David Graeber
Biographic Data
| ID | 3580971 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David Graeber |
| GIVEN NAMES | David |
| FAMILY NAME | Graeber |
| SIGNATURE | GRAEBER D |
| AFFILIATIONS | London School of Economics and Political Science |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 90 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1823 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 90 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
Un « tournant ontologique » illusoire. Réponse à Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
Virando os modos de produção do avesso
A teoria marxista em grande parte abandonou a noção (seriamente imperfeita) de "modo de produção", mas isso só incentivou a tendência de abandonar muito do que, nela, havia de radical e de naturalizar as categorias capitalistas. Este artigo argumenta que uma noção mais bem concebida de um modo de produção - a que reconheça a primazia da produção humana e, portanto, uma noção mais sofisticada de materialismo - ainda pode ter algo a nos mostrar: no…
Donnez donc ! Les nouveaux Maussquetaires
David Graeber, dont la mort subite nous laisse démunis et un peu sans voix, a été un magnifique compagnon de route du MAUSS. Nous étions entrés en contact avec lui suite à ce texte paru, il y a presque vingt ans, le 21 août 2001, dans la revue en ligne In these times , sous le titre « Give it away », et était annoncé en couverture avec en gros titre « The new maussketeers
L'anthropologie et l'essor de la classe bureaucratique-managériale
De nombreux changements au sein de la discipline anthropologique - en particulier le « tournant postmoderne » des années 1980 - ne peuvent être pleinement compris qu'à la lumière des transformations majeures qui se sont opérées dans la recomposition contemporaine des classes sociales et, en particulier, par rapport au rôle de l'université dans la reproduction d'une classe bureaucratique et managériale, laquelle a fini par supplanter tous les élém…
Zona Autônoma Provisória
Análise etnográfica do conceito de "Zona Autônoma Provisória" a partir do trabalho de campo de Graeber em Madagascar
Opressão
As conexões linguísticas entre a palavra "opressão" e a sensação "ser prensado, esmagado por um peso pesado" que existe em quase todas as línguas, apontam para uma reflexão sobre os dilemas políticos que surgem do relativismo cultural
Magia do amor e moralidade política no centro de Madagascar, 1875-1990
Ensaio sobre a "medicina do amor", sobre como ela foi inicialmente atribuída a usuárias femeninas e depois a usuários masculinos e como seu uso e significado estão vinculados às mudanças que trouxe a ocupação colonial francesa em Madagascar
Cultura como recusa criativa
Estamos acostumados a interpretar muitos aspectos da cultura em termos essencialistas, ou tacitamente evolucionistas, que podem ser melhor observados como atos de uma rejeição autoconsciente, ou formados através de um processo esquizogenético de definição mútua contra valores das sociedades vizinhas. As chamadas "sociedades heroicas", por exemplo, parecem ter se formado pela rejeição consciente dos valores das civilizações urbanas da Idade do Bro…
Autoridade negativa
Quais são as formas legítimas de autoridade em Madagascar? Segundo Graeber os anciãos e ancestrais são vistos como autoridade legítima porque não seriam vistos como reis (que mandam) e intervêm na vida dos outros dizendo o que não fazer -não o que fazer. Um sistema de "autoridade negativa" repleto de ambivalências que para ser entendido deve ser visto à luz do sistema de parentesco merina
Scale Matters
For the greater part of the 20 th century, hunter-gatherer societies were regarded as "small-scale societies" by modern sociology (see Barth ed.1978 for overview).The broad distinction between "small-scale" and "large-scale" was increasingly losing its overall analytical grip in the late 20 th century, also with regard to the classification of hunter-gatherers in these terms.Anthropologists who approached hunter-gatherers from ecological-evolutio…
Full Journal
The theme of Issue 34 of the Humboldt Journal of Social Relations is Social Justice Action, Teaching, and Research. The first article of this issue, "The Art of Social Justice," features the works of a slam poet, Vanessa Pike-Vrtiak, an activist artist, Eduardo Valadez, and an overview of the social science literature capturing the role of art in social justice movements. The two artists featured are both active in their communities and worldwide…
Un assez court manifeste concernant le concept de révolution
