The way in which society organizes production. K. Marx and F. Engels (1974) claimed that under the capitalist mode of production, bourgeois democratic society is naturalized, so that the way people act and feel is universalized as ‘human nature’, in order to preserve the status quo. M. Sahlins (1972) identifies a peasant family mode of production, which he describes as pre-capitalist, while F. Ellis (1988) stresses the flexibility of the family in agricultural and non-agricultural activities. This rather deterministic view of the critical influence of the mode of production has been challenged, for example, because of the Eurocentric nature of the argument. Nonetheless, geographers recognize that each mode of production creates its own geography: for example, capitalism seems to be inextricably wedded to uneven development (see, among many, Walker (1978) Rev. Radical Pol. Econs 10, 3).