Geoff Shullenberger discusses 'The Dawn of Everything' book, challenging assumptions on civilization rise, rejecting Marxism, emphasizing human imagination. Weaknesses include over-emphasis on personal freedom, inaccuracy in the 18th century, and blindspot on myth, ritual, environment shaping societies.
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Book Rejects Marxist Base Superstructure
The authors present a strong anti-Marxist thrust by rejecting 'mode of production' as a deterministic base-superstructure driver.
They argue politics and social forms can be chosen or recombined regardless of an economic base.
insights INSIGHT
Political Self Consciousness Precedes Enlightenment
Graeber and Wengrow stress humans have long been self-conscious political actors, not Enlightenment inventions.
They cite cases where egalitarian practices arose intentionally after collapses of hierarchical polities, suggesting conscious political choices.
insights INSIGHT
Schismogenesis Explains Neighboring Divergence
The authors use schismogenesis to explain divergent social forms in similar environments, e.g., Pacific Northwest hierarchy vs Northern California egalitarianism.
They link contrasting myths and practices to groups defining identity in opposition to neighbors.
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I join with Geoff Shullenberger of "Outsider Theory" to discuss the sweeping and challenging new book, "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" by David Graeber and David Wengrow. We consider the book's marshalling of new archaeological evidence to debunk mechanistic and deterministic assumptions about the rise of civilization, its deep rejection of Marxism, and its insistence on the human ability to imagine and create an infinite range of social and political futures. We examine the weaknesses and limitations of the book, including its over-emphasis on personal freedom, its gross inaccuracy with regard to the eighteenth century, and its blindspot regarding the profound powers of myth, ritual, and the natural environment, all of which deeply guide and shape societies in ways that Graeber & Wengrow ignore or casually discount.
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Other books & authors mentioned:
Marshall Sahlins, "The Original Affluent Society"
Yuval Noah Harari, "Sapiens"
James C. Scott, "Against the Grain"
Claude Levi-Strauss, "The Savage Mind"
Victor Turner, "The Ritual Process"
Karl Wittfogel, "Oriental Despotism"
John Rawls, "A Theory of Justice"
Francoise de Graffigny, "Letters of a Peruvian Woman"
Niccolo Machiavelli, "Discourses on Livy"
Jared Diamond, "Guns, Germs, and Steel"
JN Heard, "The Assimilation of Captives on the American Frontier in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," LSU thesis
David Graeber, "On Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit," "Debt: The First 5000 Years"
Karl Polanyi, "The Great Transformation"
Mark Fisher, "Capitalist Realism"
Orlando Patterson, "Slavery and Social Death"
Bruno Latour, "We Have Never Been Modern"
Roberto Calasso, "The Ruin of Kasch"
Ivan Illich
Rene Girard
Richard Wolff
Thomas Sowell
Divya Cherian
Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong