Fetishism Deconstructed

Author(s): Robert Pool

Source: Etnofoor , 1990, Jaarg. 3, Nr. 1, FETISHISM (1990), pp. 114-127
Published by: Stichting Etnofoor

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25757713

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Fetishism Deconstructed

Robert Pool
University of Amsterdam

Introduction

After a period in which the term fetishism had a central place in anthropological
discourse on traditional religion (referring to a phase in the evolution of religion
generally or to a specific form of religious belief in West Africa) there followed a
period of embarrassment during which it was hardly used in anthropology. Thus,
in 1977 Wyatt MacGaffey could write:

Fetishism, a word much in vogue in late nineteenth century anthropology, no longer

appears in serious scholarly use, except among art historians, psychoanalysts, and
Marxist economists (MacGaffey 1977:172).

The term fetish was still sporadically used, but in a limited sense, to refer to
certain types of composite material object, mainly in West Africa, which pos
sessed supernatural power or in which a spirit was said to reside. The most well
known of these being the Kongo minkisi (MacGaffey 1977, 1986; Stawski 1980).
In recent years this embarrassed silence has given way to a renewed interest in
fetishism as a general concept in the anthropological literature. In this paper
I want to briefly consider this recent reappearance of the term fetishism and
examine how it relates to the earlier literature on the topic.1 I will argue that
the term is a source of confusion and does not contribute to our understanding
of the phenomena it is applied to, and that it should therefore be abolished.

Fetishism established

The English word fetish is generally considered to be derived from the Portuguese
feitigo, which referred to images and relics of saints. Portuguese seamen applied
the term to manufactured objects which they thought West Africans worshipped.
According to Haddon the term feitigo is derived from the Latin facticius - facere,

114 ETNOFOOR, III (1) 1990, pp. 114-127

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 to do (1921:66). In discussing the historical development of the meaning of the
term Haddon writes:

Dr. Tylor has pointed out how magic has appropriated to itself the derivatives of
'to do,'? This tendency is already noticeable even in classical times ('potens et
factiosus,1 possessed of power and influence ...), and is well marked in Plautus,
who uses various derivatives of facere to mean 'powerful' or 'influential,' especially
with reference to influence due to family connection or to riches _ From this
sense of POTENT POLITICALLY, later Latin developed the meaning of POTENT
MAGICALLY, as seen in facturari, to bewitch, factura, witchcraft_ FETISH is
derived from the passive form facticius, meaning made by art, artificial, was probably
first applied to images, idols or amulets made by hand, and later included ALL
OBJECTS POSSESSING MAGICAL POTENCY, i.e. bewitched or 'faked'(ibid.:66
67).
De Brosses introduced the term into the study of religion in his Du culte des
dieux fetiches in 1760, in which he defined a fetish as:

Anything which people like to select for adoration ... a tree, a mountain, the sea,
a piece of wood, the tail of a lion, a pebble, a shell, salt, a fish, a plant, a flower,
certain animals, such as cows, goats, elephants, sheep, or anything like these (De
Brosses, cited in Jevons 1896:167).

This definition has been the focus of much criticism. Van Baal has pointed out
that it is so wide that it covered all forms of archaic religion which came to De
Brosses' notice (1971:11), and Jevons criticised it for the same reason almost a
century ago. Jevons claimed that De Brosses failed to realise that the power of
West African fetishes did not come from the material object as such but rather
from a spirit which resided in the object. This led to the notion, which Haddon
criticised, that West African fetishism entails the worship of objects.
The term was also used by Auguste Comte in his Cows de Philosophie Positive
(1864), in which he develops his famous 'law of three stages'. He sees human
mental development as passing through a theological and a metaphysical stage
before reaching the highest stage: positivism. The theological stage is also di
vided into three evolutionary phases, the first of which is fetishism, followed by
polytheism and monotheism. For Comte the major characteristic of fetishism is
that people attribute a life-force, essentially the same as their own, to the inan
imate objects surrounding them. Initially this phase is hardly distinguishable
from the highest level of mental development achieved by the higher animals,
and it reaches its peak in the worship of celestial bodies (1864, vol.5:5-83).
Tylor (1958) took issue with Comte's basic definition of fetishism, and pre
ferred to use the term animism to refer to the 'doctrine of spirits in general'.
He wanted to limit the term fetishism to the 'doctrine of spirits embodied in, or
attached to, or conveying influence through, certain material objects'. But he
goes on to state that fetishism 'includes the worship of "stocks and stones", and
thence it passes by an inperceptible gradation into idolatry' (ibid.:230).

