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The Scarcity Myth the Scarcity Myth Issue 2: 2008/9 ISSN 1756-0896 (Print)/ISSN 1756-090X (Online) Intterrprettiing tthe wwoorlldd – and changgiinngg iitt wwwwww..radiicallantthropollooggyyggrroouupp..oorrgg TThhee ssccaarrcciittyy mWmhatyyhuntttehh r-gatherers caan teachh us about sharriing Jerome Lewis on abundance Interview with Noam Chomsky Lionel Sims decodes Stonehenge £3 Keith Hart: a philosophy for life Marek Kohn: can we learn to trust? Editor: Stuart Watkins Email: [email protected] Who we are and what we do Editorial Board: Radical Anthropology is the journal of course at Morley College, London, was Kevin Brown , political activist. the Radical Anthropology Group. closed down, supposedly for budgetary Elena Fejdiova , social reasons. Within a few weeks, the anthropologist. Radical: about the inherent, students got organised, electing a Dave Flynn, trade unionist and fundamental roots of an issue. treasurer, secretary and other officers. political activist. Anthropology: the scientific study of the They booked a library in Camden – and Chris Knight , professor of origin, behaviour, and physical, social, invited Chris to continue teaching next anthropology at the University and cultural development of humans. year. In this way, the Radical of East London. Anthropology Group was born. Eleanor Leone , MA Social Anthropology asks one big question: Anthropology student what does it mean to be human? To Later, Lionel Sims, who since the 1960s at Goldsmiths College, answer this, we cannot rely on common had been lecturing in sociology at the University of London. sense or on philosophical arguments. We University of East London, came across Jerome Lewis , anthropologist must study how humans actually live – Chris’s PhD on human origins and – at University College London. and the many different ways in which excited by the backing it provided for Amanda MacLean, researcher they have lived. This means learning, for the anthropology of Karl Marx and in behavioural ecology, nature example, how people in non-capitalist Friedrich Engels, particularly on the conservation worker. societies live, how they organise subject of ‘primitive communism’ – Brian Morris , emeritus themselves and resolve conflict in the invited Chris to help set up professor of anthropology absence of a state, the different ways in Anthropology at UEL. Since its at Goldsmiths College, which a ‘family’ can be run, and so on. establishment in 1990, Anthropology at University of London. UEL has retained close ties with the Camilla Power, senior lecturer Additionally, it means studying other Radical Anthropology Group. in anthropology at the species and other times. What might it University of East London. mean to be almost – but not quite – RAG has never defined itself as a Lionel Sims , principal lecturer human? How socially self-aware, for political organisation. But the in anthropology at the example, is a chimpanzee? Do non- implications of some forms of science University of East London, human primates have a sense of are intrinsically radical, and this applies and member of the Society morality? Do they have language? And in particular to the theory that humanity of European what about distant times? Who were the was born in a social revolution. Many Archaeoastronomy and the Australopithecines and why had they RAG members choose to be active in Socialist Workers Party. begun walking upright? Where did the Survival International and/or other Neanderthals come from and why did indigenous rights movements to defend On the cover: they become extinct? How, when and the land rights and cultural survival of The journal’s logo represents why did human art, religion, language hunter-gatherers. Additionally, some the emergence of culture and culture first evolve? RAG members combine academic (dragons feature in myths and research with activist involvement in legends from around the The Radical Anthropology Group environmentalist, anti-capitalist and world) from nature (the DNA started in 1984 when Chris Knight’s other campaigns. For more, see double-helix, or selfish gene). popular ‘Introduction to Anthropology’ www.radicalanthropologygroup.org. The dragon is a symbol of solidarity, especially the Subscriptions blood solidarity that was a Radical Anthropology is an annual journal and appears necessary precondition for the every October. social revolution that made us human. For more on this, see One issue £3 our website at www. Two issues £5 radicalanthropologygroup.org. Five issues £10 The cover picture features Send a cheque made payable to ‘Radical Anthropology Group’ to: Baka Pygmies using software Radical Anthropology, c/o Stuart Watkins, 2 Spa View, Leamington Spa, CV31 2HA. to precisely map a valuable Email: [email protected]. moabi tree so that it can continue to provide them The journal is also available free via our website: with fruit, oil and medicines www.radicalanthropologygroup.org. for generations to come. See Jerome Lewis’s article on Anti-copyright: all material may be freely reproduced for non-commercial page 11 for details. purposes, but please mention Radical Anthropology . 