Przejdź do głównej zawartości
In their book “The Dawn of Everything,” David Graeber and David Wengrow provide multiple accounts by early European settler colonists of the indigenous societies they encountered in the woodlands of northeastern North America.

Over and over, these Europeans noted that these societies were well and truly stateless, lacking rulers, laws, courts, police, prisons, or anything like what they were used to in Europe.

They quote one Jesuit, writing in 1644 about the Wendat:

“I do not believe that there is any people on earth freer than they, and less able to allow the subjection of their wills to any power whatever – so much so that Fathers here have no control over their children, or Captains over their subjects, or the Laws of the country over any of them, except in so far as each is pleased to submit to them. There is no punishment which is inflicted on the guilty, and no criminal who is not sure that his life and property are in no danger…”

1/ #thread
A 16th-century sketch shows the Indigenous village of Pomeiock, near present-day Gibbs Creek in eastern North Carolina, with huts and longhouses inside a protective palisade, or fence. The sketch was made by an English explorer in 1585.
#thread

3 użytkowników udostępniło to dalej

HeavenlyPossum
Most people would probably be horrified at the idea of utter and total lawlessness, in which even criminals go unpunished by any sort of coercive institution. This is the stuff of Hobbesian nightmares, a recipe for war of all against all and predation by criminals against the weak.

Except that’s not at all what those same Europeans report. The same Jesuit, Father Lallemant, went on to report that the Wendat’s process for dealing with transgressions “restrains all these peoples, and seems more effectually to repress disorders than the personal punishment of criminals does in France,” even though the members of these communities “never submit to any Laws and obey no other impulse than that of their own will.”

This is quite the claim and runs contrary to our modern intuitions about how people behave in the absence of coercive authority, to put it mildly.

2/
HeavenlyPossum
I was intrigued by this claim, so I decided to dive into the primary sources. I discovered that, over and over again, European observers confirmed Lallemant.

“They never quarrel and never are angry with one another…”

“Whatever misfortune may befall them they never allow themselves to lose their calm composure of mind, in which they think that happiness especially consists…”

“They know nothing of cursing. I have never seen them become angry, even on occasions when our frenchmen would have uttered a hundred oaths…”

“A person might be among them 30 years and even longer, and not once see two sober Indians dispute or quarrel; even when one of them has deadly hatred to another, they endeavor to smother their anger, and are soon reconciled when it is possible…”

“With us, a watchful police is supported, and crimes are more frequent than among them…”

Over and over, Europeans from a variety of countries described these societies as more peaceful than contemporary European society, with violent crimes such as murder essentially non-existent, at least at any rate comparable to European rates.

3/
A painting depicting a group of Wendat warriors. The men are wearing hide clothing featuring beadwork, some with elaborate feather headdresses. Some have long dark hair, while others have shaved heads. Some carry weapons, such as a spear and shield. Some wear face paint.
HeavenlyPossum
I lack records that would allow me to compare murder rates across societies, but there is consistency among these early observers: these indigenous societies were remarkably less violent than their own, despite the absence of coercive authority.

This is, of course, precisely the opposite of what our hegemonic intuition would tell us to expect.

So how did these societies manage to produce *less* violence and crime than Europeans, with their prisons and police and courts and laws and punishments?

Very broadly, here’s how those indigenous societies managed disputes:

Absent a coercive authority, everyone was free to act however they pleased without fear of predictable interference or punishment by the state. This meant everyone was free to harm whomever they wanted, but also vulnerable to being harmed themselves.

The result was a detente—everyone refrained from harming each other to minimize the risk of harm to themselves.

4/
HeavenlyPossum
When violence did occur, there was always the risk of a cycle of violence—Person A hurts or kills Person B, so the friends and relatives of B retaliate against A, which inspires the friends and relatives of A to retaliate against the friends and family of B, and so on, in a potentially never-ending process of escalation that could destabilize or destroy an entire community.

To minimize this risk, these societies (very broadly speaking) adopted a process of restitution in the event of an act of violence or a violent dispute. The community of the perpetrator would gather to offer gifts to the victim or the victim’s community. The recipient was free to accept those gifts, and formally renounce retaliation, or not.

