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some unpublished, some previously published only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
tasknow more urgent than everof making the
possibilities of other peoples worlds the basis
for understanding our own. Marshall Sahlins,
University of Chicago
Graebers 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 theyre 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 Harpers Magazine, New Left
Review, and numerous scholarly journals
[permaculture] anthropology and permaculture,
kevin s, 12/04/2007