Issue 2: 2008/9 ISSN 1756-0896 (Print)/ISSN 1756-090X (Online)

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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. We also need it can be more than that: it can help us is to be found in a simple but puzzling to know the truth if our moral codes decide what we can and should make fact: the Yaka do not discriminate are to be anything more than hot air – of our lives – it is “the practical arm of between the activities of the loggers what kind of behaviour can we expect moral philosophy”, as Keith Hart says cutting down their forest for private from human animals? And if that in a guest editorial starting on page 4 , gain – supposedly the main villains of leaves something to be desired, and must be popular, not academic. the piece – and conservationists. what social arrangements can we That means anthropology is for make so that the darker sides of everyone. With the appointment of This is not because the Yaka have our inherited behavioural strategies activists to our new editorial board made a stupid mistake. It’s because can be better managed in the interests (see left), as well as the development of both loggers and well-meaning of all? The first question, though, a Radical Anthropology Network (see conservationists do in fact work hand must be, how are we to acquire the page 31 ), we hope we have taken a in hand. They both come from a truth about human nature if common small step towards making these culture that has already destroyed its sense is no guide? worthy aspirations a reality. I

Radical Anthropology 3 Guest editorial Towards a new human universal: rethinking anthropology for our times

We should take Kant as our inspiration and reclaim anthropology as a practical guide for living, argues Keith Hart

agellan’s crew completed the Kant’s Anthropology in one part of the world is felt first circumnavigation of the Immanuel Kant published Anthro- everywhere. The idea of a Mplanet some 30 years after pology from a pragmatic point of cosmopolitan right is not fantastic Columbus crossed the Atlantic. At view in 1798. The book was based on and overstrained; it is a necessary much the same time, Bartolomé de las lectures he had given at the university complement to the unwritten code of Casas opposed the racial inequality of since 1772-3. Kant’s aim was to political and international right, Spain’s American empire in the name of attract the general public to anthro- transforming it into a universal right human unity. We are living through pology – and it was Kant more than of humanity. another ‘Magellan moment’. In the anyone who gave ‘anthropology’ as second half of the 20th century, an independent discipline its name. This confident sense of an emergent humanity formed a world society – a Remarkably, histories of anthropology world order, written over 200 years single interactive social network – for have rarely mentioned this work, ago, can now be seen as the high the first time. This was symbolised by perhaps because the discipline has point of the liberal revolution, before several moments, such as when the evolved so far away from Kant’s it was overwhelmed by its twin space race in the 1960s allowed us to original premises. But it would offspring, industrial capitalism and see the earth from the outside or when pay us to take his Anthropology the nation-state. the internet went public in the 90s, seriously, if only for its resonance announcing the convergence of with our own times. Earlier Kant wrote an essay, ‘Idea for a telephones, television and computers in universal history with a cosmopolitan a digital revolution of communications. Shortly before, Kant wrote Perpetual purpose’ which included the following peace: a philosophical sketch . The last propositions: Our world too is massively unequal quarter of the 18th century saw its and the voices for human unity own share of ‘globalisation’ – the 1. In man (as the only rational creature are often drowned. Emergent American and French revolutions, the on earth) those natural faculties which world society is the new human rise of British industry and the aim at the use of reason shall be fully universal – not an idea, but the fact of international movement to abolish developed in the species, not in the our shared occupation of the planet slavery. Kant knew that coalitions of individual. crying out for new principles of states were gearing up for war, yet he association. In this editorial, I will responded to this sense of the world 2. The means that nature employs to explore the possible contribution of coming closer together by proposing accomplish the development of all anthropology to such a project. If the how humanity might form society as faculties is the antagonism of men in academic discipline as presently world citizens beyond the boundaries society, since this antagonism becomes, constituted would find it hard to of states. He held that ‘cosmopolitan in the end, the cause of a lawful order address this task, perhaps we need to right’, the basic right of all world of this society. look elsewhere for a suitable citizens, should rest on conditions of intellectual strategy. universal hospitality, that is, on the 3. The latest problem for mankind, the right of a stranger not to be treated solution of which nature forces us to with hostility when he arrives on seek, is the achievement of a civil someone else’s territory. In other society which is capable of Keith Hart is honorary research words, we should be free to go administering law universally. professor in the School of wherever we like in the world, since it Development Studies, University belongs to all of us equally. He goes 4. This problem is both the most of Kwazulu-Natal, and professor on to say: difficult and the last to be solved by emeritus at Goldsmiths, mankind. University of London. Email: The peoples of the earth have entered [email protected]. See in varying degree into a universal 5. A philosophical attempt to write a community, and it has developed to www.thememorybank.co.uk. universal world history according to a the point where a violation of rights plan of nature which aims at perfect

4 Radical Anthropology civic association of mankind must be has two parts, the first and longer Enlightenment predecessors motivated considered to be possible and even as being on empirical psychology and by a pressing democratic project to capable of furthering nature’s purpose. divided into sections on cognition, make world society less unequal. Seen aesthetics and ethics. Part 2 is in this light, the first work of modern Our world is much more socially concerned with the character of human anthropology is not Kant’s, but Jean- integrated than two centuries ago and beings at every level from the Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on the its economy is palpably unequal. individual to the species, seen from Origins and Foundations of Inequality Histories of the universe we inhabit do both the inside and the outside. among Men (1754). seem to be indispensable to the Anthropology is the practical arm of construction of institutions capable of moral philosophy. It does not explain Here Rousseau was concerned not administering justice worldwide. The the metaphysics of morals which are with individual variations in natural task of building a global civil society categorical and transcendent; but it is endowments which we can do little for the 21st century, even a world indispensable to any interaction about, but with the artificial state, is an urgent one and involving human agents. It is thus inequalities of wealth, honour and the anthropological visions should play ‘pragmatic’ in a number of senses: it is capacity to command obedience their part in that. ‘everything that pertains to the derived from social convention which practical’, popular (as opposed to can be changed. In order to construct This then was the context for the academic) and moral in that it is a model of human equality, he publication of Kant’s Anthropology . concerned with what people should do, imagined a pre-social state of nature, He elsewhere summarised ‘philosophy with their motives for action. a sort of hominid phase of human in the cosmopolitan sense of the word’ evolution in which men were solitary, as four questions: In his Preface, Kant acknowledges but healthy, happy and above all free. that anthropological science has some This freedom was metaphysical, What can I know? way to go methodologically. People anarchic and personal: original What should I do? act self-consciously when they are human beings had free will, they were What may I hope for? being observed and it is often hard to not subject to rules of any kind and What is a human being? distinguish between self-conscious they had no superiors. At some point action and habit. For this reason, he humanity made the transition to what The first question is answered in recommends as aids ‘world history, Rousseau calls ‘nascent society’, a metaphysics , the second in morals , biographies and even plays and prolonged period whose economic the third in religion and the fourth in novels’. The latter, while being base can best be summarised as anthropology . admittedly inventions, are often based hunter-gathering with huts. This on close observation of real behaviour second phase represents his ideal of But the first three questions ‘relate to and add to our knowledge of human life in society close to nature. The rot anthropology’, he said, and might be beings. He thought that the main set in with the invention of agriculture subsumed under it. Kant conceived of value of his book lay in its systematic or, as Rousseau puts it, of wheat and anthropology as an empirical organisation, so that readers could iron. Cultivation of the land led to discipline, but also as a means of moral incorporate their experience into it incipient property institutions whose and cultural improvement. It was thus and develop new themes appropriate culmination awaited the development both an investigation into human to their own lives. Historians and of political society. nature and, more especially, into how philosophers are divided between to modify it, as a way of providing his those who find the book marginal to The first man who, having enclosed a students with practical guidance and Kant’s thought and those for whom it piece of land, thought of saying ‘This knowledge of the world. He intended is just muddled and banal. And the is mine’ and found people simple his lectures to be ‘popular’ and of value anthropologists have ignored it enough to believe him, was the true in later life. Above all, the entirely. I hope to show that this was founder of civil society. Anthropology was to contribute to the a mistake. progressive political task of uniting The formation of a civil order (the world citizens by identifying the source The anthropology of state) was preceded by a Hobbesian of their ‘cosmopolitan bonds’. The unequal society condition, a war of all against all book thus moves between mundane Following Locke’s example, the 18th- marked by the absence of law, which illustrations and Kant’s most sublime century Enlightenment was animated Rousseau insisted was the result of vision, using anecdotes close to home by a revolutionary desire to found social development, not an original as a bridge to horizon thinking. democratic societies to replace the class state of nature. He believed that this system typical of agrarian civilisation. new social contract was probably If for Kant the two divisions of How could the arbitrary social arrived at by consensus, but it was a anthropology were physiological and inequality of the Old Regime be fraudulent one in that the rich thereby pragmatic, he preferred to concentrate abolished and a more equal society gained legal sanction for transmitting on the latter – ‘what the human being founded on the basis of what all people unequal property rights in perpetuity. as a free actor can and should make of have in common, their human nature? From this inauspicious beginning, himself’. This is based primarily on The great Victorian synthesisers, such political society then usually moved, observation, but it also involves the as Morgan, Engels, Tylor and Frazer, via a series of revolutions, through construction of moral rules. The book were standing on the shoulders of three stages:

Radical Anthropology 5 The establishment of law and the Origin of the Family, Private Property from the pre-industrial societies of right of property was the first stage, and the State . Engels’s greater emphasis Europe and Asia; and latterly refuting the institution of magistrates the on gender inequality made this strand the West’s claim to being exceptional, second, and the transformation of of ‘the anthropology of unequal especially when compared with Asia. legitimate into arbitrary power the society’ a fertile source for the feminist Goody found that kin groups in the third and last stage. Thus the status movement in the 1960s and after. major societies of Eurasia frequently of rich and poor was authorized by pass on property through both sexes, a the first epoch, that of strong and The traditional home of inequality is process of ‘diverging devolution’ that is weak by the second and by the third supposed to be India and Andre virtually unknown in Sub-Saharan that of master and slave, which is the Beteille (eg, Inequality among men ) has Africa, where inheritance follows the last degree of inequality and the stage made the subject his special domain of line of one sex only. Particularly when to which all the others finally lead, late, merging social anthropology with women’s property includes the means until new revolutions dissolve the comparative sociology. In the United of production – land in agricultural government altogether and bring it States, Leslie White at Michigan and societies – attempts will be made to back to legitimacy. Julian Steward at Columbia led teams, control these heiresses, banning including Wolf, Sahlins, Service, Harris premarital sex and making arranged One-man-rule closes the circle. and Mintz, who took the evolution of marriages for them, often within the the state and class society as their chief same group and with a strong It is here that all individuals become focus. Probably the single most preference for monogamy. Direct equal again because they are nothing, impressive work coming out of this inheritance by women is also here where subjects have no longer American school was Eric Wolf’s associated with the isolation of the any law but the will of the master… Europe and the People without nuclear family in kinship terminology, History . But one man tried to redo where a distinction is drawn between For Rousseau, the growth of inequality Morgan in a single book and that was one’s own parents and siblings and was just one aspect of human Claude Lévi-Strauss in The Elementary other relatives of the same generation, alienation in civil society. We need to Structures of Kinship . We should recall unlike in lineage systems. All of this return from division of labour and that, in Tristes Tropiques , Lévi-Strauss reflects a class basis for society that dependence on the opinion of others to acknowledged Rousseau as his master. was broadly absent in Africa. subjective self-sufficiency, Kant’s The aim of Elementary Structures was principal concern and mine. This to revisit Morgan’s three-stage theory The major Eurasian civilizations were subversive parable ends with a ringing of social evolution, drawing on a new organized through large states run by indictment of economic inequality and impressive canvas, ‘the Siberia- literate elites whose lifestyle embraced which could well serve as a warning to Assam axis’ and all points southeast as both the city and the countryside. In our world. far as the Australian desert. other words, what we have here is Gordon Childe’s ‘urban revolution’ in It is manifestly contrary to the law of Lévi-Strauss took as his motor of Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago, where nature, however defined… that a development the forms of marriage handful of people should gorge exchange and the logic of exogamy. …an elaborate bureaucracy, a themselves with superfluities while The ‘restricted reciprocity’ of complex division of labour, a the hungry multitude goes in want of egalitarian bands gave way to the stratified society based on necessities. unstable hierarchies of ‘generalised ecclesiastical landlordism…[were] reciprocity’ typical of the Highland made possible by intensive agriculture ewis H. Morgan drew on Burma tribes. The stratified states of where title to landed property was of Rousseau’s model for his own the region turned inwards to supreme importance. Lfiercely democratic synthesis of endogamy, to the reproduction of class human history, Ancient Society . If differences and the negation of social The analytical focus that lends unity Rousseau laid out the first systematic reciprocity. Evidently, the author was to Goody’s compendious work is anthropological theory and Kant then not encouraged to universalise the consistent with an intellectual proposed anthropology as an academic model, since he subsequently genealogy linking him through Childe discipline, what made Morgan’s work abandoned it, preferring to analyse the to Morgan-Engels and ultimately the launch proper of modern structures of the human mind as Rousseau. The key to understanding anthropology was his ability to enroll revealed in myths. social forms lies in production, which contemporary ethnographic for us means machine production. observations made among the Iroquois My teacher, Jack Goody has tried to Civilization or human culture is into analysis of the historical structures lift our profession out of a myopic largely shaped by the means of underlying western civilisation’s origins ethnography into a concern with the communication – once writing, now in Greece and Rome. Marx and Engels movement of world history that went an array of mechanized forms. The enthusiastically took up Morgan’s out of fashion with the passing of the site of social struggles is property, work as confirmation of their own Victorian founders. Starting with now principally conflicts over critique of the state and capitalism; and Production and Reproduction , he has intellectual property. And his central the latter, drawing on Marx’s extensive produced a score of books over the last issue of reproduction has never been annotations of Ancient Society, made three decades investigating why Sub- more salient than at a time when the the argument more accessible as The Saharan Africa differs so strikingly aging citizens of rich countries depend

6 Radical Anthropology on the proliferating mass of young for equality released by the Second obligation, self-interest and concern people out there. Kinship needs to World War and the anti-colonial for others. Modern capitalism thus be reinvented too. revolution that followed it. On the rests on an unsustainable attachment other hand, growing awareness of the to one of these poles. The pure types A new human universal: the consequences of our collective actions of selfish and generous economic unity of self and society for life on this planet might be another action obscure the complex interplay A lot hinges on where in the long stimulus to take world society between our individuality and process of human evolution we imagine seriously. Society is caught precariously belonging in subtle ways to others. If the world is today. The Victorians between national and global forms at learning to be two-sided is the means believed that they stood at the pinnacle present; and that is why new ways of of becoming human, then the lesson is of civilisation. I think of us as being like thinking are so vital. apparently hard to learn. Each of us the first digging-stick operators, embarks on a journey outward into primitives stumbling into the invention What this adds up to is the possible the world and inward into the self. of agriculture. In the late 1990s, I asked formation of a new human universal. Society is mysterious to us because we what it is about us that future gener- By this I mean making a world where have lived in it and it now dwells ations will be interested in. I settled on all people can live together, not the inside us at a level that is not the rapid advances then being made in imposition of principles that suit some ordinarily visible from the perspective forming a single interactive network powerful interests at the expense of the of everyday life. All the places we have linking all humanity. This has two rest. The next universal will be unlike lived in are sources of introspection striking features: first, the network is a its predecessors, the Christian and concerning our relationship to society; highly unequal market of buyers and bourgeois versions through which the and one method for understanding the sellers fuelled by a money circuit that West has sought to dominate or world is to make an ongoing practice has become progressively detached replace the cultural particulars that of trying to synthesise these varied from production and politics; and organise people’s lives everywhere. The experiences. If a person would have an second, it is driven by a digital main precedent for such an approach identity – would be one thing, one self revolution in communications whose to discovering our common humanity – this requires trying to make out of symbol is the internet, the network of is great literature which achieves fragmented social experience a more networks. So my research over the last universality through going deeply into coherent whole, a world in other decade has been concerned with how particular personalities, relations and words as singular as the self. the forms of money and exchange are places. The new universal will not just changing in the context of this tolerate cultural particulars, but will be Kant is the source for the notion that communications revolution. founded on knowing that true human society may be as much an expression community can only be realised of individual subjectivity as a collective My case for global integration rests on through them. force out there. Copernicus solved the three developments of the last two problem of the movement of the decades: There are two prerequisites for being heavenly bodies by having the human: we must each learn to be self- spectator revolve while they were at 1. The collapse of the Soviet Union, reliant to a high degree and to belong rest, instead of them revolve around opening up the world to trans- to others, merging our identities in a the spectator. Kant extended this national capitalism and neo-liberal bewildering variety of social achievement for physics into economic policies. relationships. Much of modern metaphysics. In his Preface to The ideology emphasises how problematic Critique of Pure Reason , he writes, 2. The entry of China’s and India’s two it is to be both self-interested and billion people, a third of humanity, mutual, to be economic as well as Hitherto it has been assumed that all into the world market as powers in social, we might say. When culture is our knowledge must conform to their own right and the globalisation of set up to expect a conflict between the objects... but what if we suppose that capital accumulation, for the first time two, it is hard to be both. Yet the two objects must conform to our loosening the grip of America and sides are often inseparable in practice knowledge? Europe on the global economy. and some societies, by encouraging private and public interests to coincide, In order to understand the world, we 3. The shortening of time and distance have managed to integrate them more must begin not with the empirical brought about by the communications effectively than ours. One premise of existence of objects, but with the revolution, linked to a restlessly mobile the new human universal will thus be reasoning embedded in our experience population. the unity of self and society. itself and in all the judgments we have made. This is to say that the world is The corollary of this revolution is a arcel Mauss held that the inside each of us as much as it is out counter-revolution, the reassertion of attempt to create a free there. Our task is to unite the two state power since 9/11 and the Mmarket for private contracts poles as subjective individuals who imperialist war for oil in the Middle is utopian and just as unrealisable as share the object world with the rest of East. As Kant said, conflict is the its antithesis, a collective based solely humanity. Knowledge of society must catalyst for seeking a lawful basis of on altruism. Human institutions be personal and moral before it is world society. Certainly humanity has everywhere are founded on the unity defined by the laws imposed on each of regressed significantly from the hopes of individual and society, freedom and us from above.