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 Haddon was probably influenced by Tylor when he proposed the following
specific definition of fetishism:

All cases of Fetishism, when examined, show that the worship is paid to an intangible
power or spirit incorporated in some visible form, and that the fetish is merely the
link between the worshipper and the object of his worship (1921:70).

The plea has regularly been heard, from Jevons (1896) through Haddon (1921)
to Van Baal (1971) to limit the term to this 'original' meaning. Although both
Nassau (1904) and Kingsley (1982), for long considered to be the experts on West
African fetishism, do proceed from this very specific and limited definition, their
use of the term gradually widens until it encompasses almost every aspect of
West African religion. For example, Kingsley starts off by stating that the fetish
'is not venerated for itself, or treasured because of its prettiness, but only because
it is the residence, or the occasional haunt, of a spirit' (1982:429). But she then
goes on, in five chapters all bearing the title 'fetish', to discuss witchcraft, the
transmigration of souls, forbidden food, burial customs, inheritance laws, etc.,
which are all part of the 'wild West African idea' which.she seems to equate with
fetishism.

Medicines and fetishes

The term fetishism has been used more recently in the literature on West Africa
to describe the kind of objects referred to by Kingsley and Nassau in their min
imal definitions. Here fetishism is usually related to medicines.
In an article entitled 'Medicines and Fetishes in Igala', John Boston discusses
the Igala (Nigeria) concepts of ogwu and ode, which he translates as medicine
and fetish respectively. Medicines are composite objects rather than single sub
stances: they are made up of ordinary vegetable and secret magical substances
(1971:201). A single medicine may contain as many as six different magical
substances and it is these which give it its efficacy.
Medicines are used to cure illness, but also in other contexts: to guarantee
successful farming, good luck on a journey, etc. Medicine is closely related to
political power and the power of leaders or warriors is based on their use of
medicine. Finally, medicines are not used primarily to affect the course of nature
but rather to counter the effects of other medicines (ibid.:203).
Fetishes share the above mentioned characteristics with medicines, but differ
in important respects. Medicines are prepared for specific occasions and have to
be renewed, whereas fetishes are permanent. Also, fetishes receive sacrifices and
according to Boston this 'implies the presence of some form of spiritual being'
(ibid.:204).
The main function of these fetishes is to prevent witchcraft and sorcery from
affecting the normal course of events (ibid.:204). Boston sees fetishes as being

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related to the ancestor cult, not because 'the spirit being worshipped through
the fetish' is an ancestor, but rather because fetishes are passed on from one
generation to the next and may become important symbols of 'the pedigree of
an office or status' (ibid.:206-207). They are also related to a cult of spirits
called ebo. Ebo spirits, like fetishes, combat witchcraft, but

when fetishes begin to kill people (who refuse to confess their witchcraft) then they
have become ebo, and their spirits have acquired a status which is denied to the
majority of the spirits that are associated with fetishes (ibid.:207).

Thus, according to Boston's description, the Igala identify two kinds of manu
factured objects, one temporary and the other permanent, which are potent in
the sense that they can influence the course of events by countering the effects
of witchcraft and of other similar objects.
A similar description is to be found in M.C. Jedrej's (1976) article 'Medicine,
Fetish and Secret Society in a West African Culture', in which he discusses the
Sewa Mende (Sierra Leone) concept of haJe. Jedrej distinguishes three meanings
of the term haJe (plural haieisia).
Firstly, when a person is ill he may be treated with either western pharmaceu
ticals or local herbs. These substances are referred to as haieisia. Secondly, in
formal disputes the litigants and witnesses swear upon an object which is called
haie, and such objects are also used to catch thieves and other malefactors. Fi
nally, the Poro and Sande societies are also referred to by the term haie. Jedrej
glosses these three kinds of haie as medicine, fetish and secret society respectively
(ibid.:248).
In the more recent medical ethnography on Africa the term medicine seems to
have broadened and completely replaced fetish. This transformation has been
necessary in order for western medical anthropologists to take African traditional
medicine seriously, but it has also tended to facilitate the reduction of indigenous
systems to western biomedical categories (cf. Pool 1989).

