Image 1: David and Ayça in Harringay, London, 2017 © Elif Sarican ![]() It is this assumption about human history that Graeber sets out to prove validĮverything: A New History of Humanity, which he co-authored with theĪrcheologist David Wengrow: Humanity has always practiced anarchistic forms of humanīehavior and social organization-since the Ice Age. The same goes for the rejection of the state and of allįorms of structural violence, inequality, or domination.” (Ibid: 3) Arguably, Principles of anarchism-self-organization, voluntary association, mutualĪid-referred to forms of human behavior they assumed to have been around aboutĪs long as humanity. New-they simply made a faithful assumption that, in Graeber’s words, “the basic The “founding figures” of anarchism did not think they invented anything Society, the belief that such a society could actually exist” (Ibid: 4). That certain others would be much better ones on which to build a livable Involves “the rejection of certain types of social relations, the confidence Anarchism can be thought of as a faith, Graeber asserts, which Instead, it is more about a particular attitude,Īnarchists (Ibid: 4). Is able to observe the strange affinity between anthropology and anarchism in Fragments because in his version,Īnarchism is not about a body of theory bequeathed in the 19 thĬentury by “founding figures” such as Bakunin, Kropotkin and Proudhon that one While grounding hope for living collectively with greater freedom in more egalitarian Unravel the seeming inevitability of our current social and political institutions, Graeber himself was fascinatedīy this, the range of human possibilities in the past and the present, which could “there was something about anthropological thought in particular-its keenĪwareness of the very range of human possibilities-that gave it an affinity toĪnarchism from the very beginning” (Ibid: 13). ![]() The “strange affinity” between anarchism and anthropology (Ibid: 12). Radical movements, and radical movements-particularly anarchism-useful and interestingįragments, Graeber explores what he names This is characteristic of Graeber: theĭesire to render social theory-particularly anthropology-usefully interesting to Those who are trying to help bring about a world in which people are free to Radical theory that would, in Graeber’s words, “actually be of interest to ![]() Broadly, Fragments seeks to outline a body of Theory that Graeber is proposing in this spirited text. Will therefore limit myself to sketching some basic elements of the kind of social The seeds of many of the major arguments Graeber was to develop later in life. The pamphlet is impossible to summarizeĪnd discuss fully in twenty minutes, especially since in hindsight, it bears Graeber calls it a pamphlet, “a series of thoughts, sketches of potential theories,Īnd tiny manifestos” (Graeber 2004: 1). In 2004 in the inspirational context of a veritably exploding anarchism aroundĪn Anarchist Anthropology (referred to here on as Fragments)is a tiny and
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