Radical Anthropology 7 Kant’s achievement was soon rest of humanity in an encompassing humanities editor for Harvard overthrown by a counter-revolution whole. Between these extremes lie University Press, claims that the that identified society with the state. proliferating associations of great current explosion of academic This was launched by Hegel in The variety. He settled on the village as the publishing is a bubble as certain to Philosophy of Right and it was only vehicle for Indians’ aspirations for self- burst as the dotcom boom. Publishing, truly consummated after the First organisation; and this made him in he says, has become more concerned World War. As a result, the personal many respects a typical 20th-century with quantity than quality and was separated from the impersonal, the nationalist. But what is most relevant mechanization ‘has proved lethal’. He subject from the object, humanism to us is his existentialist project. If the warns academics, in the face of the from science. Twentieth-century society world of society and nature is devoid corporate takeover of the university, was conceived of as an impersonal of meaning, each of us is left feeling ‘…to preserve and protect the mechanism defined by international small, isolated and vulnerable. How do independence of their activities, before division of labour, national we bridge the gap between a puny self the market becomes our prison. (…) bureaucracy and scientific laws and a vast, unknowable world? The Many universities are, in significant understood only by experts. Not answer is to scale down the world, to part, financial holding operations (…) surprisingly, most people felt ignorant scale up the self or a combination of The commercialization of higher and impotent in the face of such a both, so that a meaningful relationship education has caused innovation in the society. Yet, we have never been more might be established between the two. humanities to come to a standstill.’ conscious of ourselves as unique Gandhi devoted a large part of his personalities who make a difference. philosophy to building up the personal Because Waters blames the humanities’ That is why questions of identity are so resources of individuals. Our task is to decline on money and machines, his central to politics today. bring this project up to date. call for resistance has no practical basis in contemporary conditions. Anna oney in capitalist societies Novels and movies allow us to span Grimshaw and I, in the pamphlet that stands for alienation, actual and possible worlds. They bring launched our imprint, Prickly Pear Mdetachment, impersonal history down in scale to a familiar Press, once tried to locate anthro- society, the outside; its origins lie frame (the paperback, the screen) and pology’s compromised relationship to beyond our control (the market). audiences enter into that history subjec- academic bureaucracy in the crisis Relations marked by the absence of tively on any terms their imagination facing modern intellectuals, as money are the model of personal permits. The sources of our alienation identified by the Caribbean writer, CLR integration and free association, of are commonplace. What interests me is James in American Civilization . We what we take to be familiar, the inside resistance to alienation, whatever form held that intellectual practice should be (home). This institutional dualism, it takes, religious or otherwise. How integrated more closely with social life, forcing individuals to divide can we feel at home out there, in the given their increasing separation by themselves, asks too much of us. restless turbulence of the modern academic bureaucracy. The need to People want to integrate division, to world? The digital revolution is in part escape from the ivory tower to join the make some meaningful connection a response to this need. We feel at people where they live was the between themselves as subjects and home in intimate, face-to-face relations; inspiration for modern anthropology. society as an object. It helps that but we must engage in remote, often But this had been negated by the money, as well as being the means of impersonal exchanges at distance. expansion of the universities after 1945 separating public and domestic life, Improvements in telecommunications and by the political pressures exerted was always the main bridge between cannot stop until we replicate at on academics since the 1980s. the two. That is why money must be distance the experience of face-to-face central to any attempt to humanise interaction. For the drive to overcome Edward Said, in Representations of the society. Today it is both the principal alienation is even more powerful than Intellectual , without ever mentioning source of our vulnerability in society alienation itself. Social evolution has anthropology, made claims for and the main practical symbol reached the point of establishing near- intellectuals that could be taken as a allowing each of us to make an universal communications; now we metaphor for the discipline. He impersonal world meaningful. must make world society in the image emphasised the creative possibilities in of our own humanity. migration and marginality, of being an How else can we repair this rupture awkward outsider who crosses between self and society? Mohandas K. Crisis of the intellectuals boundaries, questions certainties, a Gandhi’s critique of the modern The universities have been around for figure at once involved and detached. identification of society with the state a long time, but they came into their Narrow professionalism poses an was devastating. He believed that it own in the last half-century, as the immense threat to academic life. disabled citizens, subjecting mind and training grounds for bureaucracy that Specialisation, concern with body to the control of professional Hegel envisaged. Most contemporary disciplinary boundaries and expert experts when the purpose of a intellectuals have taken refuge in them knowledge lead to a suspension of civilisation should be to enhance its by now and human personality has critical enquiry and ultimately a drift members’ sense of their own self- been in retreat there for some time. In towards legitimating power. The exile reliance. He proposed instead that Enemies of Promise: publishing, and the amateur might combine to every human being is a unique perishing and the eclipse of inject new radicalism into a jaded personality and participates with the scholarship , Lindsay Waters, professionalism. Said credited James

8 Radical Anthropology with being an intellectual of this kind, binary ideas (right/wrong) lay at the and the European Association grows in but James placed intellectuals within a core of society’s malaise. Leach called stature. The annual AAA (American historical process that had aligned for an intellectual practice based on Anthropological Association) meetings them with power and made them movement and engagement, have become a global gathering point increasingly at odds with the people. connection and dialectic. In short he where anthropologists are more likely Said did not identify how and why was calling for the reinsertion of ideas to meet national colleagues than at intellectual life had been transformed into social life. home, rather like the African politicians from free individual creativity into of the interwar period who got to meet serving the needs of bureaucracy. he solution to anthropology’s each other in Paris or London. The problems cannot be found in second largest annual meetings are in For James there was a growing conflict Tincreased specialisation, in the Brazil, where anthropologists have between the concentration of power at discovery of new areas of social life to expanded from their Amazonian base the top of society and the aspirations colonise with the aid of old to offer informed commentary on all of people everywhere for democracy to professional paradigms or in a return aspects of national society and culture. be extended into all areas of their lives. to literary scholarship disguised as a Scandinavian anthropologists draw on This conflict was most advanced in new dialogical form. It requires new their social-democratic tradition to America. The struggle was for patterns of social engagement exhibit a high level of public civilisation or barbarism, for individual extending beyond the universities to engagement. Countries like Nigeria and freedom within new and expanded the widest reaches of world society. We India sustain large numbers of conceptions of social life (democracy) must acknowledge how people anthropologists in the study of ‘tribal’ or a fragmented and repressed everywhere are pushing back the areas. The discipline appears to be subjectivity stifled by coercive boundaries of the old society and flourishing in the lands of new bureaucracies (totalitarianism). The remain open to universality, which has settlement, such as Australia, Canada intellectuals were caught between the been driven underground by national and South Africa. New varieties of expansion of bureaucracy and the capitalism and would be buried forever national anthropology are springing up growing power and presence of people if the present corporate privatisation of all over Eastern Europe. I could go on, as a force in world society. Unable to intellectual life is allowed to succeed. but the point is made. ‘Anthropology’ recognise that people’s lives mattered has slipped its colonial bonds and is more than their own ideas, they The expansion of academic bureau- now many things all over the world. oscillated between an introspective cracy has accentuated the individualism (psychoanalysis) and objectification of thought as a marker The same cannot be said of its service to the ruling powers, whether of status and reward. Ideas have institutional setting. Like most other of the right (fascism) or left (Stalinism). become commodities to be possessed, intellectual activities, the discipline has As a result, the traditional role of the traded and stolen. An intensified focus become largely locked up in the intellectual as an independent witness on the formal abstraction of universities. Anthropology’s modernist and critic standing unequivocally for performance has led to the academic moment – the commitment to join the truth had been seriously compromised. labour market being driven by the people where they live in order to find Their absorption as wage slaves and empty measures of print production out what they do and think – became pensioners of bureaucracy not only that Waters rightly denigrates. ossified as the professional mantra that removed intellectuals’ independence, Subjective contributions, like the we do ‘fieldwork-based ethnography’. but also separated their specialised qualities of a good teacher, inevitably The universities themselves, in most activities from social life. carry less weight. And so the academic countries outside the US, are centrally intellectuals, who might have offered a organised by the state; and the One anthropologist who addressed critique of the corporate takeover of ethnographic model of society – these questions of intellectuals and the the universities, find themselves indigenous, culturally homogeneous, public, of ideas and life, knowledge instead drawn passively into a vicious bounded territorial units – uncom- and power, was Edmund Leach in his variant of the privatisation of ideas. fortably mimics the nationalism that it prescient BBC lectures, A Runaway Something must be done to reinstate was originally designed to promote World? There he identified a world in human personality in our common and, worse, dissolves world society movement, marked by the understanding of how the world into a plethora of local fragments, each interconnectedness of people and works. But this should be through the aspiring to self-sufficiency. If cultural things. This provoked the mood of medium of money and machines, not relativism was once a legitimate optimism and fear that characterized despite them. Kant’s cosmopolitan reaction to racist imperialism, the the 60s, when established structures moral politics offer one vision of the legacy of the ethnographic turn has seemed to be breaking down. The course such a renewal might take. been to make it impossible for most reality of change could not be academic anthropologists to respond understood through conventional Anthropology now and to come effectively to our own ‘Magellan cultural categories predicated on stable Anthropology can no longer be moment’. We generate fine-grained order. Moral categories based on summarised as what a few luminaries accounts of human experience, but habits of separation and division could in the centres of imperial power think without the aspiration to universality only make the world’s movement seem and do. Americans dominate a much that still animated the discipline up alien and frightening. An ethos of larger profession, for sure, while British until the 50s. We now address only scientific detachment reinforced by and French anthropology are in decline ourselves and our students.

Radical Anthropology 9 his is not to say that Disciplines thrive when their object, commonplace in future. No one, in my anthropology sits well with the theory and method are coherent. In the view, better exemplifies the vision and Tuniversity. We retain the will to 18th century, anthropology’s object was methods needed for anthropology’s range across disciplinary boundaries; human nature, its theory ‘reason’, its renewal than Sidney Mintz. Apart from the humanism and democracy entailed method humanist philosophy. In the his record as a Caribbean ethnographer, in our methods contradict bureaucratic 19th century, anthropology’s object was he has produced an outstanding imperatives at every turn. to explain racial hierarchy, its theory biography in Worker in the Cane , and Anthropology has always been an anti- was evolution, its method world in Sweetness and Power world history discipline, a holding company for history. The object of British social of the first rank. The ‘literary turn’ in idiosyncratic individuals to do what anthropology in the 20th century was anthropology, symbolised by the they like and call it ‘anthropology’. primitive societies, its theory was publication of Writing Culture two This is coming under pressure today. functionalism and the method decades ago, has also opened up Increasingly, academic anthropologists fieldwork. We need a new synthesis of anthropology to fiction – novels, plays turn inwards for defence against all- object, theory and method suitable to and movies. This is surely for the good. comers and this often leaves them conditions now. The ethnographic exposed and without allies in the paradigm has been moving for half a The rapid development of global struggle for survival in the universities. century in response to the anti-colonial communications today contains within We can’t assume that the identification revolution and other seismic changes in its movement a far-reaching of anthropology with the academy in world history. But anthropologists have transformation of world society. the previous century will continue in retained the method of face-to-face ‘Anthropology’ in some form is one of the next. It is now harder for self- encounters while dumping the original the intellectual traditions best suited to designated guilds to control access to object and theory. Paradoxically, while make sense of it. The academic professional knowledge. People have the anthropologists have rejected seclusion of the discipline, its passive other ways of finding out for them- philosophy, history and anything else acquiescence to bureaucracy, is the selves, rather than submit to academic that could give meaning to the purpose chief obstacle preventing us from hierarchy. And there are many agencies of their discipline, the idea of grasping this historical opportunity. We out there competing to give them what ethnography has been adopted in cling to our revolutionary commitment they want, whether through journalism, everything from geography to nursing to joining the people, but have tourism or the self-learning possibilities studies. Of course the anthropologists forgotten what it was for or what else afforded by the internet. Popular claim that the others don’t understand is needed, if we are to succeed in resistance to the power of disembedded what ethnography is really about or helping to build a universal society. I experts is essentially moral, in that how it is done. But they have forgotten grew up in an education system people insist on restoring a personal what it is about ‘anthropology’ that designed to prepare graduates for the dimension to human knowledge. makes their version of ‘ethnography’ Indian civil service, so I have had to special. They no longer ask the basic retool late in life with the help of So the issue of anthropology’s future questions that launched anthropology – younger and more skilled companions. needs to be couched in broader terms what makes inequality intolerable or The internet is a wonderful chance to than those defined by the profession how people can live together peaceably. open up the flow of knowledge and itself. I have been building a case that So they can’t explain what is missing information. Rather than obsessing ‘anthropology’ is indispensable to the when others take up ‘ethnography’. over how we can control access to making of world society in the coming what we write, which means cutting century. It may be that some elements I have made much of Kant’s example off the mass of humanity almost of the current academic discipline here because he attempted to address completely from our efforts, we need could play a part in that; but the the emergence of world society directly. to figure out new interactive forms of prospects are not good, given the He conceived of anthropology engagement that span the globe and to narrow localism and anti-universalism primarily as a form of humanist make the results of our work available that is prevalent there. Rather I have education; and this contrasts starkly to everyone. Ever since the internet sought inspiration in Kant’s philosophy with the emphasis on scientific research went public, I have made online self- and in the critique of unequal society outputs in today’s universities. We publishing the core of my that originates with Rousseau. could also emulate his ‘pragmatic’ anthropological practice. It matters less ‘Anthropology’ would then mean anthropology, a personal programme of that an academic guild should retain its whatever we need to know about lifetime learning with the aim of monopoly of access to knowledge than humanity as a whole if we want to developing practical knowledge of the that ‘anthropology’ should be taken up build a more equal world fit for world. He sought a method for by a broad intellectual coalition for everyone. I hope that this usage could integrating individual subjectivity with whom the realisation of a new human be embraced by students of history, the moral construction of world society. universal – a world society fit for sociology, political economy, World history, as practised by the likes humanity as a whole – is a matter of philosophy and literature, as well as by of Jack Goody and Eric Wolf, is urgent personal concern. I members of my own profession. Many indispensable to any anthropology disciplines might contribute without worthy of the name today. The method This is an edited version of a lecture given in being exclusively devoted to it. The of biography is particularly well-suited the series ‘Disciplinary dialogs’, Center for idea of ‘development’ has played a to the study of self and society and I 21st century studies, University of similar role in the last half-century. would predict that its use will be more Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 7 September 2007.

10 Radical Anthropology Cover story Managing abundance, not chasing scarcity: the real challenge for the 21st century

Humanity must move away from seeing natural resources as scarce commodities to be controlled by the most powerful, says Jerome Lewis

n Congo–Brazzaville in the 1990s it The implications of this grouping The Mbendjele Yaka was striking that local people, and together of loggers and conservationists The Yaka ( Mbendjele ) Pygmies 2 living Iparticularly the Mbendjele Yaka led me to think harder about the way in northern Congo are forest living Pygmy hunter-gatherers with whom I Euro-Americans engage with the forest hunter-gatherers who are considered lived 1, did not distinguish between the and its resources in comparison to the the first inhabitants of the region by activities of conservationists and those Yaka. This article explores the cultural themselves and their farming of logging companies. But they did conceptions and observations that neighbours, the Bilo 3. Each Yaka distinguish between the Euro- underpin their conflation of what seem associates her or himself with a hunting Americans currently present in the to us opposed activities. The Yaka’s and gathering territory called ‘our forest and their colonial predecessors. analysis challenges basic assumptions forest’. Here, local groups of Yaka visit underpinning dominant western ancestral campsites in favoured places Whereas the colonial administrators approaches to environmental where they will gather, fish, hunt and and traders of the past are called conservation, particularly current cut honey from wild beehives ‘elephants of our fathers’ ( banjoku na attempts to assure the future of the depending on the season and batata ) in ordinary speech, today’s flora and fauna of the Congo Basin opportunities available. Though many ‘white people’ ( mindele ) are referred to by establishing protected areas. occasionally make small farms or work as ‘red river hogs’ ( bangwia ). During Somewhat surprisingly, however, the for money or goods, they value forest colonial times Europeans involved in Yaka’s analysis accords with the activities and foods as superior. this area mostly lived alone and principles behind the latest attempts to travelled in the forest accompanied by improve forest management through Yaka value travelling through the forest Chadian or Senegalese soldiers. forestry certification schemes which and camping in different places. Social Today, whether loggers or allow for sustainable human organisation is based on a temporary conservationists, Euro-Americans live exploitation of the forest. camp generally containing at most grouped together in substantial some 60 people in ten or so quickly but purpose-built settlements and travel Broadly speaking, people use two skilfully built leaf and liana huts. around the forest in teams, locating contradictory models to conceive and Camps are able to expand or contract and counting forest species using understand forest resources in easily in response to changing Yaka guidance and expertise. Northern Congo-Brazzaville. In conditions relating to the viability of general, people coming from hunting and gathering activities or The impressive wealth of Euro- industrialised countries value forest social events and needs. If Yaka have Americans is picked out by these resources because of their scarcity difficulty finding game in one area of metaphors. Whereas large elephants whereas those people living in or near forest, they simply move to another had a high trade value in the past, the forest value them because of their area, allowing game to replenish. today, with the development of the abundance. Here it is argued that In general, Pygmy peoples use their bush-meat trade, red river hogs have Yaka understanding of how people mobility and flexibility to avoid or become more commercially valuable. can maintain an abundant nature resolve problems like hunger, illness, The hogs’ habit of living in groups offers conservation organisations a conflict, political domination or means that three or four may be killed new paradigm for conceptualising disputes among themselves. at a time. Everyone lives in the same their role in the management of forest, yet all white Mindele appear to Central African forests, and Jerome Lewis is an be incredibly wealthy, just as all red establishes the basis for a meaningful anthropologist at University river hogs somehow grow surprisingly dialogue with local people. Local College London. His research fat. There is a certain mystery in how conceptions of forest resources as interests concern hunter- pigs become so fat from the forest that abundant provide a more appropriate gatherers in Central Africa and all creatures share, which is also model for resource management in he studies child development, attributed to the way Euro-Americans Central Africa than the continuing generate huge wealth from Yaka forest imposition of Euro-American derived play, religion, and political and using baffling technology. models based on scarcity. social organisation.