Conçue comme une totalité imaginaire qui rompt abruptement avec le paradigme qu'elle remplace, la « révolution », dont le rêve politique est de la faire chevaucher par la « volonté collective », gagnerait en réalisme et modestie si l'accent était déplacé du côté de l'« action révolutionnaire », qui rejette la domination en reconstituant les relations sociales à travers le pouvoir instituant de communautés autonomes. Telle est la proposition que D…
The Dawn of Everything
Towards a bullshit economy
Original English text of Vers une “bullshit economy”, Libération, May 27, 2020, available at www.liberation.fr/debats/2020/05/27/vers-une-bullshit-economy_1789579. This original was published in Anthropology for all (Nika Dubrovsky & David Graeber), May 28, 2020. available at https://www.patreon.com/posts/37626245. Originally untitled. Towards a bullshit economy was used by David Graeber in his personal Twitter to translate the French title used …
De volta à economia de merda
The article discusses the lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic as an exemplary moment to debate the contemporary direction of the economy. The lockdown proved that most of the jobs that people do are useless and not necessary and could be considered as bullshit jobs. At the same time, caring jobs are essential, although they are among those with the lowest wages. This finding is a risk to corporate and government bureaucracies designed to produc…
Têtes de nœud
Das Objekt Alkohol nimmt in unseren Gesellschaften einen anthropologischen Platz ein, indem es eine soziale Einbettung rund um das Konzept des Alkohol-Festivals ermöglicht, das den sublimierten Ausdruck libidinöser Impulse in einem sozial definierten Kontext erlaubt. Extreme Konsumenten oder Abstinenzler, die sich weigern, sich in diese Dynamik einzufügen, zerstören die Sublimierungen und mobilisieren Tabus. Dadurch sind sie Zielscheibe sozialer …
All Economies are Ultimately Human Economies
Or, what are the material conditions that would produce the kind of people one would most wish to have as friends
Cachées, à la vue de tous, les origines autochtones de la démocratie dans les Amériques
Il semble que l'histoire de la démocratie est prise en étau. Ses fervents adeptes et ses plus farouches détracteurs affirment tous qu'elle est un produit exclusif de la « civilisation occidentale » et soutiennent que la démocratie véritable et directe est à la fois tout à fait insolite dans l'histoire mondiale et qu'il est fort difficile d'y parvenir. Pourtant, les preuves manifestes de l'existence de pratiques démocratiques en Afrique, en Océani…
Revolución al revés (o sobre el conflicto entre las ontologías políticas de la violencia y las ontologías políticas de la imaginación)
Este artigo explora a tensão entre "ontologias políticas da violência" e "ontologias políticas da imaginação." Graeber argumenta que a violência, frequentemente vista como inerente à política, é na verdade uma ferramenta utilizada para restringir a imaginação política e impor estruturas de poder. Ele examina como a imaginação, a criatividade e o jogo são essenciais para a construção de alternativas políticas e para desafiar as hierarquias estabel…
It Wasn’t a Tenure Case – a Personal Testimony, with Reflections
David Graeber. Utilité et inutilité du travail / The Revolt of the Caring Classes1
La conférence s’est ouverte sur la présentation du parcours intellectuel de David Graeber par le professeur Philippe Descola, qui a été à l’initiative de sa venue au Collège de France. Cette invitation a aussi été l’occasion de marquer la date anniversaire du début des manifestations de Mai 68. Formé à l’université de Chicago, David Graeber a rédigé une thèse sous la direction de Marshall Sahlins, l’une des figures de l’anthropologie contemporain…
Comment changer le cours de l’histoire (ou au moins du passé)
Roundtable
Many Seasons Ago
Anthropologists have traditionally classified foragers on the Pacific coast of North America into two major culture areas, characterized by strikingly different social and ethical systems. These are "California" and the adjacent "Northwest Coast." Foragers in the northern part of California exhibit many elements of Weber's "Protestant ethic," such as the moral injunction for community leaders to work hard, seek spiritual purpose by introspection,…
Stone Age Economics
Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value
In "Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams," David Graeber challenges conventional economic theories of value, arguing that they fail to account for the diversity of human values and exchange systems. He proposes an anthropological approach that considers value as a process of meaning-making embedded in social relations. Drawing on ethnographic examples from Madagascar, Northwest Coast Native American societie…
