Articles
Articles and publications
Debt: the first five thousand years
Featured in Mute Vol 2, No. 12 − The Creative City in Ruins
Anthropologist David Graeber argues that it is only with a general historical understanding of debt and its relationship to violence that we can begin to appreciate our emerging epoch. Here he begins to fill in our historical knowledge gap
Farewell to the ‘childhood of man’: ritual, seasonality, and the origins of inequality
Some people (me, for instance) put a great deal of energy into organizing their lives so that they’ll never have to wear a tie. I’ve often wondered why this should be. Why should ties have such symbolic power? It’s not as if other parts of a formal suit—white shirts, tailored slacks, vests, or blazers—inspire the same sort of indignation.
Fetishism as social creativity
Originally, the term ‘fetishes’ was used by European merchants to refer to objects employed in West Africa to make and enforce agreements, often between people with almost nothing in common. They thus provide an interesting window on the problem of social creativity – especially since in classic Marxist terms they were surprisingly little fetishized.
Foreword. The return of ethnographic theory
2011
Published as the foreword to HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory Volume 1, Number 1 — Fall 2011.
Hate
Collection of essays from the group Arts Against Cuts "Bad Feelings (Common Objectives)"
Paperback – 4 April 2015
David Graeber "Hate", p 165
Hope in Common
Revolution in Reverse, p 31