Radical Anthropology 11 Hunter-gatherers such as the Yaka have moral obligation to share it without with what they need. Abundance is been characterised as ‘egalitarian expectation of return. In this way taken as natural. Should people not societies’, where differences in power, resources taken from the forest are experience abundance, it is not because wealth or authority are systematically equitably distributed among all present, resources are diminishing but due to avoided or undermined (Woodburn and accumulation is both unfeasible improper sharing. 1982). This characterisation is based on and impractical. Other camp members an analytical distinction between an will, if necessary, vociferously demand The emphasis on sharing as the means ‘immediate-return’ hunter-gatherer their shares from someone with more to maintain abundance is peculiar to economy and agricultural, herding or than they can immediately consume. egalitarian societies. Conceiving of capitalist ‘delayed-return’ economies resources as abundant can lead to a that is helpful for understanding the Anthropologists have characterised this variety of approaches to them. To differences in approach to resource type of sharing as ‘demand-sharing’ 4 illustrate this I will describe divergences management and the environment. and observe that it leads to a high between the Yaka conceptions that degree of economic and social equality. inform my argument and those held by n delayed-return societies work is There is a noticeable absence of social their Bilo neighbours 6, and others. invested over extended periods of inequality between men and women Itime before a yield is produced or and between elders and juniors. Any Abundance consumed. This delay between labour individual, man or woman, adult or Most local Congolese conceive of the investment and consumption results in child, has the opportunity to voice their forest and its resources as abundant. In political inequality because it becomes opinion and resist the influence of the 1990s conservationists confirmed necessary to establish hierarchical others as they see fit. 5 Yaka actively this by designating this area as one of structures of authority to distribute shun status since it will attract jealousy rich biodiversity. But unlike Yaka work, yields and control vital assets as that may ruin their success in valued hunter-gatherers, Bilo groups depend labour matures into a yield. The activities. Thus, in contrast to western on subsistence farming that requires the majority of contemporary human expectations, good hunters will refrain felling of large trees and the clearing of societies are based upon delayed-return from hunting too often. They will avoid forest to create fields for cultivation economies. Efforts by communist states anything that could be interpreted as and dwellings. The forest bordering to develop more egalitarian structures boasting about their skill or success, their clearings requires constant and inevitably yielded to these fundamental lest their colleagues become jealous and energetic cutting if it is to be prevented forces, reasserting new types of curse them (see Lewis 2003). from reclaiming domesticated land. hierarchies and inequalities to manage From this perspective the abundant the delay between labour and yield. he forest is idealised as the forest is a wild force that needs to be perfect place for people to live, conquered for successful social life to ‘Immediate-return’ hunter-gatherers Tin contrast to cleared spaces occur. Bilo often justify claims to own such as the Yaka are strongly orientated such as farms or rivers. Mbendjele forest areas in terms of conquest. to the present. People like to obtain a Yaka women like to give birth to their direct and immediate return for their children in the forest. Everyday As the experience of Europeans and labour – eating most of their conversations are obsessed with the Americans attests, a ‘conquering’ production on the day they obtain it, as forest, with the locations of desirable relationship with an abundant nature hunters, gatherers and sometimes as wild foods, with different tricks and can have disastrous consequences on day labourers paid in food. They value techniques for finding and extracting natural systems, especially when consumption over accumulation and them, with the intricacies of animal combined with modern industrial will share their food with all present on behaviour or plant botany, on stories technology. Only relatively recently, the day they acquire it. Without the of past hunting, fishing or gathering with the expansion of scientific research authority and power derived from the trips, or on great feasts and forest spirit into industrialisation and capitalism’s ability to withhold vital resources, performances. Yaka say that when they impact on environmental systems, have hierarchy has great difficulty die they go to a forest where Komba Euro-American conceptions of an establishing itself. Thus societies whose (God) has a camp. They cannot abundant nature been replaced by economies are based on immediate- conceive of their lives, or deaths and careful estimations of the value of returns tend to be egalitarian societies. afterlife, without the frame of the individual resources in terms of their These are common among hunter- forest around them. They express their scarcity and human demand for them. gatherers such as Central African dependency on and the intimacy of A striking example of this is the Pygmies, Southern African San and the their relationship with the forest in the planned launch of carbon trading on Hadza of Tanzania, as well as among proverb, “A Yaka loves the forest as international stock markets in 2012, in Orang Asli groups such as the Batek or she loves her own body.” which trees standing in Northern Chewong in South East Asia. Congo can be traded by bankers as The Yaka believe that Komba created carbon stocks in environmentally ‘feel- Yaka, like other immediate-return the forest for them. It has always been, good’ investment portfolios. societies, greatly stress obligatory, non- and will eternally be there for them. reciprocal sharing as a moral principle. They, similar to many other forest Bilo and earlier Euro-American views A person who happens to have more of hunter-gatherers, as Bird-David of an abundant and wild nature placed something, such as meat or honey, than discusses (1990; 1992), have a faith human society outside it, and they immediately need, is under a that the forest will always provide them emphasised metaphors of control and

12 Radical Anthropology conquest in describing human relations inadequacies in human skill or the personal enrichment, and others such with natural environments. In contrast, environment’s ability to provide. People as conservationists, who obtain large the Yaka see themselves as part of a recognise each other’s skills, but in this grants to exclude all other people from socially interacting and generous nature egalitarian society it is impolite to refer areas of forest they occupy. This that provides abundantly to all so long to them. Rather, success or failure may colonial-like expansion by loggers and as rules about sharing are respected. be discussed in terms of ekila . conservationists is far advanced in forest belonging to another Yaka Ekila 7 as a guide to A whole area of forest may become group, the Baka of Cameroon. When I proper sharing ekila . This becomes apparent when visited Cameroon in November 2002 For Yaka, people should be successful hunting is consistently unsuccessful, Lambombo, a Baka elder, explained: in their activities because nature is and successive misfortunes befall those abundant. If they are not, it is because who camp in or pass through a certain Before all this was our forest, our they, or somebody else, has ruined area. Yaka hunters from the clan ancestors were all hunters who lived their ekila by sharing inappropriately. responsible for that area will place leaf in the forest. Our fathers told us to Sharing is fundamental to sociality. cones stuffed with earth on all foot live in this forest and to use what we Yaka share even when there would paths leading into the ekila forest. This needed. Komba [God] made the seem to be no need to share, for warns other Yaka that the forest is forest for all of us, but first of all for instance, when huge amounts of fish dangerous, and that they should not the Baka. When we see the forest we are captured by everyone in the dry attempt to find food but turn back or think, ‘That is our forest’. But now season; and they still share even if this simply pass through quickly. Despite a we are told by the government and means the producer remains with non-scientific reasoning, the effect of the conservationists that it is not our almost nothing. They explain that if this allows degraded areas of forest to forest. But we are hunters and need they didn’t share, their ekila would be be left in order that their resources the forest for our lives. ruined and they would no longer catch increase to sustainable levels again. fish or find food. Of these others who say our forest is Although couched in unfamiliar theirs, there is Ecofac [the Ekila regulates Yaka environmental idioms, ekila is a theory for conservationists], MINEF [the relations by defining what constitutes maintaining abundance. Adherence to ministry for forests] and the loggers. proper sharing. For example, by not these practices, and their explanation, When the loggers cut our trees we sharing food, especially meat, properly has established a relationship with got nothing, and we still get nothing. among all present, a hunter’s ekila may resources that has assured Yaka people We who are older notice that all that be ruined so that he is unsuccessful in have experienced the forest as a place was in the forest before is getting future. A hunter who is too often of abundance for the entirety of their less. We used to always find things – successful may stop hunting for a while cultural memory. Ekila teaches that by yams, pigs and many other things – for fear that his successes will attract not sharing properly resources become we thought that would never end. envy and ruin his ekila . If either a scarce. By sharing properly, resources Now when we try and look we can’t husband or wife inappropriately shares will be experienced as abundant. find them anymore. their sexuality with others outside their marriage, it is said that both partners From abundance to scarcity The government and the have had their ekila ruined. A Even in the short time I have been conservationists have messed up our menstruating woman is said to be ekila visiting the forest, areas I stayed in forest. When we looked after the and her smell will anger dangerous during the 1990s are considerably less forest there was always plenty. Now forest animals. She must share part of abundant now than they were then. that we are forbidden to enter our her menstrual blood with forest spirits While visiting in 2003 I found myself forest when we put out traps they in order that her male relatives walking in wide elephant trails remain empty. Before if we put out continue to find food. Even laughter, a (mbembo ) that were obviously traps and nothing walked on them highly valued activity, should be becoming overgrown from lack of use. we would take them elsewhere to let properly shared. Whereas laughter I remarked this to my companions. the forest rest. We know how to look shared between people in camp during They responded that the elephants after the forest.’ the evening makes the forest rejoice, walk elsewhere now due to the noise of laughing at hunted animals ruins the the loggers’ bulldozers, not that Lambombo describes the movement ekila of the hunter. elephants were becoming scarce. from abundance to scarcity that he has witnessed. His perceptive analysis of If ekila has been ruined it causes men to Explained within the logic of ekila , how this situation came about and the miss when they shoot at animals, and outsiders coming into Yaka forest have persecution they continue to for women it causes them to have not understood the importance of experience is unfortunately difficulties in childbirth. If parents eat proper and equitable sharing as the marginalised by those, such as the certain ekila animals when their means to guarantee the continuing government and the conservationists, children are still infants, this can abundance of its resources. Indeed, the which have been entrusted with provoke illness in their children and opposite is occurring as outsiders, such responsibility for these areas. even death. Failure or difficulties in the as loggers, obtain exclusive rights to food-quest or procreation are discussed resources that they systematically Though it goes back further than in relation to ekila rather than to remove without replacement for great Lambombo may realise, the increasing

Radical Anthropology 13 scarcity of forest resources coincides of the forest into an animal refuge for governments and international with Euro-Americans’ engagement northern scientists to study forest conservation organisations to impose with the Yaka. Since the Atlantic ecology, and for northern tourists to militarily enforced protected areas in Trade Era and the arrival of watch forest animals, while the land small areas of forest while encouraging Europeans in Central Africa the around the park is ‘developed’. In industrial development in remaining demand for forest products has been Congo, government and international areas. At the time the CBFP was steadily increasing. The Atlantic Trade attitudes perceive of hunting and conceived, no forester in Central Africa Era brought ivory, slaves, and cam gathering in areas around the park as had Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) wood onto international trade circuits. primitive and wasteful, whereas certification 8 demonstrating that they In the colonial period ivory, rubber, industrial logging, extensive could log sustainably and many loggers copal resin, duiker skins and red wood commercial tree plantations and similar publicly claimed it would be impossible were the main exports. Since activities are desirable developments. for FSC to work in Africa. independence those resources that remain valuable, namely hard woods Yet this view of development is Enforcement of forestry regulations and minerals, have been increasingly bringing about the steady was, and continues to be, undermined intensively exploited using industrial impoverishment of the world’s by rampant corruption. Available technology combined with political resources to the benefit of rich nations documentation of illegality and abuse and military strategising. and national elites. Forest resources are of cutting regulations 9 provides strong now so effectively destroyed evidence of the profoundly n practical terms, for local people throughout the rest of the world that unsustainable logging practiced by their forests have been converted they are increasingly scarce and the most companies in Central Africa. Yet, Iinto floral and faunal assets that subject of guilt and intense anxiety despite all this, conservation organis- have been traded or rented out by the from industrialised governments and ations have encouraged, facilitated and national government under pressure their peoples. However, their established numerous such partner- from international financial commitment to globalising industrial ships. The World Wide Fund for institutions, such as the World Bank, capitalism overrides this realisation. Nature (WWF) even created its own wishing to reclaim loans. It is this The current fashion to promote network called Central African Forest system of intensive and unsustainable protected areas legitimises this while Trade Network (CAFTN) when sub- exploitation of forest resources by condemning the Congo Basin to stantial funds became available from outsiders, euphemistically called become just like European or USAID (the United States Agency for economic development, that is the American landscapes where nature is International Development) in 2002. root cause of the severe environmental subjugated to the needs of people. problems facing the forests of the Conservationists promoting protected But the evidence suggests that many Congo basin. areas seem to have already given up on logging companies use the panda (the the possibility of maintaining the WWF logo) to shield themselves from By contrast, the sustainability and forests of the Congo Basin intact. criticism that could damage their image success of Yaka forest management Without change this is likely to be a in high value European and American over many centuries is portrayed as self-fulfilling prophecy. markets, and to facilitate getting public unrestrained and primitive by non- funds and cheap bank loans. In 2005 Yaka. Traditional subsistence activities mazingly, the relationship Greenpeace released a damning report such as hunting, petty trade in forest between the intensification of on Danzer’s illegal activities and urged products or slash and burn agriculture Aindustrial extraction and the a general boycott of Danzer products 10 . are often depicted as destructive. Local increasing diminishment of natural In spite of this WWF continued to people are stereotyped as careless resources continues to be ignored or support Danzer by facilitating access to about their environment, uneducated, glossed over. So a recent effort to markets to sell their goods through easily corrupted and only interested in impose more industrial exploitation on WWF’s Global Forest Trade Network, short-term gain. However, the the Congo Basin was presented as a and in 2007 WWF was actively majority of intensive commercial conservation initiative called the Congo lobbying a major German bank for a poaching is organised by local Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP). In loan on Danzer’s behalf. educated elites who manipulate their September 2002, the United States and power to set up effective poaching and South Africa joined 27 public and There seems to be a significant risk that trafficking networks that are immune private partners to launch the CBFP at supporting such initiatives as the model from prosecution. The weak majority the World Summit on Sustainable for the future of forest conservation in is being scapegoated due to the Development in Johannesburg, South the Congo Basin will condemn Central activities of a powerful minority. Africa. Its stated goal is to promote Africa to become an expanse of Such misreading of local realities serves economic development, alleviate unsustainably logged and impoverished to justify international elites sending poverty, and improve governance and woodland surrounding small islands of expatriate conservation managers to natural resource conservation through militarily protected forest. apply Euro-American ideas about support for a network of protected wildlife management, developed in areas and well-managed forestry Red river hogs: loggers industrialised countries, to places such concessions in the Congo Basin. These and conservationists as Yaka forest. The result is militaristic initiatives promote alliances between A partnership between loggers and management regimes that convert part huge logging companies, national conservationists seems strange at first

