Althusser distinguishes mode of production from social formation as analytic abstraction versus concrete totality

Evidence

Althusser (who was profoundly influenced by Gramsci) and his coauthors of Reading Capital (Althusser and Balibar [London: New Left Books, 1970]) make a critical distinction between “mode of production,” which refers to the basic forms of economic relations which characterize a society, but which is an analytic abstraction, since no society can function by its economy alone, and, on the other hand, what they call the “social formation.” By this latter term they meant to invoke the idea that societies are necessarily complexly structured totalities, with different levels of articulation (the economic, the political, the ideological instances) in different combinations, each combination giving rise to a different configuration of social forces and hence to a different type of social development. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 97

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core differentiation between ‘mode of production’ (economic abstraction) and ‘social formation’ (concrete totality of economic, political, ideological levels) — a foundational term for critical theory and Islamophobia’s analysis of racialized societies.
• XREF: Connects directly to Orientalism’s method of concrete historical specificity over abstract universal claims, and to the social-formation analytic the Islamophobia field will apply to postcolonial societies.