David Graeber’s Possible Worlds

Re:David Graeber’s Possible Worlds by culi on Thursday November 11, 2021 @09:35PM (#29195736)

I'm not as familiar with how anthropologists feel about Yuval Harari, but fwiw Graeber is far from unique amongst academic anthropologists in his distaste for Jared Diamond's work and the misconceptions and myths that it spread

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Re:David Graeber’s Possible Worlds by netcan on Friday November 12, 2021 @04:46AM (#29197703)

It's pretty common in social science/philosophy that a paradigm gets popular, overly drawn upon and that then pisses off the next commentators.

Graener & Wengrove are as susceptible to this as others.

I mean... the origins of enlightenment liberalism, the origin of money and such don't really have distinct answers. There are always multiple, arguable narratives.

The "paradigm" concept is all about narrowing these to simple causal chains and dynamics... which then limits the next generation.

We love paradigms, anti-paradigms, paradigm shifts... So, every author likes to rebel against the preceding simplification and argue their own, calling them myths and misconceptions.

For the most part, imo, excess is what drives it all. The Jared Diamond paradigms, YNH's, Marx's... Graener & Wengrow are focused on challenging their paradigms as much as they are on promoting their own.

If successful, these new paradigms develop their own excesses and a new generation can get pissy with them.

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