David Graeber | |
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| Born | David Rolfe Graeber (1961-02-12)February 12, 1961 New York City, USA |
| Died | September 2, 2020(2020-09-02) (aged 59) Venice, Italy |
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| Thesis | The Disastrous Ordeal of 1987: Memory and Violence in Rural Madagascar |
| Doctoral advisor | Marshall Sahlins |
| Website | www |
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David Rolfe Graeber (/ˈɡreɪbər/; February 12, 1961 – September 2, 2020) was an Americananthropologist andleft-winganarchist social and political activist. His influential work insocial andeconomic anthropology, particularly his booksDebt: The First 5,000 Years (2011),The Utopia of Rules (2015),Bullshit Jobs (2018), and, withDavid Wengrow,The Dawn of Everything (2021), and his leading role in theOccupy movement, earned him recognition as one of the foremost anthropologists and left-wing thinkers of his time.[1][2][3]
Born inNew York to aworking-class family, Graeber studied atPurchase College and theUniversity of Chicago, where he conductedethnographic research inMadagascar underMarshall Sahlins and obtained his doctorate in 1996. He was an assistant professor atYale University from 1998 to 2005, when the university controversially decided not to renew his contract. Unable to secure another position in theUnited States, Graeber entered an "academic exile" inEngland, where he was alecturer andreader atGoldsmiths' College from 2008 to 2013, and a professor at theLondon School of Economics from 2013.
In his early scholarship, Graeber specialized intheories of value (Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value, 2002),social hierarchy and political power (Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, 2004,Possibilities, 2007,On Kings, 2017), and the ethnography of Madagascar (Lost People, 2007). In the 2010s he turned tohistorical anthropology, producing his best-known book,Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011), an exploration of the historical relationship betweendebt and social institutions, as well as a series of essays on the origins ofsocial inequality in prehistory. In parallel, he developed critiques ofbureaucracy andmanagerialism incontemporary capitalism, published inThe Utopia of Rules (2015) andBullshit Jobs (2018). He coined the concept ofbullshit jobs in a 2013 essay that explored the proliferation of "paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence".[4]
Although exposed to radical left politics from a young age, Graeber's direct involvement in activism began with theglobal justice movement of the 1990s. He attended protests against the3rd Summit of the Americas inQuebec City in 2001 and theWorld Economic Forum in New York in 2002, and later wrote an ethnography of the movement,Direct Action (2009). In 2011, he became well known as one of the leading figures ofOccupy Wall Street and is credited with coining the slogan "We are the 99%". His later activism included interventions in support of theRojava revolution in Syria, theBritish Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn andExtinction Rebellion.
David Graeber was born into a working-class family. His parents were left-wing political activists.[5][6]
David's father, Kenneth (1914–1996), came from a family ofGerman immigrants who settled inKansas in the 19th century. He was educated atLawrence College (according to other sources, at theUniversity of Kansas), where he met members of theYoung Communist League USA. As a result, he volunteered for theSpanish Civil War, where he served as a driver in a medical unit. After the war, he returned to the United States and completed his education. At the same time, he broke with thecommunists, but remained actively involved in theleft-wing movement. DuringWorld War II, Kenneth served in the merchant marine. Later, he worked as a plate stripper on offset presses.[5][6][7]
David's mother, Ruth Rubinstein (1917-2006), was from a family ofPolish Jews who moved to the United States in the late 1920s. In the 1930s, she went to college, but due to theGreat Depression, she was forced to leave it and start working in a factory. Ruth was an active member of theInternational Ladies Garment Workers Union. There she took part in the union theater group. The comedy "Pins and Needles" staged with her participation became a hit onBroadway for several years (1937-1940). However, she did not continue her stage career, returning to the factory.[5][6][8][9]
David's parents met afterWorld War II during their stay in the left camp. Their marriage led to Ruth's relatives stopping communicating with her, not accepting her German husband. The family settled inNew York, where David and his brother Eric (1952-2003) were born.[5][6][10]
