Hi Felix, Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I've been enjoying listening to various podcasts and interviews with Wengrow but I haven't got around to the book yet. LSE have had a seminar series recently on Graeber's work which is worth checking out. The final seminar is this week - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/join-david-graeber-tribute-lse-anthropology-friday-seminar-series-tickets-164329216109 You can also find videos from the previous seminars here - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc8UhtfokLNhzkGgeKvJWVw/featured The journal focaal has been publishing some texts related to the seminar series - http://www.focaalblog.com/
Best On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 at 12:28, Felix Stalder <[email protected]> wrote: > So, I finished reading "The Dawn of Everything", the new book by David > Graeber and David Wengrow. In many ways, it's the perfect book for our > dark historical moment. It's all about historical possibilities, yet not > in the future, but in the past. Thus, an escape and an inspiration. > It's an amazing read, so full of detail that's impossible to summarize. > You really should read it yourself. > > I'll just focus on the structure here. The book aims to deconstruct the > dominant linear narratives of human culture, in which the "agricultural > revolution" (which wasn't revolution) and the emergence of cities (which > were frequently used only for seasonal gatherings) inexorably lead to > inequality, domination, and "the state". There are two conventional > versions of this story: the loss of freedom/equality (Rousseau, Hariri, > etc) or the gain of civilization (Hobbes, Diamond, etc). Graeber and > Wengrow argue, in dizzying archeological and anthropological detail, > that both are wrong and severely curtail our imagination of social > potential. Their baseline assumption is that humans since the neolithic > are our cognitive equals. No more, but also no less intelligent than we > are, hence also no less capable of making decisions their own lives, > individually and collectively. So, no more treatment of foragers as > semi-apes living in small bands, unable to overcome by supposed > constants like Dunbar's 150 people threshold (after which social > stratification sets in). > > And decisions they made. The historical record reveals a "carnival > parade" of social forms, most of which do not fit the linear accounts. > Thus, non-modern societies have something to teach us, because they have > solved many of the problems we are grappling with. And, indeed, > historically they have. E.g. they make a strong case that the > enlightenment notion of personal freedom was first formulated by the > indigenous critique of European culture, by people like the Wendat > leader Kandiaronk. To structure the historical diversity of social > forms, they develop the notion of three sources of freedom: the capacity > to move away (and be received somewhere else), the capacity to refuse to > obey commands, and the capacity to collectively remake social relations. > At the same time, there are three sources of domination: violence > (sovereignty), knowledge (bureaucracy), and charisma (competitive > politics). It's easy to be reminded of Max Weber's definition of forms > of legitimate power (traditional, charismatic, rational) here, but > Graeber/Wengrow's notion is much more flexible because these sources are > not mutually exclusive, but rather they can be layered in top of own > another. > > While the three freedoms are related (take away one and the others will > start to crumble), the sources of domination are not. Often, only one of > them played an important role, while others were absent. Sometimes two > were co-present and only in the modern state, all three come together. > And, this is their political point, they don't need to stay together in > the future. > > While the book is great, it has a glaring hole in it. What is almost > entirely missing is the discussion of how this "carnival parade" of > social forms structured the relation to the environment, or, more > generally, how they were embedded in, and impacted on, the metabolic > system. While for much of the historical period they cover, this might > not have been too much of a concern, it is clearly one for us now and if > we are to remake our social relations, then this will be a key dimension > to transform. But it would probably be too much to ask from one single > book, already long enough, to cover everything, even with this title. > > > > -- > | |||||||||||||||||| http://felix.openflows.com | > | Open PGP | http://felix.openflows.com/pgp.txt | > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected] > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: >
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