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Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. David Graeber. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004. 105 pp.
Anthropology of all social sciences knows anarchism best-ethnography bulges with facts about stateless societies. Today, however, when anarchists worldwide fight globalization, anthropology will not advise them as other social sciences advise businessmen and politicians. Cowardice and careerism (the distinction may be oversubtle) as well as guilt about Western "conquest, colonization, and mass murder" (p. 96) making the world safe for fieldwork explain why.
So David Graeber argues in pamphlet 14 of a series kicked off by Marshall Sahlins, Waiting for Foucault, Still (2002). Whereas Sahlins is comedic but serious-a fictional course he posted on "deconstructing" university football saw students try to register, graduate students offer to assist, and colleagues ask how it went; his one-word solution for all social problems is atheism; and so on-Graeber is serious but comedic: He claims anarchism is feasible and desirable, yet the stateless societies of ethnographic record that he deems truly anarchist are vanishingly few, and the one new model society that he deems truly anarchist is in Chiapas.
Graeber's sales pitch for anarchism and matching anthropology is simple: Anarchism works as ethnography shows and beats as anyone can see the tyranny...