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Reclaim the Future! No. 1. October 2007 www.radicalanthropologygroup.org ) e n i l n O ( X 0 9 0 - 6 5 7 1 N S S I / ) t n i r P ( 6 9 8 0 - 6 5 7 1 N S S I Reclaim the future! David Graeber on revolution today Religion as spectacle Camilla Power on the role of ritual Darwinist family values How Pleistocene girl power changed the world £3 Contents Editorial 5 Why anthropology matters Revolution in reverse 6 The idea of radical change today seems unrealistic. Why? David Graeber investigates Religion as spectacle 17 Richard Dawkins may think it’s just a delusion, but religion had a more interesting evolutionary role than that, says Camilla Power The last word 26 What Darwinism can tell us about ‘single mums’ and family values Who we are and what we do Radical Anthropology is the journal of closed down, supposedly for budgetary Radical Anthropology is the Radical Anthropology Group. reasons. Within a few weeks, the edited by Stuart Watkins and students got organised, electing a Dave Flynn for the Radical Radical: about the inherent, treasurer, secretary and other officers. Anthropology Group. They fundamental roots of an issue. They booked a library in Camden – and also write a blog at Anthropology: the study of what it invited Chris to continue teaching next http://despairtowhere.blogs.com. means to be human. year. In this way, the Radical Anthropology Group was born. Thanks to Kevin Cook- Anthropology asks one big question: Fielding for help with the what does it mean to be human? To Later, Lionel Sims, who since the 1960s design and layout, and to answer this, we cannot rely on common had been lecturing in sociology at the Martin K. for organising the sense or on philosophical arguments. We University of East London, came across printing. Pictures in David must study how humans actually live – Chris’s PhD on human origins and – Graeber’s article and on the and the many different ways in which excited by the backing it provided for cover are by Chris Knight . they have lived. This means learning, for the anthropology of Karl Marx and Pictures of the Himba woman example, how people in non-capitalist Friedrich Engels, particularly on the in Camilla Power’s article societies live, how they organise subject of ‘primitive communism’ – come from themselves and resolve conflict in the invited Chris to help set up www.askadavid.org. absence of a state, the different ways in Anthropology at UEL. Since its which a ‘family’ can be run, and so on. establishment in 1990, Anthropology at On the cover: The journal’s logo UEL has retained close ties with the was designed by Kevin Cook- Additionally, it means studying other Radical Anthropology Group. Fielding . It represents the species and other times. What might it emergence of culture (dragons mean to be almost – but not quite – RAG has never defined itself as a feature in myths and legends human? How socially self-aware, for political organisation. But the from around the world) from example, is a chimpanzee? Do non- implications of some forms of science nature (the DNA double-helix, human primates have a sense of are intrinsically radical, and this applies or selfish gene). How this morality? Do they have language? And in particular to the theory that humanity could possibly have happened what about distant times? Who were the was born in a social revolution. Many has long been of especial Australopithecines and why had they RAG members choose to be active in interest to the Radical begun walking upright? Where did the Survival International and/or other Anthropology Group. Neanderthals come from and why did indigenous rights movements to defend The dragon is a symbol of they become extinct? How, when and the land rights and cultural survival of solidarity, especially the blood why did human art, religion, language hunter-gatherers. Additionally, some solidarity that was a necessary and culture first evolve? RAG members combine academic precondition for the social research with activist involvement in revolution that made us The Radical Anthropology Group environmentalist, anti-capitalist and human. For more on this and started in 1984 when Chris Knight’s other campaigns. For more on the related themes, see popular ‘Introduction to Anthropology’ Radical Anthropology Group, see Radicalanthropologygroup.or g course at Morley College, London, was www.radicalanthropologygroup.org. Subscriptions Radical Anthropology is an annual journal and will appear every October. One issue £3 In the next issue of Radical Anthropology … Two issues £5 G Exclusive interview with Noam Chomsky Five issues £10 G Managing abundance: Jerome Lewis Send a cheque made payable to ‘Radical Anthropology on the Mbendjele hunter-gatherers of Group’ to RA, c/o Stuart Watkins, 2 Spa View, Leaming - ton Spa, CV31 2HA. Email: [email protected]. Congo-Brazzaville RA is also available free via our website: www. G Book reviews radicalanthropologygroup.org. Anti-copyright: all G And much more... material may be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes, but please mention Radical Anthropology . 