David Graeber grew up inPenn South, a union-sponsoredhousing cooperative inChelsea, Manhattan,[11] described byBusiness Week magazine as "suffused with radical politics."[6]
Graeber had his first experience of political activism at the age of seven, when he attendedpeace marches in New York'sCentral Park andFire Island.[12] He was an anarchist from the age of 16, according to an interview he gave toThe Village Voice in 2005.[13]
Graeber attended local public schools PS 11 and IS 70. His passion for decipheringMaya script helped him win a scholarship that allowed him to spend several years atPhillips Academy Andover. He then attended theState University of New York at Purchase, where he graduated in 1984 with a BA inAnthropology.[14]
Graeber received his master's degree and doctorate at theUniversity of Chicago, where he won aFulbright fellowship to conduct 20 months ofethnographicfield research inMadagascar, beginning in 1989.[15][16] His resulting Ph.D. thesis on magic, slavery, and politics was supervised byMarshall Sahlins and entitledThe Disastrous Ordeal of 1987: Memory and Violence in Rural Madagascar.[17][18]
In 1998, two years after completing hisPhD, Graeber became assistant professor atYale University, then associate professor.[17] In May 2005, the Yale anthropology department decided not to renew Graeber's contract, preventing consideration foracademic tenure, which was scheduled for 2008. Pointing to Graeber's anthropological scholarship, his supporters (including fellow anthropologists, former students and activists) said the decision was politically motivated. More than 4,500 people signed petitions supporting him, and anthropologists such asMarshall Sahlins,Laura Nader,Michael Taussig, andMaurice Bloch called on Yale to reverse its decision.[17] Bloch, who had been a professor of anthropology at theLondon School of Economics and theCollège de France, and a writer on Madagascar, praised Graeber in a letter to the university.[19]
The Yale administration argued that Graeber's dismissal was in keeping with Yale's policy of granting tenure to few junior faculty. Graeber suggested that Yale's decision might have been influenced by his support of a student of his who was targeted for expulsion because of her membership inGESO, Yale'sgraduate student union.[17][20][21]
In December 2005, Graeber agreed to leave Yale after a one-year paid sabbatical. That spring he taught two final classes: "Introduction to Cultural Anthropology" (attended by more than 200 students) and a seminar, "Direct Action and Radical Social Theory".[22]
On May 25, 2006, Graeber was invited to give theMalinowski Memorial Lecture at theLondon School of Economics. Each year, the LSE anthropology department asks an anthropologist at a relatively early stage of their career to give the Malinowski Lecture, and invites only those considered to have made significant contributions to anthropological theory. Graeber's address was called "Beyond Power/Knowledge: an exploration of the relation of power, ignorance and stupidity".[23] It was later edited into an essay, "Dead zones of the imagination: On violence, bureaucracy and interpretive labor".[24] The same year, Graeber was asked to present the keynote address in the 100th anniversary Diamond Jubilee meetings of theAssociation of Social Anthropologists.[25] In April 2011, he presented the anthropology department's annual Distinguished Lecture at Berkeley,[26] and in May 2012 he delivered the second annualMarilyn Strathern Lecture at Cambridge (the first was delivered by Strathern).[27]
After his dismissal from Yale, Graeber was unable to secure another position at an American university.[28][29] He applied for more than twenty, but despite a strong track record and letters of recommendation from several prominent anthropologists, never made it past the first round.[29][30] At the same time, a number of foreign universities approached him with offers.[28][30] In an article on his "academic exile" from the United States,The Chronicle of Higher Education interviewed several anthropology professors who agreed that Graeber's political activism could have played a role in his unsuccessful search, describing the field as "radical in the abstract" (in the words ofLaura Nader) but intolerant of direct political action. Another factor suggested by the article was that Graeber had acquired a reputation as being personally difficult or "uncollegial", especially in light of allegations of poor conduct made by Yale during the dispute over his dismissal.[28] Graeber himself interpreted his exclusion from American academia as a direct result of his dismissal from Yale, likening it to "black-balling in a social club", and arguing that the charge of "uncollegiality" glossed a variety of other personal qualities, from his political activism to his working-class background, that marked him as a trouble-maker within the academic hierarchy.[30] Laura Nader, reflecting on Graeber's case amongst other examples of "academic silencing" in anthropology, speculated that the real reasons could have included Graeber's growing reputation as a public intellectual,[29] and his tendency to "write in English" rather than jargon.[28]