Fetishism resurrected

In recent years the term fetishism has reappeared in the anthropological litera
ture as a more general theoretical concept. For example, in an article entitled
'Fetishism', Roy Ellen focusses on fetishism because he thinks that it can shed
light on the articulation between individual cognitive processes and collective
representations (1988:219)!
He notes, as Van Baal did before him, and as anyone who reads only a se
lection of the literature on the topic could not fail to notice, that fetishism is a
'confusing hydra' (ibid.:220). He then goes on to state that 'In order to tame
the beast it is necessary to lop off its many heads and begin to re-constitute its
conceptually' (ibid.:220). He achieves this re-constitution through a discussion

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of what he calls four general underlying cognitive processes which generate the
cultural representations which are called fetishes (ibid.:219). These processes are
connected as a cumulative sequence, of which the end product is the fetish.
People concretise abstractions thus making them into objects. They then at
tribute the properties of living organisms to these objects. Personification 'is
the most developed, the most characteristic projection of what we call fetishes'
(ibid.:224). These material objects, rather than that which they represent, then
come to be regarded as the active causative agent. Ellen refers to this conflation
of signifier and signified as fetishisation (ibid.:227). Finally, there is an ambiva
lent power relation between people and the objects which they have created.
People concretise abstractions and make them into objects, which they can then
manipulate, but in the process the object also becomes a causative agent with
the ability to affect people.
Ellen shows that these processes can be identified in the anthropological, marx
ist and psychoanalytic conceptions of fetishism, for example, in Nuaulu shields,
money and shoes. But there is a problem: they are also characteristic of a wide
range of representations which are not called fetishes

... and it is this array of possibilities which constitutes the 'greater whole' of which
that phenomenon labelled 'fetishism' must be considered an empirically ill-defined
part. The boundary between fetishes and non-fetishes is consequently vague, admit
ting such a ludicrously wide area of reference (ibid.:232).

For Ellen fetishes are not a special type of object and fetishism is not a mode
of thought or mental condition. Fetishism is rather an aspect of all thought
(ibid.:232).
When discussing the use of the term fetishism in the recent anthropological
literature the study which immediately springs to mind is Michael Taussig's
The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (1980). Taussig adopts
Marx's concept of commodity fetishism to analyse pacts with the devil on the
sugar plantations of the Cauca valley in Colombia and in the tin mines of Bolivia.
For Taussig commodity fetishism in advanced capitalist society has two as
pects: on the one hand, as a result of the emphasis on exchange-value rather
than use-value and the role of the market things, commodities, which are the
product of social relations, are seen as independent of those relations, and even
capable of controling them. The value of commodities is seen as intrinsic to
them rather than being produced by labour power. On the other hand labour,
a social relation, becomes a commodity, a thing. Things thus appear to act
independently of the social relations which produce them and social relations
themselves become things. A system of production which is artificial comes to
appear natural.
In addition to commodity fetishism Taussig also refers to what he calls pre
capitalist fetishism. Pre-capitalist society is based on use-value rather than
exchange-value and people are not subordinated to the things which they have

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produced but are intermeshed with them. These products are animated, but
the reason is the very opposite of the animation of capitalist commodities. It is
because they embody the social relations which produce them (ibid.:36).
In the context of the nascent mode of capitalist production, in the plantations
and the mines, but not in peasant subsistance production, workers make pacts
with the devil in exchange for material wealth. But this wealth is ephemeral and
its benefits ambivalent: the cattle thus acquired soon die, the money is quickly
dissipated and the person who made the contract dies young.
According to Taussig, beliefs in the devil mediate two radically distinct modes
of interpreting 'the world of persons and of things' (ibid.: 18). The devil is a fetish
mediating between the pre-capitalist mode of objectification based on use-values
and the capitalist mode of objectification based on exchange-value (ibid.:xi, xii).
The former is related to what Taussig calls pre-capitalist folk mysticism, whereas
the latter stems from the capitalist mystification which Marx called commodity
fetishism (ibid.: 18).
Thoden van Velzen's (1990) notion of fetishism is closely related to that of
Taussig. He sees fetishes as symbols which are created (to a certain extent
willfully) by people in situations of conflict in order to conceal reality:

I assume that processes occur which cause a social group to fall under the spell
of certain powerful images, giving members a partial understanding of a dreaded
external reality, while at the same time blocking their progress towards more realistic
interpretations (ibid.:79).

He then goes on to discuss pacts with the devil, as described by Taussig, and
the demonic beliefs of the Maroons of Suriname as forms of what he calls 'social
fetishism', which he sees as being related to plantation economy and the rise
of capitalist production. He concludes that such fetishes 'represent attempts to
come to a better understanding of the modern world, to gain a new way of seeing'.
They are 'an indirect comment upon the new socio-conditions that people have
to live with' (ibid.:91).
In his book Material Culture and Mass Consumption (1987) Daniel Miller is
not directly concerned with fetishism as such but with objectification and the
potential of mass consumption for overcoming the alienation between people and
the goods they produce. But he does discuss fetishism, because his conception
of the liberating potential of material culture depends on a critique of fetishism.
The central concept in Miller's argument is objectification, which he derives
from Hegel. Objectification refers to a dialectical process in which the subject
first externalises itself and then reappropriates this externalisation, thus over
coming the separation between the subject and its creation and enabling the
former to develop through the latter (ibid.:28).
Miller rejects a dualistic interpretation of the relation between subject and
object, people and things: neither is prior to the other but they are rather mu
tually constitutive (ibid.: 18). He wants to retain the positive connotations of the

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term objectification as referring to a progressive process (ibid.:28). This positive
emphasis on the development of the subject through reappropriation implies a
rejection of marxist analyses which emphasise rupture and estrangement between
the subject and its externalisations, and it entails a critique of marxist critiques
of fetishism.
According to Miller the use of the term objectification in the recent marxist
literature is closely related to three other terms which are highly indeterminate
and not easily distinguishable: alienation, fetishism and reification. Fetishism
entails that

... the vast array of the products of labour cannot be understood as such by the
worker, who confronts them in a different sphere, where they appear to be the result
of other forces. This is in part a consequence of contemporary representations of the
political economy, which portray commodities as a result of the abstract working of
capital itself, and dispense with the social relations which created them (ibid.:44).

Fetishism entails the masking of social relations through concern with objects per
se (ibid.:18). Material culture has been criticised as fetishistic because of the fo
cus on goods rather than the social relations which lie behind them, but for Miller
the growth of material culture and mass consumption is not necessarily negative.
Mass consumption is the main arena in which people and objects interact, and
through consumption people are able to re-appropriate their externalisations,
thereby contributing to the development of a social subject (ibid.: 17). For Miller
material culture is not fetishistic but rather offers the potential, through mass
consumption and reappropriation, of overcoming fetishism.
Miller does not deny fetishism, which occurs when people are unable to reap
propriate external cultural forms which have become oppressive, but points to
the potential of mass consumption for overcoming fetishism. In his article in
the present issue (1990) he contrasts the use of modernist architecture in mass
housing projects with the the mass consumption of blue jeans. The former
... often created a population which recognised that they had become identified
with this form. They could see that, in part, it was the mass housing that signified
them as 'mass' population, but was not a style that they had themselves either
created, desired or associated with. Here then a housing style becomes a fetish - an
element for our identity, (or being), which we are unable to appropriate (or consume)
(ibid.:101).