4 Radical Anthropology Editorial …Wonly with ethis. Oar, if thery fanecy themselaves morre mpolitical exeperimendts no on… e else really peer-reviewed political or radical, because we no knows about” (2004: 96). And yet it science. So says longer live in an age of revolutions, or refuses, for the most part, to talk about the rather because, with the rise of globalisation, it. Anthropology, says Graeber, seems brilliant our room for manoeuvre is more like a discipline “terrified of its own banner that limited. Or because previous potential” (2004: 97). It could so features on the movements for change have ended in easily, instead, be an “intellectual cover of our first issue. The picture disaster. No amount of philosophical forum for all sorts of planetary was taken at the Climate Camp dispute or pub-table arguments can conversations” and make common against the third runway at Heathrow resolve such issues. But if we turn cause with social activism for the sake Airport in August of this year. So in instead to the subjects that have made of human freedom (2004: 105). this context, the banner obviously such concerns their special object of refers to the link between independent, study, we should be delighted to find This, then, is the ambition of this peer-reviewed climate science, and the that, to at least some extent, the journal – to act as just one forum for environmental movement that draws answers to these questions are already this planetary conversation. We start, strength from its findings. It is here in. Human societies, in fact, have not of course, relatively modestly, with two where the battle between science and always been dominated by conflict and lengthy essays, and one short opinion its discontents takes on its piece. But we begin full political importance appropriately – for in for the human species. In this first issue we feature the case of Darwinists “Anthropology seems terrified representatives of what versus creationists and are, for us, the two most scientists versus of its own potential” exciting trends in the postmodernists, it was possible to violence, prioritised material gain over whole of anthropology. The first is think that maybe the debates were of other aspects of our humanity, run David Graeber, and we’ve already purely academic significance. The economic life according to market heard from him in this editorial. Read issues raised by climate science should principles, worked for wages or for more in his sparkling and original essay have shattered that illusion. But we bosses, or been ruled by misery and on page 6. The second, we state rather believe that all social activism should exploitation. Revolutions have not less modestly, is the school of arm itself with science, and that always ended in disaster. Egalitarian anthropology of which this is the scientists should join the social societies in fact still exist – although journal, and some of whose arguments activists. Let us try to explain why. they, too, face the constant threat of are brilliantly summarised in the essay annihilation by capitalist powers. by Camilla Power (see page 17) and a It can hardly be denied that we live in a further editorial by RA (page 26). If troubled world. Even those of us lucky Pre-eminent among such subjects is Graeber’s project can be glossed as enough to live in a part of the world anthropology. If what you want is a ‘what ethnography can tell us about not actually in a warzone, or where theory of how humans have lived, and political practice and human freedom”, there is access to such human essentials how they might live, and how they Power’s is “what the modern science of as food and clean water, go through bring about and think about change, human nature can tell us about the our lives in a constant state of worry then anthropology is the most same problem”. These themes will be about our future. If we are not actually promising place to start looking for continued in Issue 2, with contributions threatened at any one time by the one. To use the phrase of one of our from linguist Noam Chomsky and terrorism and crime we are supposed contributors to this issue, David social anthropologist Jerome Lewis. to be most concerned about, we feel Graeber, the “fragments” of such a anxious and depressed about our radical anthropological theory already To extend this conversation, we future both as individuals (will I have a exist. There is, to continue with cordially invite letters, articles and pension?) and as a species (will there Graeber’s argument, an obvious book reviews for future issues.
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