From 2008 to 2013, Graeber was a lecturer and a reader atGoldsmiths College of theUniversity of London. In 2013, he accepted a professorship at the London School of Economics.[28][31]
Graeber was a founding member of the Institute for Experimental Arts in Greece. He gave a lecture with the title "How social and economic structure influences the Art World" in the International MultiMedia Poetry Festival organized by the Institute for Experimental Arts supported by the Department of Anthropology of theLondon School of Economics and Political Science.[32]
Graeber is the author ofFragments of an Anarchist Anthropology andToward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. He conducted extensive anthropological work inMadagascar, writing his doctoral thesis,The Disastrous Ordeal of 1987: Memory and Violence in Rural Madagascar, on the continuing social division between the descendants of nobles and the descendants of former slaves.[33] A book based on his dissertation,Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar, was published byIndiana University Press in September 2007.[34] A book of collected essays,Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire was published byAK Press in November 2007,[35] andDirect Action: An Ethnography appeared from the same press in August 2009.[36] Moreover, the aforementioned publisher printed a collection of essays by Graeber – co-edited with Stevphen Shukaitis and Erika Biddle – calledConstituent Imagination: Militant Investigations/Collective Theorization (AK Press, May 2007).[37]
In December 2017, Graeber and his former teacherMarshall Sahlins released a collection of essays entitledOn Kings, outlining a theory, inspired byA. M. Hocart, of the origins of human sovereignty in cosmological ritual.[38] Graeber contributed essays on theShilluk andMerina kingdoms, and a final essay that explored what he called "the constitutive war between king and people".[39] He was working on a historical work on the origins ofsocial inequality withDavid Wengrow,[40] published posthumously asThe Dawn of Everything.
From January 2013 until June 2016, Graeber was a contributing editor atThe Baffler magazine inCambridge, Massachusetts, where he, too, participated in the public debate about futures of technology.[41] From 2011 until 2017 he was editor-at-large of the open access journalHAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, for which he andGiovanni da Col co-wrote the founding theoretical statement and manifesto of the school of "ethnographic theory".[42]
Charles Kenny, writing in the political magazineDemocracy, claimed that Graeber sought out data that "fit the narrative on the evils of neoliberalism" and challenged or criticized data which suggested otherwise.[43]
His bookThe Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, co-written with archaeologistDavid Wengrow, was published posthumously in 2021.[44]
Graeber's first major historical monograph wasDebt: The First 5000 Years (2011).[45]
Karl Schmid, writing in the Canadian Anthropology Society's journalAnthropologica, describedDebt as an "unusual book" which "may be the most read public anthropology book of the 21st century" and noted that "it will be difficult for Graeber or anyone else to top this book for the attention it received due to excellent timing".[46] Schmid comparedDebt toJared Diamond'sGuns, Germs, and Steel andJames C. Scott'sThe Art of Not Being Governed for its "vast scope and implication".[46] However, Schmid expressed minor frustrations with the sheer length of the book, and the fact that Graeber raises many claims and examples which he does not go on to develop in full.[47]
J. Bradford DeLong, an economic historian, criticizedDebt on his blog,[48][49] alleging mistakes in the book. Graeber responded that these errors had no influence on his argument, remarking that the "biggest actual mistake DeLong managed to detect in the 544 pages ofDebt, despite years of flailing away, was (iirc) that I got the number of Presidential appointees on the Federal Open Market Committee board wrong".[50] He dismissed his other criticisms as representing a divergence of interpretation, truncation of his arguments by DeLong, and mistakes in thecopy editing of the book.[50]