14 Radical Anthropology sight. However, conservationists and Major international finance for this has and conservationists are potentially loggers have been mutually dependent been provided through the Central very serious for Yaka and other for some time already. Since the 1970s African Forest World Heritage Pygmy people. They are the easy industrial logging has rapidly Initiative (CAFWHI), whose focus, like victims of those outsiders extracting expanded with the importation of most conservation projects in Central resources and those ‘protecting’ them. improved technology and skills to Africa, is policing the bushmeat trade – exploit the forest in ways that mostly 84% of the budget is for this activity From Yaka perspectives conservation, earn money for international alone. The illegal bushmeat trade is like logging, makes abundant forest companies and local elites. This has cited as the single greatest threat to the scarce. By sealing off areas to all except had numerous consequences. Central African forests and used to the privileged (Euro-American scientists justify the draconian imposition on and tourists, important officials and ndustrial logging requires a local people of exclusion zones project workers), conservationists claim substantial labour force and large protected by armed ‘eco-guards’. The to protect wildlife. This enforced Iinfrastructural developments to activities of illegal and unsustainable preservation of forest in some areas sustain it. Regular wages create logging companies are not addressed. serves to justify the forest’s destruction demands for goods and services from Despite many millions of dollars, no elsewhere. International institutions employees that attract other people to funding is planned for community such as the World Bank promote and provide them. Employees’ less well-off consultations, co-management finance conservation initiatives at the relatives come to live with them in initiatives or local capacity building. same time as promoting, funding, and town. These communities need feeding; even obliging governments to open intensive farming or hunting to supply Exclusion zones and protected areas their national resources to exploitation the town with food offers an attractive displace the problem, they do not solve by foreign corporations. income for traders and others. Roads it. Elephant poachers I met near the used to evacuate logs also provide Nouabale Ndoki National Park in Surprisingly, this contradictory transport for bushmeat and other 1996 in Congo explained that they behaviour only occasionally provokes forest products. They also disenclave simply crossed the river into Cameroon outrage. In 2005, for instance, in a remote villages. People flock to the to hunt there for the local Congolese campaign spear-headed by the logging town out of curiosity, to seek mayor. Corruption allows the biggest Rainforest Foundation and Greenpeace, employment and to enjoy the intense culprits of environmental crime to the World Bank was widely criticised social life available there. escape with impunity. Commercial for appearing to have pushed through bushmeat traders and farmers go surreptitiously forest legislation that Urban developments suddenly emerge elsewhere. But for Yaka hunter- was advantageous to international in areas of high biodiversity, changing gatherers it is much more difficult since logging interests and international the land for kilometres around and each zone will have important seasonal conservation organisations but ignored leading to the common problems wild resources not necessarily available civil society and local forest peoples’ associated with rapid urbanisation in a elsewhere in the territory they normally needs. The furore that followed resulted forest environment. Local elites see live and travel in. The militaristic in a moratorium on new logging lucrative opportunities for gain by enforcement of hunting restrictions concessions in Democratic Republic of combining their political immunity around protected areas does not the Congo and a very critical World with modern technologies and the address the root causes of the bushmeat Bank Inspection Panel Report (2007). access to the forest provided by the trade. These are economic and political. loggers’ infrastructure. 11 Justifying the promotion of industrial Using shocking images of dead apes, exploitation by providing grants at the The consequences of opening up forest monkeys and other game, same time to conservation by loggers draws wider attention to it conservationists obtain funds in rich organisations is not a new strategy. from international environmentalists countries to support their activities. Already in 1992 Polly Ghazi, writing in who take an interest in logging’s But this focus is acting as a diversion The Guardian , noted how the World impact, and associated activities on from addressing the root causes of the Bank, despite a ‘green forestry policy’, forest resources. The impact is great. serious environmental problems facing offered commercial rate loans to boost To date most environmentalists’ Central Africa. Local people are being Congo-Brazzaville’s timber exports. reaction to this focuses on establishing scapegoated unfairly, while the urgent ‘To help tempt the government of the small areas of protected forest for need to reign in corruption and develop Congo, which already owes the West isolation from local people, and practices that ensure sustainable huge debts, the loan offer is being intensively policing them rather than resource use continues to be neglected. linked to a free UN grant for setting up seeking to ensure that industrial protected conservation areas. The $10 activities such as logging are only As international capital draws out million grant will come from the new permitted if they are sustainable. more and more of the forest’s Global Environment Facility, raising resources, international fears that the much heralded green Despite this peculiar myopia, current environmentalists are seeking to fund could be misused to damage trends are to establish even larger isolate increasingly large areas of rather than protect rainforests…’ protected areas that cross national forest and exclude local people from boundaries in what is being called a them. The implications of this dual Like the World Bank, loggers and ‘landscape management approach’. occupation of the forest by loggers conservationists are each using the

Radical Anthropology 15 other to justify their actions and obtain The political economist Bayart (1993) Congo Basin, not even a handful have funding to develop their activities. characterised these political systems as achieved Forest Stewardship Council Loggers are able to divert attention based on ‘the politics of the belly’; the (FSC) certification, indicating that they from the harmful impact of their principle that a person will use their are sustainable forest managers. And activities by pointing to efforts being position of authority and power to ‘eat’ among those that have been certified, made to protect conservation areas and whatever they can, and grow fat controversy often surrounds the by paying lip-service to the ideals of (wealthy). Indeed this tendency among legitimacy of the certificate, to such an sustainable forestry. Conservationists civil servants and politicians has created extent that some founders of FSC justify the draconian repression of local a context of pervasive corruption that militantly oppose the Council today. peoples’ traditional rights by referring undermines the normal way that states to the destruction caused by activities redistribute wealth through taxation Scarcity associated with logging or that depend and local investment. Major social Euro-Americans, and people from on the infrastructure created by investments in infrastructure or in capitalist countries more generally, are loggers. As exclusion zones encompass equipping buildings to serve the public infatuated with goods that are scarce more and more forest, logging interest, such as schools or hospitals, in their own countries. The discourse companies use their existence to justify are undermined by corrupt individuals of endangered species is premised on enlarging and accelerating their siphoning off money and equipment. this. Rarity is an explicit theme in activities around the protected areas. This makes social planning subject to media portrayals of Yaka forest. It is all kinds of unexpected problems that depicted as the last great wilderness of hy conservation agencies often cause actions to fail spectacularly. the Congo basin (Congo. Spirit of the focus activities on limiting Forest, 2000), or more dramatically in Wlocal peoples’ hunting or Omitting these factors in conventional the National Geographic as ‘Ndoki, bushmeat trading activities rather than economic analysis undervalue the Last Place on Earth’ (Chadwick on the massive road building activities forest’s resources and make industrial 1995). These sensational portrayals of multinational companies seems to be and commercial land use appear more are promoted by documentaries an issue of scale linked to what is attractive than they are. In one of the glamorising their material and achievable in a funding cycle – often rare studies to quantify the alternative underpin conservationists’ funding just three years. It is less daunting to value of forest resources to local applications. attempt to control local people than to people, Camille Bann’s (2000) 18- address the underlying causes of month study in Ratanakiri, Cambodia, Both loggers and conservationists are environmental destruction – the estimated the value of harvesting non- monopolising what they conceive of as obligatory capitalisation of resources timber forest products (NTFP) to yield scarce resources; loggers want control imposed by the big international US$3,922 per hectare to local people in of precious trees, conservationists of lenders on poor countries governed by comparison to no more than US$1,697 rare animals and undisturbed forest corrupt political systems. per hectare if harvested for timber. areas. The perception of scarcity is the ideological bedrock of both these The dominance of protected-area NTFP are a very important source of activities, and a driving force in the thinking in conservation planning subsistence for the poorest sectors of industrialisation and capitalisation of means that the economics of industrial society. All households in the study the world’s resources. The Yaka’s forest exploitation are rarely relied on NTFP, but only 30% of conflation of loggers and challenged by national governments households in the region have a family conservationists is more perceptive or conservationists working in Central member engaged in the wage economy. than most people realise. Africa. Within the context of the debt Forest products provide an important arrears facing the Congo the value natural mechanism for alleviating Most conservationists come from of the forest is calculated according to poverty without explicit government industrialised nations where the its value on international markets – ie, investment. Additionally forest must awesome power of industrial the commercial worth of its timber. remain intact for local peoples’ unique exploitation has devastated the The value of non-timber forest cultures, values and traditional original environment and turned it products to forest people, one of the knowledge to continue. Given the into patchworks of spaces in use by most impoverished social groups, in negative ecological impacts of timber people in different ways, with the addition to the ecological functions of harvesting on watershed maintenance occasional token to the original watershed maintenance and and biodiversity conservation, then the appearance of the land in the form of biodiversity protection that a large net benefits from harvesting timber are well-managed parks. Industrialised- forest provides, have been ignored. diminished further. nation conservationists then go out to Promoters of industrialisation couch non-industrialised nations like Congo their arguments in terms of wealth Not calculating the value of the forest and apply the same model of generation and poverty reduction. from local peoples’ perspectives is development, focusing themselves on However, the substantial profits condemning huge areas of Central delimiting and protecting small generated by industrial exploitation Africa’s forests to become resources for pockets of faunal and floral resources are unequally distributed. The lion’s industrial activities, the great majority from local and industrial exploitation. share goes to a few, probably foreign, of which are not conducted in a businessmen and members of the sustainable way. Of the hundreds of The competition for scarce funding national elite. logging companies operating in the puts pressure on conservation to

16 Radical Anthropology appear to be effective; to be seen to In Central Africa, rather than grasp gatherers will thus be complete. Their achieve goals and be successful. what local conceptions can offer, forest land and resources are denied Indeed, these pressures are so great conservationists constantly seek to them or destroyed, and they no longer that most conservation organisations transform how locals understand their have the knowledge necessary to return need to be more concerned with environment. The very notion of into the forest if ever their rights were appearances to the rich north than to ‘endangered species’ judges resources to be recognised. This process is the local area where work is being according to their scarcity. For people occurring to varying extents done. The quickest way of appearing such as Mbendjele, this is contradicted throughout the region. It is probably to be doing something in this context by their experience. To understand most advanced among the Twa is to take the protectionist approach current conservation discourse requires Pygmies in the Great Lakes Region, and isolate an area of forest, exclude a dramatic reformulation of their most of who have become landless locals and enforce protection. thinking based on counter-intuitive potters and beggars (Lewis 2000). claims that they have little reason to do. The enforcement and protection of orest knowledge, like forest protected areas becomes a military-like The current dominance of the scarcity resources, has been transformed operation, sometimes described by model precludes the idea of sharing, it Ffrom being abundant and widely conservationist field-workers as a ‘war even encourages voracious available into a scarce and controlled on poaching’. Since the mid 1990s consumption. Conservation needs to expertise, only recorded in formats when Eco-guard militias became a get away from the paranoid thinking available to those with a northern-style popular conservation tool, I have that informs the hoarding mentality education – a format that so far recorded a number of cases of serious underpinning industrial capitalism and excludes access by Yaka forest people. human rights abuses, including murder, much conservation activity, and cease by Wildlife Conservation Society Eco- to be enslaved to market economics. If current activities continue in the guards in northern Congo, and The economic considerations of Central African forests, the hunter- complained to those responsible. I have multinational corporations and gatherers’ fate will be sealed by the also been told by victims of very institutions presently dominate too continued imposition and dominance serious abuses by WWF Eco-guards in much decision-making. Instead of an ideology of scarcity. Whether south-eastern Cameroon ranging from decisions should be based on the forest resources are over-exploited and torture and public humiliation to the understanding that nature is indeed depleted as a consequence of industrial burning down of an entire village. abundant and capable of sustaining all capitalist extraction methods or sealed life, if it is shared properly. off from local people by zealous This aggressive and colonial-like animal protectionists from rich imposition of protected areas on local Making the Yaka countries, the result for local people is people understandably antagonises lifestyle scarce the same. There will be no space in the many and establishes their relationship Yaka forest knowledge and practice forest for forest people unless they to conservation as involuntary and have ensured that large areas of forest become involved in the activities of the based on force. This is the basis for thrive and endure. Later-comers, such foresters or the animal protectionists. most of the conflicts conservation faces as conservationists, are benefiting Their livelihood and resource base and is likely to face in Central Africa. hugely from this good custodianship of have been swept away from them and forest resources. While conservationists control over it given to multinational From local perspectives, rich and depend on Yaka forest knowledge and companies and Euro-American animal powerful outsiders are denying poor skills to identify, explore, and protection agencies. people access to their basic needs. This understand the environments they is seen as a grave abuse of basic human come to control, the exclusionary While the forest was in local people’s rights by many. Local people may policies they impose on Yaka people control it was considered abundant, rarely protest in front of powerful threaten the very relationship with the and actually was so. Since Euro– white people, but the resentment they forest that permitted the transmission Americans arrived and began to feel may (and does) lead to serious and development of the forest skills perceive of forest resources as problems for conservationists. In this and knowledge conservationists need. scarce, desirable and valuable, so context it is very difficult for they have become. Now control conservationists to convince local When access to good forest is denied or over the future of the forest is vested people that they are concerned with made dangerous for Yaka, it becomes in the hands of people with little or no their best interests. Protected areas in difficult to transmit forest knowledge genuine long-term or generational the Congo basin have been imposed on adequately to succeeding generations. interest in preserving it beyond their local people by international Over time forest knowledge will limited engagement with it, often for organisations pressurising national become rarer among young Yaka just a fiscal year or two, or a project governments. Many contemporary people as resources are impoverished funding cycle. conservationists’ narrow view of their or access denied. Eventually Yaka task in Central Africa is resulting in the knowledge may only remain in the This tradition of natural resource use acceleration of the industrialisation of notebooks and publications of that is based on what was done in rich forest resources, the very process anthropologists, ecologists and other countries, if widely applied through the underlying the problems conservation scientists. The ultimate process of globalisation to other parts seeks to remedy. disenfranchisement of the hunter- of the world, will result in massive

Radical Anthropology 17 areas of farmland, urban dwellings and protected areas surrounded by follow the Yaka lead to realise that industrial areas, surrounding the industrial zones, to a process of nature can be an abundant provider occasional token to the original equitably managing resources for all. and home for all creatures if we share appearance of the land in small and This is clearly not happening within the whatever we take properly, and behave insignificant protected areas. This is not currently popular paradigm of scarcity. with consideration and respect to each a viable model for the future of the other, and the planet that we all depend tropical forests of the Congo Basin. However, there are indications that upon. This is the real challenge facing when the Forest Stewardship Council’s us all in the 21st century. I Nor is it a model for long-term Principles are applied rigorously the environmental conservation more hunter-gatherers’ model is being References For a full list of references, see www. generally in non-industrialised areas. adopted. The Forest Stewardship radicalanthropology.org/journal.htm How long will small islands of Council approach, although expressed protected resources be able to survive in very different language, has adopted Notes when surrounded by extensive urban similar principles to those of Yaka 1. Field research was undertaken in the sprawls with subsistence slash and burn forest stewardship. When taken Northern Republic of Congo, in 1994-1997, with generous support from the Wenner-Gren agriculture supporting impoverished seriously, the FSC management model Foundation for Anthropological Research, an populations, or when surrounded by is based on maintaining the forest’s Emslie Horniman Anthropological Scholarship industrially exploited or otherwise abundance through socially just and and a Swan Fund Scholarship. I am grateful for transformed areas from which all ecologically sustainable harvesting of an Alfred Gell Memorial Scholarship. Annual valuable resources have been forest resources. This is a modern visits have been made since 2000. 2. Mbendjele claim shared ancestry with other intensively removed, and most of the idiom for talking about the same issues forest hunter-gatherer groups in the region such profits from their exploitation that concern ekila . as the Baka, Mikaya, Luma or Gyeli. All these successfully exported to rich countries? groups are called Ba.Yaka (Ba’aka) people by Unfettered industrial capitalism is the the Mbendjele. The academic name for these real menace to the key world diverse groups is ‘Pygmies’. The term can be Abundance as the basis for objectionable outside this context. environmental management environments that we all depend upon, 3. The Yaka term ‘Bilo’ refers to any non-Yaka, Rather than attempt to change the not Yaka hunters seeking food for their village-dwelling African people who live near conception of abundance common families. While happy to impose Yaka people. Although growing urban popula- among local people, maybe the onus is hunting bans on traditional hunter- tions are also called Bilo, typical Bilo are village on conservation to change its point of gatherers such as Pygmies, dwelling, agriculturalists, and fishing or trapping peoples, who speak Bantu or Ubangian languages. view from one that endlessly chases and conservationists are surprisingly 4. Woodburn 1998. protects scarce natural resources to one reluctant to impose logging bans on 5. Lewis 2002 elaborates on this in Yaka that sees natural resources as adequate, international logging companies. Unless society. Gender relations in immediate-return even abundant. Seeing that there is industrialists can show their methods to hunting and gathering societies are the most enough for everybody, but it just needs be both environmentally and socially egalitarian anthropologists have observed (Endicott and Endicott 2006, Woodburn 1982). to be shared properly, is the lesson that sustainable they should be prevented 6. The Yaka describe Bilo village people as recent we can learn from the Yaka and ekila . from continuing to exploit the forests arrivals to the forest who discriminate against of the Congo Basin. The reluctance to them, attempt to exploit them, claim rights over The Yaka are offering conservation a apply the same standards to rich their land and labour, and make aggressive model for the future. Rather than northerners as are applied to local claims to own farmland, rivers, forest and even other people. Yaka elders often emphasised that repressing them and disregarding their people is the downfall of conservation it is their transience that makes Bilo claims basic human rights, conservationists efforts in the Congo Basin. vacuous and therefore not to be taken too need to learn from them. Taking seriously. Rural migration to urban centres is the abundance as the starting point for a Environmentalists can only expect non- latest migratory movement of the Bilo. Currently meaningful dialogue with local people industrialised nations to stand up to the 80% of Congo’s population lives in two cities. 7. Ekila is a fascinating cultural category that I conservationists could create the forces of capitalism if they do so discuss in Lewis 2008 and 2002: 103-120. conditions necessary for effective long- themselves, and apply greater pressure 8. Forest Stewardship Council certification is term conservation of Congo Basin to counter the imperatives of global widely considered the least controversial criteria environments. For conservationists capital in the places from where it for establishing sustainable forestry practices. ekila is a metaphor for the need for originates – in Europe, Asia and 9. Forest Monitor 2001 provides examples. 10. http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/ political engagement in decisions about America. There can be no effective forests/forests.cfm?ucidparam= how resources are distributed and used. conservation of our planet without 20041201143538 committed political engagement and a 11. In northern Congo in the mid-1990s This would result in conservation willingness to question the assumptions members of the local elite were responsible for taking the maintenance of abundance that underpin dominant attitudes to organising some of the most damaging environmental practices. These included large- as its goal, rather than the protection of our environment. As is self-evident to scale elephant massacres using high powered scarcity. Following ekila logic, the key the Yaka, but seemingly not to many military machine guns (the remains of over 300 to abundance is equitable sharing. This conservationists, humanity is part of corpses were found in one forest clearing in translates in the language of modern nature, not something that it is possible 1997), large-scale wood theft from logging environmentalism as assuring effective to isolate from nature. We need to companies and the extensive clearance of forest for commercial plantations and farms. resource management and benefit move away from seeing natural Anecdotal evidence of extensive poaching being sharing – a movement away from resources as scarce commodities to be organised by the highest political powers seeing conservation as a series of controlled by the most powerful and continues to emerge.