2 Radical Anthropology Editorial Anthropology is for everyone n the editorial for our first issue, we forests and put a safety fence around It is scarcely possible to consider what said we were proud to feature the charred ruins that remain. Conser- a science of human nature could tell us Irepresentatives of the most exciting vationists pursue a strategy that makes without engaging with the work of and important trends in anthropology. sense if what you want is to accept Noam Chomsky . More than anyone Which left us with a difficulty. How defeat and preserve the ruins. If, on the else, he has changed the way we think were we to top our initial achieve- other hand, we truly want a future for about what it means to be human, ment? There was an obvious answer, if the forests, maybe we should turn for gaining a position in the history of one that seemed doomed to disap- advice to those who have been its ideas arguably comparable with that of pointment: just contact all the very best custodians for millennia. From their Darwin or Descartes. As if that wasn’t and most important names in the field, point of view, the forest is not a scarce enough for one lifetime, he is also and ask them to contribute too. That’s resource to be protected, but an essential reading for anyone critical of what we did. Amazingly, unbelievably, abundant resource to be shared. US militarism and imperialism, and they all said yes. Even better, they all As Lewis puts it, the onus is on us to global capitalism. Here, we limit delivered on their promise, and you change our point of view from “one ourselves to an area of his thought not can read what they have to say in these that endlessly chases and protects so often discussed, the evolution of pages. If we may be so immodest to scarce natural resources to one that language. See our interview on page 19 . say so, that makes the first two issues sees natural resources as adequate, (We in the Radical Anthropology of our journal an essential – if not, of even abundant. Seeing that there is Group have our differences with course, definitive – guide for anyone enough for everybody, but it just Chomsky, which we hope come out in interested in creating a future fit for needs to be shared properly, is the the interview. In the next issue, we’ll be our species and the planet. lesson that we can learn from the talking to anthropologist Chris Knight, Yaka”. How the Yaka achieve this where an alternative view on the For the present, however, what we sharing way of life is also touched evolution of language will be spelled seem to need as much as anything is upon in Lewis’s brilliant article. out. In the meantime, see inspiration and the confidence that www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/ things could be changed and improved. That they have achieved it is not in class_text_070.pdf.) We continue the Because if the prospects for radical any serious doubt, which may come human nature theme later in the change are as gloomy as most people as a surprise to those who insist that journal by considering under what insist, there would seem to be little human nature must militate against conditions we can expect humans to point doing anything but console such communist arrangements. This trust each other. See our interview with ourselves as the economy tanks and the confidence about what human nature Marek Kohn on page 29 . planet burns. Where better to find such is and must be is another dominant inspiration than Jerome Lewis’ s work feature of Western thought – if you e are delighted to have such with African hunter-gatherers on page like, our inherited common sense. eminent names onboard. 11 ? Lewis pursues a classic anthropo- Common sense can be a reliable guide WBut our journal must ulti- logical strategy – to learn something in our lives – how could we account mately be judged a failure if all we end about ourselves by paying close and for its existence otherwise? But some- up creating is yet one more forum for sympathetic attention to how others see times it is so disastrously wrong that that small minority of people lucky us. In his article for Radical we need a way to think beyond it. enough to make their living from the Anthropology , Lewis considers what We need to know the truth behind production of new knowledge. Such the Yaka hunter-gatherers of Congo- appearances because better knowledge knowledge is useful – as Lionel Sims Brazzaville make of Western of our human nature will allow us to puts it on page 24 , it strengthens our ‘conservation’ efforts. The clue to the make living arrangements that are in resolve by arming us intellectually. But truth of what ‘conservation’ is all about accord with that nature.
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