Miller goes on to discuss the ambivalent nature of blue jeans. On the one hand
they are fetishistic, 'expressing a situation of asymmetry and the interiorisation
of global colonial forms' (ibid.:103). They represent an identity associated with
western affluence to which the poor of the world can aspire and attempt to
appropriate through their purchase, but never quite achieve. But on the other
hand blue jeans also point to the possibility of a de-fetishised relationship to
material culture. They are highly ambivalent, produced by big multi-national
concerns and representing American capitalism, but simultaneously symbolising

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 the proletariat, the film anti-hero and political opposition to the status quo more
generally.
Through their mass consumption they express equality and through their plu
ralistic transformation they create individual and group identity and symbolise
non-conformity. What is more, this plurality is not imposed from above but
constructed from below (faded jeans and jeans with holes could never have been
imposed by the industry). In this way the consumer re-appropriates material
culture and transforms it into alternatives which oppose established forms. For
Miller fetishism is a form of reification which is immanent in the process of
objectification which produces culture, but it can be overcome through the re
appropriation of material culture, towards which blue jeans have pointed the
way.

Fetishism questioned

What I have done above is to give a brief sketch of some of the ways in which
the term fetishism has been used in the anthropological literature. This sketch
is by no means meant to be exhaustive or even representative, but rather to give
an impression of both the differences and the similarities in the different usages
of the term fetishism in the anthropological literature.
It is possible to distinguish between three different applications of the term.
Firstly, there is the old and long discredited notion of fetishism as an early phase
in the evolution of religion. Secondly, the term is also used in a narrow sense,
to refer to the belief, in West African societies, that certain composite material
objects are invested with supernatural power or are the residence of some kind of
spirit. These objects are referred to as fetishes. (This is of course also the basis
for the idea of fetishism as an evolutionary stage.) Finally, in the more recent
literature the term has a much wider and more diffuse meaning.
Not only is the term fetishism used in three very different senses, but it is
also highly indeterminate within each of these applications. When Comte used
it to refer to a phase in the evolution of religion he did not mean the same as
De Brosses did when he used it for the same purpose. Igala ode are not the
same as Mende haieisia, and both differ from Kongo minkisi. The alienation
described by Miller is not the same as the ideological functioning of the devil's
pacts discussed by Thoden van Velzen, and these are in turn different from Ellen's
cognitive classificatory rules.
Some authors prefer to make a distinction between fetish and fetishism, and
this may appear to reduce some of the confusion. For example, we could say that
fetishism refers to a set of beliefs or ideas relating to objects or our relation to
objects, while fetishes are certain kinds of charged objects. Fetishes then do not
necessarily imply the existence of fetishism (see Mommersteeg 1990). But this
clarification is only apparent and the distinction untenable. The terms fetish

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and fetishism are used together to such an extent that they cannot easily be
separated into two distinct concepts. On the one hand, the belief in, or 'worship'
of charged objects which are called fetishes in the literature is widely referred to
as fetishism, and MacGaffey's article on the sociology of Kongo minkisi is enti
tled 'Fetishism Revisited' (1977). On the other hand, anyone who writes about
fetishism, no matter how abstractly, also refers to material (and non-material)
things as fetishes. For Miller a housing style can be a fetish, for Thoden van
Velzen a devil's pact is a fetish, and for Ellen all manner of cultural representa
tions may be fetishes.
The question which now arises is to what extent the term has become so inde
terminate as to be practically useless and whether it would be better to abolish
it altogether rather than continue re-using it with an ever widening semantic
content and concomitant indeterminacy. This does not mean that anthropo
logical concepts should always be precisely defined in order to be useful. On
the contrary, I believe that such concepts are necessarily indeterminate. But a
point may be reached at which a term becomes so indeterminate that its use
no longer contributes to our understanding of that to which it is applied. Nor
should it detract from the value of the studies mentioned above, in which the
term fetishism is central. These studies are important and they contribute to our
understanding of the phenomena they describe. But is the term fetishism itself
necessary for this understanding? Would Igala ode or our alienation from our
own objectifications be any more opaque if it was not used? I do not think so.

