A trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution--from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of the state, political violence, and social inequality--and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.
For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike--either free ...
A trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution--from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of the state, political violence, and social inequality--and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.
For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike--either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself.
Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what's really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? What was really happening during the periods that we usually describe as the emergence of the state? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.
The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action.
David Graeber was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years and Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, and was a contributor to Harper's Magazine, The Guardian, and The Baffler. An iconic thinker and renowned activist, his early efforts in Zuccotti Park made Occupy Wall Street an era-defining movement. He died on September ...
David Graeber was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years and Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, and was a contributor to Harper's Magazine, The Guardian, and The Baffler. An iconic thinker and renowned activist, his early efforts in Zuccotti Park made Occupy Wall Street an era-defining movement. He died on September 2, 2020.
David Wengrow is a professor of comparative archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and has been a visiting professor at New York University. He is the author of three books, including What Makes Civilization?. Wengrow conducts archaeological fieldwork in various parts of Africa and the Middle East.
To Americans like Kandiaronk, there was no contradiction between individual liberty and communism – that’s to say, communism in the sense we’ve been using it here, as a certain presumption of sharing, that people who aren’t actual enemies can be expected to respond to one another’s needs. In the American view, the freedom of the individual was assumed to be premised on a certain level of ‘baseline communism’, since, after all, people who are starving or lack adequate clothes or shelter in a snowstorm are not really free to do much of anything, other than whatever it takes to stay alive.
在像Kandiaronk这样的美洲原住民眼中，个人自由与共产主义之间毫无矛盾。当然，这里的“共产主义”是指我们前文界定的那层含义，即一种关于分享的默契：预设了只要双方不是死敌，就理应响应彼此的需求。
在美洲原住民看来，个人自由正是建立在某种程度的“基线共产主义”之上的。毕竟，一个在暴风雪中忍饥挨饿、缺衣少食、无处栖身的人，其实谈不上拥有什么真正的自由；他所能做的，无非是竭尽全力让自己活下去罢了
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足足啃了五个月，为自己加一星。其实作者没有完全说服我，人类在史前原始阶段，权利关系的松散和社会组织的自由，并不能推导出我们就有其他可能性，能够摆脱当今的阶层统治和权力结构。到了今天权力对人的支配更隐蔽幽微，身体的暴力已经大可不必，有关真相的信息无从获得也无人关心，倒是个人魅力这第三种支配方式仍在起作用，但是人么早晚会塌房，等到所有这三项都失效了，我们是不是就迎来全新的 the dawn of ev...足足啃了五个月，为自己加一星。其实作者没有完全说服我，人类在史前原始阶段，权利关系的松散和社会组织的自由，并不能推导出我们就有其他可能性，能够摆脱当今的阶层统治和权力结构。到了今天权力对人的支配更隐蔽幽微，身体的暴力已经大可不必，有关真相的信息无从获得也无人关心，倒是个人魅力这第三种支配方式仍在起作用，但是人么早晚会塌房，等到所有这三项都失效了，我们是不是就迎来全新的 the dawn of everything？然后暴力，信息和个人魅力又会大有作为，万年后回到支配与被支配的境地？看来，我还是无法想象出另一种可能。(展开)
第一章总结： 作者的目的是重新书写人类历史，改写目前通行但错误的叙述和叙述逻辑，改写盛行的以不平等 (inequality) 为开端发问的人类历史思考与叙述方式。 目前大历史的主流叙述其实都在一个错误的设问下展开，即探寻不平等的起源是什么 (what is the origin of inequality)...
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我们正身处于一个想象力枯竭的时代。 已故文化理论家Mark Fisher在其著作《资本主义现实主义》中敏锐地捕捉到了这种时代精神： It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. 想象世界的终结比想象资本主义的终结要容易得多。 我们太擅长用“历史...