Much of Graeber's later scholarship focused on the topic of "bullshit jobs", proliferated by administrative bloat and what Graeber calls "managerial feudalism". One of the points he raised in his 2013 bookThe Democracy Project—on theOccupy movement—is the increase in what he callsbullshit jobs, referring to forms of employment that even those holding the jobs feel should not or do not need to exist. He sees such jobs as being typically "concentrated in professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers".[51] As he explained also in an article inSTRIKE!: "Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed."[52]
Because of the article's popularity, Graeber then wrote the bookBullshit Jobs: A Theory, published in 2018 bySimon & Schuster. Writing for theNew Yorker, Nathan Heller described the resulting book as having "the virtue of being both clever and charismatic."[53] Reviewing the book for theNew York Times, Alana Semuels noted that although it could be criticized for generalizations about economics, "Graeber's anthropological eye and skepticism about capitalism are useful in questioning some parts of the economy that the West has come to accept as normal."[54]The Guardian gave a mixed review of Graeber'sBullshit Jobs, accusing him of having a "slightly condescending attitude" and attesting to the book's "laboured arguments," while referring to aspects of the book's thesis as "clearly right."[55]Bullshit Jobs spent four weeks in the top 20 of theLos Angeles Times' bestseller list.[56]
In addition to his academic work, Graeber was directly and indirectly involved in political activism. He was a member of the labor unionIndustrial Workers of the World, protested at theWorld Economic Forum in New York City in 2002, supported the2010 UK student protests,[57] and played an early role in theOccupy Wall Street movement. He was co-founder of theAnti-Capitalist Convergence.[58]
Graeber became a strong advocate of thedemocratic confederalism of theAutonomous Administration of North and East Syria after visiting the region in 2014, often drawing parallels between it and the Spanish Revolution his father fought for in the 1930s.[59][60][61]
On October 11, 2019, Graeber spoke at anExtinction Rebellion protest inTrafalgar Square[62] about the relationship between "bullshit jobs" and environmental harm, suggesting that the environmental movement should recognize these jobs in combination with unnecessary construction or infrastructure projects and planned obsolescence as significant issues.[63][64]
In November 2011,Rolling Stone credited Graeber with giving the Occupy Wall Street movement its theme: "We are the 99 percent". Graeber wrote inThe Democracy Project that the slogan "was a collective creation".[65]Rolling Stone said he helped create the firstNew York City General Assembly, with only 60 participants, on August 2.[66] He spent the next six weeks involved with the burgeoning movement, including facilitating general assemblies, attending working group meetings, and organizing legal and medical training and classes onnonviolent resistance. A few days after the encampment ofZuccotti Park began, he left New York forAustin, Texas.[6]
Graeber argued that the Occupy Wall Street movement's lack of recognition of the legitimacy of either existing political institutions or the legal structure, its embrace of non-hierarchicalconsensus decision-making and ofprefigurative politics made it a fundamentally anarchist project.[67] Comparing it to theArab Spring, he claimed that Occupy Wall Street and other contemporary grassroots protests represented "the opening salvo in a wave of negotiations over the dissolution of the American Empire."[68] Writing inAl Jazeera, he noted that from the beginning the Occupy movement was about a "commitment to answer only to a moral order, not a legal one" and so held meetings without the requisite permits. Defending this early decision of the Occupy movement, he said, "as the public, we should not need permission to occupy public space".[69]
Graeber tweeted in 2014 that he had been evicted fromhis family's home of over 50 years due to his involvement with Occupy Wall Street. He added that others associated with Occupy had received similar "administrative harassment".[70]
In November 2019, along with other public figures, Graeber signed a letter supportingLabour Party leaderJeremy Corbyn, calling him "a beacon of hope in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism,xenophobia and racism in much of the democratic world" and endorsed him in the2019 UK general election.[71] In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, he signed a letter endorsing the Labour Party under Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election. The letter stated that "Labour's election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few."[72][73] Graeber, who was Jewish, also defended Corbyn fromaccusations of antisemitism, saying that "What actually threatens Jews, the people who actually want to kill us, are Nazis", and that the allegations represented a "weaponization" of antisemitism for political purposes.[74][75]