Fetishism dissolved

Here I would like to offer a different distinction as a means of deconstructing

fetishism. It is possible to distinguish between fetishism as a descriptive ethno
graphic term and fetishism as an abstract analytic concept. In what follows I
will consider these two usages.
Van Baal (1971:12), following Haddon (1921:64-65), appeals for the term to
be limited to its specific African form, i.e. referring to certain composite objects
which have potency or contain a spirit, and to the beliefs and ideas relating to
these objects. This would include the early use of the term by Kingsley, Nassau
and Jevons as well as its more recent use by Boston, Jedrej and MacGaffey. This
may be called the 'classic' definition of fetishism in the anthropological literature.
In this sense fetishism resembles that other central topos in the ethnographic
discourse on Africa: witchcraft.
Malcolm Crick (1982) has appealed for the abolition of such terms. He focusses
his criticism on witchcraft, stating that it has probably only become a separate
topic for anthropological study because of its role in our own history. It is a
ready-made concept which can be easily applied to other cultures and leads to the
translation of domains of meaning in other cultures in terms of our own categories

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(ibid.:346). Through the work of Evans-Pritchard the concepts of witchcraft and
sorcery have 'tended to become frameworks into which ethnographers could fit
their own field material instead of paying more attention to the particularity of
the culture they happen to have studied' (ibid.:351). Concepts such as witchcraft
form part of a wider conceptual field and can only be understood when they are
placed in the context of the other concepts which make up that field.

Great violence must be done to the conceptual structures of another culture in speak
ing of witchcraft if it lacks those environing categories which defined it in our own.
Where the conceptual field is so different we could not reasonably expect to find the
same phenomenon, and so the one term should not be used twice (ibid.:346-347).

I do not entirely agree with Crick's claim that we should not use the term
witchcraft to refer to African 'witchcraft' for the simple reason that local people
in Africa have adopted the term into their discourse to such an extent that it has
become a vernacular term and we would be 'doing violence to their conceptual
structures' if we now tried to eliminate it from our ethnographic descriptions.
Can we still talk to Africans in a meaningful way about 'witchcraft' without
using the term? I doubt it. The semantic fields or indigenous conceptual struc
tures to which Crick refers already contain the terms which he wants to abolish
because they have been constituted and are continually being reconstituted in
an ongoing and inter-cultural praxis (see Pool 1989).
But Crick's criticism is applicable to the term fetish in contexts where the
natives use objects which we call fetishes but do not use the term fetish to
refer to them. This must be the case with the Igala and Mende discussed by
Boston and Jedrej, otherwise they would hot have had to go to all that trouble
to translate the vernacular terms.
According to Boston, although they both contain magical substances, fetishes
differ from medicines because they are permanent and because sacrifices are
made to them. He concludes that this implies the presence of a spirit. But these
are 'very low order' spirits which do not form a class, each being specific to a
particular fetish. They do not belong to the distinct class of spirits which are
called ebo, though they may become ebo, and the use of fetishes shades off into
the ebo cult. Here one wonders in exactly what terms Boston's Igala informants
described the nature of these fetishes, and whether he is justified in applying the
term spirit to them, especially as it appears that the Igala distinguish between
ebo spirits and the powers inherent in the fetishes, though the latter may turn
into the former (Boston 1971:207). This is all very confusing, and becomes
more so when we see that the haleisia which Jedrej calls fetishes are radically
different from Igala ode. The use of the term fetish invites a lumping together
of phenomena which, though they do have similarities, are also quite different.
Why then is this translation necessary? What does it contribute to our un
derstanding of ode or haie or minkisi? Nothing. The question which then arises
is: why is the term still used?

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 Perhaps it is simply habit, which, in the case of objects like the Kongo minkisi
is supported by the continued use of the term fetish in auction catalogues and
art books.
But there is also the term's exotic value. Keesing (1988) has referred to an
thropologists as 'dealers in exotica'. The reward structure of the discipline is
such that they are compelled to focus on the most unusual phenomena in other
cultures and to give the most exotic readings of these phenomena.
Keesing's argument sheds some light on the use of the term fetish. It does
have a certain exotic value in western discourse which the vernacular terms do
not have. It has connotations of wild pagan rites deep in the African bush, of
exotic primitivism and, for the man in the street at least, vague associations with
sexual fetishism. The discussion becomes much duller when we simply speak of
minkisi or charged objects.
Keesing goes on to argue that this exoticism tends to support postmodern
relativism. If we looked at less exotic phenomena we would find more similar
ities and cross-cultural comparison would be possible once again. But in the
case of fetishism the opposite can be argued. The continued use of the term
has the effect of reducing diverse phenomena to a single anthropological con
cept. In fact, it can be argued that this is the case with most of the central
terms which anthropologists apply to other cultures. The need which anthropol
ogists seem to feel when analysing other cultures, to reduce cultural diversity to
the unity of anthropological categories in an attempt to make comparison (and
thus explanation) possible stems from the quest for certainty, for epistemological
foundations, which has characterised western thought since the enlightenment
(Bernstein 1983) and for which the relativism which Keesing criticises offers a
radical alternative.
I would therefore suggest that fetish and fetishism only be used as descriptive
ethnographic terms in cases where the natives themselves use them, and that
they then be treated as vernacular terms.

