#Fragments of an anarchist anthropology how to

That's the point.Īt the end, Graeber claims anthropologists have avoided speaking up for anarchy because they are hesitant to state big claims about the world. Obviously an anarchy can't fit into those standards because it's not a state. However, demanding of an anarchist community to fit into state standards is somewhat of an oxymoron. When discussing anarchism, people tend to refuse to acknowledge societies due to their smaller scale or lack of recognizable state traits. It is the government style of nowadays that stops us from being able to truly focus on compromise rather than beating the opponent.

Rather than a law ending with a pass or fail, we can do politics through conversation and debate, finding the middle ground and making sure no one ends up unhappy. Graeber describes the value of democracy that is built on debates. Even if we do our best to make sure minorities have representation and are protected against prejudice, we still find ourselves with a situation where every law either passes or fails. In many ways, this always creates someone who feels entirely ignored. For example, when we talk about democracy now, we're talking about majoritarian democracy. My favorite part of this book were the little details that made me rethink things. Therefore, there's no reason why we shouldn't apply our skills and think of ways to prosper without government. However, as anthropologists know (apparently), there's no lack of societies that have worked without a government. There's this type of mindset that anarchism is irrelevant or has never worked. In essence, Graeber's claim is that anthropologists and other social scientists are ignoring the potential of anarchist research.

After every few paragraphs, I had to stop and reevaluate things I'd learned in class. This book is fantastic because it was just eye-opening. However I definitely feel that something has to change with the way we do politics and well, judging by the massive protests all across Israel (and several other countries in the past few months), other people also think so. I'm hesitant to call myself an anarchist because man, I do not feel like I know enough about the world for that.

#Fragments of an anarchist anthropology how to

While other people discussed the benefits of such companies, I'm just there like 'let's discuss why we're working so much! Here's how to say capitalism in Hebrew! Is our modern world worth it guys? Who wants to move into the woods and live a life free of responsibility? Why is our world like this?' Today our class topic was technology companies (very Israeli).