ANTH360 – Midterm Essay

Jake Carey – 26975852

Anarchism and Anthropology

Anthropologists attempt to understand culture from a

holistic perspective, analysing all of the aspects that

contribute to a specific group of people’s classification

and enactment of their own social life. These aspects are

what define and contribute to the organisation within a

society, ranging from kinship and affinity to ritual,

gift giving, religion/sacred beliefs, ideas and rules

surrounding food, warfare, and hierarchy. Essentially the

Anthropologist provides an overarching analysis that

involves in depth understandings of the social, economic,

political and environmental powers that shape a society

and its culture. This means that as a discipline

Anthropology can illuminate the ways in which different

people attempt to construct and organise their own

imagined way of life specific to their culture and the

ways in which established forms of power and the

institutions that hold this power can limit a groups

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autonomy and cultural expression. Many argue that because

Anthropologists often study and write about native

peoples, there can be no relevant contribution to modern

popular/public discourse and that these more ‘primitive’

societies only provide us with information based on a

past state of social organisation and cultural existence.

I will argue that it is the exact opposite, because

anthropology has a holistic basis for its analysis, it

can provide us with an understanding of societies that

have lived with and successfully attained cohesion

separate from an established state, allowing for the

freedom of action and thought without opposing

institutional forms of power that limit and constrain the

people and their chosen way of life. Through a close

examination of David Graeber’s essay, “Fragments of an

Anarchist Anthropology,” and referencing Michael

Foucault’s, “The Discourse on Language,” and Henry A.

Giroux’s, “The Disappearing Public Intellectual and the

Crisis of Higher Education as a Public Good,” I will show

that Anthropology can directly influence and contribute

to public discourse and debate, by critiquing currently

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accepted social norms and presenting ethnographic

information based on real world evidence with not just

historical depth but with a multifaceted cultural and

social examination of organised societies that enables us

to view and realise the possibilities that are evident in

alternative cultures and that organisation and social

cohesion does not need to be subject to an all powerful

governing body encapsulated by the nation state.

Anarchism is a political philosophy that has permeated

popular culture all the while being stigmatised as a far

leftist ideology focusing on violence and unsocial

behaviour, disruption of the status quo and a general

rejection of modern capitalist ideology. Anarchists often

attempt to convey their unhappiness and further their

goals of political dissent through collective and

individual forms of activism. Mainly focusing on the

inequality present within society, particularly the

hierarchical organisation and institutionalised power

relations that enforce these hierarchies, anarchists

denounce the State in all forms and seek equality through

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self-government. For well known anarchist Emma Goldman,

the political philosophy stood for, “the liberation of

the human mind from the dominion of religion; the

liberation of the human body from the dominion of

property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of

government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on

the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of

producing real social wealth; an order that will

guarantee to every human being free access to the earth

and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according

to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations”

(Goldman, 1910). David Graeber is an Anthropologist and

self proclaimed anarchist, who explains in his essay,

“Fragments of an Anarchist Antrhopology,” how

anthropology as a discipline can use its research of

social/cultural groups coupled with anarchist thought to

recognise alternate possibilities within the organisation

of human life. He identifies a number of anarchist

theories that Anthropologists can use in their physical

and theoretical practice in order to present anarchist

thought and attitudes that can challenge the established

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forms of knowledge found within not only Anthropology

itself but also other disciplines and the publics

perceptions of what might constitute a functioning

society. Graeber poses that it is because anarchism is

directly interested in forms of political dissent

focusing on activism, that it is an individual and the

wider collective that must embody and express the

philosophy of life that they wish to manifest into

existence. As Emma Goldman wrote, "I don't care if a

man's theory for tomorrow is correct," "I care if his

spirit of today is correct" (Goldman, 1910). You can

understand how this might be troubling for an established

professor, as Graeber worked for Yale University, but was

dismissed, resulting in claims that this was due to his

political philosophy and activism. He writes, “At the

very least, one would imagine being an openly anarchist

professor would mean challenging the way universities are

run” (Graeber, 2004). The ideals of the anarchist are

directly opposed to institutional structures like

Universities or schools that have become subjected to

corporate interests and are continuing further toward a

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neoliberal ideology. The ability for Professors in

