Reasons For The Nonexistence of Anarchist Anthropology
He also offers several possibilities why anthropologists are reluctant to come out and make normative judgments and proposals: "In many ways, anthropology seems a discipline terrified of its own potential. It is, for example, the only discipline in a position to make generalizations about humanity as a whole—since it is the only discipline that actually takes all of humanity into account, and is familiar with all the anomalous cases." (p. 96) Anthropologists, Graeber writes, may be also simply afraid of being dismissed as "utopian."
Part of the problem, Graeber claims, is that traditionally, academics on the radical left have gravitated toward the more "High Theory"-oriented Marxism (Karl Marx himself was a PhD) rather than the more practice-oriented anarchism. Graeber further claims: "1. Marxism has tended to be a theoretical or analytical discourse about revolutionary strategy. 2. Anarchism has tended to be an ethical discourse about revolutionary practice." (p. 6)
Read more about this topic: Fragments Of An Anarchist Anthropology
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