Culture as Creative Refusal

David Graeber

47 citations0/0 files storedThe Cambridge Journal of Anthropology

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Anthropological Studies and Insights Cultural and Mythological Studies Cross-Cultural and Social Analysis

Abstract

Many aspects of culture that we are used to interpreting in essentialist or even tacitly evolutionist terms might better be seen as acts of self-conscious rejection, or as formed through a schizmogenetic process of mutual definition against the values of neighbouring societies. What have been called 'heroic societies', for instance, seem to have formed in conscious rejection of the values of urban civilizations of the Bronze Age. A consideration of the origins and early history of the Malagasy suggests a conscious rejection of the world of the Islamic ecumene of the Indian Ocean, effecting a social order that could justifiably be described as self-consciously anti-heroic.

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2015Radical alterity is just another way of saying “reality”2016Theorizing Refusal: An Introduction 2018The evolution of simple society 2015Godless People and Dead Bodies: Materiality and the Morality of Atheist Materialism 2018Ethnographic refusal in traditional land use mapping: Consultation, impact assessment, and sovereignty in the Athabasca oil sands region 2018“Many Seasons Ago”: Slavery and Its Rejection among Foragers on the Pacific Coast of North America 2022Strategic illiteracies: the long game of technology refusal and disconnection 2023Refusing aid

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