18 Radical Anthropology References Ghazi, Polly. peoples’ resources, and their Bann, Camille. 1992 ‘Congo’s rainforest threatened by environments? Indigenous Affairs 2000 An Economic Analysis of World Bank loans’, Observer , 4/06: 8-15. Tropical Forest Land Use 26.1.92. 2008 ‘Ekila: Blood, Bodies and Options, Ratanakiri Province, Egalitarian Societies’. Journal of Cambodia, International d’Huart, Jean-Pierre, Stalmans, Marc, the Royal Anthropological Development Research Centre, and Tutin, Caroline. Institute , Vol. 14, No. 2. pp 297- Ottawa, Canada. 2002 Central African World Heritage 315. Forest Initiative (CAWHFI). A Bird-David, Nurit H. working draft project proposal Nightingale, Neil. 1990 ‘The Giving Environment: for the CAWHFI partners 2000 Congo. Spirit of the Forest. Another Perspective on the consultation workshop (25 (Written and produced by Brian Economic System of Gatherer- February – 1 March 2002). Paris: Leith). Scorer Associates for the Hunters’. Current Anthropology UNESCO. BBC and Discovery Channel. 31 (2): 189-196. IUCN. Vidal, John. 1992 ‘Beyond “The Original Affluent 1996 The World Conservation 2002 Big Five seek to save Congo Society”. A Culturalist Congress: resolutions and forests. The Guardian 27.8.02: 4. Reformulation’. Current recommendations. Gland: IUCN. Anthropology 33 (1): 25-47. Woodburn, James. Barume, Kwokwo. Köhler, Axel and Jerome Lewis. 1982 ‘Egalitarian Societies.’ Man, the 2002 ‘Putting hunter-gatherer and Journal of the Royal 2000. Heading Towards Extinction? farmer relations in perspective. A Anthropological Institute , 17 , no. Indigenous Rights in Africa: The commentary from Central 3: 431-51. case of the Twa of the Kahuzi- Africa’. In Ethnicity, hunter- Biega National Park, Democratic gatherers, and the "other": 1998 “Sharing is not a form of Republic of Congo. IWGIA Association or Assimilation in exchange”: an analysis of Document No. 101, Southern Africa? Susan Kent property sharing in immediate- Copenhagen: IWGIA/ Forest (ed.). Washington: Smithsonian return hunter-gatherer societies, Peoples Programme. Institute. in C.M. Hann ed., Property Relations: Renewing the Bayart, Jean-Francois. Lewis, Jerome. Anthropological Tradition , 1993 The State in Africa: the politics of 2000 The Batwa of the Great Lakes Cambridge: Cambridge the belly. Longman: London. Region. London: Minority Rights University Press, pp. 48-63. Group. Chadwick, Douglas. World Bank Inspection Panel. 1993 ‘Ndoki, Last Place on Earth.’ In 2002 Forest Hunter-Gatherers and 2007 Investigation Report: Democratic National Geographic , July 1995, Their World: A Study of the Republic of Congo. 188 , 1: 2-45. Mbendjele Yaka Pygmies of http://siteresources.worldbank.or Congo-Brazzaville and Their g/EXTINSPECTIONPANEL/Res Endicott, Karen and Kirk Endicott. Secular and Religious Activities ources/FINALINVREPwhole.pdf. 2006 The Headman was a Woman. and Representations. PhD Thesis: Waveview Press. University of London. 2002. World Wildlife Fund for Nature. Forests Monitor. Available at: 2007 Responsible forestry and trade in 2001 Sold Down the River. The need to http://www.radicalanthropologyg Africa control transnational forestry roup.org/pub_lewisthesisfull.pdf. http://www.panda.org/about_ww corporations: a European case 2003 The hunter’s curse. Annotated f/what_we_do/forests/our_solutio study. Cambridge: Forests film. ns/responsible_forestry/gftn/abou Monitor. 2006 Logging in the Congo basin. t_gftn/africa/index.cfm What hope for indigenous Noam Chomsky Human nature and the origins of language Noam Chomsky ranks among the leading intellectual figures of modern times and has changed the way we think about what it means to be human, revolutionising linguistics and establishing it as a modern science. He agreed to discuss just some of his ideas with Radical Anthropology .

Radical Anthropology: It’s unusual on order to be sure that the concept of it is possible, sometimes, to achieve the left to work explicitly, as you do, ‘human nature’ we’re working with deep results, though leaving many with a concept of genetically captures the diversity of human puzzles; I just happened to read an determined human nature. Many experience. Your work on linguistics, article posted on physicsworld.com on suspect the idea must set limits on our on the other hand, deliberately set out the basic unsolved problems about ability to change the world and also in isolation from anthropology and the formation of snow crystals. It’s roughly change ourselves in the process. So, social sciences. Why? Do you still the case that if systems become too let’s start by asking, what exactly do consider that separation necessary? complex to study in sufficient depth, you mean by ‘human nature’? physics hands them over to chemistry, Chomsky: The idea of a ‘separation’ is then to biology, then experimental Noam Chomsky: It is considered an interesting myth. It might be worth psychology, and finally on to history. unusual, but I think that is a mistake. investigating its origins. The facts are Roughly. These are tendencies, and Peter Kropotkin was surely on the left. quite the opposite. Some of the earliest they tend to distinguish roughly He was one of the founders of what is work in our programme at the between hard and soft sciences. now called ‘sociobiology’ or Massachusetts Institute of Technology ‘evolutionary psychology’ with his (MIT), back to the 1950s, was on RA: OK, let’s consider your book Mutual Aid , arguing that human native American languages (Hidatsa, contribution to the science of nature had evolved in ways conducive Mohawk, Menomini). Later, with Ken linguistics. First it might be worth to the communitarian anarchism that Hale’s appointment 40 years ago, the reminding our non-specialist readers he espoused. Marx’s early manuscripts, department became one of the world where it all began. Your work on with their roots in the Enlightenment centres of research in Australian and language started with a critique of the and Romanticism, derived native American languages, soon after then-prevailing view that children had fundamental concepts such as others, worldwide. That engaged to learn their natal language. You alienation from a conception of human faculty and students in issues of land insisted instead that it was an innate nature – what we would call rights, endangered languages and part of our brain. In other words, genetically determined. In fact, anyone cultures, cultural wealth, educational humans no more have to learn who merits attention and who and cultural programmes in indigenous language than we have to teach our promotes any cause at all is doing so communities (run mainly by MIT stomachs how to digest. How did you on the basis of a belief that it is graduates brought here from indigen- come to this conclusion? And how can somehow good for humans, because of ous communities), the spectacular we know whether it’s true? their inherent nature. revival of Wampanoag as a spoken language after 100 years (mainly the Chomsky: I cannot respond to the To object that the facts about human work of Hale and Jesse Little Doe), questions, because I do not understand nature set limits on our ability to stimulating cultural revival as well, and them. Plainly, children learn their change the world and ourselves makes much else. And of course all of this language. I don’t speak Swahili. And it about as much sense as the lament that interacting closely with theoretical cannot be that my language is ‘an our lack of wings sets limits on our work, contributing to it and drawing innate property of our brain.’ ability to ‘fly’ as far as eagles under our from it. Where is the separation? Otherwise I would have been own power. There is nothing more genetically programmed to speak mysterious about the concept human RA: But you have always insisted, (some variety of) English. However, nature than about the concept bee or haven’t you, on the difference between some innate capacity – some part of chicken nature, at least for those who natural and social science? Is linguistics the human genetic endowment – enters regard humans as creatures in the a social or natural science? Or has the into language acquisition. That much biological world. Like other organisms, progress of linguistics as a science is uncontroversial among those who humans have a certain genetic blurred any meaningful boundary believe that humans are part of the endowment (apparently varying little between the two? natural world. If it were not true, it in the species, not a surprise considering its recent separation from Chomsky: I have never suggested any Noam Chomsky is institute other hominids). That determines what principled difference between the professor and professor of we call their nature. natural and social sciences. There are, linguistics (emeritus) at the of course, differences between physics Massachusetts Institute of RA: We agree! We would also insist on and sociology. Physics deals with Technology. the importance of anthropology, in systems that are simple enough so that

Radical Anthropology 19 would be a miracle that my primary (or no) interest. I do not agree communication is a possible function granddaughter reflexively identified that I-language is “basically for of language but that it’s just one some elements of the blooming buzzing internal cognition, not social among many possible functions, hence confusion as language-related and went communication.” It is surely used for of no special relevance either to the on to acquire capacities of the kind both, and it’s not “for” anything, any nature of language or its origins? that you and I are now exercising, more than hands are “for” typing on while her pet kitten (chimp, songbird, the computer, as I’m now doing. Chomsky: At the Alice V. and David H. bee…), presented with exactly the same Morris Symposium on the Evolution of data, could not take the first step, let It’s a mistake to suppose that capacities Language held at Stony Brook alone the later ones. And must evolve gradually. There are many University in October 2005 (and correspondingly she could not acquire known examples of sharp changes – elsewhere), I quoted evolutionary their capacities. There is also a slight genetic modification that yields biologists Salvador Luria and Francois question about whether my substantial phenotypic effects, and Jacob, both Nobel Laureates, as granddaughter’s achievement falls much else. By coincidence, I was just expressing the view that communicative under the technical concepts of looking at an article in Science on the needs would not have provided “any learning developed in one or another ‘Avalon explosion’, which appears to great selective pressure to produce a branch of psychology, or whether they be one of many examples of an system such as language,” with its are more properly subsumed under explosion of forms without gradual crucial relation to “development of general theories of growth and selection. But it really doesn’t matter in abstract or productive thinking”; “the development. About these matters the present context. The human role of language as a communication there are real questions and legitimate digestive and visual systems did clearly system between individuals would have controversy: What is the nature of the evolve over a very long period. come about only secondarily… The genetic endowment? How does Language as far as we know did not. quality of language that makes it acquisition proceed? Etc. Scientists do Anatomically modern humans are unique does not seem to be so much its routinely ask similar questions about found up to 200,000 years ago; role in communicating directives for the visual system, system of motor behaviourally modern humans appear action” or other common features of organisation, and others – including, in very recently in evolutionary time, as animal communication, but rather “its fact, the digestive system. far as evidence now exists, perhaps role in symbolizing, in evoking cogni- within a window of 50-100,000 years tive images,” in “molding” our notion RA: Point taken! But aren’t what you ago, a flick of an eye in evolutionary of reality and yielding our capacity for term ‘external’ languages such as time. That’s why palaeoanthropologist thought and planning, through its Swahili of secondary interest from a Ian Tattersall regards human property of allowing infinite combin- scientific point of view, since language intelligence generally as an “emergent ations of symbols” and therefore as you define it is basically for internal quality”, not “a product of Nature’s “mental creation of possible worlds.” cognition, not social communication? patient and gradual engineering over It’s surely central to your position that the eons.” There is good reason to believe that you don’t need Swahili or any other they are right, in part for reasons I external language just to think logically I did not say that language as a com- mentioned in the passage to which you and clearly? A second point is that pleted system emerged in an individual are referring. If the rewiring of the most of us take for granted that innate in an instant. But I cannot think of a brain that yielded recursive generation human capacities such as vision or coherent alternative to the idea that of hierarchically structured expressions digestion evolved gradually, through mutations take place in individuals, took place in an individual, not a what Darwin termed ‘descent with not communities, so that whatever group (and there seems to be no modification’. Your argument that rewiring of the brain yielded the coherent alternative), then interaction language emerged in an ancestral apparently unique properties of must have been a later phenomenon. individual in an instant – before any language, specifically recursive gener- Language would have evolved first as external language could have existed – ation of hierarchically structured an internal object, a kind of “language suggests that we are talking about an expressions, would therefore have of thought” (LOT), with entirely different kind of thing? taken place in an individual, and only externalisation (hence communication) later been used among individuals who an ancillary process. I can’t review here Chomsky: I would not say that Swahili had inherited this capacity. the strong and growing evidence to is an ‘E(xternal) language’. I don’t even support this conclusion, but I have understand what that means. In fact, I RA: Sure, evolution proceeds through elsewhere. There are ample reasons know of no characterisation of E- the selection of chance mutations that why having a LOT would confer language. I introduced the term, but arise in individuals. But is there selectional advantage: the person so didn’t define it, except as a cover term nothing we can say about the terms of endowed could plan, interpret, reflect, for any conception of language other selection? Nothing about why a chance etc., in ways denied to others. If that than I-language. Without an mutation for language might have advantage is partially transmitted to explanation of what you mean by increased in frequency in the descendants, at some later stage there Swahili (apparently, something other population? Fingers surely evolved for would be opportunity for than the similar I-languages of something, after all – even if not for communication, and motivation to individual speakers), I can’t answer the typing e-mails! To be sure we’ve develop a means of externalising the question whether it is of secondary or understood you here: you say that internal LOT – a process that might

20 Radical Anthropology not involve evolution at all; perhaps it conditions that existed at the time, but emergence of the remarkable was a matter of problem solving using there’s no scenario I can think of that instrument of language. available cognitive mechanisms. This suggests how a sudden change in these is, of course, speculation, like all talk conditions could have led to the RA: Would you agree that science about the evolution of language. But it emergence of language. The only involves restricting our speculative is the minimal assumption, and I think plausible assumption I have ever heard, hypotheses to those that can be tested enters in some way into all such and I suspect the only one that would against empirical data? We are not speculations, even if tacitly. The be taken seriously by evolutionary clear in what sense the speculation you conclusion, quite plausible I think, is biologists, is that some rewiring of the have just offered us is testable. that while language can surely be used brain, perhaps the result of some slight Presumably we should expect to find for communication (as can much else), modification in the functioning of recursion playing a central role in every communication probably has no regulatory circuits, provided the basis known language – not just in the special role in its design or evolution. for this new capacity. language of thought but in language as actually spoken. It seems that this isn’t As for organs, traits, etc., being “for” The simplest assumption – which the case. Some linguists have claimed something, the notion may be a useful appears to be implicit in all of the more that the language of the Piraha, for shorthand, but shouldn’t be taken too complex ones that have been proposed example, almost entirely lacks seriously, if only because of the – is that the rewriting yielded ‘Merge’, recursion and for that reason presents ubiquitous phenomenon of exaptation. the simplest recursive function, which a challenge to your theory. Does it? Suppose that insect wings developed instantaneously made available an primarily as thermoregulators and then infinite array of structured expressions Chomsky: Don’t quite understand the were used for skimming and finally generated from whatever conceptual first question. Which speculation do flying, evolving along the way. What ‘atoms’ are available. That yields, in you have in mind? would they be “for”? Or what is the effect, an internal I-language, a skeleton “for”? For keeping one ‘language of thought,’ providing As for the Piraha, there’s a common upright, protecting organs, storing obvious advantages to the person so confusion between recursion and calcium, making blood cells…? A endowed. If the mutation is partially embedding. Everett claimed that Piraha property of an organism enters into its transmitted to offspring, they too lacks embedding. Others challenge that life (and survival) in many different would have the advantage. And over claim (since his examples of Piraha ways, some more salient than others. time it might have come to dominate a language appear to me to have But there is no simple notion of its small breeding group. At that stage examples of relative clauses embedded being “for” some function. there becomes a motivation to in phrases, I don’t know what Everett externalise the I-language, that is, to means by embedding). But I haven’t RA: At the conference you mention, map the internal objects generated to seen any claim that Piraha lacks you also talked about ‘the great leap the sensori-motor system, yielding what recursion, that is, that there are a finite forward’ – the ‘human revolution’, as we think of as language – the external number of sentences or sentence many have called it. It’s fair to say, we expressions we are exchanging now, for frames. If that’s so, it would mean that think, that most Darwinian theorists example. That mapping is quite non- the speakers of this language aren’t would regard the social dimensions of trivial, and the problem of how to making use of a capacity that they this major transition as having played a construct it can be solved in many surely have, a normal situation; plenty decisive role. We are thinking, for different ways. It is in these ancillary of people throughout history would example, of the late John Maynard processes that languages differ widely, drown if they fall into water. Nothing Smith, who linked the emergence of and in which the mass of complexity of much follows except for a question as language with the earliest social language resides. It’s not at all clear that to why they haven’t made use of these contracts – an idea harking back to this is, technically, a step in the capacities (a question independent of Rousseau. How does your origins evolution of language. It might have Everett’s assumptions about the scenario fit with approaches of this been just a matter of problem-solving, culture). No one seriously doubts that if social and political kind? Darwinians using existing cognitive capacities. Piraha children are brought up in don’t take cooperation for granted. Boston they’ll be speaking Boston Can you say anything about the socio- The secondary step of externalisation English, that is, that the capacities are political conditions which might have evidently took place under existing present, unlike other animals, as far as driven our ancestors to start talking sociopolitical conditions, and probably is known. There’s no challenge to the and listening to one another? profoundly changed them. Beyond theory – not mine, but everyone’s – that that, evidence is thin. I do not see how the human language faculty provides Chomsky: I should make it clear that notions of social contract might play the means for generation of an infinite the term ‘great leap forward,’ referring more than a superficial role. Scientists array of structured expressions. to the burst of creative activity, sudden generally, not just evolutionary in evolutionary time, was not mine. It’s biologists, don’t take much for granted. RA: We had in mind your whole Jared Diamond’s. It’s commonly But there isn’t much doubt that like speculative origins scenario. How does assumed that the emergence of other animal societies, those of Homo it stand up to what we know about language was a key element of the sapiens involved plenty of cooperation, primate politics and cognition? The great leap. We of course know very which might have been considerably hypothesised behavioural ecology of little about the sociopolitical enhanced, one would suppose, by the our hominin ancestors? The laws of

