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.
“It may well be that anthropology departments disappear, and that wouldn’t bother me very much”. “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 anthropology can address life’s “big questions”.
