Thought this was an interesting and well reasoned critque of some aspects of the Dawn of Everything, particularly how Graeber’s conclusions could lead one to take a misinformed wrong path toward changing modern society that may give poor results.
I saw that video a while ago and found the critique very unconvincing. I recommend actually reading the book, because it gets misrepresented in the video above.
Wanted to come back to this after getting about halfway through the book so far, as well as finishing What Is Politics’ series on the book (which, it turns out, only focus on the first 3 chapters). My conclusion is: they’re kinda both right.
As someone who has never looked into anthropology, Dawn of Everything showcases some incredibly valuable history that I likely wouldn’t have stumbled across by myself. The historic debate with Kandiaronk and his background in particular was exceptionally cool to read about, and the breadth of examples Graeber and Wengrow have to show all in one place is astounding.
What Is Politics’ critique, though, does have merit IMO. There are a fair amount of times Dawn of Everything either misquotes, misleads, or withholds relevant context of the hunter gatherer tribes and cultures they reference. As an example, David & Wengrow suggest that cultures which experience only seasonal hierarchy are proof that these ancient cultures experimented with different forms of structuring society, but they left out the parts of the studies they reference to make those claims that show those seasonal hierarchies are absolutely not a conscious choice, but one that is quite clearly something the people being dominated by the hierarchy tolerate only due to environmental circumstance.
As an example, Marcel Mauss’s study on the Eskimo: The Inuit experience somewhat egalitarian lives during the winter, and a more strict hierarchy during the summer where things become decidedly patriarchal, as the hunting men have full domination over their families. This is not out of choice by the women, but due to the seasonal change forcing their food supply (which concentrates in the winter) to disperse during the summer, leading individual families to venture out alone to continue to hunt game. This isolates women from their families which would normally act as a power equalizing effect against abusive or dominating husbands. The patriarchal domination does not appear to be a willing choice or experiment in any practical sense.
I also think it’s odd that they seem to be suggesting that personal choice is what ultimately caused these egalitarian outcomes, but then also mention materialist reasons for why a culture might’ve stayed egalitarian, such as their reference to one tribe’s use of a constantly shifting fertile river bank for agriculture as not lending itself to laying down territorial claims, which likely aided that culture in not becoming hierarchical.
What is Politics definitely is hyper materialist, but I think he makes a solid case in many of his critiques. His materialism does, however, seem to blind him to the solid argument Dawn of Everything makes that culture and conscious choice does seem capable of playing a large part in shaping society, such as the case of the differences between the Californian and Northwest coast native American tribes.
Without having finished the book, I can’t make a final conclusion. But at least from what I’ve read so far, I’d put forward that environmental conditions do seem to have a not insignificant influence in determining whether an ancient society will lean toward becoming hierarchical or egalitarian, simply due to the conditions being more or less favorable to a group or individual gaining a foothold over others due to resource access. But culture and choice seem capable of playing a large part in that outcome as well.
I think ultimately Dawn of Everything is going to result in more regular folk becoming aware of the facts that our ancestors were fully capable of egalitarian societies and that it was in fact the norm until recent history, which is a terrific boon, and I’ll certainly continue to recommend it for that reason alone. Though I think What is Politics’ series is also enlightening, and a good companion piece to the book to fill out areas that Graeber & Wengrow likely got a bit wrong just due to the sheer size and complexity of the project.
I think G&W use “experimentation” is only applied to an entire group of people. Of course individual members are often victims of the circumstances, but except in rare marginal situations like early Viking settlers on Island being driven to extinction by changing climatic conditions, groups of people have collective choice over their location and mode of subsistence.
Thus saying that peoples’ social relations are a result of material conditions is usually not even half the picture.
But for me the bigger take-away from The Dawn of Everything is that interelations between groups of people, both in place and time and usually in opposition to each other, seem to have such a strong impact on how they chose to structure their social interactions. G&W argue that this is something scientists often miss because they focus on one group in isolation. Furthermore, they argue that there a certain level of confusing cause and effect: when a group of people is conciously moving into marginal lands (for example to escape domination by another group of people) that forces them to swich to a different mode of subsistence, then the ultimate cause of the resulting change is not the material confitions.
To be fair I think this video was made before the book was actually out. Not sure why he decided to do that but I think I remember him saying in another video that the book was better than expected.
The guy seems to be an orthodox marxist (or maoist?), and Graeber is implicitly questioning the validity of the marxist concept of material determinism in that book (with some pretty compelling historical evidence). Obviously that didn’t go down well with the true believers 😅
I don’t know if he’s put words to his exact ideology but it seems to be anarchist or at least anarchist adjacent, albeit with lots of heterodox opinions on various things. But you’re right that he’s very pro-materialism.
I generally enjoy his content but I haven’t read the book so this series was a bit beyond me.
I’m mostly familiar with him from his series on why all marxist revolutions were dictatorships, where he’s quite scathing towards Marxism and all of its offshoots, and instead points out how Anarchist thinkers predicted all those poor outcomes, and how superior their solutions and methods were.
Overall from what I’ve seen of him, his opinions remind me of Bookchin’s more than anything (though I’m basing that on old interviews and the few things I’ve read of Bookchin’s).
Hmm, I admit I have only seen a few of his videos, but those I have seen had a strong entryism smell of trying to cater to an Anarchist audience without actually being an Anarchist himself. But maybe I am wrong and he just spend too much time in ML circles.
I also remember this segment in which he said that he found the book was better than the previous published articles (which were to be turned into a book), even tho his criticism was based on them, not the book itself.
