socialstratification. In addition, we will synthesize the critical turns of Marxism: feministdebates on social reproduction, the geographical discussion on the spatial configurationof class, Bourdieu?s articulationist proposal and re-readings of Gramsci?sworks. Following these debates, we will analyze the six uses of the concept of socialclass in Latin American world-historical anthropology from the second half of thetwentieth century. We group them by their central topic and by the national academiain which their articulation had institutional effects on the discipline (Brazil,Peru, Chile, Mexico, and Argentina). We end with a look at the debate?s outcomes inthe twenty-first century, in the context of international crisis and its Latin Americanconfiguration, to propose a conceptualization that dialogs with the revised traditions.