articulation of modes of production

(MARXISM) a concept in which separate MODES OF PRODUCTION are seen as coexisting within one society or social formation. The concept was developed particularly within a Marxist critique of DEPENDENCY THEORY to demonstrate links between so-called UNDERDEVELOPMENT and development. Especially influential was Wolpe's (1972) analysis of the reserve system in South Africa as a subordinate, precapitalist mode of production based on kinship relations, which provided cheap labour power for the industrialized capitalist economy of South Africa.

There is considerable debate within Marxism. For example, Banji (1977) offered a powerful critique of Wolpe in which he argued that the overall laws of motion of the economy define the social formation, and it is not always necessary that all elements of the capitalist mode be present to define a system as ‘capitalist’. The ‘subordinate modes of production’ referred to by articulation theory are not, for Banji, modes of production at all, since they are devoid of their own ‘laws of motion and serve to reproduce the capitalist mode of production. Such forms lack the essential ingredient of the ability to reproduce themselves’. See also NONCAPITALIST AND PRECAPITALIST MODES OF PRODUCTION.

Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000

References in periodicals archive

Wolpe, H., ed, (1980), The Articulation of Modes of Production, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

'The riddle of history solved': socialist strategy, modes of production and social formations in Capital

The themes are Marxism in the American anthropological tradition; the debate about the articulation of modes of production; dependency theory, world systems theory, and pre-history; the development of peasantries under capitalism; the crisis of representation and Writing Culture; working over history: cultural idealism and materialism; and fighting over commodities and history.

Critical anthropology; foundational works

Stripped of its sometimes peculiar definitions and periodization--Bengal scholars might be surprised to find early 19th-century Britain is a liberal colonizer--Mahoney's writing is more than a little redolent of a decades-old structural Marxist analysis once known as the "articulation of modes of production" debate, which was itself part of a wider Latin American-based debate over the "development of underdevelopment." Oddly, I found little reference to this debate or to its main protagonists in Mahoney's text, notes, or bibliography.

James Mahoney: Colonialism and Post Colonial Development: Spanish America in Comparative Perspective

Wolpe (ed.) The Articulation of Modes of Production. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Definition of the capitalist mode of production: a re-examination (with application to non-capitalist modes of production)

Each one of the consecutive stages of modernization is characterized by a specific level of development of domestic PF, by the related social structure of accumulation (SSA), by a specific articulation of modes of production established both at the domestic level, and in-between the domestic and international levels.

DEVELOPMENTAL STALEMATE IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN: SOME CONCEPTUAL TOOLS FOR THE UNDERSTANDING OF CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS