THE PROMISE OF AN ANARCHIST ANTHROPOLOGY: THE THREE BURIALS OF THE ANARCHIST PROJECT
THE PROMISE OF AN ANARCHIST ANTHROPOLOGY: THE THREE BURIALS OF THE ANARCHIST PROJECT

Summary/Abstract: In this article I discuss David Graeber’s proposition of an anarchist anthropology. I focus on three key issues: Graeber’s understanding of ethnography and its role within the politics of anthropology, his reading of the anarchist tradition, and his involvement with the Occupy Wall Street movement as a concrete example of the limitations of the political project of an anarchist anthropology. The argument of the article is that rather than broadening the debate on political alternatives, Graeber’s representation of the discipline of anthropology, together with his partial reading of the anarchist tradition, run counter to a political and analytic focus that centralizes the notions of class and exploitation. Graeber’s “small a anarchism” together with his uncritical disciplinary positioning eclipse the richness of the anarchist tradition in favour of a model of knowledge production which, at heart, remains an unreformed practice of academic domination.

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