Wim van Binsbergen (1947) read social and cultural anthropology and Third World sociology at the Municipal University of Amsterdam. Peter Geschiere (1941) read history and social-cultural anthropology at the Free University, Amsterdam, where he also received his doctorate.

• Notes on contributors, Preface, 1. Introduction: Emerging insights and issues in French Marxist anthropology, 2. Demographic developments and class contradictions in a 'domestic' community: The Nyakyusa (Tanzania) before the colonial conquest, 3. Articulation of modes of production and the beginning of labour migration among the Diola of Senegal, 4. Imposing capitalist dominance through the state: The multifarious role of the colonial state in Africa, 5. African literature between nostalgia and Utopia: African novels since 1953 in the light of the modes-of-production approach, 6. From tribe to ethnicity in western Zambia: The unit of study as an ideological problem, 7. Marxist theory and anthropological practice: The application of French Marxist anthropology in field-work, 8. Analytic tools, intellectual weapons: The discussion among French Marxist anthropologists about the identification of modes of production in Africa, Index of authors, Subject index