"Radical alterity is just another way of saying "reality
As a response to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's critique of my essay "Fetishes are gods in the process of construction," this paper enters into critical engagement with anthropological proponents of what has been called the "ontological turn." Among other engagements, I note that my own reflections on Malagasy fanafody, or medicine, are informed by just the sort of self-conscious reflections my informants make on epistemology, something that anthro…
It is value that brings universes into being
All this works well enough for the Kayapo. Indeed they might be considered a classic case in point, since they are forced to somehow improvise the equivalent of two moieties in order to conduct their beautiful naming ceremonies and other important ritual events. At these moments, and these moments only, Kayapo "society" is made to appear in its total form. But Turner's formulation also offers a much more compelling explanation of why it must be m…
Dead zones of the imagination
The experience of bureaucratic incompetence, confusion, and its ability to cause otherwise intelligent people to behave outright foolishly, opens up a series of questions about the nature of power or, more specifically, structural violence. The unique qualities of violence as a form of action means that human relations ultimately founded on violence create lopsided structures of the imagination, where the responsibility to do the interpretive lab…
Farewell to the 'childhood of man
Evidence of grand burials and monumental construction is a striking feature in the archaeological record of the Upper Palaeolithic period, between 40 and 10 kya (thousand years ago). Archaeologists often interpret such finds as indicators of rank and hierarchy among Pleistocene hunter-gatherers. Interpretations of this kind are difficult to reconcile with the view, still common in sociobiology, that pre-agricultural societies were typically egali…
Fetishism as social creativity
Originally, the term 'fetishes' was used by European merchants to refer to objects employed in West Africa to make and enforce agreements, often between people with almost nothing in common. They thus provide an interesting window on the problem of social creativity - especially since in classic Marxist terms they were surprisingly little fetishized. Starting with an appreciation and critique of William Pietz's classic work on the subject, and re…
Beads and Money
Why have so many societies adopted beads or other objects of adornment as currencies of trade? The question opens up a series of other questions about the nature of exchange, visibility and invisibility, and the relation of exchange both to conceptions of the human person and ways of exercising power over others
The Dawn of Everything
Consumption
Beginning in the 1980s, anthropologists began to be bombarded with endless-and often strangely moralistic-exhortations to acknowledge the importance of something referred to as "consumption." The exhortations were effective; for the past 2 decades, the term has become a staple of theoretical discourse. Rarely, however, do anthropologists examine it: asking themselves why it is that almost all forms of human self-expression or enjoyment are now be…
On the moral grounds of economic relations
The gift is not a uniform economic category, since gifts are structured by different economic principles or moral rules which co-exist in all societies. Mauss showed that dominant economic forms, like capitalist markets or the heroic gift, often elevate one principle above the others, but ordinary people must combine them in order to get by. There are three moral grounds for economic relations: communism, exchange and hierarchy. Everyday communis…
Turning Modes of Production Inside Out
Marxist theory has by now largely abandoned the (seriously flawed) notion of the 'mode of production', but doing so has only encouraged a trend to abandon much of what was radical about it and naturalize capitalist categories. This article argues a better conceived notion of a mode of production - one that recognizes the primacy of human production, and hence a more sophisticated notion of materialism - might still have something to show us: nota…
Anthropology and the rise of the professional-managerial class
Many of the internal changes within anthropology as a discipline-particularly the "postmodern turn" of the 1980s-can only be understood in the context of broader changes in the class composition of the societies in which university departments exist, and, in particular, the role of the university in the reproduction of a professional-managerial class that has come to displace any working-class elements in what pass for mainstream "left" political…
