Thread

1. culi · 1790642109 · focus · HN ↗

   More evidence for David Graeber and David Wengrow's reading of the site.

   Between Göbekli Tepe, Poverty Point, Cahokia, and other sites we have pretty good evidence of complex urban societies that did not rely on agriculture. And even in these few sites we have abundant evidence of diversity of social structures from radically egalitarian to hierarchical

   The linear narrative of the evolution of human societies is dead

   1. ggm · 1790645533 · focus · HN ↗

      > More evidence for David Graeber

      What little I know of the disputes around Graeber suggest this is not going to end his isolation in the wider community of archeologists, economists, sociologists.

      1. culi · 1790701721 · focus · HN ↗

         Well other than being dead, I'm not sure what you mean. Graeber is the anthropologist (and the guy who organized Occupy). Wengrow is the archeologist.

         My take on the different fields:

         - anthropology: a central figure. Like all central figures, he can be polarizing

         - archeology: a big collaborator but has never pretended to be an archeologist

         - economics: celebrated by behavioral economists, rejected by neoclassical ones

         - sociology: pretty widely celebrated and cited

         1. ggm · 1790732631 · focus · HN ↗

            Do you think any of the fields above will change their opinions on Graeber based on this kind of re-appraisal of the ground at Göbeklitepe? That's my point. What people think about his work is not an even field, it depends on the context and your stance in things like economics.

            being dead doesn't alter how people feel about the work of an academic. If you reject their premises, the extent to which new work validates them or not is often moot. Fred Hoyle was isolated in his lifetime and taken "not seriously" as an astronomer by many because he did a lot of science popularisation and because he held outsider-views on things close to panspermia. Subsequent work which suggests his view that a lot of earths water could come from cometary sources hasn't really significantly altered how people feel about him, because it's grounded in him being irascible, hard and complicated. I would suspect the same is true of Graeber. BTW these people are often adored (rightly so!) by their students because they take time to treat them well, talk to them as people, validate them. It's not that they're inherently bad teachers, bad sources it's that they become isolated inside their fields because they take polemical positions, or are off the main path.

      2. applicative · 1790724755 · focus · HN ↗

         He's been dead for years now.

         1. ggm · 1790732342 · focus · HN ↗

            Isolation in the sense of "is not held in high regard in his community" which works dead or alive. I see now that it's more nuanced (from another comment), Graeber was in several communities, and is viewed differently depending on context. Maybe I should have stuck to "is a polarising figure"

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