academic institutions to spread ideas and directly

contribute to a wider public discourse of students and

those interested in particular theories or conceptions of

thought, like anarchism, means that they hold an

especially important position within the framework of the

state. Michel Foucault writes of a system of exclusion

present within discourse, which is maintained and

enforced by institutional powers. Most people accept that

there will be limits to what they can say, freedom of

speech does exist but the freedom for an academic to

express his knowledge to a wider audience is hindered by

the control of publication and any work that is contrary

to an organisations economic, social and political

interests is unlikely to be funded or supported. “I am

supposing that in every society the production of

discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and

redistributed according to a certain number of

procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its

dangers to cope with chance events, to evade its

ponderous, awesome materiality” (Foucault, 1972). One of

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Anthropologies strengths is that it can provide critiques

through comparison, providing evidence of how a specific

group of people can be affected by the forces of

modernity. When coupled with anarchist sentiment

anthropology becomes an extremely critical discipline

that seeks to uncover the inequalities present within

social structures with an aim of producing work that can

push the boundaries of what is considered a viable option

of organising human beings and their lives. Graeber

writes of anarchism and anthropology as, “A project,

which sets out to begin creating the institutions of a

new society “within the shell of the old,” to expose,

subvert, and undermine structure of domination but

always, while doing so, proceeding in a democratic

fashion, a manor which itself demonstrated those

structures are unnecessary” (Graeber, 2004).

Henry A. Giroux is extremely critical of the current

educational environment around the world. He argues that

the public intellectual is a figure that is disappearing

from the mainstream and being marginalised by the

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pressures of the neoliberal agenda that has become

widespread due to capitalist interests. He writes, “we

are witnessing the emergence and dominance of a powerful

and ruthless, if not destructive, market-driven notion of

education, freedom, agency, and responsibility” (Giroux,

2013). David Graeber’s anarchist Anthropology seeks to

directly combat these notions of education stifled under

the power of the state, with the freedom of speech and

the freedom of information being monitored and limited by

the interests of governing bodies and individual agendas

of those in positions of corporate power and high

influence. By citing Marcel Mauss, Graeber attempts to

expose the inherent contradictions within established

academic theory and show that the values currently

celebrated in a neoliberal capitalist state run society

has not always been the case and that alternatives are

possible. Mauss refuses the established idea of an

economic system of barter that preceded monetary

exchange, arguing that instead a form of gift giving was

used within societies, and that values of reciprocity and

solidarity based on providing necessity for others was

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inherent. These societies rejected the notions of private

property and entrepreneurship, for the very idea of

accumulating wealth at the loss of another within their

community was non-existent. This rejection of what we

consider to be the economic norm within our growing

global capitalist society is just as Graeber describes

anarchism as being, “founded on an explicit rejection of

the logic of the state and the market” (Graeber, 2004).

Egalitarian societies remove the possibilities of

economic inequality from daily life, they show how a

society can sustain itself without a state system of

hierarchy and established forms of institutionalised

power, without a market and without a complete submission

to rational thought and action. They are not constrained

by a system that encourages consumerism and

individuality, in which the goal in life is seen not to

accumulate wealth and possessions, private property,

power is despised and signified as death or witchcraft.

For example, Graeber writes of a South American anarchist

society called the Piaroa, that, “place enormous value on

individual freedom and autonomy, and are quite self

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conscious about the importance of ensuring that no one is

ever at another person’s orders, or the need to ensure no

one gains such control over economic resources that they

can use it to constrain others’ freedom”, this is a

society based on a moral philosophy in which life is

separated into two categories, senses and thoughts. By

learning to control and understand ones senses their

desires can no longer hold power over them, through

“thoughtful consideration for others, and the cultivation

of a sense of humour,” this means that from a young age

they can show empathy towards others and their hardship

or whatever situation they may be in, defusing any need

or want to dominate over another member of their

community (Graeber, 2004). He also writes of the Tiv in

Nigeria, who do have an internal system of hierarchy,

categories by a dominance of male elders, over women and

younger men, but any “enterprising men who managed to

patch together some sort of fame, wealth, or clientele

were by definition witches…This imaginary society of

witches was seen as the invisible government of the

country. Power was thus institutionalised evil, and every

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generation, a witch-finding movement would arise to

expose the culprits, thus, effectively, destroying any

emerging structures of authority” (Graeber, 2004). These

examples show how anarchist societies maintain their

cohesion and organisation through internal systems of

moral philosophy and myth that ensure the continued

running of stateless human bodies.