Dancing With Corpses Reconsidered
The ritual of exhumation and rewrapping of ancestral bodies practiced in Imerina, Madagascar, is the culmination of a pervasive relation of memory and violence-a relationship that can only be fully understood by contrasting the attitudes toward ancestors held by ambitious or powerful men in rural society, and those attitudes held by most women. Doing so reveals the parameters of a complex and ambivalent attitude toward authority. [kinship, author…
On social currencies and human economies
In this essay I propose a category of ‘human economies’ to refer to those where the primary focus of economic life is on reconfiguring relations between people, rather than the allocation of commodities. Currencies that used to be labelled ‘primitive money’, but which are primarily used to effect this, would better be called ‘social currencies’. These social currencies are often seen as inadequate substitutes for human beings, not so much ways of…
Culture as Creative Refusal
Many aspects of culture that we are used to interpreting in essentialist or even tacitly evolutionist terms might better be seen as acts of self-conscious rejection, or as formed through a schizmogenetic process of mutual definition against the values of neighbouring societies. What have been called 'heroic societies', for instance, seem to have formed in conscious rejection of the values of urban civilizations of the Bronze Age. A consideration …
The Anthropology of Globalization (with Notes on Neomedievalism, and the End of the Chinese Model of the Nation‐State)
Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism. Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. 320 pp. Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts. Néstor García Canclini. George Yúdice. trans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. 200 pp. The Anthropology of Globalization:. Reader. Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo. eds. London: Blackwell Publishers, 2002. 498 pp
Ancestors, Power and History in Madagascar
The peoples of Madagascar are renowned for the prominence they give to the dead. In this edited volume, regional specialists reassess the significance of ancestors for changing relations of power, emerging identities, and local historical consciousness. Case-studies include The Royal Bath of 1817 (Pier Larson), Succession in an Urbanized Sakalava Kingdom (Lesley Sharp), The Antankaraìa Ritual Cycle (Michael Lambek, Andrew Walsh), Nineteenth-Centu…
Manners, Deference, and Private Property in Early Modern Europe
This essay is an attempt to map out the rudiments of a theory of manners and formal deference and to demonstrate how such a theory can be usefully applied to certain long-standing problems in the historical sociology of Europe. It is also meant to demonstrate the continuing relevance of comparative ethnography for social theory—something which has been somewhat cast into doubt in recent years. The historical problems I have in mind is how Max Web…
Many Seasons Ago
Anthropologists have traditionally classified foragers on the Pacific coast of North America into two major culture areas, characterized by strikingly different social and ethical systems. These are "California" and the adjacent "Northwest Coast." Foragers in the northern part of California exhibit many elements of Weber's "Protestant ethic," such as the moral injunction for community leaders to work hard, seek spiritual purpose by introspection,…
Value, politics and democracy in the United States
This article examines the role of values in the political discourse of the last decade in the US. It embarks from what many observers had described as a puzzle: the fact that significant parts of the American working class voted against their economic interests but in line with what they perceived to be their values. As a result, a president had been re-elected who cut taxes for the rich while waging an expensive war in Iraq and increasing public…
The New Anarchists
Is the ‘anti-globalization movement’ anything of the kind? Active resistance is true globalization, David Graeber maintains, and its repertoire of forms is currently coming from the arsenal of a reinvented anarchism
Love Magic and Political Morality in Central Madagascar, 1875–1990
Direct and Indirect Effects of Childhood Adversity on Adult Depression
A Pilot Study Comparing Motivational Interviewing and an Educational Intervention in Patients with Schizophrenia and Alcohol Use Disorders
Painful Memories
Dancing With Corpses Reconsidered
