Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - Re: [permaculture] anthropology and permaculture

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Primal Parent <primalparent@hotmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] anthropology and permaculture
  • Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 13:19:09 +0000


i got my degree in anthropology.
looking at native systems actually led me to permaculture...

>kevin wrote
> 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 feel (or "rationally think" for others) that there is a myriad of reasons.
(in fact i swore to stay out of any future political discussions ever since
the ron paul debate a while back). one of the main reasons i believe is fear
- either fear of the other side taking power or fear that you side will lose
power, fear that the constitution will be shredded or fear that terrorist
will attack, so forth.

the fear comes (in part) from our culture and the system where "the threat of
violence is perpetually suspended."

actually, david graeber can probably explain the origins of it better than i
can.

but i feel from an anthro-permie standpoint if we look to other models - or
more precisely natural models - to inform us on pc designing, then we can
just as easily look at natural models for "political" designing ...which
leads many to critique the model of western civilization itself.







> 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 some unpublished, some previously published only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
> _______________________________________________
> permaculture mailing list
> permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Subscribe or unsubscribe here:
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
>
>
>

_________________________________________________________________
Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live.
http://www.windowslive.com/connect.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_Wave2_newways_112007



Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page