Thanks for sharing this. Graeber’s name came up many times during a recent a deep dive on ancient Mesoamerican societies. I had seen his new book The Dawn of Everything as well as an older text, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value, and was eager to pick them up. I was unaware he had passed, however. Nearly all of his previous topics of research and publishing were of interest to me; it is a shame to realize this most recent book will be the last.
What a way to go to. The book, cowritten with archeologist David Wengrow, ties together so many different developments within archeology and anthropology that are driving some major paradigm shifts. These massively important paradigm shifts have mostly been confined to academia so far and I don't there's been such a broad attempt to tie them altogether like this. Especially not one geared towards the public
This book will undoubtedly change the way we talk about non-industrial peoples and lifestyles for decades to come.
Began "The Dawn of Everything" about a week ago, still on chapter 3.
Chapter 2 was very, very good. Worth the whole book alone. It begins with by questioning "why did Rousseau wrote about inequality if 100 years before no one in western culture cared about it"? Then he goes to show how the themes of liberty and social equality came from Canadian First Nations criticism of western culture. It is very well argued, solid and mind-blowing.
Sometimes the book gets too much into petty fights. I didn't like its takes on Yuval Harari's "Sapiens" or Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel". But that's a matter of my personal taste.
The problem with that part of the book is that it's wildly historically inaccurate. The Diggers and the Levellers were not just trying to enact a much more egalitarian society 100 years before Rousseau but were also (along with a bunch of other non conformist thinkers and doers across Europe) busy producing a vast body of populist pamphlets that later Enlightenment thinkers drew on, stripped of their theological content and rendered more palatable. Dismissing these as peasant revolts is the sort of intellectual snobbery that most early modern historians got over 50 years ago when it was realised that the Enlightenment didn't suddenly spring from nothing in France in 1715 and actually started much earlier in the protestant lands. Maybe this hasn't penetrated David Graeber's corner of academia yet?
It's good to see the Jesuit Relations (basically the National Geographic of its time) being introduced to a popular audience but the notion that the ideals of liberty and social equality didn't exist in European thought prior to contact between American and European cultures is just wrong.
> It begins with by questioning "why did Rousseau wrote about inequality if 100 years before no one in western culture cared about it"? Then he goes to show how the themes of liberty and social equality came from Canadian First Nations criticism of western culture
Well, La Boétie's "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" dates back to 200 years before Rousseau, and I wouldn't say it was inspired by American Indians. I am not saying that the discovery and then the deep relations that France did have with American Indians did not play an important in the literature and reflections: on the contrary just a bit after La Boétie's time, Montaigne integrated them in his thinking. That was still over 150 years before Rousseau.
Edit: There were other major transformations at work, like the fact that before 1500, writers would either be lords or strongly depend on King or lords both for their income and for being allowed to publish. It was a Middle Age organisation, with a chivalry based nobility; writing essays was not a thing, the number of themes was as reduced as the number of forms. Then society organisation changed, bourgeoisie and nobles started mixing more and more; writing was more long-form (technical reasons come into play too) and of course expanded the number of themes it dealt with.
There were plenty of Westerners who were concerned with inequality -- there were numerous failed peasant rebellions throughout Europe ever since the Middle Ages.
He fully addresses that in the book. Don't take my word for it, I don't have his explaining skills.
But what he addresses is radical equality, as a fundamental value, as opposed to "less inequality". Equality under a ruler or rebellion against abuses is not the same as thinking the whole society as composed of equals. Think of no-slavery, equality among genders, sexual freedom, etc. Even thinkers that thought about equality before Iluminism (e.g. Thomas More) didn't go that far.
I strongly recommend you reading, at least, chapter 2 in the book. Is way deeper than what I explain.
Having read too much history for fun and jobs, the comment sounds wrong. You can go back to the Roman republic to find people concerned about this (Gracchi brothers).