These were not merely bribes, but symbolic concessions by an entire community. Bruce Graham Trigger observed in the 1963 “Order and Freedom in Huron Society”:

“The final payment of the compensation took the form of an elaborate ceremony that might last several days. The chiefs presented each gift separately. Each gift symbolized some interesting or metaphoric act and was accompanied by a speech telling what it represented. From these speeches…we can get an idea of what this compensation was meant to accomplish. The purpose of the presents was to blot out the crime, honour the murdered man, console his relatives and possible avenger, reunite the country, and restore normal relations. As an expression of good faith, some smaller presents might be given in return.”

5/
HeavenlyPossum
The goal was not punishment or retribution but rather social cohesion and harmony, which was a social rather than individual responsibility. The knowledge that one’s own community would (voluntarily) bear the costs of one’s potential crime seems to have worked as a dramatically more effective deterrent than any of the tortures and murders concocted by European societies to punish “criminals.”

Trigger further noted:

“This, combined with the nature of the settlement itself, demonstrated that the primary aim of legal action on this level in the case of murder was not the punishment of the offender or the simple gratification of the offended family, but the repression of the blood feud and the restoration of amicable relations between kin groups. Deep fear of the disruptive effects of blood revenge is shown by the special effort made in the law to repress it. If a family resorted to blood revenge, not only were all the rights to receive compensation for the original murder forfeited, but the avengers were themselves regarded as murderers and their village required to pay the regular penalties.”

6/
HeavenlyPossum
As a result, people in these societies cultivated and practiced enormous self-restraint and encouraged this behavior in their peers.

In the case of habitual offenders, people who were not deterred by this process from harming others, then members of their own community generally expected that *they* would have to take action to stop the offender, rather than letting things escalate to the point of a feud with another community.

Abraham H. Cassell and Helen Bell noted, in their 1877 “Notes on the Iroquois and Delaware Indians”:

“When the crime is too great, and the guilty person is a notorious murderer or thief, that is, has been guilty several times before, then they council his own tribe to kill him, his tribe advise his own family to tell him the sentence, and then his nearest friend, and very seldom anyone else, kills him.”

Knowing that one might be responsible for killing one’s own friend to protect one’s community seems to have worked as an incredibly powerful and effective check on the sort of criminality and violence that most people today would expect from a stateless society.

7/
A map depicting the locations of indigenous communities of northeastern North America. These include the tribes of the Haudenosaunee confederacy in what is now New York State and the Huron (or Wendat) in what is now Ottawa province.
Lien Rag
Can such social systems exist in absence of war with other tribes ?
From what I know of anthropology works (Pierre Clastres, but not only him) it's not really the case.
HeavenlyPossum
@lienrag

I don’t know what you’re asking.
@Lien Rag
Lien Rag
Thing is, it's not aspects that I've read extensively about; I'm just speaking from memory of short excerpts that I've read long ago.
But from what I remember, the consensus among anthropologists studying most Native American societies is that they could not function without war.
HeavenlyPossum
@lienrag

Why would they have not been able to function without war?
@Lien Rag
Lien Rag
I'm afraid that you'll need to read Pierre Clastres (and another French anthropologist specializing in northern native American societies, whose name I don't remember) to get the answer to your question - it's only something that I've read long ago in the second guy's necrology, IIRC.
HeavenlyPossum
@lienrag

I’m familiar with his work, just not the claim that any society needed war to function.
@Lien Rag
Lien Rag
IIRC that specific claim was from the second guy; Pierre Clastres though wrote extensively about violence in stateless society, but I haven't read this part of his work.

I don't claim to know something here, I'm just pointing to the fact that AFAIK there is serious work on theses topics and you may want to check them to avoid having blind spots in your (very interesting) description of these societies.
HeavenlyPossum
@lienrag

So you want me to read something by a French anthropologist whose name you don’t remember?
@Lien Rag
Lien Rag
When you write it like this, it seems indeed very silly of me.

