David Graeber and David Wengrow – ‘The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity’. This new book from Graeber and Wengrow seeks to challenge assumptions about human social evolution and narratives of a linear development from primitive brutes to civilised people. Instead, the authors draw attention to the diversity of earlier human societies, arguing that humans had lived in large, complex, and decentralized societies for thousands of years. In doing so, Graeber and Wengrow fundamentally transform both our understanding of the past, and our vision for new ways of organising society in the future.

Schedule

  • Thursday 23rd December - Foreword, Chapters 1 & 2
  • Sunday 2nd January - Chapters 3 & 4
  • Sunday 9th January - Chapters 5 & 6
  • Sunday 16th January - Chapters 7 & 8
  • Sunday 23rd January - Chapters 9 & 10
  • Sunday 30th January - Chapter 11 & Conclusion

Outline

  • RedCloud [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Their general thesis seems to be that these societies were highly conscious about the political and hierarchical implications of their modes of production/ positions of authority … you name it, and thus consciously decided to form their societies in a way that accommodated their preferred type of social relations.

    I don't think this is the main theses of the book, although they do infer this at times. I think their main goal is to simply dispel myths surrounding early man: that they were all innocent, or all violent, or all stupid; or that certain ways of organising societies were natural or inevitable, or that human societies all developed in the same linear way. By helping people to gain a new understanding of the past, I think they're trying to help people think differently about how things could be in the future. That, for example, a city doesn't necessarily have to be hierarchical and authoritarian in order for it to function. There's also the stuff about finding out how we got "stuck" but I'm not really sure where they're going with that since they've only touched on it briefly where I am in the book.

    That said, I think that in the places where they do argue that some societies were arranged in a conscious way isn't necessarily incorrect per se. Like its possible that some societies had an aristocracy at some point but ended up overthrowing them and arranging things with the intention of stopping it from happening again - this wouldn't be too far-fetched if we're to believe earlier humans were as intelligent as we are, why wouldn't some of them seek to overthrow authoritarian systems just as we do, or punish those who seek to place themselves over others in the first place? Their thoughts are shaped by their conditions and experiences just as ours are, so I don't think its too unreasonable to say that some of these more egalitarian societies were responses to or attempts to prevent more hierarchical ones. Although, even if that was the case, I agree that the Davids would need to do a much better job in proving it, if something like that could even be proved at all.

    And with this framing, I don’t really see how this: [...] is supported by this [...]

    Yeah I agree with this. From what I can tell, their source doesn't exactly back up what they say, and I don't like that they don't mention the climate factors at play. Its still possible that they're partly right - that more people could have kept farming using the more resilient crops but perhaps chose not to because the crops failures made them lose trust in the benefits of agriculture, so they turned back to foraging the plentiful supply of wild hazelnuts instead. This could also explain the several centuries without agriculture even with the favourable climate restored. But again, they need to be more explicit with their reasoning for thinking it was a conscious decision and they need to provide better evidence for this.

    • Invidiarum [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      So, I'm not denying fluid hierarchies nor that the structure of a society can be changed. But I've heard (more from the direction of psychology, but anyways) that general trends exist, according to material circumstances. E.g. societies with complex irrigation systems tend to be more communitarian (to keep them from clogging up/overflowing/drying out) while it tends to be easier to be individualistic if you just have to wait for rain. Or that cattle-herding likely produces more warlike and male dominated societies (since cattle are highly mobile and easily stolen and thus societies are organized around cattle-raids and and protection against them).

      This is the oversimplified way I remember it, but it just seems intuitively to be an important factor. And therefore I'm annoyed that they just gloss over it (as far as I've read). Maybe it's obsolete for state of the art anthropology, but then it ought to be addressed and criticized and not left to be the big elephant in the room.

      • D61 [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Or that cattle-herding likely produces more warlike and male dominated societies (since cattle are highly mobile and easily stolen and thus societies are organized around cattle-raids and and protection against them).

        I just finished chapter 5 and there's something similar mentioned there. But its with preserved fish instead of cattle. And the compare/contrast was between two regions where there was a bit of a difference in how the tribes in those areas did things and the authors were trying to use fish/acorns as a way to illustrate the idea that groups in contact with each other, living in a places with similar resources, knowing similar skills, and aware of each other's cultures were able to do things completely differently at the same time.

      • RedCloud [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I see, I believe this is something they go over in chapter 5, which I've just started reading. We'll have to see where Graeber and Wengrow go with this.