Totality, system and predictability. An approach from socio-anthropological theory and Marxism

Abstract

In this essay we want to put into dialogue two types of analysis of contemporary reality that often seem to complement and confuse each other: the socio-anthropology in some of its most recurrent currents and Marxism; the first has conceptual frameworks such as structural-functionalist analysis, systems theory, social representations, the perspective of the actor, etc. while the second possesses the historical-genetic analysis and the dialectic. The one privileges the interpretation based on the detailed representation of social phenomena (whether an analysis that focuses more on the empirical and material or on the ideal, from Durkheim to Moscovici or Geertz, to name a few of its exponents, while the another relegates them to a contingent place since it prioritises the study of the development of the modes of production of material goods and the transition from one social system to another, this difference is correlated to others as the notions of rationality, action, praxis, predictability and knowledge The work presents some specificities of these theoretical