Anarchist societies are situated on a basis of direct

democracy, in which a consensus process is established.

This consensus process is created by the people and is

used to directly project the need and desires, the

political action that everyone can come to some agreement

or compromise on. Within an already established state run

society the anarchist movements can use this consensus

process as a means of creating a counterpower of

anarchist institutions within the original state, to

ultimately oppose the established forms of power and the

market system inherent in the state in order to create a

revolution seeking to overthrow it. These counterpowers

can emerge in a number of different forms, “from self

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governing communities to radical labour unions to popular

militias” (Graeber, 2004). Graeber, poses the idea of

‘blowing up walls’, as a metaphor for changing public

assumptions that we are separate from everyone else, that

the individual does not exist, we are only the sum of our

parts and that all of those before us and all of those

that will come after us are in reality all a part of the

same social system of human beings. Categories and

separations based on race and class are unnecessary, we

can learn from past societies and their practices, in

order to implement the them in the future, to create an

alternative system of social organisation based on

equality, freedom of expression, autonomy, mutual aid and

direct democracy. The state has imposed and limited our

ability to gather and implement knowledge, through an

insistence and bombardment of cultural and social norms

that have become so embedded in the collective

consciousness of the majority of individuals it is

extremely hard to break or divert established modes of

thought, generalisations, ethnocentrisms, stereotypes,

patterns of behaviour etc. Michel Foucault writes, “I

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believe that this will to knowledge, thus reliant upon

institutional support and distribution, tends to exercise

a sort of pressure, a power of constraint upon other

forms of discourse – I am speaking of our own society”

(Foucault, 1972). Anthropological anarchism can identify

and challenge all of our preconceived notions about ‘the

self’ and ‘the other’, but one must be able to project

this knowledge into the public sphere in order for it to

be heard and recognised as relevant. I think this is

where anarchist anthropology can help to create

institutions of counterpower in which groups and

organisations can be set up outside of the frameworks

imposed by the state. Allowing for the continued spread

of new ideas and information that shows how, why and what

the possibilities of alternative social and economical

systems are. This is how revolutions are set in motion

and how the free spread of knowledge can create a lasting

change in people’s perceptions. Graeber writes that we

must, “accept that anarchist forms of organisation would

not look anything like a state. That they would involve

an endless variety of communities, associations,

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networks, projects, on every conceivable scale,

overlapping and intersecting in any way we could imagine,

and possibly many that we can’t” (Graeber, 2004). We can

see that anarchist forms of expression and organisation

are all around us, in many different manifestations. They

do not have to be violent revolutions on a massive scale,

but can be small-scale methods of activism and attempts

at rupturing the status quo. Human society has never

stayed the same but in order for it to continue to change

and head towards a philosophy based on reciprocity,

empathy, inclusion, mutual aid, freedom of autonomy and

speech and direct democracy, we must have people within

our society and state institutions that are willing to

speak out and create forms of counterpower that can

inspire and stir, create a lasting impact on those that

listen and internalise the forms of knowledge presented

to them. Henry Giroux writes, “Democracy places civic

demands upon its citizens, and such demands point to the

necessity of an education that is broad-based, critical,

and supportive of meaningful civic values, participation

in self-governance, and democratic leadership. Only

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through such a formative and critical educational culture

can students learn how to become individual and social

agents, rather than merely disengaged spectators, able

both to think otherwise and to act upon civic commitments

that “necessitate a reordering of basic power

arrangements” fundamental to promoting the common good

and producing meaningful democracy” (Giroux, 2013). By

acquiring knowledge one must take responsibility for his

actions and seek to express his philosophy to those

around him if he is every going to attempt to change

anything. It is important for us all to seek new ways of

understanding and to challenge our own assumptions about

how the society we live in is run.