Fetishism as fetish

Let us now turn to the more recent use of fetishism as an abstract analytic
category. Here again we encounter the subsumption of different, though related,
phenomena under a single term. In the case of the ethnographic usage discussed
above the authors in question attempted to use the term fetishism in its 'original'
anthropological meaning. In the second usage the meaning of the term is derived
from marxist economics.
As I have mentioned above, the term fetishism was introduced into anthro
pology through De Brosses. Marx adopted it from De Brosses and applied it
to the enigmatic nature of commodities: they are physical objects, but at the
same time also social. The commodity 'reflects the social characteristics of men's

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own labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves ...'
(Marx 1976:164-165). The social relation between people assumes the form of a
relation between things (ibid.: 165).
During the period that the term fetishism appeared to have been banished from
anthropology it still remained in use in marxist economics, and it is from this
source that anthropologists have re-appropriated the term. There are a number
of possible reasons for this reappearance in recent anthropological literature.
Many members of the generation of radical students who were politically ac
tive in the late sixties and early seventies, and who internalised marxist concepts
as part of their education, occupied university posts and started publishing from
the mid-seventies. A marxist anthropology developed, particularly in France
under the influence of Althusser, and it is round about this time that the term
fetishism in the marxist sense made its appearance in the anthropological liter
ature (for example in Godelier's Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology (1977),
first published in French in 1973).
This development is also related to the blurring of boundaries between differ
ent disciplines and the related extension of topics which anthropologists could
legitimately study. Marxist economists became interested in non-western soci
eties and anthropologists were no longer only concerned with simple societies
but also with the effects of capitalist production and development (Taussig 1980,
Thoden van Velzen 1990).
Then there is the recent increase in interest in material culture studies, which
have moved back into the mainstream of academic anthropology (Van Beek 1990;
Miller 1987, 1990).
This use of the term is not unproblematic. For both Ellen and Miller fetishism
refers very generally to certain aspects of the relationship between people and
objects. Ellen claims that it is an aspect of all thought and he uses the term
to refer to four characteristics of the relationship between people and objects.
Miller takes one of these characteristics, objectification, as his point of departure
and uses the term fetishism to refer to the alienation which occurs when people
are unable to reappropriate their externalisations. Thoden van Velzen uses the
term to refer to a system of ideas which masks reality. As in the case of the
ethnographic use of fetishism, the question of its necessity also arises here. Would
what Ellen, Miller and Thoden van Velzen are trying to say be any less clear
if they abandoned the term fetishism and simply spoke of cognitive processes,
cultural representations, alienation and ideology?
What has happened is that fetishism has itself become a fetish. It is an
objectification, a cultural representation which we have created and over which
we have now lost control. It both reveals and conceals.
Marx borrowed the term from early anthropology to refer to our alienation
from commodities. From marxism it has been re-appropriated back into anthro
pology. In a certain sense it resembles Miller's blue jeans. There is a basic,
though sometimes minimal, substance of meaning which each author who uses

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the term adapts and expands to suit his own purpose. But this pluralism result
ing from re-appropriation does not reduce fetishisation but is the very cause of
it. The more the term is used in this pluralistic way the less we are able to grasp
what exactly it is that it refers to, while at the same time we become more and
more convinced that it does refer to something. It seems to me that the time is
right for its abolition.

Notes

1. I will limit my discussion to the English language literature.

References

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