Radical Anthropology 21 evolution of animal signals? Does it say system that arises is a “perfect there any archaeological evidence, for anything testable in the light of solution” to conditions imposed by the example, that our ancestors of four or findings from these arguably relevant CI (conceptual-intentional) interface five millions of years ago were getting fields, or in the light of archaeological (hence in effect also instantaneous), especially co-operative? What socio- data? And so on… and the question how the internal ecological factors might have driven syntax-semantics is externalised, a later this? And so on. This has turned into a Chomsky: You’ll have to explain to me process virtually by definition, and one longer than usual question, but the what you mean by my ‘speculative that might not even involve evolution reason we’re interested in these kinds origins scenario’. In particular, can you in the sense of genomic change. of issues – and why we’re interested in identify what I’ve written about this the fact that you seem to ignore or that is even controversial enough to RA: Let’s try to summarise your downplay them – is that they have require empirical test? Or is it not argument so the point we’re driving at obvious political dimensions. What perfectly consistent with what is can be made clearer. Although ecological and social conditions, for known about our ancestors? Or, for language in a broad sense relies on example, are conducive to that matter, what is not accepted, various evolved structures and communistic co-operation? Or is tacitly, by everyone who has had a mechanisms, and although language everything we need to know to be word to say on this topic? can be used for communication, the found in the computational mechan- crucial step that gave our species the isms of individual human brains? RA: It is a refreshingly bold “just-so” language faculty was a chance rewiring story for the evolutionary emergence of of the brain. This genetic event Chomsky: You say you’re “taken language. It’s certainly parsimonious instantly gave rise to a computational aback by your claim that every serious and has a kind of logic on its side, but mechanism for recursion – something scholar agrees with you on these how could we discriminate between unique to humans, and perhaps points,” namely the points I’ve actually your story and any other? Modern originally nothing to do with language. made. As far as I am aware, that is Darwinism provides us with ways to Perhaps it evolved as an adaptation for, true. Pinker and Jackendoff, for turn a just-so story into a testable say, navigation, this mechanism example, tacitly pressuppose these proposition – by modelling the costs subsequently being exapted for points. Of course they disagree with and benefits of proposed adaptive language. In your 2002 Science article views that they’ve attributed to me. But behaviours, for example. To count as co-authored with Marc Hauser and that was not my question: to repeat, scientific, a hypothesis surely has to be Tecumseh Fitch, you describe all this as what is controversial in what I’ve testable. Can you specify just one or a “tentative, testable hypothesis in actually said and written? two experimental results or need of further empirical archaeological finds or anything else investigation”. Our previous questions There’s no “hypothesis” in the paper I that might in principle pose a problem were merely inviting you to clarify for co-authored with Hauser and Fitch for your hypothesis of instantaneous our readers what some of these tests about recursion in language being an language evolution? might look like. What kind of exaptation from deeper capacities, experimental or observational results maybe used in navigation. Rather, that’s Chomsky: I’m afraid I am still puzzled. might pose a problem for the theory? proposed as a possibility that could be The question I raised remains explored, and tested. It’s easy to see unanswered, and as long as this is so, I We’re taken aback by your claim that how it could be explored: e.g., by do not really understand what you are every serious scholar agrees with you studying these processes in different asking. If it is true that what I have on these points. Our own impression is systems and looking for commonalities, suggested is not even controversial that virtually every scholar vehemently differences, appearance at various times enough to require empirical test, is disagrees! Ray Jackendoff and Steven of evolution, the usual approaches of perfectly consistent with what is Pinker come to mind. We are not the comparative method; obviously known about our ancestors, and is interested, for the moment, in whether premature in this case, because not accepted, tacitly, by everyone who has the truth lies more with you or more enough is known. There are plenty of a word to say on this topic, then I do with Pinker and Jackendoff. If we are hypotheses discussed, and there are not see how the question you are to have a Darwinian account of the masses of empirical evidence testing posing arises. So I cannot proceed until emergence of language, we surely need them, but they are about the nature of you indicate to me in what respects to ask what might have been the the system that evolved – obviously a that judgment is incorrect. selection pressures that gave rise to it in prerequisite to study of its evolution. humans but in no other animal? Pinker I have not suggested that the argues that the explanation is social So I’m back to where I was. Unless you emergence of language is cooperation, explaining this in turn by can identify some thesis that is instantaneous. Rather, that the invoking kin selection and reciprocal controversial, and that isn’t accepted, rewiring of the brain enabling an altruism. But these are widely at least tacitly, in all speculations about infinite array of structured expressions applicable Darwinian principles, by no language evolution that can be taken was in effect instantaneous. I have means restricted to Homo sapiens . So seriously, I can’t respond to the queries. never heard of an alternative to this why didn’t apes evolve language? Or suggestion. That leaves plenty of something a bit like language? Were RA: OK, we take your point, but we’re questions, among them, the question to our hominin ancestors particularly co- trying to get you to talk about some what extent the internal computational operative? Which ones and when? Is interesting issues in evolutionary

22 Radical Anthropology science. The popular science writer readership will be interested to know with Pannekoek’s writings, and do not Marek Kohn describes well what I what they can do with your ideas. recall his drawing conclusions about mean in his chapter on trust in his Frederick Engels once wrote, “The his political stands from his work on book As We Know It . Kohn quotes more ruthlessly and disinterestedly astronomy, nor do I see how one could anthropologist Chris Knight as saying science proceeds, the more it finds itself do so. Nor why it should be a demand that “Darwinian theory shows that in harmony with the interests of the – no sane human being devotes 100% cheating is likely to result in higher workers.” That’s quite an inspiring of his or her life to political activism. fitness than co-operating – and the idea. Revolutionaries need no ideology, greater the rewards of co-operation, he is saying – only science, conducted If scientists and scholars were to the greater the unearned benefits to the dispassionately for its own sake. Are become “collectively self-organised and freeloader. Any theory of how lan- we right in saying that you don’t consciously activist” today, they would guage, symbolism or culture originated encourage socialists or anarchists to probably devote themselves to service has to show how a system based on view science – or at any rate, your own to state and private power. Those who cooperative agreement could have linguistic science – as having potential have different goals should (and do) developed without being destabilised at in that political sense? become organized and activist. All the any stage by the pursuit of individual questions you raise merit inquiry and interests.” What do you think of this? Chomsky: I don’t encourage socialists attention, and if there are lessons to be or anarchists to accept falsehoods, in drawn from the sciences, then that Chomsky: I don’t see the force of the particular, to see revolutionary should be the concern of everyone, claim. For one thing, evolutionary potential where there is none. Anton including scientists to the extent that theory has nothing to say, in general, as Pannekoek didn’t encourage radical they can make a contribution. One to whether cheating is more advantag- workers and other activists of the anti- contribution they can and should make eous than cooperating. There are many Bolshevik left to see revolutionary is to be clear and explicit about the circumstances in which the contrary potential in his work in astronomy, for limits of scientific understanding, a would be true, and empirical evidence, the simple reason that he was honest, matter that is particularly important in though it exists, has little bearing on and knew there was none to speak of. societies where people are trained to real situations. For another, there’s no The shred of truth that can be defer to alleged experts. I have written need (or way) to establish what Knight extracted from the remark of Engels occasionally on links between my demands. One might just as well argue that you cite (which I don’t recognise) scientific work and political thinking, that language differentiation results is that those who wish to change the but not much, because the links seem from pursuit of group interests, like world should have the best possible to me abstract and speculative. Others other kinds of cultural variety. And understanding of the world, including believe the links to be closer, and have individual interests are beside the point. what is revealed by the sciences, some written more about them (Carlos Furthermore all such matters (even of which they might be able to use for Otero, James McGilvray, Neil Smith, mapping of I-language to the sensori- their purposes. That’s why workers and others). If I can be convinced that motor system) may have nothing to do education, including science and the links are significant, I’ll be happy to with evolution in the biological sense. mathematics, has commonly been a write about them. concern of left intellectuals. RA: The question is under what RA: We have mostly talked about the circumstances is the sharing of valuable RA: But do you think the scientific evolution of language, but you are information with non-kin using a community should get collectively self- perhaps most famous for your political cheap signalling system like language organised and consciously activist? stand. It is understandable that your an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS)? Let’s take the example of climate political work should attract hostile In all other species, a signal must be change. Is astronomy entirely criticism – material interests are at costly to be seen by the signal receiver unconnected with the task of stake. What can seem more puzzling is as reliable in situations of conflict. But familiarising ourselves with the big why arcane academic debates, more if you don’t accept that language is an picture here? With the origins of life on fittingly subject to disinterested inquiry adaptation or arose in a Darwinian, earth, with the reasons why we have than political polemic, can provoke biological world, then you need not life on earth in the first place and with equally impassioned criticism. Why is submit to the constraints posed by comprehending why capitalism might this, do you think? selfish-gene theory. Is that why you be ultimately inconsistent with Earth’s don’t see the force of these arguments? future as a habitable planet? Anton Chomsky: It should seem puzzling, to Pannekoek may, rightly or wrongly, professionals as well. I have seen many Chomsky: Selfish-gene theory tells us not have seen the revolutionary illustrations over the years, and they go nothing about the value of interacting potential of his astronomy, but he back quite far in history. Sometimes through language. Human language is certainly linked his scientific outlook people are “defending their turf.” nothing like the signalling systems of with his politics – in political Sometimes it is personal jealousies. I other animals. Of course language pamphlets on Darwinism and human know of cases that are really depraved. arose in a Darwinian biological world, origins, for example. Might we yet see Academics are not necessarily nice because that’s all there is, but that a pamphlet by Noam Chomsky, linking people. And one might mention a world relates only superficially to the your scientific and your political remark attributed to Henry Kissinger: pop-biology that circulates informally. thinking for a popular audience? the reason academic disputes are so RA: OK, let’s move on. Our activist Chomsky: I am reasonably familiar vicious is that so little is at stake. I

Radical Anthropology 23 Lionel Sims Stonehenge: monument of counter-revolution

Stonehenge has long been a fascination and a mystery. What were the monument builders doing? What was it all for? Recent archaeological digs raised hopes that we might finally get some answers. The diggers need to start looking up, not down, argues Lionel Sims

Radical Anthropology: How and why archaeology led by Chris Tilley. unobserved ‘reality’ behind the directly did you get interested in prehistoric Thirdly, I started contributing to what observed ‘reality’. Just because we have monuments and Stonehenge? was then the annual RAG day-trip to no written records from prehistory does the Avebury monuments. The trip was not mean we can’t test theories of Lionel Sims: I was not interested in hilarious: none of us had a clue what prehistory and reject some of them. For prehistoric monuments or Stonehenge the monuments were, but just knew example, John North showed in 1996 at all until around 1989/90, when I they had to be something to do with that Stonehenge cannot be aligned on became involved in a debate within the the collapse of hunting cultures and in summer solstice sunrise, but does have British left defending Friedrich Engels’ some way were a memory of our one main alignment on winter solstice claim, outlined in his book The Origin ancient origins. So when anybody sunset. That therefore excludes any of the Family, Private Property and the asked, ‘What is Silbury Hill?’, or theory which requires a ritual timed for State , that humans are a revolutionary Avebury circle, or Stonehenge, the the start of the longest, possibly species, and that the oppression of repeated reply was – ‘We don’t know’. brightest, day. Another theory suggests women was a late development in My research came out of both that Stonehenge is an astronomical history. This debate sparked such attempting to defend Engels and to ‘computer’ designed to predict eclipses vitriol that I realised there must be big lessen the embarrassment of always (Gerald Hawkins). I was initially stuff behind it. The majority was saying ‘We don’t know’. impressed with this claim since it against me in the debate, but I was not seemed to be congenial to a culture that at all convinced by the confused and RA: It seems that that is still the respects the lunar scheduling of ritual – angry counter-arguments. official answer when archaeologists are the eclipse of full moon would be asked what Stonehenge is! Not only do disastrous for a lunar-scheduled ritual Rather than give up, I decided to we not know, we can’t know, they say. system (Chinese priests in the past were pursue the matter in my personal To the layman, then, the choice is executed if they failed to predict one!) research. My intention was to open up between official scepticism and an and therefore it would be powerful the debate in the light of recent infinite array of mystical answers. knowledge to have. To test this theory I research in anthropology and the How did you approach the question? had to learn astronomy – about which I natural sciences, and use whatever knew zero when I started. After two findings came up to strengthen the LS: The quick answer is: with science! years of study I realised Stonehenge marxist case first set out by Engels. The second answer is: the official could not possibly be designed to I knew this would be a long haul, but archaeology response that we can’t predict eclipses, but was designed to also knew that nobody else was doing know is only for those outside their predictably avoid them! it, and I felt that I was well placed. circles. They now say they can come In particular, I was a member of the up with an answer – Mike Parker- Therefore the method of science allows Radical Anthropology Group (RAG), Pearson has come up with ‘monuments us to reject some theories and narrow which was a great support and for the living’ (Durrington Walls the range of possible explanations for sounding board. Secondly, I enrolled monument) and ‘monuments for the monuments like Stonehenge. Any on a Masters course at University dead’ (Stonehenge), and his theory interpretation that can’t be tested, such College London (UCL) in recently reached a wider audience as mystical answers, I have no time for. anthropology, and attended classes in through New Scientist magazine. It is Or rather, they tell us something about interesting that to make this argument the teller, but usually very little about Parker-Pearson has had to engage with the object of the telling. Further, if we Lionel Sims is an anthropologist archaeoastronomy. This is a big shift can mobilise a range of different for British archaeology. methodologies, in combination the at the University of East number of theories they allow us to London, a member of the Returning to the main question – reject grows exponentially. Therefore, I European Society for Astronomy science can investigate what is not started with a marxist method in in Culture (SEAC) and the directly observable. In fact, all of anthropology, archaeology and Stonehenge Round Table Group. science is about finding the indirect archaeoastronomy. If I come up with a

24 Radical Anthropology hypothesis from any one of these have done? All we do is test out the they will say. Do you think we are disciplines, I then test it out with available alternatives – they could have going to return his cattle? How will we another. If it checks out, my hypothesis been conservative, and carried on get a wife/children if we return his grows in confidence. In the last ten hunting, or they innovated. To carry cattle? Now brother/sister solidarity years this has been my finding – each on hunting in the old way meant has broken down, patrilineal/patrilocal time I move over to another dispersing into smaller, more scattered, clans become the organisational heart methodology, the initial hypothesis is more mobile groups and, perhaps, of a society increasingly stratified by confirmed and therefore strengthened. coming back together again once or degrees of cattle wealth and warring A few years ago I was at a conference twice a year. This is what happened cattle-raiders. One way to keep such in Sardinia and a man I met there, over most of the world in a period we groups from falling apart from internal Marco, convinced me to read Indo- call in British archaeology the competition is to build monuments. European myths. I was astonished to Mesolithic. If they innovated there find that a team of researchers at were two main ways to do so – become I’m no stone-hugger. These monuments Chicago University have reconstructed complex hunters who ‘farmed’ were labour-intensive structures to test the root myths that can be dated to salmon/cod from the sea and rivers (for the loyalty of groups with the need to about the time of Stonehenge, and they example), or become ‘farmers’. atone for the crime of women’s confirm in details I would never have oppression. That’s a counter-revolution. imagined the findings of the previous Up until 20 years ago, it was the methodologies I have used. ‘farming revolution’ theory that held RA: If the solution to the puzzle of sway. Archaeologists assumed that the Stonehenge can be found in such RA: We’ll come back to those myths! hunter-gatherer precursors of farmers everyday, earthly matters as trade and But for now, let’s stay with the were irrelevant since “nothing much marriage, why are so many people monument itself. Contrary to Parker- happened” (as archaeologist Colin convinced that the builders were Pearson, you call Stonehenge a Renfrew put it) until the farming of the looking at the stars? Were they? And ‘monument of counter-revolution’. Neolithic. We now know that the first how do we know either way? First, tell us what revolution and ‘farmers’ who built Stonehenge (and counter-revolution you are talking Avebury, and so on) weren’t settled LS: Most archaeologists would still say about. Stonehenge was built by settled farmers at all, but cattle herders who that Stonehenge has no ‘astronomy’. Neolithic farmers, wasn’t it? still hunted, occasionally planted and However, there is no other explanation were not living in settled villages but for the accurate alignments on winter LS: Like Engels I believe that we were still ‘nomadic’, ie, they preserved solstice sunset from the right hand side humans are a revolutionary species. as much of their earlier hunter-gatherer of the Heel Stone through the gap in Our hunter-gatherer ancestors lifestyle as possible. This has been the grand trilithon or on the southern overthrew primate jealousy and established by the last two decades of minor standstill moonsets from the left selfishness and established a mode of research in archaeology, and is found hand side of the Heel Stone through the production through the revolutionary to be true for much of the world. upper gap. (To make sense of this and creation of matrilineal/matrilocal Intensive, sedentary farming was of much that follows, we recommend clans. The solidarity of classificatory resisted as much as possible by all the you go to www.stonehenge3d.co.uk.) brothers and sisters, what Morgan people of the world. It was only under In my article in the Cambridge and Engels called ‘the gens’, was the the most pressing circumstances that it Archaeological Journal in 2006 organisational heart of the first was adopted. (available at www.radicalanthropology communist society. Chris Knight, a group.org), I identified 27 or so other professor of anthropology at the The key to this, I am sure, was properties that were consistent with University of East London, and sexual/economic politics. In a hunting this lunar-solar double alignment. My others, have made this claim society, a man only earns sexual rights, point to archaeology was: if you can scientifically respectable on the basis marriage, in return for hunting services come up with one simple explanation of modern scientific methods. to his wife and in-laws. This is called for 28 properties of the architecture bride-service. Once domestic cattle which is better than mine, then do so! However, that theory, sex-strike theory, have been adopted, they are not used has a number of assumptions for it to for food, but for purchasing wives. The monument builders were not just work. The main one is a materialist Then a man can approach another ‘looking at the stars’. As you imply, assumption – that there are plenty of man who has a daughter, and instead you can do that without getting a big game animals for launching a of promising a life-time of hunting he hernia by building Stonehenge. predictably successful, monthly big now bargains to purchase a wife in Obviously, Stonehenge is not just a game hunt. Now, that assumption perpetuity for a once-for-all payment sighting device. It is a cosmological cannot be true by at least ten thousand of a number of cattle. This is called centre, which creates the illusion when years ago, if not much earlier. Many of bride-price. Now look at this standing at the Heel Stone that the sun the big game animals died out by then, arrangement from the point of view of and the moon enter the underworld at and much of the grasslands of the the bartered woman. What if she that point. It becomes therefore a world disappeared under forests – doesn’t like her new husband? What if portal into the underworld. We would which have a much lower biomass she complains to her brother(s) or her predict that sex-strike theory, when it than grasslands. All I asked is – what mother(s) that he is not a nice man? collapses in the Neolithic, would would we predict the hunters would What will they say? Go back to him, require a device to simulate what