The ritual of exhumation and rewrapping of ancestral bodies practiced in Imerina, Madagascar, is the culmination of a pervasive relation of memory and violence-a relationship that can only be fully understood by contrasting the attitudes toward ancestors held by ambitious or powerful men in rural society, and those attitudes held by most women. Doing so reveals the parameters of a complex and ambivalent attitude toward authority. [kinship, author…
Love Magic and Political Morality in Central Madagascar, 1875–1990
Beads and Money
Why have so many societies adopted beads or other objects of adornment as currencies of trade? The question opens up a series of other questions about the nature of exchange, visibility and invisibility, and the relation of exchange both to conceptions of the human person and ways of exercising power over others
Manners, Deference, and Private Property in Early Modern Europe
This essay is an attempt to map out the rudiments of a theory of manners and formal deference and to demonstrate how such a theory can be usefully applied to certain long-standing problems in the historical sociology of Europe. It is also meant to demonstrate the continuing relevance of comparative ethnography for social theory—something which has been somewhat cast into doubt in recent years. The historical problems I have in mind is how Max Web…
Painful Memories
Painful Memories
Ancestors, Power and History in Madagascar
The peoples of Madagascar are renowned for the prominence they give to the dead. In this edited volume, regional specialists reassess the significance of ancestors for changing relations of power, emerging identities, and local historical consciousness. Case-studies include The Royal Bath of 1817 (Pier Larson), Succession in an Urbanized Sakalava Kingdom (Lesley Sharp), The Antankaraìa Ritual Cycle (Michael Lambek, Andrew Walsh), Nineteenth-Centu…
Wampum and Social Creativity among The Iroquois
I n this chapter, I’d like to say a little bit about wampum, the white and purple shell beads which became a currency of trade in early colonial Northeast North America. Among “primitive valuables”—a category that includes such things as kula necklaces, Kwakiutl coppers, or the iron bars used in bridewealth exchange by the West African Tiv—wampum holds a rather curious place. Simply as an object, it’s by far the most familiar. The average reader …
The False Coin of Our Own Dreams, or the Problem of the Fetish, IIIb
I n this final chapter I want to move from an emphasis on value and exchange to the other side of the equation proposed in chapter 4 and to talk a little bit about the phenomenon of social power. Odd though it may seem, I think the easiest way to do this will be to look at the notion of fetishism—one that has cropped up periodically over the course of the book but that I have not so far fully developed. These keywords were added by machine and no…
Action and Reflection, or Notes toward a Theory of Wealth and Power
D utch settlers, as any American schoolchild can tell you, bought Manhattan Island from the local Indians for twenty-four dollars worth of beads and trinkets. The story could be considered one of the founding myths of the United States; in a nation based on commerce, the very paradigm of a really good deal. The story itself is probably untrue (the Indians probably thought they were receiving a gift of colorful exotica as a token of peaceful inten…
Marcel Mauss Revisited
I n earlier chapters, I have given Marcel Mauss’ work somewhat short shrift, particularly in comparison with that of Marx. In fact, I believe Mauss’ theoretical corpus is the single most important in the history of anthropology. He was a man with a remarkable knack for asking all the most interesting questions, even if he was also keenly aware in those early days of anthropological research, that he didn’t have the means to fully answer them. In …
Current Directions In Exchange Theory
S o far, I’ve described how the term “value” held out the promise of resolving some of the outstanding theoretical problems in anthropology, notably the clash between functionalism and economism, which took its clearest and most vitriolic form in the arguments between Formalists and Substantivists in the 1960s. I’ve also suggested that, common wisdom to the contrary, these issues are not really all that dead. At the same time that Dumont’s school…
Three Ways of Talking about Value
If one reads a lot of anthropology, it is hard to escape the impression that theories of value are all the rage of late. One certainly sees references to "value" and "theories of value" all the time—usually thrown out in such a way as to suggest there is a vast and probably very complicated literature lying behind them.1 If one tries to track this literature down, however, one quickly runs into problems. In fact it is extremely difficult to find …