But :
1 - This work exist
2 - I believe that it is useful to the understanding of these societies
3 - I can't help more until I happen to stumble again on some reference to his work (which would allow me to give you his name)

All these are facts, about which you are obviously free to do whatever you want.
HeavenlyPossum
This process reminds me quite a lot of the institution of weregild, or “man-price,” that was common in pre-modern European societies and descended from archaic tribal custom. Harm done to someone might require payment to the victim or the victim’s family to prevent retaliation and feuding, not because material goods could compensate for a murdered person but to symbolically reconcile people and reinforce community bonds.

A weregild payment in, say, Anglo-Saxon Britain might include not just a direct payment to the victim’s kin but also an endowment paid to build a new church for the community and maybe a wedding between members of the families of both the perpetrator and the victim.

This is a radically different approach to crime and justice than what we’re used to in Western, capitalist, state societies. For us, justice is primarily a process of vengeance, punishment, and ostensibly deterrence. These societies emphasized restitution and social harmony, which seems to have actually generated deterrence. It also seems to have been more personally cathartic to victims and their communities.

8/
HeavenlyPossum
When we think about how we might manage the threat of crime in a revived anarchist society, people have conjectured lots of different mechanisms and processes, and there are lots and lots of good ideas out there.

This is one such process that seems to have evolved out of individual self-interest into an elaborate but purely voluntary system of communal response. It also seems to have been enormously effective at deterring aggression.

This is not to advocate for this particular system, or to argue that it is the best imaginable system, or to claim that it is without flaw. But we can observe that people are not fools and are perfectly capable of restraining themselves and each other from causing harm, for purely self-interested reasons, in ways that benefit entire communities and drive elaborate communal and cooperative behavior.

Hobbes and all the statists are wrong; we do not turn into bestial monsters in the absence of a state to harm us for misbehaving.

9/
A photograph of the Hiawatha Belt, the emblem of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois confederacy. It is a belt made from wampum beads, densely woven together. It depicts a line of four interconnected rectangles centered on a single stylized tree, all in white against a rich purple background.
Ten wpis został zedytowany (1 rok temu)
HeavenlyPossum
You can always support my work by buying me a coffee here:

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/heavenlypossum

10/end

Heavenly Possum

Hello! I am a leftist anarchist and I write about history, anthropology, sociology, and economics on the fediverse. Please consider supporting my work!
Buy Me a Coffee
HeavenlyPossum
Bibliography:

- “Aboriginal Criminal Justice as Reported by Early French Observers” Desmond Brown; Social History; 2002

- “Notes on the Iroquois and Delaware Indians (continued)” Abraham H. Cassell and Helen Bell; The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography; 1877

- “Indigenous Law in North America in the Wake of Conquest” James Zion and Robert Yazzie; Boston College International and Comparative Law Review; 1997

- “Iroquois Women” W.M. Beauchamp; The Journal of American Folklore; 1900

- “Order and Freedom in Huron Society” Bruce Graham Trigger; Anthropologica; 1963
Camcamagy
Thanks for this thread, this was really interesting. I would be interested to know if violence against women were handled the same way as the other forms of violence?
HeavenlyPossum
@camcamagy

“For a Huron killed by a Huron thirty gifts are commonly deemed a sufficient satisfaction. For a woman forty are required...”
@Camcamagy
Sigurd Jakobsen
@malte , this would interest you.
@malte
Bèr Kessels 🐝 🚐 🏄 🌱
I would expect that community size is an important factor too. Is there known research on that?

Not to use that as dismissal (yeah, but they lived in small villages, this can never work for a city like Chicago, or a country like France) but as possible lesson to learn from: maybe if we can reshape our society into smaller communities we enable behavior and freedom as seen in these tribes?
mycorrhiza
for me, the most fascinating (and exciting) argument that the Davids made in DoE was that these American societies were organized this way NOT by chance or historic accident, but potentially as a conscious rejection of the hierarchical Mississippian culture exemplified at Cahokia.

The recognition that we can come back from hierarchy — authority is not the always-tightening ratchet we’re led to believe it is — is incredibly empowering.
papiris
What an intriguing read!
Fish Id Wardrobe
This is really interesting, thank you.

