David Graeber

David Graeber
Born	(1961-02-12) February 12, 1961 (age 51)
Residence	London, United Kingdom
Citizenship	United States
Fields	anthropology
Institutions	Yale University Goldsmiths, University of London
Alma mater	State University of New York at Purchase University of Chicago
Influences	Edmund Leach, Marshall Sahlins
Influenced	Occupy movement

David Rolfe Graeber (born 12 February 1961) is an American anthropologist and anarchist who is Reader in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London.^[1] He was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, although Yale controversially declined to rehire him,^[2] and his term there ended in June 2007. Graeber has been involved in social and political activism, including the protests against the World Economic Forum in New York City in 2002 and Occupy Wall Street. He is a member of the labor union Industrial Workers of the World and of the Interim Committee for the emerging International Organization for a Participatory Society.^[3]

Early life

Graeber's parents, who were in their forties when Graeber was born, were self-taught working-class intellectuals. Graeber's mother, Ruth Rubenstein, had been a garment worker, and played the lead role in the 1930s musical comedy revue Pins & Needles, staged by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.^[4] Graeber's father Kenneth, who was affiliated with the Youth Communist League, participated in the Spanish Revolution in Barcelona and fought in the Spanish Civil War.^[5] He later worked as a plate stripper on offset printers. Graeber grew up in New York, in a cooperative apartment building described by Business Week magazine as "suffused with radical politics."^[6] Graeber has been an anarchist since the age of 16, according to an interview he gave to The Village Voice in 2005.^[7]

Graeber graduated from Phillips Academy Andover in 1978 and received his B.A. from the State University of New York at Purchase in 1984. He gained his Masters degree and Doctorate at the University of Chicago, where he won a Fulbright fellowship and completed his Ph.D. thesis on magic, slavery, and politics in Madagascar.^[2]

Academic career

Graeber in January 2002

In 1998, two years after completing his PhD, Graeber joined Yale University as an assistant professor.^[2] In May 2005, the Yale anthropology department decided not to renew Graeber's contract, preventing him from coming up for consideration for tenure as he would otherwise have been scheduled to do in 2008. Pointing to Graeber's highly regarded anthropological scholarship, his supporters (including fellow anthropologists, former students, and activists) accused the decision of being politically motivated. More than 4,500 people signed petitions supporting him, and well-known British anthropologist Maurice Bloch called for Yale to rescind its decision.^[2] Bloch, who had been a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics and the Collège de France, and world renowned scholar on Madagascar, made the following statement about Graeber in a letter to the university:

"His writings on anthropological theory are outstanding. I consider him the best anthropological theorist of his generation from anywhere in the world."^[8]

The Yale administration argued that Graeber's dismissal was in keeping with Yale's policy of granting tenure to few junior faculty and Yale gave no formal explanation for its actions. Graeber has suggested that his support of a student of his who was targeted for expulsion because of her membership in GESO, Yale's graduate student union, may have played a role in the university's decision.^{[9][2][10][11]}

In December 2005, Graeber agreed to leave the university after a one-year paid sabbatical. That spring he taught two final classes: an introduction to cultural anthropology (attended by over 200 students) and a course entitled “Direct Action and Radical Social Theory” – the only explicitly radical-themed course at Yale he ever taught.

On 25 May 2006, Graeber was invited to give the Malinowski Lecture at the London School of Economics; his address was entitled "Beyond Power/Knowledge: an exploration of the relation of power, ignorance and stupidity".^[12] The anthropology department at the university honors an anthropologist at a relatively early stage of their career to give the Malinowski Lecture each year, and only invite those who are considered to have made a significant contribution to anthropological theory. That same year, Graeber was asked to present the keynote address in the 100th anniversary Diamond Jubilee meetings of the Association of Social Anthropologists.^[13] In April 2011 he presented the anthropology department's annual Distinguished Lecture at Berkeley.^[14]

Authorship

David Graeber is the author of Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology and Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. He has done extensive anthropological work in Madagascar, 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. A book based on his dissertation, Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar appeared from Indiana University Press in September 2007. A book of collected essays, Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire was published by AK Press in November 2007 and Direct Action: An Ethnography appeared from the same press in August 2009, as well as a collection of essays co-edited with Stevphen Shukaitis called “Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations//Collective Theorization” (AK Press, May 2007). These were followed by a major historical monograph, Debt: the First Five Thousand Years (Melville House), which appeared in July 2011.^[15] As of December 2011^[update], Graeber is working on a book for Random House connecting "the story of the Occupy movement to an exploration of the past and future of direct action, participatory democracy, and political transformation", and another for Melville House combining two essays on bureaucracy (one of which he delivered as the Malinowski Lecture in 2006).^[16]

Activism

Graeber (left) at a rally for immigrant rights at Union Square, New York City in May 2007

In addition to his academic work, Graeber has a history of both direct and indirect involvement in political activism, including membership in the labor union Industrial Workers of the World, a role in protests against the World Economic Forum in New York City in 2002, support for the 2010 UK student protests,^[17] and an early role in the Occupy Wall Street movement. He is co-founder of the Anti-Capitalist Convergence.^[18] In November 2011, Rolling Stone magazine credited Graeber with giving the Occupy Wall Street movement its theme: "We are the 99 percent." Rolling Stone says Graeber helped create the first New York City General Assembly, with only 60 participants, on August 2.^[19] 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 on nonviolent resistance. A few days after the encampment of Zuccotti Park began, he left New York for Austin, Texas.^[6]

Graeber has 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-hierarchical consensus decision-making and of prefigurative politics make it a fundamentally anarchist project.^[20] Comparing it to the Arab Spring, Graeber has claimed that Occupy Wall Street and other contemporary grassroots protests represent "the opening salvo in a wave of negotiations over the dissolution of the American Empire."^[21]