Graeber identifies a number of areas of theory in which

an anthropologist might seek to examine from an anarchist

perspective. These theories help to shape how one might

implement a larger theory of anarchist anthropology and

contribute to the public discourse surrounding current

social and economic theory. His theory of the state,

requires us to view the state as an imagined entity that

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encompasses the assumed ideals of a group of people, but

it is not a direct democracy, it is representative and

thus there will always be a form of hierarchy and

blocking in which a large amount of the publics opinions,

desires, beliefs and necessities will not be taken into

consideration. We must, “reanalyse the state as a

relation between a utopian imaginary, and a messy reality

involving strategies of flight and evasion, predatory

elites, and a mechanics of regulation and control”

(Graeber, 2004). The Zapatista movement in Mexico is an

indigenous group seeking control of their own lives

outside of an enforced state apparatus, their many forms

of resistance mirror an anarchist form of counterpower,

in which every day action and a constant expression of

values through this action is what combats and allows

them to separate from the state and the values of

neoliberalism. One example of a form of counterpower, is

evident in a Zapatista University called Unitierra, in

which students can come from their communities with no

prior education, and learn tangible skills, becoming

apprentices in which they attend workshops and then use

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their skills to go back to their own community and help

spread new ways of organising and maintaining the

cultural environment. This is a system of education based

on reciprocity, not just a institutional system devised

to create professionals who can then go out and earn

money for themselves, continuing a capitalist logic that

favours the creation of jobs over the building of

communities through mutual aid. Although it can be

extremely hard for a revolution to actually take place,

for the state to be overthrown in its full capacity and a

new society emerge based on anarchist morality. “What

cannot be destroyed can, nonetheless, be diverted,

frozen, transformed, and gradually deprived of its

substance-which in the case of the states, is ultimately

their capacity to inspire terror” (Graeber, 2004). It is

these forms of activism that can create momentum and

bring into the public consciousness examples of political

action that present alternatives to the current mode of

education, economy and social relations. Expressions of

nonconformity even at the smallest of scales, creates an

essence of change, of difference and are thus more likely

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to impact someone that might otherwise not have thought

or viewed something in a particular way or had the

courage to say or express themselves. “The moment we stop

insisting on viewing all forms of action only by their

function in reproducing larger, total, forms of

inequality of power, we will also be able to see that

anarchist social relations and non-alienated forms of

action are all around us” (Graeber, 2004). Anything and

everything we do that engages critically with those

around us can be seen as a form of activism, if we feel a

certain way, express it, if you are part of a particular

scene that is outside of the mainstream perspective or

challenges some type of power structure then you are

participating in a constant flux of miniature revolutions

that contribute to combating conformity and helping to

produce spheres of action in which cultural and

collective and individual expression is inspired.

“The revolution will not be right back after a message

about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.

You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom,

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a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.

The revolution will not go better with Coke. The

revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad

breath. The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be

televised, will not be televised, will not be televised.

The revolution will be no re-run brothers; The revolution

will be live” (Gil Scott-Heron, 1971).

In this essay I have provided a review of David Graeber’s

essay, “Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology,”

attempting to show how Anthropology as a discipline can

provide a critique on the current social and economic

climate, with emphasis on state control and forms of

institutional and governing power, presenting

ethnographic cases of societies that have lived without

states and continue to express their cultural identities

outside of a framework of inequality and dominance.

Anarchism is a political ideology that groups well with

anthropology, its basis for political dissent and

activism allow us to understand how movements and even

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small actions can create rupture within the status quo

and identify and try to challenge directly the current

inequalities present within the system of social

organisation we experience everyday. An Anthropologist

has all the theoretical and critical tools to implement a

series of actions or events that can contribute to a

wider understanding of anarchism and help to change the

misconceptions surrounding the political ideology. The

Anthropologist can use his position of authority to

further challenge the state and provide an engaging and

lasting effect on public perception by contributing to

the discourse of theory and ideas surrounding social and

economic organisation.

Bibliography:

Graeber, D., 2004. Fragments of an Anarchist

Anthropology. Prickly paradigm Press, Chicago. pp. 1-105.

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Giroux, H.A., 2013. The Disappearing Public Intellectual

and the Crisis of Higher Education as a Public Good.

pp.6-26.

Foucault, M., 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge & The

Discourse on Language. Travistock Publications Limited. pp.215-

237.

Esteva, G., 2008. Reclaiming Our Freedom to Learn. YES!

Magazine.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/liberate-your-space/reclaiming-our-

freedom-to-learn

Goldman, E., 1910. Anarchism and Other Essays. Dover

Publications.

Scott-Heron, G., 1971. The Revolution Will Not Be

Televised.

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