It seems as if these Americans fostered a society in which every single person was responsible for keeping the peace, and doing so in an adult way which would not make things worse.

Personally I cannot imagine this working in the UK today. We're just not grown up enough. (I can't speak for other countries.)

But that leads me to wonder: did these reparation rules work because they were grown up? Or were they grown up because of the rules?
Gabriel Pettier
@fishidwardrobe not an expert in anarchism, but i would say it's because we are not (socially) responsible in this way, that people don't "grow" in this way, is we had to, if we were expected to, by our community, we would.

The hard question, imho, is how to get back there, under the influence of a state that took over the role of such peace keeping (and not doing a great job at it) and prevents communities from implementing some of these mesures.

Let alone at our current scale
@Fish Id Wardrobe
HeavenlyPossum
@fishidwardrobe @tshirtman

I think this is precisely correct: we do not behave this way because we are prevented from doing so by controlling, authoritarian, and paternalistic capitalist states.

Domesticated animals resemble juvenile versions of their wild relatives.
@Gabriel Pettier @Fish Id Wardrobe

RDudostępnił to.

Fish Id Wardrobe
@tshirtman
> Domesticated animals resemble juvenile versions of their wild relatives.

A powerful and cogent analogy.
@Gabriel Pettier
David Mitchell :CApride:
@fishidwardrobe @tshirtman

Some of us *do* behave this way, in fact many of us *routinely* behave this way. Look for the person who was last to ditch their mask (or is still wearing one!). Look again at the driver you are swearing at because they are observing all the speed limits.
The seeds for this type of society are everywhere if you look for them, but require the (re)invention and development of social systems to support it.
@Gabriel Pettier @Fish Id Wardrobe
WndlB's ballot accepted!
This is a good TED Talk on 'restorative justice.' Thanks.
Amgine
This is a delightfully sanitized interpretation. You even contradict yourself in 5/ by mentioning a ‘law’. And you assume a homegeneity across cultural groups in the western hemisphere which is unsupported by the evidence.

It seems likely the cultural melieux were not reported by people trained to observe them, nor fluent in the local languages, nor able to present evidence to support their claims. But they *were* in the business of recruiting investors and colonists.
HeavenlyPossum
@amgine

- I did not use the word “law” in the fifth post and I’m not sure what you’re arguing there.

- I do not claim homogeneity across cultural groups in the western hemisphere, but rather explicitly and repeatedly referred to the societies of the northeastern woodlands of North America, among whom these social practices were common.

- Many of these observers were fluent in indigenous languages, because many of them were members of religious institutions who sought to persuade indigenous peoples to convert to European Christianity. They were not, by and large, agents of the colonization project and were, for the most part, horrified by the liberties they observed among these societies.

These sources are of course imperfect, but they’re the best textual sources we have and they’re remarkably consistent across time and space.
@Amgine
Amgine
my apologies on two points: the thread toot is 6/, and you quoted Trigger stating:

> … Deep fear of the disruptive effects of blood revenge is shown by the special effort made in the law to repress it.
HeavenlyPossum
@amgine

Yes, Trigger was writing in the 1960s and used a term I would not have used to refer to a social phenomenon that we, in our hegemonically statist society, lack a vocabulary to accurately discuss.

In the absence of a state, rulers, courts, police, legislatures or legislation, or any of the trappings of a coercively hierarchical system, we can only refer to these as “laws” in the most tenuously metaphorical sense.

I’m not sure which part of what I wrote got you so worked up that you’d make such a weak attempt at a gotcha.
@Amgine
Amgine
As regards your other rebuttals, I will have to politely disagree on all points, and leave it at that!
HeavenlyPossum
@amgine

Yes, when you just make shit up to be snide, it can be hard to defend.
@Amgine
Amgine
You are of course correct, and I apologize profusely and abjectly. At some point I am certain I will find your work cited in the literature.

