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  • From: kevin s <k.skvorak@verizon.net>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] anthropology and permaculture
  • Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:41:18 -0500

i have been appreciating the (most recent of reoccurring) "politics" thread. when these threads come around, i always feel very mixed feelings when i observe the tangled and ardent efforts at communications that always mix hope, fear, 'facts', science, a whole bunch else into "politics". i am holding back not knowing what to contribute, and wondering what it is exactly that provokes hostility whenever the topic appears. i think we can never understate or underestimate how wounded we all are.

are there a lot of permaculturalist anthropologists out there?

i want to highly recommend some (ostensibly) anthropological writings from a friend. he makes some really acute observations, and i think does a great service to those folks out there whose deepest living needs are directed towards change, and are working to manifest it.

best,
kevin

fwd:

from: From: David Graeber <David.Graeber@mac.com>
yup, I went and put out another book. This one is a collection of essays, some published,
some unpublished, some previously published only in French or Italian. I think it's a
pretty good collection, but I'm not sure yet how widely it's going to be distributed so you
might have to go to AK Press' web page or Amazon. Also do feel free to pass this on to
any appropriate lists, individuals, etc.

-----------------------------------------------------

“If anthropology consists of making the apparently wild thought of others logically compelling in their own cultural settings and intellectually revealing of the human condition, then David Graeber is the consummate anthropologist. Not only does he accomplish this profound feat, he redoubles it by the critical task—now more urgent than ever—of making the possibilities of other people’s worlds the basis for understanding our own.” —Marshall Sahlins, University of Chicago

“Graeber’s ideas are rich and wide-ranging; he pushes us to expand the boundaries of what we admit to be possible, or even thinkable.”—Steven Shaviro, Wayne State University

In this new collection, David Graeber revisits questions raised in his popular book, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Written in an unpretentious style that uses accessible and entertaining language to convey complex theoretical ideas, these twelve essays cover a lot of ground, including the origins of capitalism, the history of European table manners, love potions in rural Madagascar, and the phenomenology of giant puppets at street protests. But they’re linked by a clear purpose: to explore the nature of social power and the forms that resistance to it have taken, or might take in the future.

Anarchism is currently undergoing a worldwide revival, in many ways replacing Marxism as the theoretical and moral center of new revolutionary social movements. It has, however, left little mark on the academy. While anarchists and other visionaries have turned to anthropology for ideas and inspiration, anthropologists are reluctant to enter into serious dialogue. David Graeber is not. These essays, spanning almost twenty years, show how scholarly concerns can be of use to radical social movements, and how the perspectives of such movements shed new light on debates within the academy.


Table of Contents:


PART I: SOME THOUGHTS ON THE ORIGINS OF OUR CURRENT PREDICAMENT

1 Manners, Deference, and Private Property: or, Elements for a General Theory of Hierarchy.

2 The Very Idea of Consumption: Desire, Phantasms, and the Aesthetics of Destruction from Medieval Times to the Present

3 Turning Modes of Production Inside-Out, or, Why Capitalism is a Transformation of Slavery (short version).

4 Fetishism as Social Creativity, or, Fetishes are Gods in the Process of Construction.



PART II: PROVISIONAL AUTONOMOUS ZONE: DILEMMAS OF AUTHORITY IN RURAL
MADAGASCAR

5 Provisional Autonomous Zone, or, The Ghost-State in Madagascar

6 Dancing with Corpses Reconsidered: an Interpretation of Famadihana (in Arivonimamo, Madagascar)

7 Love Magic and Political Morality in Central Madagascar, 1875-1990

8 Oppression



PART III: DIRECT ACTION, DIRECT DEMOCRACY, AND SOCIAL THEORY

9 The Twilight of Vanguardism

10 Social Theory as Science and Utopia (or, Does the Prospect of a General Sociological Theory Still Mean Anything in an Age of Globalization?)

11 There Never Was a West: or, Democracy Emerges From the Spaces In Between

12 On the Phenomenology of Giant Puppets: Broken Windows, Imaginary Jars of Urine, and the Cosmological Role of the Police in American Culture.

David Graeber is an anthropologist and activist who currently teaches at the University of London and has been active in direct-action groups, including the Direct Action Network, People's Global Action, and the Industrial Workers of the World. He is the author of Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value, and Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar, and has written for Harper’s Magazine, New Left Review, and numerous scholarly journals




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