I haven't read the book but I assume here Rousseau is serving as an emblem for the Enlightenment (or an aspect of it at least), which is generally regarded as uhh kind of a big deal. That there were earlier Europeans here and there who discussed some of the same concepts is of little significance.
I'm not as familiar with how anthropologists feel about Yuval Harari, but fwiw Graeber is far from unique amongst academic anthropologists in his distaste for Jared Diamond's work and the misconceptions and myths that it spread
It's pretty common in social science/philosophy that a paradigm gets popular, overly drawn upon and that then pisses off the next commentators.
Graener & Wengrove are as susceptible to this as others.
I mean... the origins of enlightenment liberalism, the origin of money and such don't really have distinct answers. There are always multiple, arguable narratives.
The "paradigm" concept is all about narrowing these to simple causal chains and dynamics... which then limits the next generation.
We love paradigms, anti-paradigms, paradigm shifts... So, every author likes to rebel against the preceding simplification and argue their own, calling them myths and misconceptions.
For the most part, imo, excess is what drives it all. The Jared Diamond paradigms, YNH's, Marx's... Graener & Wengrow are focused on challenging their paradigms as much as they are on promoting their own.
If successful, these new paradigms develop their own excesses and a new generation can get pissy with them.
>It begins with by questioning "why did Rousseau wrote about inequality if 100 years before no one in western culture cared about it"?
I really hope he doesn't say that because Rousseau is just the high point of a debate about luxury and sociability that runs throughout the whole eighteenth century. He and others like him were influenced by travelogues from the New World describing natives as living simply and equitably. But he was equally influenced by the objective conditions of early modern capitalism, ancient Stoicism, and Christian writings about greed and pride. He wrote his own 'Confessions' in tribute to St.Augustine, after all.
I like Graeber, and he has a truly original mind, but he doesn't have the best reputation in academia for being 100% scholarly.
My pre-ordered copy of "The Dawn of Humanity", hot off the press, just arrived yesterday, from Bookshop.org, right on schedule. I am preparing to experience all my cherished preconceptions exploding.
I'm ashamed to admit I've never actually read any of Graeber's books, even though I'm fairly anarchist-leaning. I really need to change that. I didn't even know that he finished another one before he died, so I guess I'll have to add that to my list as well.
He’s got a lot of great talks and other appearances on YouTube. I don’t read much but I listen to stuff like this on Bluetooth headphones while I clean the house and do other physical work. Often instead of reading an authors book I will listen to them give the same book talk at three different venues. I don’t claim it’s as good as reading the book but compared to buying the book and watching it collect dust on my shelf it’s a winner.
I recommend Debt the first 5000 years as well as The Democracy Project. Both of which were absolutely fascinating to me. Solidarity forever and rest in power Graeber.
Some of them were popular enough to get audiobook versions, which can help you get started if sitting down to read big tomes is something you find difficult
Bakunin-reading anarchist here admits to the same ignorance. Fascinated to learn that he was an early supporter of the Kurdish struggle in northern Syria.
I am not an anarchist at all but I think he has some very good criticisms of a lot of fundamental beliefs among modern day economists. Economics as a profession is built upon a set of axioms or premises about human nature and society. Graeber cannot go toe to toe with modern economists with their equations but he does a brilliant job of tearing apart the assumptions of economists within the classical school of though.
I lived “Debt: first 5000 years” and “Bullshit jobs”
Both challenge a lot of truthisms about our modern capitalist world. I am surprised the ideas in these books have not become more widely known on the political left.
He epitomized, embodied how and what public intellectuals should be, should aspire to: the a willingness to ask hard questions, to challenge conventional preconceived notions. It seems like academia these days is more about maintaining the status quo. If your ideas are engineering debate, it means you're doing your job.
He didn’t challenge any conventional preconceived notions. His parents were leftists and he grew up in a commune and all his views literally revolved around this political ideology.