Value as the Importance of Actions
The theory of value presented in the next essay was developed in the 1980s (largely \nby anthropologists in the University of Chicago) and 90s (largely by myself) so it occurred to \nme, this being a new millennium and all, it might be helpful to the reader to provide something \nof an update. Something to demonstrate how this rather abstract theory can be useful for \nsomething. Since I am writing from America (just barely: I m writing from New …
Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value
In "Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams," David Graeber challenges conventional economic theories of value, arguing that they fail to account for the diversity of human values and exchange systems. He proposes an anthropological approach that considers value as a process of meaning-making embedded in social relations. Drawing on ethnographic examples from Madagascar, Northwest Coast Native American societie…
Money and Modernity
Money and Modernity: State and Local Currencies in Melanesia. David Akin and Joel Robbins. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999. viii. 284 pp., notes, bibliography, index.Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Spaces. Patricia Spyer. London: Routledge Press, 1998. vii. 262 pp., illustrations, photographs, index
The New Anarchists
Is the ‘anti-globalization movement’ anything of the kind? Active resistance is true globalization, David Graeber maintains, and its repertoire of forms is currently coming from the arsenal of a reinvented anarchism
The Anthropology of Globalization (with Notes on Neomedievalism, and the End of the Chinese Model of the Nation‐State)
Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism. Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. 320 pp. Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts. Néstor García Canclini. George Yúdice. trans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. 200 pp. The Anthropology of Globalization:. Reader. Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo. eds. London: Blackwell Publishers, 2002. 498 pp
A Pilot Study Comparing Motivational Interviewing and an Educational Intervention in Patients with Schizophrenia and Alcohol Use Disorders
La sociologie comme science et comme utopie
Il m’est possible de repondre aux questions des organisateurs soit en tant qu’anthropologue, soit en tant que militant politique actif depuis quelques annees au sein du mouvement de globalisation – generalement appele mouvement « anti-mondialisation » – qui est en train de reformuler entierement l’idee de revolution conformement a la transformation des conditions globales. Je vais essayer, dans les pages qui suivent, de tenir cette double identit…
Ethnohistory
Fragments of an anarchist anthropology
Everywhere anarchism is on the upswing as a political philosophy - everywhere, that is, except the academy. Anarchists repeatedly appeal to anthropologists for ideas about how society might be reorganized on a more egalitarian, less alienating basis. Anthropologists, terrified of being accused of romanticism, respond with silence. What if they didn't?"--BOOK JACKET
Catastrophe
O ensaio trata do início de meu trabalho de campo, em 1990, em uma comunidade rural malgaxe, localizada a uma hora por carro da capital Antananarivo. A comunidade estava, naquela época, tomada por uma intensa guerra simbólica entre andriana descendentes do que se pode chamar clã nobre e mainty, descendentes dos ex-escravos daqueles. A luta ganhou ainda mais significado quando percebi que o estado malgaxe tinha, por vários interesses e propósitos,…
La démocratie des interstices
L’auteur examine en anthropologue la question de la definition du mariage. A travers les evolutions historiques de la societe francaise, les changements du droit, par la comparaison avec les traits que presente l’institution dans des societes differentes, elle montre que le mariage heterosexuel est une formule parmi d’autres qui a particulierement reussi en raison des avantages qu’elle presente, toutes formules ayant pour effet d’instaurer des es…
"Comunismo ou comunalismo? A política e o "Ensaio sobre o dom
Este artigo aborda o contraste entre uma modalidade de troca explicitamente qualificada por Mauss, na década de 1930, como "comunista" e as modalidades "agonística" e "mercantil". Mauss nunca foi comunista, mas sim um socialista engajado. Como tal, lançou à Revolução Russa seu olhar de etnógrafo, sem deixar de considerar sua importância como "experimento". Vê como inspiração do Ensaio sobre o dom o impacto que lhe causaram tanto uma visita à Rúss…
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