Radical Anthropology 25 everybody would have with very cautious claims done naturalistically in the for astronomical Palaeolithic – that is, a alignments in prehistoric lunar-scheduled, ritual life- monuments. Previously cycle – but now found it they ridiculed such claims very difficult to do because since their main theory of of the emerging divisions in prehistory was of a society as cattle wealth slowly accumulating undermined clan solidarity. farming revolution emerging out of hunter- Farming revolution theory gatherer savagery. will only allow monument Atkinson called them alignments on the solstice ‘howling barbarians’! sun as primitive Therefore the first claims agricultural calendars. But of ‘scientific astronomy’ it has now been shown that The setting winter solstice sun from the Heel Stone at Stonehenge made no sense to most of them have at least archaeologists. But now double alignments on both the sun’s culture that is confiscating monthly that the farming revolution theory is solstices and the moon’s standstills. (A lunar cycles to a solar timescale. That is no longer accepted within archaeology, lunar standstill is the lunar equivalent what we would predict for a culture and since archaeoastronomers no of the sun’s solstice in horizon moving from hunting to agriculture, longer claim a scientific, but a astronomy – a place on the horizon but during a period of relative religious, role for horizon ‘astronomy’, which defines the moon’s rising and ‘equipoise’ between these two systems. there is the chance for convergence setting range – with one difference: that between the two disciplines. those positions change between a major Every counter-revolution has to take and a minor limit, each spanning the account of the previous revolution. So a All of this has nothing to do with my sun’s solstice positions, according to an ‘machine’ that can lie, that can pretend views becoming more acceptable. My 18.61 year cycle.) it still is true to the old way, but now articles are being met with a has adapted it to new conditions – that resounding silence! My work began Another property of these two cycles – is a useful machine to an emerging with a detailed critique of the the sun’s solstices and the moon’s warrior-priesthood which is displacing marvellous work done by John North. standstills – is that this knowledge matrilineal solidarity with its own form I have been the only researcher to take allows you to predict the phase-locking of solidarity – monument building. North’s work seriously. Without his of solstices with dark moons twice achievements there is no way I could every 19 years. The sun’s solstices RA: You mentioned earlier that have come up with the arguments I am occur twice a year for a period of a archaeology has long resisted now making. North’s work is also met week around winter and summer archaeoastronomy, but that it is with a resounding silence! solstice, but the moon’s standstills starting to come around. Why the occur over a period of a year twice in resistance, do you think? Does the fact RA: Could you tell us briefly what you an 18.6-year cycle. that it is coming round mean that it think North’s achievement was? now has to take your theory seriously? Look at the two pictures of Stonehenge LS: John North’s book – Stonehenge: (at the top of this page and the next), LS: We are now in the third stage of Neolithic Man and Cosmos – was shown from the Heel Stone. You will the history of archaeoastronomy published in 1996. He proved that see that Stonehenge, viewed from the (Norman Lockyer was the first at the Stonehenge had a double main Heel Stone, once appeared as a solid beginning of the 20th century; then alignment from the Heel Stone on wall of stone with two windows. The Gerald Hawkins and Alexander Thom winter solstice sunset below another on lower gap within the grand trilithon in the 1960s and 1970s; now led by the southern minor standstill moonsets. traps a ray of light from the setting Clive Ruggles in Britain since the The first is an annual property, the winter solstice sun; the upper gap traps 1980s). Ruggles was research assistant second once every 19 years spread over the southern standstill moonsets over to Richard Atkinson, the leader of the course of a year. He demonstrated the course of a standstill year. Thirteen British archaeology in the 1960s and this through 600 pages of careful moons will have set in that upper 1970s. Ruggles has shown that the argumentation, showing in a patient window, culminating in dark moon claims for scientific, precision examination of hundreds of earlier and coinciding with the winter solstice astronomy of Hawkins and Thom are similar monuments the principles of sunset. That is the start of the longest incorrect, and also established modern NW European prehistoric monument darkest night, and therefore predictably standards for testing for intentional design. Some of these principles are: allows observing the greatest possible (rather than accidental) alignments in how horizons were manipulated by number of stars. This is a much more ancient monuments. But most of this digging ditches and banks around sophisticated ‘astronomy’ than farming has passed archaeology by, and monuments to preferentially shift the revolution theory allows, displays archaeologists know virtually nothing trapping of the sun and moon’s light complex knowledge of the moon’s of the details. They let Clive Ruggles rays between posts or stones; the use of movements, and is consistent with a get on with it, and basically come up standard gradients in earth mounds

26 Radical Anthropology which allowed doubled were patrilineal cattle reverse viewing of certain herders of the late stars or the sun and the Neolithic and early moon; the construction of Bronze Age. Some artificial and level horizons components of their for establishing alignments origin myths have been accurate to one-third of reconstructed by, in one degree; and many particular, Wendy more. Once he had Doniger, Bruce Lincoln demonstrated how these and Calvert Watkins. principles operated elsewhere, he could then These myths are obsessed test them out at with heroes killing the Stonehenge. He therefore cattle-stealing dragon, showed us the method we repairing the cosmos and can use to decode Stonehenge traps the southern standstill moon forestalling its imminent monuments. Nothing in collapse, and the original the archaeoastronomy or archaeology G Stone 11 is half the height, half the patriarchal twins instituting human of NW European monuments can width and half the breadth of the other sacrifice as the pre-eminent means of move forward until North’s work is 29 stones in the outer sarsen circle. keeping the cosmos stable and self- critically acknowledged. There are therefore 29.5 stones in the replenishing. If you start your outer circle. This is the average length understanding of human origins with RA: OK, and what about your of the (synodic) month. sex-strike theory, of culture led by contribution? Above you said that G There are 19 bluestones in the inner matrilineal/matrilocal coalitions of your theory explains 28 features of the arc. This is the length of the standstill hunters which then started to break architecture of Stonehenge and that no cycle of the moon. down when big game hunting other theory comes close. Perhaps that G The bluestones, which come from collapsed, then these myths are exactly would be the best way to approach the Preselli Hills in Pembrokeshire, are what you would predict as one of the your work. What architectural features dark blue with mica flecks. If the outcomes of that collapse. In terms of are you talking about? monument is designed for a ritual of monuments, double alignments of the the longest darkest night, then this sun and the moon, in which monthly LS: They are not just mine, many are selection of stone is a good rendition of lunar phases are being transplanted from North. I just put them together in the night sky in the middle of winter. onto annual solar cycles, and in which a new way to show that the combined G The monument is binary – two dark moon rituals are now being result was to build a monument that circles (one of sarsen, one of bluestone) ritually celebrated twice a year rather could predictably stage rituals when and two horseshoe arcs (one of sarsen, than 13 times a year, are also what you winter solstice sunset coincided with one of bluestone). This is consistent would predict. None of this is explic- dark moon – therefore at the start of with the main double alignment on the able or explainable by the standard the longest, darkest night. Nobody had sun and the moon. model of culture-creating farmers out come up with this before. Some of the of hunter-gatherer savagery. properties which all go together and are I could go on. All of these points explained by this single motivation are: and others outlined in my article RA: Finally, can we return to your first in the Cambridge Archaeological answer, and consider why it was that G Approaching Stonehenge from the Journal are consistent with my the people you were debating on the North East along the Avenue, argument, and no other theory can British left were hostile to these ideas. Stonehenge paradoxically appears as a integrate them in this way. Why were they? And what can our solid wall of stone except in two activist readers take from your work? places, even though it is full of gaps RA: You mentioned above that a study when viewed, as archaeologist do on of Indo-European myths confirms your LS: In the winter of 1989/90, the views their site plans, from above. findings. Could you tell us a little bit of the section of the British left I was G The two nearest trilithons point to a about this with reference to the debating with were no different to convergence on the Heel Stone. features you have just described? those common among the liberal left G The lower gap is exactly aligned on and ‘intelligentsia’. There was a very winter solstice sunset; the upper gap on LS: It is a remarkable achievement of ambiguous and weak endorsement of the southern minor standstill moonsets. scholarship that not only has some of the claims of Engels (and Marx) that G Stonehenge is built on the side the proto-Indo-European language our species was born in a revolutionary of a hill. As you walk to the centre been reconstructed, but also some of break with primate ‘politics’. of the monument from the Heel their origin myths. This is the root A number of reasons lay behind this. Stone at winter solstice sunset, the language and origin myths of all the First and most important was an upward movement of the eye counter- peoples from Iceland to Sri-Lanka. inability to critically use the methods balances the sinking of the sun, From both Indo-European study, and of the new Darwinism – selfish-gene creating the illusion of suspending its from the archaeology, a strong case can theory. All the left and liberal sinking movement. now be made that Indo-Europeans intellectuals were (and still are)

Radical Anthropology 27 biophobic. Any recourse to using the not the deliverance from hunter- Second, this communist society started mathematics of selection processes was gatherer poverty! breaking down as the big game considered a collapse into a right-wing animals of the Palaeolithic started to agenda. Second, the left had a weak Fourth, during the 1970s feminism and die out. By the Neolithic, when response to the radical feminist attack marxism were involved in acrimonious monument building began, wealthy of patriarchy theory and, in defence of debates over the roots of women’s cattle-owning men are establishing their organisations, wanted to close off oppression and Engels’ part in that their power, partly through monument the debate rather than embrace a new debate. In their failure to resolve the building, at the expense of the earlier and, to them, untested theory. issue both sides retreated, wounded in brother-sister solidarity of the different ways, to leave the issue alone. matrilineal/matrilocal clans. This event Third, much of academic anthropology Academic anthropology has was, as Engels claimed, the world- was profoundly anti-marxist, and used consistently attacked (vulgar) marxism historic defeat of women and the methods that were uncongenial to with the evidence from pre-state establishment of the first class societies. marxists. Therefore, whereas societies. Those of us in RAG who are anthropologists celebrated the thought marxists believe that if it seems that Third, as the Neolithic counter- systems of ‘simple’ societies, marxists, anthropology undermines marxism on revolution was based on economics, and in part including Engels, used the issue of the roots of oppression, not biology, and as we were present ecological methods, which led them to then only anthropology can rescue it. at our own making as communists, claim that hunter-gathers had an That is why we call ourselves the then the next revolution is a return to insubstantial hold on survival because Radical Anthropology Group. the first, but now on the basis of they had to rely on hunting with a modern technology that can assure ‘primitive technology’ and so on. The main messages I would want plenty for all. Therefore, before agriculture, the activists to take from all this are the ecology of hunter-gatherers was following. These claims strengthen our resolve by predicted to be close to starvation. arming us intellectually. Who would If you started talking about the high Firstly, in the last 40 years there not want that? I levels of solidarity between brothers has been a revolution in the life and sisters in matrilineal clans as the sciences and, I would claim, this Lionel Sims gives guided tours and basis for the first communist society, revolution has provided the method talks on Avebury and Stonehenge then it was heard as utopian. Instead, and the data to confirm the truth of as part of the Radical Anthropology marxists celebrated agriculture as the Engels’ claim that we are a Group’s lecture series and annual first mode of production which revolutionary species, and that field trip to Stonehenge and Avebury. afforded plenty. Yet Engels had always we established the first human For more details, see www. claimed this as the counter-revolution – culture as communist. radicalanthropologygroup.org.

The material origins of inequality Rough equality among men in patrilineages sits upon systematic G Brian Hayden of Columbia University has suggested an inequality between men and women.This is the first inequality out ‘accumulator-feasting’ complex to explain ‘potlatch’ type rituals. of which all later inequalities spring – this is Engels’ basic These involve the conspicuous display and destruction of wealth, argument. The imbalances that can occur within this relation of and the profligate consumption of luxury foods.They are run inequality are like a proto-class out which all later classes evolve. competitively by ‘big men’ ‘financed’ by calling in debts.This The main imbalances suggested in the scholarly literature are: increases ranking differences among men in the midst of plenty. G ‘Trade’ in, for example, stone axes, flint cores and artefacts, and G Cattle herders also hunt and garden, therefore there are three in the early bronze age in copper and bronze, had a restricted dimensions for ‘chance’ inequalities to arise. circulation linked to rank. Variable trading opportunities are G Political authority (chiefs, kings, etc) can grow as the reverse- therefore a source of inequality. dominance structures of matrilineal/matrilocal organisation G Exotic luxury goods, such as types of stone, silver, gold, confer weaken (see, for example, Hierarchy in the Forest:The Evolution of unequal power on those who control their circulation. For Egalitarian Behaviour by Christopher Boehm).This can have example, a Zulu bride can be purchased with a brass ring: see economic consequences, eg, monument building. Eileen Krige, The Social System of the Zulus . G Agricultural labour services, except plough agriculture which G Napoleon Chagnon’s social circumscription theory suggests uses oxen, are the province of women, and variable opportunities that, when there are fewer opportunities to flee from intra-group for wealth inequalities exist with multiple wives (see, for example, problems, this intensifies the emergence of rank inequalities. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond). GThe spoils of raiding and war – from revenge to cattle raiding to G Before cattle-herders there were the complex hunter-gatherers territorial defence– create inequalities. of the Mesolithic, something like the NW coast American Indians. G Resource stress. Most of these were slave-owning misogynist warriors who G Migration. vigorously defended territory. As there were at least 4,000 years of G Colonialism. the Mesolithic which preceeded NW European Neolithic monument building, we would expect some degree of gender There is evidence for the first nine of these factors operating in the inequality and ranking among men before cattle-herding. prehistory of the British Isles and north Europe.

28 Radical Anthropology Marek Kohn Trust: self-interest and the common good Marek Kohn is a science writer whose previous books include As We Know It: Coming To Terms With An Evolved Mind , and A Reason For Everything: Natural Selection and the English Imagination . Here he talks to Radical Anthropology about his latest work on trust.