In the meantime, please be well, and enjoy your life. I am sorry I may have bothered or upset you.
Ten wpis został zedytowany (1 rok temu)
Doug Kappeler
I believe I saw that portion of the belt in the Seneca-Iroquois Museum in Salamanca New York. Excellent thoughts.
David Mitchell :CApride:
I think it would be interesting to explore the connections between customs similar to weregild surviving social structures that have made modern Scandinavians more broadly successful at socialism and addressing disorder than other western nations.
HeavenlyPossum
@DavidM_yeg

What customs of weregild survive in modern Scandinavia?
@David Mitchell :CApride:
David Mitchell :CApride:
Not specifically weregild, but the ways of being in community it is representative of. Speaking out of more ignorance than knowledge, my impression is that that feudal structures were far less comprehensive or deeply imposed in the north than elsewhere in Europe. So I wonder if there is a stronger expression of or continuity with other ways of being in community.
HeavenlyPossum
@DavidM_yeg

Feudalism was quite prevalent in Northern Europe, and Scandinavian society was deeply unequal and dominated by the aristocracy until quite recently. Thomas Piketty wrote about this extensively in “Capital in the 21st Century” if you’re interested in more.
@David Mitchell :CApride:
David Mitchell :CApride:
hmm thx I’ll have a look!
Evan Prodromou
I wonder what that red line represents.
HeavenlyPossum
@evan

Just an arbitrary boundary around the northeast woodlands cultural area.
@Evan Prodromou
Evan Prodromou
I figured that was it, but I didn't think "cultural area" was a term that the EB recognises, or that one would use such a sharp line for it.

I'm reading Dawn of Everything right now. It's really engaging.
David Mitchell :CApride:
I find it interesting how granular European naming is at points of first contact, and how vague they become further into the ‘hinterland’.

And then I imagine a group living on the north shore of Lake Superior, living lives completely unaware that they are part of this concretion-to-be named by foreigners, caught up in the detailed interactions between themselves and their neighbours, and hearing distant rumours of trouble off on the fringes of Turtle Island.
Piousunyn
"This is fascinatingly enlightening Heavenly,
"Knowing that one might be responsible for killing one’s own friend to protect one’s community seems to have worked as an incredibly powerful and effective check on the sort of criminality and violence that most people today would expect from a stateless society."
Cavyherd
I saw a mention go by a few weeks ago (from an Indigenous writer, I think) that, when you live (and have lived, and will live) in a place effectively since the dawn of time, there is overpowering incentive to learn to get along with your neighbors because THEY'RE ALWAYS GOING TO BE THERE.

Given that archeology has pushed the presence of humans in North America back to at least 23K years ago, it seems this principle has been very solidly road tested.
lithobraking 🛸
Coïncidentally, this is also the basis of the justice system SDF and its civil society equivalents established in Rojava after driving out ISIL.
HeavenlyPossum
@anarchiv

Do you have any recommendations for something I could read on this?
@lithobraking 🛸
lithobraking 🛸
If you're specifically interested in the justice system part of it and how it ties in with democratic confederalism and societal structures in post-revolutionary Rojava, the podcast "The Women's War" by Robert Evans isn't the worst place to start.
𝕸𝔞𝔩𝔦𝔫
this is a nice read so far, but quite difficult when it's cut up into squares to click. It might make a better blog post.
Fish Id Wardrobe
Do we know what the "process for dealing with transgressions" was?
anilmc
good thread, thanks
David Levine🖖
I'm listening to the audiobook of "The Dawn of Everything" now - it is a fascinating book.
N0tSure
I published a novel on the topic (True South) with KDP.
HeavenlyPossum
@telepyleia

Not off the top of my head, but if I come across something I’ll share it.

It’s worth noting, I think, that communities mostly continued to self-manage even after the imposition of systems like feudalism, which were oppressive and exploitive but not even remotely as intrusive as what we’re used to with the modern state.
@Telepyleia
Canadian Curmudgeon
The book 1491 by Charles C. Mann is also an excellent examination of pre-Columbis societies in North America (2nd edition recommended).
Imre
Please explain what happened to the Neutrals.
HeavenlyPossum
@Ferencz

If you have a point to make, you’re welcome to make it.
@Imre
Imre
They got massacred by the Iroquois ,didn’t they.
HeavenlyPossum
@Ferencz

Yes, members of the Haudenosaunee confederacy fought a war of aggression against them.

