Thinking about “The Dawn of Everything" in Black and Red

Summary

This is an abstract from the "In Defense of Everything! Constructive Engagements with Graeber and Wengrow’s Provocative Contribution" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

“The Dawn of Everything" urges us to rethink the most basic concepts of culture and cultural evolution. Waving the black flag of anarchism, Graeber and Wengrow question the widespread idea that inequality and exploitation were unavoidable consequences of human technological “advancement” and population growth. They maintain that humans do not have an inherent nature and that human actors make culture and cultural change. These actors are powerful and capable of choosing freedom. I applaud the authors for engaging a popular audience countering banal ideas of pop psychology (and academic evolutionary psychology) and media that sees human inequality as given. Waving the red flag of Marxism, I find much of value and much to agree with in these pages. Both the black and the red study history to show that humans created the modern social world. Since humans created it they can also transform it. But the key question must be how do we change it? Graeber and Wengrow emphasize the goal of emancipation and repeatedly show how people in the past chose to live free. Under the red flag, Marxists engage in a praxis that focuses on the relationships between material conditions, human consciousness (choice) and human action.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• In Defense of Everything! Constructive Engagements with Graeber and Wengrow’s Provocative Contribution   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38131.0