Publications

Books

• — (2001). Toward an anthropological theory of value: the false coin of our own dreams. New York: Palgrave. ISBN 978-0-312-24044-8. OCLC 46822270. 
• — (2004). Fragments of an anarchist anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press (distributed by University of Chicago Press). ISBN 978-0-9728196-4-0. OCLC 55221090. 
• — (2007). Lost people: magic and the legacy of slavery in Madagascar. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-34910-1. OCLC 82367869. 
• — (2007). Possibilities: essays on hierarchy, rebellion, and desire. Oakland, CA: AK Press. ISBN 978-1-904859-66-6. OCLC 154704091. 
• — (2009). Direct action: an ethnography. Edinburgh Oakland: AK Press. ISBN 978-1-904859-79-6. OCLC 182529207. 
• — (2011). Debt: the first 5,000 years. Brooklyn, N.Y: Melville House. ISBN 978-1-933633-86-2. OCLC 426794447. 
• — (2011). Revolutions in reverse. London New York: Minor Compositions. ISBN 978-1-57027-243-1. OCLC 759171790. 

As co-editor

• — (2007). Constituent imagination: militant investigations/collective theorization. Oakland, CA: AK Press. ISBN 978-1-904859-35-2. OCLC 141193537. 

Articles

• — (December 27, 1998). "Rebel Without A God". In These Times. http://penseenoir.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/rebel-without-a-god-the-anti-authoritarian-attributes-of-buffy-the-vampire-slayer/. Retrieved February 15, 2012.  A meditation on the anti-authoritarian elements of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• — (August 21, 2000). "Give it Away". In These Times 24, (19). http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/24/19/graeber2419.html. Retrieved February 15, 2012.  An article about the French intellectual Marcel Mauss
• — (January-February 2002). "The New Anarchists". New Left Review (13). Archived from the original on January 30, 2010. http://web.archive.org/web/20100130062023/http://newleftreview.org/A2368. Retrieved February 15, 2012. 
• — (June 1, 2003). "The Twilight of Vanguardism". Indymedia DC. http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/71522/index.php. Retrieved February 15, 2012.  An essay originally delivered as a keynote address during the "History Matters: Social Movements Past, Present, and Future" conference at the New School for Social Research on May 3rd, 2003
• — (January 06, 2004). "Anarchism in the 21st Century". Z Magazine. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=4796. Retrieved February 15, 2011.  Co-authored with Andrej Grubacic
• — (December 6, 2005). On the phenomenology of giant puppets: broken windows, imaginary jars of urine, and the cosmological role of the police in American culture. http://www.libcom.org/files/puppets.pdf. Retrieved February 15, 2012.  Originally an address to Anthropology, Art and Activism Seminar Series at Brown University's Watson Institute, December 6, 2005
• — (March 2006). "Transformation of Slavery Turning Modes of Production Inside Out: Or, Why Capitalism is a Transformation of Slavery". Critique of Anthropology 26 (1): 61–85. doi:10.1177/0308275X06061484. http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/dcrawford/graeber_2006a.pdf. Retrieved February 15, 2012. 
• — (January 2007). "Army of Altruists". Harper's. http://harpers.org/archive/2007/01/0081344. Retrieved February 15, 2012.  An attempt to solve the riddle of why so many working class Americans vote right-wing
• — (October 12, 2007). "The Shock of Victory". Infoshop News. http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=2007graeber-victory. Retrieved February 15, 2012. 
• — (October 16, 2007). "Revolution in Reverse". Infoshop News. http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=2007graeber-revolution-reverse. Retrieved February 15, 2012. 
• — (April 1, 2008). "The Sadness of Post-Workerism, or, "Art and Immaterial Labour" Conference: a Sort of Review". The Commoner. http://www.commoner.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/graeber_sadness.pdf. Retrieved February 15, 2012.  An assessment of recent trendy autonomist theory (à la Negri, Lazzarato, etc.), with some comments on the relation of art, value, scams, and the fate of The Future
• — (November 17, 2008). Hope in Common. Autonomedia.org. Archived from the original on February 10, 2009. http://web.archive.org/web/20090210032906/http://slash.autonomedia.org/node/11569. Retrieved February 15, 2012. 
• — (February 10, 2009). "Debt: The First Five Thousand Years". Mute Magazine 2 (12). http://www.metamute.org/en/content/debt_the_first_five_thousand_years. Retrieved February 15, 2012. 
• — (November 2010). "Against Kamikaze Capitalism: Oil, Climate Change and the French refinery blockades". Shift. http://shiftmag.co.uk/?p=389. Retrieved February 15, 2012. 
• — (December 7, 2010). "To Have is to Owe". Triple Canopy (10). http://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/10/to_have_is_to_owe. Retrieved February 15, 2011.  An illustrated essay on the history of debt, containing excerpts from Debt: the first 5,000 years (2011)

References

Further reading

• Sutton, David (September 2004). "Anthropology's Value(s): A Review of David Graeber's Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value". Anthropological Theory 4 (3): 373–379. doi:10.1177/1463499604042818. 
• Guyer, Jane I. (December 2009). "On 'possibility': A response to ‘How Is Anthropology Going?’". Anthropological Theory 9 (4): 355–370. doi:10.1177/1463499609358143. 

External links

• Academic profile at Goldsmiths, University of London
• Interview to Mark Thwaite (for Ready Steady Book)
• Works by or about David Graeber in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• David Graeber at the Internet Movie Database
• In Conversation: World of Debt: David Graeber with Spencer Woodman, The Brooklyn Rail