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Maurice Bloch
is a French-British anthropologist with a Ph.D. from Cambridge, UK on the Merina, irrigated rice cultivators of Madagascar, and he has carried out field work among slush and burn agriculturalist in Madagascar -- the Zafimanary. He has written important neo-marxian work on power, history, kinship, and ritual in the 1970s and 80s, including his monograph on the historical development of Merina circumcision ritual: From blessing to violence: History and ideology in the circumcision ritual of the Merina of Madagascar, 1986.
Bloch's work (with Jonathan Parry) on money as a moral factor in social relations has also been very influential (see Money and the Morality of Exchange, 1989). Since the 1990's, Bloch has increasingly turned his attention to cognitive science and has written several controversial works on the relationship between cognitive science, memory and culture. He recently retired from his professorship at London School of Economics.Eurozine Articles
The reluctant anthropologist
An interview with Maurice Bloch
"Anti-anthropologist" Maurice Bloch talks in interview about the abuse of anthropological expertise by developmental ecologists; about the contradictions of "collective memory"; and about whether anthropologists can address "life's big questions". [more]