Written by John Lounsbury
The world lost one of the greatest anthropology thinkers of the last 100 years when David Graeber died unexpectedly on 02 September 2020 at the age of 59. He had become both famous and controversial especially through two of his books, Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011) and Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (2018), as well as his central role in the Occupy Wall Street Movement (2011).
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This week we have a discussion between David Graeber and Jonathan Conning, Associate Professor of Economics at Hunter College at the Graduate Center, CUNY. The discussion took place at Hunter College in April 2012. The topic was the book Debt: The First 5000 Years.
From YouTube:
Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter system-to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that 5,000 years ago, during the beginning of the agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems. It is in this era, Graeber shows, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.
With the passage of time, however, virtual credit money was replaced by gold and silver coins-and the system as a whole began to decline. Interest rates spiked and the indebted became slaves. And the system perpetuated itself with tremendously violent consequences, with only the rare intervention of kings and churches keeping the system from spiraling out of control. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history-as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.
From Wikipedia:
As an assistant and later associate professor of anthropology at Yale University from 1998 to 2007, Graeber specialized in theories of value and social theory. Yale’s decision not to rehire him when he would otherwise have become eligible for tenure sparked an academic controversy.[3] He went on to become, from 2007 to 2013, reader in social anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London.[4]
His activism included protests against the 3rd Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001, and against the 2002 World Economic Forum in New York City. Graeber was a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and is sometimes credited with having coined the slogan “We are the 99%“.[5] He accepted credit for the description “the 99%” but said that others had expanded it into the slogan.[6
In 1998, two years after completing his PhD, Graeber became assistant professor at Yale University, then associate professor.[3] In May 2005, the Yale anthropology department decided not to renew Graeber’s contract, preventing consideration for academic tenure, which was scheduled for 2008. Pointing to Graeber’s anthropological scholarship, his supporters (including fellow anthropologists, former students and activists) said the decision was politically motivated. More than 4,500 people signed petitions supporting him, and anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins, Laura Nader, Michael Taussig, and Maurice Bloch called on Yale to reverse its decision.[3] Bloch, who had been a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics and the Collège de France, and a writer on Madagascar, praised Graeber in a letter to the university.[16]
The Yale administration argued that Graeber’s dismissal was in keeping with Yale’s policy of granting tenure to few junior faculty. Graeber suggested that Yale’s decision might have been influenced by his support of a student of his who was targeted for expulsion because of her membership of GESO, Yale’s graduate student union.[3][17][18][19]
In December 2005, Graeber agreed to leave Yale after a one-year paid sabbatical. That spring he taught two final classes: “Introduction to Cultural Anthropology” (attended by more than 200 students) and a seminar, “Direct Action and Radical Social Theory”.[20]
After his dismissal from Yale, Graeber was unable to secure another position at an American university.[26][27] He applied for more than twenty, but despite a strong track record and letters of recommendation from several prominent anthropologists, never made it past the first round.[27][28] At the same time, a number of foreign universities approached him with offers.[26][28] In an article on his “academic exile” from the United States, The Chronicle of Higher Education interviewed several anthropology professors who agreed that Graeber’s political activism could have played a role in his unsuccessful search, describing the field as “radical in the abstract” (in the words of Laura Nader) but intolerant of direct political action. Another factor suggested by the article was that Graeber had acquired a reputation as being personally difficult or “uncollegial”, especially in light of allegations of poor conduct made by Yale during the dispute over his dismissal.[26] Graeber himself interpreted his exclusion from American academia as a direct result of his dismissal from Yale, likening it to “black-balling in a social club”, and arguing that the charge of “uncollegiality” glossed a variety of other personal qualities, from his political activism to his working-class background, that marked him as a trouble-maker within the academic hierarchy.[28] Laura Nader, reflecting on Graeber’s case amongst other examples of “academic silencing” in anthropology, speculated that the real reasons could have included Graeber’s growing reputation as a public intellectual,[27] and his tendency to “write in English” rather than jargon.[26]
From 2008 to 2013, Graeber was a lecturer and a reader at Goldsmith’s College of the University of London. In 2013, he accepted a professorship at the London School of Economics.[26][29]
In the following video, the discussion involving David Graeber starts at 8 minutes. There is a Q&A involving the audience starting at 1 hour and 1 minute..
Source: YouTube
Some important books by David Graeber:
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