Graeber advocated for a boycott[76] ofThe Guardian newspaper by fellow left-wing authors after alleging that the paper published distortions against Corbyn for years.[77] He denounced what he claimed was the weaponization of antisemitism for political purposes,[78][79] andThe Guardian's alleged role in undermining Corbyn in the 2019 election, which, according to Graeber, resulted in a landslide victory forBoris Johnson and theConservatives.[80][81][82][83] He asserted thatThe Guardian only publishes progressive authors in order to gain credibility with its readership, but its editorial policy is at odds with socialist politics.[84] He was a vocal critic of the Labour centrists who attacked Corbyn, stating their disdain for socialist movements was due to their previously selling-out: "If those activists were not naive, if this man was not unelectable, the centrists' entire lives had been a lie. They hadn't really accepted reality at all. They really were just sellouts."[82]
Kate Burrell wrote, in the journalSociology, that Graeber's work "promotes anarchist visions of social change, which are not quite believed possible by the Left, yet are lived out within social movements every day" and that his work "offers poetic insight into the daily realities of life as an activist, overtly promotes anarchism, and is a hopeful celebration of just what can be achieved by relatively small groups of committed individuals living their truth visibly."[85]
Hans Steinmüller, reviewingOn Kings in theJournal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, described Graeber and his co-authorMarshall Sahlins as "two of the most important anthropological thinkers of our time" and considered their contribution to represent a "benchmark" for the anthropological theory of kingship.[2]
As stated byPenguin Random House editor Tom Penn after Graeber's death, "David was a true radical, a pioneer in everything that he did. David's inspirational work has changed and shaped the way people understand the world... In his books, his constant, questing curiosity, his wry, sharp-eyed provoking of received nostrums shine through. So too, above all, does his unique ability to imagine a better world, borne out of his own deep and abiding humanity. We are deeply honoured to be his publisher, and we will all miss him: his kindness, his warmth, his wisdom, his friendship. His loss is incalculable, but his legacy is immense. His work and his spirit will live on."[86]
Graeber had a long-term relationship with anthropologist Lauren Leve.[87] After that, he had another long-term relationship with Erica Lagalisse (engaged from 2013 to 2017).[88] Finally, he married artist Nika Dubrovsky in 2019.[89] The two collaborated on a series of books, workshops, and conversations calledAnthropology for Kids[90] and on the Museum of Care, a shared space for communication and social interactions nourishing values of solidarity, care, and reciprocity. According to Graeber's website, "The main goal of the Museum of Care is to produce and maintain social relationships."[91] The concept "museum of care" was coined by Graeber and Dubrovsky in their article "The Museum of Care: imagining the world after the pandemic," originally published inArts of the Working Class in April 2020.[92] In the article, Graeber and Dubrovsky imagine a post-pandemic future, where vast surfaces of office spaces and conservative institutions are turned into "free city universities, social centers and hotels for those in need of shelter." "We could call them 'Museums of Care'—precisely because they are spaces that do not celebrate production of any sort but rather provide the space and means for the creation of social relationships and the imagining of entirely new forms of social relations."[93]
Graeber died suddenly fromnecrotic pancreatitis[94] on September 2, 2020, while on vacation with his wife and friends inVenice.[95] As his death occurred during the early period of theCOVID-19 pandemic, instead of a funeral, his family organized an "Intergalactic Memorial Carnival" oflive-streamed events that took place in October 2020.[96] His wife Nika Dubrovsky has attributed the pancreatitis toCOVID-19, pointing to his prior good health, strange symptoms they both had for months beforehand, and the connection scientists have since found between COVID-19 and pancreatitis.[97]
As a matter of historical record, since there is so much discussion of the origin of the slogan "We Are the 99 Percent," the answer is that—appropriately enough—it was a collective creation.
