Work as cultural production: labour and self–identity among southwest French wine–growers

I criticize insufficiencies in the Marxist conceptualization of labour as instrumental action as a departure–point to evaluate the relation between work and self–identity among southwest French wine–growers who are members of co–operatives. The symbolic distinction between two wine–growing regions, and the tension between wine–growing as an artisanal practice and wine–growing as science, are used historically and ethnographically to argue for a cultural view of work and self–identity that is differentiated and thus acknowledges the potentials and constraints of power. The article also makes use of French ethnographic materials to address broader issues of the anthropology of work, the critique of science, and the cultural means through which subaltern subjects challenge hegemonic culture and the political economy of exploitation.