Being incredibly rude to people who disagreeing with him. Accusing anybody that find flaws in his book as being pawn of capitalism. Doing poor research and ignoring all the evidence that doesn't fit his model. Putting anthropology above other social sciences. What an amazing guy.
This is a very HN way of looking at academia. The vast majority of academics aren't looking to be "public", they quietly do great work for decades, passing their knowledge down to their students. You don't hear about them because their main job is to educate not bloviate.
Not saying Graber does this, but there are academics (I can think of a Canadian professor) who are very much "public intellectuals" but whose entire career is popular due to controversy. Is that person educating or is he leading a social movement? I guess that's up for debate, but that's hwy people know who he is, not because of great work.
Very different perspective from the debate here in Norway . Here is is seen more as a duty of academics to engage with the public and a push to get them to do that more. What value is knowledge if it is not known? We live in a media world increasingly dominated by quacks and pseudo science. The need for real experts to make themselves heard is bigger than ever.
Thus at least hear in Norway the academics who popularized knowledge and engage with the public are celebrated. Politicians have started to put more pressure on academics to speak up.
I know from a mother who was a life long journalist that it was always very hard to get experts to talk to media. They are so focused on a level of accuracy and formality that often is entirely unsuitable to address the public at large. But that does not mean that the alternative is to let quacks dominate public discourse.
If we're thinking of the same professor/Kermit the Frog impersonator, he was definitely somewhat of a public figure before he got involved with the C-16 controversy.
If you look at his public appearances from before this viral clip (and even for a year or two after), most of it is fairly well grounded and uncontroversial (or at least, not controversial for controversy's sake).
I felt like sharing this comment I left here when he passed, as it confirms for me the adoration many of us apparently felt for him.
“David saved my academic career, if not my life. When I faced expulsion from the LSE, having already left the University of Chicago due to the health issues, he wrote a compelling letter on my behalf when there was no reason for him to do so. I wasn’t even in his department.
Although he and I disagreed about a number of things, I will forever appreciate him sticking his neck out for me when there was little evidence to suggest it was worth doing.
Recently had a throwaway thought while reading The Dawn of Everything.
The formation of cultural norms fundamentally sit on the idea of recollection of the distant past and not of that which has just happened in front of you.
Example:
The reason for wearing ties is part of the western cultural code not because each person distinctly and has first-hand witnessed how it started, it's just being shaped by historical precedent.
So what happens, over time, to cultural norms when the recollection can be made in first-person, distinct ways? (Think the internet, VR)
This has happened to some extent forever, through oral tradition, but manufactured media certainly accelerates the process. If you’re interested in this kind of thing i’d recommend Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson, in which the author analyzes the way nationalism developed with the invention of the printing press. It's a classic text of anthropology and absolutely blew my mind when i read it as a teenager.
Readit News
This book will undoubtedly change the way we talk about non-industrial peoples and lifestyles for decades to come.
Rest in power, David Graeber
In any case, thanks for the link.
Chapter 2 was very, very good. Worth the whole book alone. It begins with by questioning "why did Rousseau wrote about inequality if 100 years before no one in western culture cared about it"? Then he goes to show how the themes of liberty and social equality came from Canadian First Nations criticism of western culture. It is very well argued, solid and mind-blowing.
Sometimes the book gets too much into petty fights. I didn't like its takes on Yuval Harari's "Sapiens" or Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel". But that's a matter of my personal taste.
It's good to see the Jesuit Relations (basically the National Geographic of its time) being introduced to a popular audience but the notion that the ideals of liberty and social equality didn't exist in European thought prior to contact between American and European cultures is just wrong.
Well, La Boétie's "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" dates back to 200 years before Rousseau, and I wouldn't say it was inspired by American Indians. I am not saying that the discovery and then the deep relations that France did have with American Indians did not play an important in the literature and reflections: on the contrary just a bit after La Boétie's time, Montaigne integrated them in his thinking. That was still over 150 years before Rousseau.
