ŷ������

Anthropology 101: Asking the Big Questions��

Preamble:
…Does “human nature�� make society’s inequalities inevitable?
…Does “human nature�� make destruction of the environment inevitable?
…What even is “human nature��?
--Anthropologist David Graeber has been my go-to author for social imagination since I started exploring nonfiction, synthesizing social theory buried in academic silos and popularizing it in a playful manner for a wider audience.
--Fellow anthropologist James Suzman also asks the big questions in this accessible book, using a more ��materialist�� lens which is crucial to balance Graeber’s more “idealist�� lens.

Highlights:

1) Human Nature and Inequality?:
--Graeber’s last major project (co-authored with archaeologist Wengrow), The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021), was an attempt to rethink the origins of inequality.
…It was a mainstream best-seller but was a mess in anthropology circles because anthropology already had a compelling analysis of the origins of inequality which deserved a popular re-telling, which Suzman summarizes: the legacy of the 1966 “Man the Hunter�� symposium on how hunter-gatherers practiced both egalitarianism and leisure (Man the Hunter: The First Intensive Survey of a Single, Crucial Stage of Human Development�� Man’s Once Universal Hunting Way of Life).

2) Human Nature and Productivity (destroying the Environment)?:
--As I’ve already overviewed the inequality debate in reviewing Graeber/Wengrow’s book, I’ll focus more on the productivity debate here.
--Suzman starts with economist Keynes�� 1930 essay “The Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren��, which predicted rising technological productivity will bring about a society of leisure (15-hours work per week). Keynes anticipated a lag in culturally adopting this leisure given our supposed human nature for hard work (from our evolutionary “struggle for subsistence�� to solve the “economic problem��).
--Suzman challenges Keynes�� assumption by turning to the 1966 “Man the Hunter�� conference, starting with anthropologist Richard Borshay Lee’s conclusion (from energy inputs/labour outputs analysis of the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen of the Kalahari) that hunter-gatherers already achieved Keynes�� leisure society of 15-hours/week to sustain their nutritional needs (indeed, their lives were not nasty/brutish/short), with 15-20 additional hours for domestic activities. This despite the Kalahari’s challenging environment.
--Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (Stone Age Economics, 1974) expanded on this as “the original affluent society��/“primitive affluence��. Note: Sahlins was Graeber’s anthropology PhD supervisor! It’s interesting how Sahlins here is using a materialist lens (see later), while Suzman also describes Sahlins as “one of cultural anthropology’s [i.e. more idealist] most insightful meta-theorists��.
--Suzman notes how “novelty oils the engines of academia��, so once “primitive affluence�� became established in academia in the 1980s it received many counters. However, Suzman concludes that the core of “primitive affluence�� is still sound.
--Keynes did not focus on the environmental costs of productivity, which “primitive affluence�� also provides lessons for. Note: Graeber takes a different approach in unpacking Keynes�� leisure prediction (see: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory).

3) Hunter-gatherers 101:
--How did this mode of living (also known as “forager��) achieve a dynamic equilibrium with the environment, thus relative sustainability rather than reliant on colonization’s endless growth? (I’m using past tense here to focus on human origins as hunter-gatherers).
--The reason the materialist anthropology lens is so useful to start with is because it reveals commonalities shared by diverse hunter-gatherer communities throughout the world due to their shared social relation with their material conditions.
--Anthropologist James Woodburn describes hunting-gathering as an “immediate-return economy��, which actively avoids surpluses (storage; “delayed-return��).
--This is in part due to pragmatism since hunting-gathering requires a nomadic lifestyle, so carrying large surpluses is impractical.
--Environmental relations: there is relative confidence in the environment, i.e. like a parent providing offerings to all beings/autonomously productive. Of course, there are variations, as Suzman adds:

Foraging Ju/’hoansi don’t animate their environment like the [also foraging] Mbuti. They also don’t talk about animal spirits or speak of conscious, living landscapes. Rather, they describe their environment’s providence in more matter-of-fact terms: it is there and it provides them with food and other useful things, just as it does for other species. And just as importantly, even if they consider their environment to be provident, they don’t think of it as “generous”—firstly because it can sometimes be austere, and secondly because Ju/’hoansi do not think of their environment as a “thing�� capable of agency. Rather, they describe it as a set of relationships between lots of different things capable of agency—plants, insects, animals, people, spirits, gods, and weather—that interact with one another continuously on what Ju/’hoansi called the “earth’s face.��

…the commonality here is that humans are considered part of nature and not separate (so there is no pure nature). This is shared with indigenous societies that forage but also cross into farming (the materialist lens is particularly useful in deciphering how different relations with material conditions are reflected in cultural practices), ex. The Earth's Blanket: Traditional Teachings for Sustainable Living.
--Time is experienced as cyclical/rhythmic/predictable based on seasons. Suzman’s experience with the Ju/’hoansi suggests a focus on the immediate given the confidence on the environment’s cycles, although this is being disrupted by colonization.
--A key hunter-gatherer innovation as mentioned earlier is egalitarianism (esp. material equality). Gathering is cooperative, while hunting (esp. big game) requires careful redistribution. For the evolutionary advantages of egalitarianism, see:
-Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior
-Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding
--In short, equality secures personal liberties by preventing despotic rule. This counters the modern myth of equality vs. liberty (since liberty is from the perspective of the rich, to be free to exploit the masses). Thus, self-interest for personal liberty is channelled via jealousy/ridicule (social leveling mechanism) to prevent hierarchy/profitable exchange/accumulation/monopolization of production and distribution, flipping Adam Smith’s self-interest (later distorted as “the Invisible Hand��) theory on its head.
…Similarly, private property facilitates sharing; the only delayed exchange is gifts, which are long-term relations rather than market exchange (immediate, between strangers): see Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years.

…see comments below for rest of the review��