If you have a point, articulate it now
@Imre
Pinchy63 🇨🇦 🌈🏳️‍⚧️✌️🕊️
excellent article! Thank you! I find it really interesting that we have been lead to believe that the indigenous were savages who had to be contained in reserves.
HeavenlyPossum
@mtrigo

That’s quite a long story, but the quick version is:

I think Worbs either misunderstood or dishonestly mischaracterized the book’s thesis.

We had a big falling out on Twitter over this, before I quit it. He quite nastily called me an idiot and accused me of being unread, and I blocked him for it.
@Murilo Trigo
Lee
Let’s kill those heathens or make them live like us.
Chip Butty
this sounds a bit like the fediverse, but here we lack the parties and gift giving for making up
Tom Pearce
- Thank you for a wonderful Sunday thread. So often the idea that we (White Europeans, largely) have been a "civilising influence" on the world, or that "Primitive Societies" were nasty, brutish affairs turn out to be entirely wrong. Instead it is we who have been nasty and brutish...!
Medea Vanamonde🏳️‍⚧️ ♀
they….WE! were living in That Garden that was only a core myth to y’all
Chancerubbage
@WarnerCrocker

Thanks. I have considered this book several times, this excerpt/discussion may nudge me towards adding it to my library.
@Warner Crocker
Piousunyn
After readding the threads, one can see a cooperative life style without greed of capitalism, religion but what of feelings towards people of difference? Being simplistic here.
HeavenlyPossum
@Piousunyn

Not sure what you mean by “people of difference.”
@Piousunyn
Piousunyn
The constant attacks on people of difference here in the US, meaning racism, bigotry, misogynists, Xenophobia and political plus religious' differences.
Was actually thinking of Europeans before they killed them?
HeavenlyPossum
@Piousunyn

Well, those societies routinely adopted people into their communities, including Europeans who fled settler colonies, if that gives you a sense.

Women were also dramatically freer in these societies than they were in contemporary European society.
@Piousunyn
db
 
db  
•
this is extremely interesting. are there examples of this kind of system still in use by communities, today?
HeavenlyPossum
@51dusty

None that I am explicitly aware of, but there are extant indigenous communities throughout the Americas that live largely outside the state’s purview and probably practice something like this.
@db
HeavenlyPossum
@jones

“Had these societies also some form of redistributive mechanism for wealth? Where they more equal than ours, with less difference "between the poorest and the richest"? If so, maybe it was another way to keep conflict and rivalry low.”

Yes, they made use of common property and extensive mutual aid, which absolutely contributed to minimizing interpersonal domination and conflict.

“Did these societies also resort to human sacrifices of "scapegoats" in order to divert the excalation of internal rivalries?”

Not that I’m aware of, though they did engage in a kind of slavery and sometimes killed captives captured in war.

“What about conflicts among them, the different societies?”

They often fought each other.

“As a side question: do you think ritual usage of psychedelics could account in some measure for that "enormous self-restraint" you wrote of?”

I’m not aware of the use of psychedelics by any of these societies:
A cappella
Dithmarschen, a Medieval Peasant Republic, by William L Urban

examines the existence of the Dithmarschen Republic (1227-1559), ruled by commoners who developed their own institutions, had their own written constitution, and successfully defended their political independence against the forces of Holstein, the combined powers of Schleswig and Holstein, and the united kingdom of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

Pirate download:
https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=F2F589447803B3BE0DEDB686CB178310

Library Genesis: William L. Urban - Dithmarschen : a medieval peasant republic

Library Genesis is a scientific community targeting collection of books on natural science disciplines and engineering.
libgen.is
HeavenlyPossum
@waldenecovillage

Thanks! Reminds me of the Frisian Freedom, which was roughly a contemporary and sounds like a similar social structure:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_freedom
@A cappella
SewBlue
I'm an engineer at a local utility. A state sanctioned monopoly, so job security if you are a competent engineer. The skill base takes years to develop, so you end up working with the same people for most of your career. Making choices that can get people killed if wrong.

