Hey Hari “What I have realised now is that there is a lot of selective cherry picking going on…. For I have come across now a lot of data strongly arguing the erection of early stratification and evident inequality. By “early” - I mean Bronze age period. Although the periodisation is problematic since it varies by global site - and has led to some racist prior understandings of this…”
I completely agree. My primary concern with the Graeber and Wengrow text and even the video to a lesser extent (it was pretty decent) is the naturalization of anthropological history which seems to oscillate between empirically limited facts, mythopoetic folk narratives, and selective geographical references that present the ideal of a global historical perspective without as you state of Marx’s work on the “Asiatic mode of production,” “finishing the job.” Of course neither a video nor a 700 page book can be expected to fully present an accurate and totally complete historical narrative, I simply fear historicism by the social sciences in general tend to naturalize European imperialism as the loci, motive, and trajectory of historical progression. To me the method of anthropological study is inescapably idealist and the video kind of gets to this reductionism in the conversation of patriarchy and patrilocality specifically when it universalizes every form of kinship strategy into 6 idealized categories which seems to normalize the nuclear family and western ideal of marriage against the reality of extended families, kinship strategies such as bilateral transmission of property rights in cultures such as the Serer people of Senegal where patrilocality, matrilocality, hierarchy and egalitarianism play out amongst the various strategies of different tribes within the prehistoric Senegalese tradition a theme taken up at length by Dennis Galvan in “The State Must Be Our Master of Fire.” As others have noted David has been known to take shots at Marxism and I like the videos attack on the mysterious assumption that human creativity somehow magically allows for the flip-flopping between hierarchies and egalitarianism. The interesting thing about both Graeber and Wengrow work as well as the video is the paradoxical manner in which alternative ways of occupying larger cities or citadels subtly refutes the universalization of the global hunter gatherer hypothesis exposing nuanced ways in which nomadic or sedentary connection to geography, culture and climate necessarily produce specific social configurations that cannot be reduced to a monolith but this reminds me of Marx’s preface to The Critique of Political Economy basically the economic base versus superstructure argument. Last but not least, this topic brings back nostalgia about left wing organization a decade ago versus today. At our worker’s cooperative we were able to witness David present a book talk on his work on debt and hang out and talk very informally afterwards. To me it seemed like David was aware of some of the “maneuvers” anthropology makes and the limitations this imposes on radical scholarship in general. Although there is definitely much room for criticism I do miss David’s presence and how excited he was to reimagine the historical narrative even if this creativity is inescapable from the problems associated with the very research models used. Cheers, Ben -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40854): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40854 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117988661/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