Radical Anthropology: In your new from first principles to see how interests so, the signals often actually being book, Trust: Self-Interest and The may be combined into a common good. transmitted by gunfire – and so people Common Good , you discuss the need to interpret them according to biological origins of trust. Is trust RA: And what are those first their understanding of others’ peculiarly human? Or does it have principles? Are they Darwinian, would intentions. No ceasefire would have parallels in the animal world? you say? lasted if any shot was interpreted as a deliberate breach. Trust makes co- Marek Kohn: The primatologist Frans MK: They are; though they can be operation resilient instead of brittle. de Waal observes that, “We have no derived from other kinds of cost-benefit trouble recognising the difference analysis. Differing genetic interests can Well-placed trust makes relationships between a trustful or distrustful cause problems of trust, particularly in work better. It allows people to take dog, and we know how long it can ‘familial’ societies where families trust advantage of opportunities they would take to turn the latter into the former.” each other implicitly and everybody otherwise miss, and makes the colours If an animal can form expectations else very little. This often arises when of social interaction more intense. about how another will act with the state is oppressive or dysfunctional, respect to itself, we can think of it as failing to implement laws fairly and RA: In your book you say “capitalism being able to trust. But the question inhibiting the development of civil has won the global game of how to gets more difficult and interesting if society: under such conditions the make a living”. Marx and others one understands trust as involving a family becomes a fortress. pointed out that capitalism is parasitic sense of selves and others: that to trust, on trust. Workers in the factory, in the one needs to have a sense that others RA: So traditional societies can be too home and in society generally operate are individuals, with interests and parochial for widespread trust to on communist principles – if my motives of their own. Trusting them is develop; modern societies too chaotic. colleague asks me to pass the spanner, I expecting that they will incorporate But why do you think widespread trust don’t charge him for my time; my mum one’s own interests into theirs. So this is desirable anyway? Could we not just doesn’t put a padlock on the fridge. Yet is a question about whether non- get by, as Thatcher implied, with the profits that accrue from this social human animals have what’s known as individuals and their families? trust go into the pockets of a small ‘theory of mind’ – which will doubtless minority of individuals. Isn’t the global be the subject of heated debate among MK: Another politician, David consensus on capitalism more an primatologists for years to come! Trimble, recently observed (in the example of misplaced trust than of context of his experience in Northern deserved success? RA: If trust has parallels in the animal Ireland) that trust is “over-rated and world, and if human life is so frequently misplaced”. He has a point. MK: It depends on where you think characterised by trust, why it is a Trust is not strictly necessary to value comes from. By locating the problem in the first place? achieve many forms of co-operation, source of value in labour, Marxism and to focus on trust, as political proposes that capital is inherently MK: Sure, there’s a lot of trust about, commentators often do, can be to exploitative and implies that workers but the particular problem these days is concentrate on the icing when what are wrong to trust in it. Orthodox that it doesn’t go very deep. A matters is the cake. economics, on the other hand, constantly moving, accelerating world welcomes capital as a source of value. reduces the opportunities for trust to However, even in situations where co- In Britain, the old labour movement grow through experience, familiarity, operation can be achieved without was deeply mistrustful of capital and habit, and the commitment involved in trust, trust may be needed to sustain management, whereas on the relationships – personal, intimate or the co-operation. Reading accounts of Continent, notably in West Germany, occupational – that are intended to last informal truces on the Western Front relations between capital and labour a long time. This isn’t to say that trust in the First World War, I was struck by were structured around an idea of is a peculiarly modern problem, the extent to which trust seemed to social partnership which implied trust. though. It’s a problem in the first place arise between soldiers on opposing Indeed I believe they still largely are, to because co-operation is fundamentally sides, and how such sentiments may the workers’ benefit. problematic between agents whose have helped to maintain the truces in interests are not identical. To situations where violations would RA: Trust is not only good for our understand how to promote trust and inevitably occur. In real life, signals are pocket, you say in your book, but how to place it well, we need to work often noisy – in the trenches literally good for our health too. How so?

Radical Anthropology 29 MK: One specific way that it works is people have to see the benefits of MK: You often see signs on buses through the National Blood Service. building relationships with others of along the lines of “Please give up this People trust that they would receive a different cultures, have to find shared seat for someone who is less able to transfusion if they needed it, because interests, and build on the elements in stand than you”. It’s welcome that they trust unknown others to donate their cultures that they share - which public transport providers are blood, and this public trust encourages may mean building a new shared concerned to redistribute seats from people to make the donations. It’s a culture. People have to want to make it those with standing ability to those virtuous circle, providing public goods happen, and, as with any relationship, with a need to sit down, but at a reduced cost – the medical good, they have to work at it. regrettable that passengers should of the blood itself, and the social good need to be asked. And the further an of solidarity. RA: What about religion? You put a organisation goes in its efforts to much more positive spin on the subject bring about fairness by regulation, the More generally, trust can be seen as a than we are used to hearing from weaker the relations between people source of health through its close science writers. What would you say to become. When they are required to relationship to equality. The work of ‘militant atheists’ such as Richard obey rules, individuals are relieved of Richard Wilkinson, Michael Marmot Dawkins? Can we expect trust and the responsibility to make their ethical and others has shown that equality moral behaviour from the human decisions for themselves, and to think promotes health, while inequality animal in the absence of religion? about how they should engage with damages it. This effect seems to work others. French public transport has a through the reduction of stress in social MK: I’d say, “To an evolutionary tradition of chapter and verse on this relationships: being a subordinate can psychologist, the universal – priority in descending order to mean a life lived in an unhealthily extravagance of religious rituals, with ‘mutilés de guerre’, blind civilians, prolonged emergency mode, and their costs in time, resources, pain and industrially disabled people, and so on shortened by it. Relative equality privation, should suggest as vividly as a – which replaces individual makes for a healthier social mandrill’s bottom that religion may be judgement, and public spirit, with a environment. Pleasant, co-operative adaptive.” In fact, I did say that in my bureaucratic code. Doing the right social relations make for longer, review of Daniel Dennett’s book thing becomes doing what is healthier lives: trust, forming a basis Breaking the Spell . Richard Dawkins prescribed – and if it’s not prescribed, for relaxed co-operation, should used it as the epigraph to a chapter of it probably won’t be done. People’s therefore be good for health. The God Delusion , but it didn’t seem relationships are with authority rather to make a huge amount of difference to than with each other. RA: You quote some studies in your his argument! They just can’t seem to book that seem to show trust is less bring themselves to accept the The question is, though, how would likely to be spontaneously extended to possibility that there might be anything they behave if they weren’t told how people of different race. Are multi- of value in religion. to behave? We should bear in mind culturalism and liberal immigration that a lot of behavioural prescriptions policies therefore doomed to fail? As for morality, rather than adaptation, in organisations have been introduced I’ve become increasingly confident that because people couldn’t be trusted not MK: Not at all. It’s hardly surprising to people can manage fine without to discriminate against women, ethnic find that ethnic differences may be an religion. I used to be in awe of the word minorities or other groups. Such obstacle to trust. After all, trust of God as the basis of right and wrong, prejudice has become much less involves confidence in one’s ability to but now I don’t worry that people need socially acceptable, so by and large predict how others will behave. It is such an absolute foundation for people will have become more easier to predict how others will act if deciding how they should behave. trustworthy in these respects. At the you share a set of rules and customs Good strong relationships between moment, organisations remain with them: you can ask yourself, people – implying a profound role for obsessed with achieving standards “What would I do if I were them?” trust – can be just as powerful. This through detailed bureaucratic People will build relationships across confidence is almost entirely based on prescription, so that will probably cultural divides if they are persuaded it my experience of parenthood. continue for the time being. But I can is in their interests to do so, and as they imagine things changing as the costs learn to co-operate, they will come to RA: You say that, in modern societies, of such strategies become too trust. On the other hand, if they see the “attenuation of traditional tiresome, and as institutions become their interests as best served by authority has created a vacuum in more confident that their people could maintaining group divisions, they will social relations that is being filled be trusted to treat others without reinforce their prejudices and their by bureaucratic regulation”. prejudice. Trust lowers costs – of lost mistrust. That can happen where civil Where once there were customs in opportunities as well as of policing society is weak and people have little common, now there are contracts behaviour – so organisations should faith in the state as an arbitrator or between individuals. Is this be able to appreciate the value of guarantor of fairness. It may also development largely good or bad? rediscovering it. I happen where political strategies Is it reversible? What kind of political promote identity politics. But that strategies and real-world projects give Trust: Self-Interest and the Common doesn’t mean that multiculturalism is us grounds for hope that the future Good is published by Oxford necessarily divisive. It means that could be more trustful? University Press, £10.99.

30 Radical Anthropology Books

Moving testament to once, it only takes a phone call courageous woman, and many would have created a new way an extraordinary life from him to have her returned others like her. What Dorothy of living and with it the Review of Pilgrim State by there once she becomes needed (and asked for) was beginnings of culture. Jacqueline Walker, Sceptre pregnant with Teddy, their support. She didn’t get it, but 2008, pp352. second child. She is eventually fortunately, this may change. Myth has long been used as a Jacqueline Walker’s novel released, the years of Pilgrim State is now on the tool to make sense of our own Pilgrim State is a fictionalised (mis)treatment having taken reading list for all trainee social lives. Separation can, and does, memoir. She takes the life of her their toll. Deportation back to workers at Brunel University. occur. But this need not be the mother, Dorothy, and tells it Jamaica, with Teddy and her end. Throughout the novel, like through a variety of sources, third child Jackie, follows. The use of myth gives the book the voice of Demeter, we hear official documents and Clifford retains custody of Pearl an added resonance. The myth Dorothy calling to her narratives. The result is a in the US. Thus begins a life- of Demeter and Persephone daughter, her love never- moving testament to a woman long struggle to find a safe frames the narrative; in the ending. –Eleanor Leone who, despite much hardship, place and be reunited with all same way that we hear instilled in her daughter a her children. It is a journey that Dorothy speak through Books received strong sense of family. takes them through several Jacqueline’s words, Demeter G Possibilities: Essays on separations, and a move to too calls out to us in her Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Dorothy was born in Jamaica south London, where they distress. There is the separation Desire by David Graeber. AK in 1915. A conscientious lived, until Dorothy’s of mother and daughter, Press 2007, pp400. student, she earned a premature death (in 1965), echoing when Persephone is Inspiring collection of essays scholarship to study medicine when Jackie was 11 years old. stolen away into the from anarchist David Graeber. in the US. It was there that she Underworld by Hades, and the met and married her husband, Despite these tragic events the subsequent ‘madness’ G What Gives Work Its Value? Clifford Brown. What begins as story is an uplifting one. Each experienced by Demeter as she The Human Worth of a a passionate and loving page is filled with optimism, as searches for her daughter. Physical Project by David relationship soon changes once we get to know the Dorothy Wilson. Edwin Mellon Press Dorothy becomes pregnant that Jackie knew, with her This myth is one of universal 2006, pp212. with their first child, Pearl. intellect and love of dressing up importance. It symbolises the A reinterpretation of Karl Pilgrim State is named after the and music. It holds out an necessary periodic separation Marx’s value theory. psychiatric facility into which example of how the bonds between mothers and Dorothy is sectioned, after between mother and daughter daughters, as a girl matures and G Expedition Naga – Diaries being drugged by her husband can remain unbroken. This is, marriage takes place. But with from the Hills in Northeast while suffering from what may at root, an inspiring love story. each new spring Persephone India by Peter van Ham and now be thought of as post-natal and Demeter are brought Jamie Saul. ACC Editions depression. Her treatment was But Pilgrim State isn’t just a together again. In this, it also 2008, pp300. electric shock therapy. After novel. It is a challenge to our speaks of an ancient time when Accounts of a trip to the being forced into giving over understanding of what good the bonds between husband Burmese border to meet the her savings, her husband allows parenting means. The over- and wife were not permanent, Naga – notorious for their for her temporary release. But whelming message is that social allowing for a solidarity head-hunting activities. now that she has been admitted services failed this funny and between female kin, which Includes 140-min film on DVD. Letters

Radical Anthropology Network all the feedback I received was positive and the construction of a praxis that is both G Dear Radical Anthropology, encouraging. We evidently have many aims ethical and capable of achieving our Acting as a representative of two Cuban in common. We think that co-operation increasingly urgent goals. collectives of activists and intellectuals could prove fruitful, and we would like to John Green, County Meath, Ireland committed to social and cultural research contribute to your journal, publish a as well as to exploring new emancipation Spanish version of it, organise events, and G Dear Radical Anthropology, paradigms for our country, Latin America support community initiatives. We are open I did a table at the Montreal anarchist and the planet, I’d like to suggest the for discussion and eager to hear from you. bookfair in May and another in Hamilton creation of a Radical Anthropology Dmitri Prieto-Samsonov, Cuba in June, and Radical Anthropology was Network. The membership of the Cuban Editors reply: At the RAG AGM in June easily the most thumbed publication on my groups includes some of the more 2008, Dmitri’s proposal to set up a Radical table. The idea of a radical anthropology interesting social researchers of this Anthropology Network was unanimously was for many people a novelty: “What country. Due mainly to historical reasons, agreed. Anyone interested in contributing could be radical about anthropology?” Cuban social science still largely follows should e-mail [email protected]. Yet the necessity of such a project is only European ethnocentric patterns, a fact made more urgent by current attempts to which seems bizarre to many foreigners G Dear Radical Anthropology, introduce the renamed version of because it contrasts with the revolutionary, Congratulations on a fascinating, Creationism, Intelligent Design, into the third-worldist and latin-americanist history enjoyable, and inspiring first issue. Grade 10 science curriculum. In this for which our country is famous. The need I particularly liked David Graeber’s article. context a radical anthropology truly is a for new approaches is strongly felt. As a His work epitomises for me what revolutionary practice. Congratulations on result of our debates, my Cuban comrades contemporary libertarian socialist theory a great journal. It’s my current favourite share many of the goals of the Radical should be all about: finding new forms of along with Aufheben , Communicating Anthropology Group. I have sent them a resistance appropriate to the times we live Vessels and Internationalist Perspective . copy of the first issue of your journal and in. Such openness to ideas is essential to Fischer, Toronto, Canada

Radical Anthropology 31 The last word Has the key social science lost its way?

oth Karl Popper and Mario strategy by which to advance a truly Bunge described anthropology as Brian Morris is emeritus professor of “scientific” study of religion. The basic Bthe key social science. For anthropology at Goldsmiths College, idea is that religious systems can be despite its diversity, anthropology has a University of London, and author of explained in terms of pan-human certain unity of purpose and vision. It Religion and Anthropology: “psychological characteristics”, or is unique among the human sciences A Critical Introduction (Cambridge more specifically, the emphasis is on both in putting an emphasis and value University Press 2006). innate “cognitive mechanisms” or on cultural difference, thus offering a psychological “modules”, that have cultural critique of western capitalism, There have been many books and been adaptive in a biological sense, and in emphasising people’s shared articles that have attempted to define namely, in fostering the survival or humanity, thus enlarging our sense of religion. For like reason, culture and reproductive success of humans in the moral community and placing humans economy, the concept of religion has past. Religious beliefs, duly fragmented squarely “within nature”. an historical trajectory, and in into atomistic “memes” (which Anthropology has therefore always different contexts diverse meanings. seemingly have a life of their own), are placed itself – as a comparative social Anthropologist Melford Spiro defined described as “counter-intuitive”, that science – at the “interface” between the religion as a social institution is, contrary to commonsense natural sciences and the humanities. consisting of patterned interactions assumptions and experience. Hardly with “culturally postulated news to social scientists! Dismissive of Sadly this ‘dual heritage’ of anthropol- superhuman beings”. This is a useful other approaches to religion, and ogy, which combined both humanism working definition and emphasises ignoring social factors in the and naturalism, interpretive under- that religion is a social institution – understanding of religion, advocates of standing and scientific explanation of not merely a “symbolic system” the cognitive approach make some social phenomena, has come under (Geertz), or “awareness of the rather grandiose claims for this mode attack from two types of extremists. transcendent” (Tambiah), or a of understanding. Mario Bunge and On the one hand, hermeneutic “feeling of the numinous” (Otto). the essays in Hilary and Steven Rose’s scholars, literary anthropologists and Functional definitions of religion, in edited volume Alas, Poor Darwin the so-called postmodernists, have contrast, tend to be rather vague, like (2000) have provided us with some repudiated the Enlightenment tradition that of J. Milton Yinger, who defined important criticisms of this approach. of anthropology. They have thus religion as a system of beliefs and attempted to reduce anthropology to practices that dealt with the “ultimate s religion is a complex and semiotics – or even to autobiography! problems of human life”. By this multifaceted social phenomenon – rejected history and social science, criterion Marxism, evolutionary Ait can be fully understood only embraced a dubious moral and naturalism and secular humanism are by adopting an integral approach, in epistemic relativism, and have become “religions”. Indeed, in the US, both which all approaches to religion must increasingly obsessed with the study of John Dewey’s empirical naturalism be taken into account. But historically, symbolism and ritual. On the other and secular humanism have been anthropology, given its “dual heritage” hand some anthropologists have gone declared a “religion”. (embracing both humanism and to the other extreme. Influenced by naturalism) has always combined sociobiology and its offshoot Long ago, in my Anthropological hermeneutics – the interpretive evolutionary psychology, they have Studies of Religion (1987), I outlined understanding of religious beliefs and advocated a reductive form of the many and varied ways in which practices – with a social-scientific naturalism. This has involved the philosophers and social scientists have perspective that seeks to situate religion attempt to explain complex social attempted to understand and explain in its wider socio-historical context. institutions, particularly religion, in religion – as a natural phenomenon. And this dual approach has always terms purely of cognitive mechanisms. I thus critically discussed in detail the been expressed within specific They thus suggest that an explanation many approaches to the study of ethnographic contexts. There is thus a for religious beliefs and practices is to religion: intellectualist, psychological, need to avoid the extremes of both a be found solely in the way the “human structuralist, interpretive, narrow hermeneutics, embraced by mind works”. With great aplomb they phenomenological, and, especially, the literary anthropologists and inform us that religion is a “natural sociological approach derived from phenomenologists, and the equally phenomenon”, as if this was some new Marx, Weber and Durkheim. narrow scientistic approach of the idea. In fact, ever since Ludwig evolutionary psychologists, who would Feuerbach, social scientists have In recent decades anthropologists such interpret religion purely in terms of emphasised that god (along with as Pascal Boyer and Harvey pan-human instincts – cognitive beliefs about deities, spirits, angels and Whitehouse, and the philosopher mechanisms. The “dual heritage” of witches) have no ontological basis, but Daniel Dennett, have enthusiastically anthropology is surely worth sustaining are essentially the products of human embraced sociobiology, and its in order to develop a more integral consciousness and imagination. offshoot evolutionary psychology, as a approach to religion. I

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