You know what happens? You never get mad. Even if you are about to blow your top. You will have to work with these people for the rest of your life, with very little prospect for real change. You are less like to push a risky plan because of those ties.

Conversely, in parts of the company where people move in and out, you get more displays of anger. Bullying. Risk taking behavior, that occasionally kills people.

Anonymity and the ability to move on changes the game. Small groups don't have that. I've not seen how we bridge the changes that come with stability, the lack of change.
Lt. Commander Reggie
this is a beautiful thread! Definitely something we should all meditate on and work to bring into practice into 1) our own lives 2) the lives of friends and fam 3) our extended communities and neighboring communities!! 🖤🤎🩷🩵🩶🤍❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
Frances Larina
"Over and over, these Europeans noted that these societies were well and truly stateless, lacking rulers, laws, courts, police, prisons, or anything like what they were used to in Europe"

Cutting to the quick: Did those societies have Europe's deep history of forced labor? Or for that matter, empires and kingdoms? In Europe those structures go back to dawn of their history. It makes one wonder if they perpetuate crime to enhance the power of those in control.
HeavenlyPossum
@mtrigo

Anyway. The crux of his argument is a claim that Wengrow and Graeber were arguing that social structures of oppression and exploitation were purely voluntary choices, and that in reality these social structures are direct outgrowths of means and relations of production. A classic Marxist base -> superstructure argument.

But Wengrow and Graeber weren’t arguing that these things are purely voluntary choices, just observing that many different social structures are possible outcomes of the same means and relations of production (ie, egalitarian societies and hierarchical kingdoms among forager societies with similar subsistence patterns), so we can’t just rely on a mechanical process of base -> superstructure to explain these social structures. There’s something more at play, and it seems like they wanted this book to be an opening salvo in the process of figuring that something out.
@Murilo Trigo
HeavenlyPossum
@CedarTea

Encyclopedia Britannica
Can O' Bitch
I'm currently reading this book, close to being finished. It really shows the vast space of possibilities for how human societies can be organized.
HeavenlyPossum
@CedarTea

I can’t imagine that trying to map these societies is ever very easy, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were lots of errors in any given attempt.
groundskeeper willa
@CedarTea the Decolonial Atlas just today published a map of Indigenous-language place names on Turtle Island that I think is pretty good!

I also liked this thread, haven't read Dawn of Everything but it's an interesting book and I appreciate all the excerpts/summaries/podcast interviews about it :)

https://kolektiva.social/@decolonialatlas/111203049590248205

Decolonial Atlas

2023-10-09 03:57:56


300 names. 150 languages. 9 years of research involving the consultation of 100s of elders and language-keepers across the continent. We're thrilled to finally share this with the world on this Indigenous Peoples Day!

Documenting these names is vital work as many of the elders who worked on this project have since joined the ancestors. This map serves to support ongoing language revitalization efforts, acknowledge unextinguished Indigenous land tenure, and help us all better understand Indigenous history, the legacy of colonization, and our relationship with the land.

Just as this knowledge was gifted to us, the map is a gift we hope people will print and hang in schools, community centers, and anywhere it can help start a dialogue.

On our website, you can also find a list of all these names and resources to help learn the accurate pronunciations.

Check it out for yourself at decolonialatlas.com

Clare Bryden
A bit of a plough through at times, but that was such an interesting book. Upended all sorts of theories and assumptions.
HeavenlyPossum
@ClareBryden

Indeed a bit of a plow. The two of them also did a number of lectures together that can be found on youtube and those were a bit more light-hearted.
@Clare Bryden
Clare Bryden
Great, thanks for the tip. I see Wengrow has done a TED talk as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SJi0sHrEI4

A New Understanding of Human History and the Roots of Inequality | David Wengrow | TED

What if the commonly accepted narratives about the foundation of civilization are all wrong? Drawing on groundbreaking research, archaeologist David Wengrow ...
YouTube
⇧