James Brow

Class Formation and Ideological Practice: A Case from Sri Lanka

An adequate understanding of the complex connections between changes in the social relations of production and changes in the bases of group formation demands an historical approach in which consciousness and its ideological products are viewed dynamically, not as the mechanically determined superstructural reflections of material relations but as an active and constituent components of everyday social life. The concepts required for such an analysis are developed here, drawing on the seminal work of both Marx and Weber, as well as on more recent scholarship, and are applied to recent changes in agrarian relations and ideological practice in Anuradhapura District, Sri Lanka.