Edit: There were other major transformations at work, like the fact that before 1500, writers would either be lords or strongly depend on King or lords both for their income and for being allowed to publish. It was a Middle Age organisation, with a chivalry based nobility; writing essays was not a thing, the number of themes was as reduced as the number of forms. Then society organisation changed, bourgeoisie and nobles started mixing more and more; writing was more long-form (technical reasons come into play too) and of course expanded the number of themes it dealt with.
But what he addresses is radical equality, as a fundamental value, as opposed to "less inequality". Equality under a ruler or rebellion against abuses is not the same as thinking the whole society as composed of equals. Think of no-slavery, equality among genders, sexual freedom, etc. Even thinkers that thought about equality before Iluminism (e.g. Thomas More) didn't go that far.
I strongly recommend you reading, at least, chapter 2 in the book. Is way deeper than what I explain.
Graener & Wengrove are as susceptible to this as others.
I mean... the origins of enlightenment liberalism, the origin of money and such don't really have distinct answers. There are always multiple, arguable narratives.
The "paradigm" concept is all about narrowing these to simple causal chains and dynamics... which then limits the next generation.
We love paradigms, anti-paradigms, paradigm shifts... So, every author likes to rebel against the preceding simplification and argue their own, calling them myths and misconceptions.
For the most part, imo, excess is what drives it all. The Jared Diamond paradigms, YNH's, Marx's... Graener & Wengrow are focused on challenging their paradigms as much as they are on promoting their own.
If successful, these new paradigms develop their own excesses and a new generation can get pissy with them.
I really hope he doesn't say that because Rousseau is just the high point of a debate about luxury and sociability that runs throughout the whole eighteenth century. He and others like him were influenced by travelogues from the New World describing natives as living simply and equitably. But he was equally influenced by the objective conditions of early modern capitalism, ancient Stoicism, and Christian writings about greed and pride. He wrote his own 'Confessions' in tribute to St.Augustine, after all.
I like Graeber, and he has a truly original mind, but he doesn't have the best reputation in academia for being 100% scholarly.
I lived “Debt: first 5000 years” and “Bullshit jobs”
Both challenge a lot of truthisms about our modern capitalist world. I am surprised the ideas in these books have not become more widely known on the political left.
Dead Comment
Deleted Comment
Not saying Graber does this, but there are academics (I can think of a Canadian professor) who are very much "public intellectuals" but whose entire career is popular due to controversy. Is that person educating or is he leading a social movement? I guess that's up for debate, but that's hwy people know who he is, not because of great work.
Thus at least hear in Norway the academics who popularized knowledge and engage with the public are celebrated. Politicians have started to put more pressure on academics to speak up.
I know from a mother who was a life long journalist that it was always very hard to get experts to talk to media. They are so focused on a level of accuracy and formality that often is entirely unsuitable to address the public at large. But that does not mean that the alternative is to let quacks dominate public discourse.
If we're thinking of the same professor/Kermit the Frog impersonator, he was definitely somewhat of a public figure before he got involved with the C-16 controversy.
If you look at his public appearances from before this viral clip (and even for a year or two after), most of it is fairly well grounded and uncontroversial (or at least, not controversial for controversy's sake).
Deleted Comment
“David saved my academic career, if not my life. When I faced expulsion from the LSE, having already left the University of Chicago due to the health issues, he wrote a compelling letter on my behalf when there was no reason for him to do so. I wasn’t even in his department.
Although he and I disagreed about a number of things, I will forever appreciate him sticking his neck out for me when there was little evidence to suggest it was worth doing.
Thanks David.”
Deleted Comment
The formation of cultural norms fundamentally sit on the idea of recollection of the distant past and not of that which has just happened in front of you.
Example: The reason for wearing ties is part of the western cultural code not because each person distinctly and has first-hand witnessed how it started, it's just being shaped by historical precedent.
So what happens, over time, to cultural norms when the recollection can be made in first-person, distinct ways? (Think the internet, VR)