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![[美国] 大卫·格雷伯](https://img1.doubanio.com/view/personage/m/public/01c5166a270f9d17f53b7116d38cf3a0.jpg)
Claire-Corning
后浪
九州出版社2024版
汗青堂
九州出版社2024版
魏禾Ifree
Le Flaneur
戴临川
九州出版社2024版
16 有用 TimberNord 2023-12-04 17:26:19 浙江
推。一般 convincingly 推翻一个预设就是好书，哥们一口气推翻一筐预设。可惜 Greaber 已被 covid 并发症 带走。
26 有用 陈别扭 2021-12-17 05:44:55
花了一个月读完，想打999颗星。重新讲述了人类史，证明了我们对社会进化论的想象只是一种迷思。西方现代政治体制绝对不是历史的终结，人类完全有能力想象出真正平等的组织形式并将其付诸实践。
1 有用 Jackie 2024-05-03 18:07:14 浙江
足足啃了五个月，为自己加一星。其实作者没有完全说服我，人类在史前原始阶段，权利关系的松散和社会组织的自由，并不能推导出我们就有其他可能性，能够摆脱当今的阶层统治和权力结构。到了今天权力对人的支配更隐蔽幽微，身体的暴力已经大可不必，有关真相的信息无从获得也无人关心，倒是个人魅力这第三种支配方式仍在起作用，但是人么早晚会塌房，等到所有这三项都失效了，我们是不是就迎来全新的 the dawn of ev... 足足啃了五个月，为自己加一星。其实作者没有完全说服我，人类在史前原始阶段，权利关系的松散和社会组织的自由，并不能推导出我们就有其他可能性，能够摆脱当今的阶层统治和权力结构。到了今天权力对人的支配更隐蔽幽微，身体的暴力已经大可不必，有关真相的信息无从获得也无人关心，倒是个人魅力这第三种支配方式仍在起作用，但是人么早晚会塌房，等到所有这三项都失效了，我们是不是就迎来全新的 the dawn of everything？然后暴力，信息和个人魅力又会大有作为，万年后回到支配与被支配的境地？看来，我还是无法想象出另一种可能。 (展开)
13 有用 尼安德特人 2022-05-16 17:09:32
大部分所谓颠覆性的观点其实都算不上原创，考古学和人类学中已经讨论了很多，两位作者搜集了各种来展现人类社会的多样性和创造力：狩猎采集群体未必是平等社会；农业革命未必是多么大的革命，农业也未必是狩猎采集的下一个阶段（很多社群在农业和狩猎采集间来回转变）；城市和复杂社会未必有严格的自上而下的等级区分；前殖民时代非洲和美洲的很多社会是群力群策、自发组织起来的组织，未必有明确的统治者；很多人类历史上重要的发... 大部分所谓颠覆性的观点其实都算不上原创，考古学和人类学中已经讨论了很多，两位作者搜集了各种来展现人类社会的多样性和创造力：狩猎采集群体未必是平等社会；农业革命未必是多么大的革命，农业也未必是狩猎采集的下一个阶段（很多社群在农业和狩猎采集间来回转变）；城市和复杂社会未必有严格的自上而下的等级区分；前殖民时代非洲和美洲的很多社会是群力群策、自发组织起来的组织，未必有明确的统治者；很多人类历史上重要的发明和发现未必是出于实用的目的，很多都是ritual play的产物等等。我非常感兴趣的是作者在开头和结尾提出的观点：一些我们认为的西方现代社会奠基性的思想观点（比如平等或不平等的起源、三权分立等）很可能与殖民主义有关，很可能是美洲（或非洲）原住民的原创或至少是受到了他们的影响，期待相关思想史的研究。 (展开)
1 有用 熊二Easton 2024-05-21 21:56:10 波兰
推翻线性进化论，但是觉得人类可以设计出平等的制度并付出实践，就知道这是一个多么骄傲多么疯狂的作者了。还是少产出一些摧毁世界的著作吧，唉。