Frei von Herrschaft

David Graeber's work routinely annoys me. Sometimes it's because of others who basically grab bits and pieces of it and hold them up like he's the epitome of what we should all be, which isn't his fault (especially today). But largely it's because he has these glaring gaps that people overlook because he superficially addresses aspects while glossing over them at the same time, and it has always annoyed me.

For example, he rarely engaged in discussing feminism in his works unless it somehow 'fit'. He might have paid a small bit of respect to feminism (outlining how certain behaviours became more amplified in one of the waves), but he never truly integrated it into his work. The same is true of racism, where he would occasionally say, "Yes, this is because of racism" only to be followed by, "but it's also because..." And while he recognised the racism of something, he never really wanted to engage it.

This book does much the same thing with acknowledging issues of anthropology. Having been a student of anthropology when this was published (2004), I probably would've taken some of the same issues if I had read it then as I do now. It's hard to pick an example of him giving so much grace to anthropologists, so I'll use this one line as a representative:

Anthropologists are not to blame here: we have been trying for decades now to convince the public that there’s no such thing as a “primitive,” that “simple societies” are not really all that simple, that no one ever existed in timeless isolation, that it makes no sense to speak of some social systems as more or less evolved; but so far, we’ve made very little headway.

Anthropologists are partially to blame, though. And he even recognised the history of the field while glossing over how it operates. Anthropology, particularly ethnography (which is what he focused on the most in this piece), were routinely used in the destruction of societies via colonialism and imperialism. Early ethnographers would go out into the field, collect data on different peoples by engaging them in some of their most vulnerable moments, and then take that data back to the empire that sought their destruction. Whether or not they understood their role in colonialism doesn't matter; the results of their actions are plain as day, especially to people who have intimate engagement with the field.

He also went on to say, while trying to decipher the political leanings of anthropologists:

As far as I can make out the only real fundamental political commitment running through the entire field is a kind of broad populism. If nothing else, we are definitely not on the side of whoever, in a given situation, is or fancies themselves to be the elite. We’re for the little guys. Since in practice, most anthropologists are attached to (increasingly global) universities, or if not, end up in jobs like marketing consultancies or jobs with the UN—positions within the very apparatus of global rule—what this really comes down to is a kind of constant, ritualized declaration of disloyalty to that very global elite of which we ourselves, as academics, clearly form one (admittedly somewhat marginal) fraction.

Except that doesn't make any sense. If an anthropologist is "for the little guy," then why are they working in arenas that are actively hostile toward them? Universities, the UN, state governments... All of these things are actively hostile towards the very people that anthropologists might study. How can you believe that the anthropologists were against the elite when they only seem to exist in spaces that serve their interest? (And if it's meant as irony, then I'd say he did a bad job because that's not how it reads due to the way he talks about anthropologists in the rest of the book.)

And, from my own experience (and even knowledge of Graeber's mentor, Marshall Sahlins), I cannot in good conscience agree with this at all. From my own personal experience, I watched people who studied anthropology willingly go to work in intelligence agencies. I have repeatedly stated that the CIA tried to recruit me because of my anthropology background and interest in foreign languages; they saw the value of whatever research (via participant-observation) that I could create for them. While I refused (resigning myself to a life made more financially difficult in favour of my ethics), I know many people who took them up on this offer.

That's not unlike what Sahlins was fighting, particularly because he was both very vocal against the NAS and had resigned from it due to their willingness to work with the military and their admittance of notorious racist anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon (who embodies a lot of what I hated about the field). And while the linked article happened in 2013, this was not a new aspect of anthropology (I saw people I knew get recruited in 2003 to work for intelligence agencies).

Part of what I routinely hate about Graeber's work is his very narrow understanding of how certain things are (like anthropology, in this case). It very often makes me feel like screaming: "Well, it might feel that way for you, but that's never been the experience of everyone else."