The Dawn Of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow

The Dawn of everything seeks to tell a sweeping history of human society based on the latest archaeological evidence. In doing so, it seeks to replace the sweeping histories that dominate our narratives of our species. Most histories of human social organization start with an ends first perspective that frames all historical events as leading inexorably toward our present. (large nation states marked by inequality, and domination) These events are often framed as being purely technologically determined and almost never frame them as the product of self-concious political decision making. The authors show that this sweeping narrative of human society "running headlong into its chains" is dissonant with the anthropological and archaeological record. They lament that almost no-one in their respective fields (archaeology and anthropology) is writing work that synthesizes the evidence into a broad narrative. Meanwhile, academics outside their fields write histories that retell a largely evolutionary story of human society.
The evidence shows a kaleidoscopic array of forms of human social organization, driven by self-concious experimentation as much as it is by technology and agriculture. Abandoning this teleological myth of human development and engaging with the evidence is important for our collective ability to imagine a future for our species.

criticism of the evolutionary model of human social organization

• The evolutionary model of the development of human society has been widely discredited as "myth-making".
• Most authors within the field are hesitant to make any sweeping claims at all however still write as if a society is mostly determined by its mode of subsistence.
• Authors outside the field seem to be stuck in a mode of either reiterating Hobbes or Rousseau. Neither Hobbes nor Rousseau were writing from a place of evidence and their assertions about "man in the original state of nature" is more of a theological argument than a

why asking "what is the origin of social inequality?" is the wrong question

• the anthropological record cannot agree on what is meant by social equality/inequality
• "egalitarian" societies sometimes contain staggering in-equality between men and women in domestic life
• many societies switch their mode of organization depending on time of year or activity
• its a better question to ask where this question came from...

the effect of the indigenous critique of European society on the so called "Enlightenment"

• How political arguments of Kondiaronk became a best selling book in Europe and influenced Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau
• These ideas inspired backlash from enlightenment thinkers like Turgot. This backlash shaped many of the ideas of economic liberalism.

Rousseau and the myth of the "stupid savage"

• Rousseau is often accused of inventing the "noble savage" trope. In his essay on the origins of social inequality he imagines man in a state of nature....
• Graeber and Wengrow that, while it is problematic to treat the philosophical ideas of indigenous societies as mystical, ineffable wisdom, it is more problematic to rob indigenous societies and their philosophers of their agency by insisting that these societies were not making self-concious political decisions and criticising anyone who suggests that they were as invoking the "noble savage" trope.

criticism of technological determinism - how the agriculture revolution didn't happen

• Authors write about social organization as if it is entirely determined by a given societies mode of subsistence. "Egalitarian" societies are possible for small hunter-gatherer bands but as soon as agriculture shows up these societies are "running into their chains"
• This is dissonant with archaeological evidence with suggests that societies experimented on and off with agriculture well ahead of evidence of centralized control
• According to archaeological evidence the agricultural revolution took some 3000 years. This is a very slow pace for a "revolution". It is also much longer than what.
• Most early implementations of farming did not lend themselves to the development of private property. Flood-retreat farming.

the carnival of human forms reveals by the archaeological and anthropological evidence

the danger of teleological stories about the origins of human society

• the future is famously hard to predict
• yet we write about past events as if they were inevitable
• this limits our imagination about what can be

The 3 elemental freedoms

• freedom to move
• freedom to disobey
• freedom reorganize social relationships

The 3 elemental modes of domination

• control of violence
• control of information
• charismatic politics

the origin of kings

• the beginning of kingdoms are punctuated by events of enormous violence
• typically this takes the form of ritual sacrifice of loyal retainers and hundreds to thousands of victims, usually women, whose bodies are sometimes mutilated and buried with the king and his retainers. The retainers are sacrificed so they may accompany the king into the afterlife (so he will remain a king in the next world). The victims, sometimes war captives, sometimes chosen apparently at random, serve to provide the fledgling kingdom with its subjects by robbing surviving family of a way of honoring their ancestors without honoring the king.
• kingship, and sovereignty more generally, is marked by a confluence of violence and care.
• care makes the king a king. his retainers feed him, cloth him, cut his hair, and ritualize his daily existence.
• kings almost invariably proclaim themselves the defenders of orphans and widows. Their courts are populated by those who are not able to get care elsewhere. In this way, these people lose their freedom to move away. By losing this first elemental freedom, the lose the second, the freedom to disobey. In order to receive care they are compelled to carry out the king's commands however violent or objectionable.

why asking "what is the origin of the state?" is the wrong question

• no one can seem to agree on what is meant by a state

• living in cities does not imply a state as there is a long record of urban life without state-like control

• histories of civilizations tend to tacitly assume an evolutionist model where our modern nation state is seen as the inevitable evolutionary outcome...

• the state as we currently imagine it was not inevitable as, pre-invasion and colonization, North America had largely done away with its most state-like social structures.

  1st, 3nd, and 3rd order societies

• Graeber and Wengrow propose instead that we speak of a society based on which forms of domination predominate its social life.