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Thanks for the rec. I’ve wanted to read “Debt” for a long time but I recently read Graeber’s book “the Dawn of Everything” and it bent the truth so much every w

Thanks for the rec. I’ve wanted to read “Debt” for a long time but I recently read Graeber’s book “the Dawn of Everything” and it bent the truth so much every which way to get to his POV that I won’t read another book by him.

Willish42 2y ago
> I recently read Graeber’s book “the Dawn of Everything” and it bent the truth so much every which way to get to his POV that I won’t read another book by him. Do you mind elaborating on why this is the case? I've read and liked some of his other work (Bullshit Jobs is a great one) and I have Dawn of Everything on my reading list -- was it due to his politics in general or because of disingenuous interpretations of the evidence?
- Nicholas_C 2y ago
  Disingenuous interpretations of the evidence and stating things as facts that are very much still debated or denied by other experts. A good example: Graeber posits that the European Enlightenment came directly from contact with Native American ideals rather than being a home grown movement. To support this, Graeber repeatedly references a book written by a French Army officer named Lahontan about his travels in North America in the late 1600s[0]. In this book Lahontan has dialogue with a fictional Native American named Adario that is more or less a disguised critique of European society. Adario bears similarities to Iroquois Chief Kondiaronk[1]. It's thought that Adario was a literary device for Lahontan's ideas but Graeber makes a very hand wavy argument that Adario was actually Kondiaronk and the dialogue was real. Graeber then uses this as his main piece of evidence to support his theory about the origins of the European Enlightenment. I couldn't finish the book because I kept looking up the evidence Graeber was presenting and it usually ended up like the Kondiaronk situation. Graeber is also very condescending when he's writing about ideas held by other anthropologists (like Jared Diamond), it was off-putting and came off as unprofessional for someone who was supposed to be a leading academic. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Voyages_to_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Voyages_to_North_America [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondiaronk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondiaronk
  - Willish42 2y ago
    Have you read any of his other stuff? His essay on Bullshit Jobs (https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/) is a good example that isn't book-length (though he did write a book of the same name that came out later) Here I definitely take his condescending / snarky tone with a grain of salt, but as a reader I understand it as largely a literary technique to build a narrative and suggest / propose an alternative, usually somewhat contrarian, viewpoint. I can't at all disagree with you here re: Dawn of Everything, as I haven't read the book, but is it at all possible that -- given we're analyzing the reported history of indigenous societies and the book talks about a proposed alternative viewpoint -- some level of "matter of fact"-ness works in a similar way as a literary technique? In this context it seems impossible to truly make a definitive claim one way or the other, as we're talking about histories for groups of people (who were largely extinguished by invading colonialist armies; Guns Germs and Steel and all that...) that are no longer around in serious enough numbers to have an oral history, let alone a quasi-accurate one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything#Recepti... seems largely like reception was a mixed bag, and that while there are parts that are a bit of a stretch, most anthropologists and reviewers found it a refreshing read contrary to the "canonical" (imperialist) narrative(s) commonly taught in history class. Is it as "mixed" from your read as that Wikipedia summary says, or do you find the discrepancies/inaccuracies significantly more egregious than the way I'm characterizing them?
  - mempko 2y ago
    I honestly don't know your background. Do you have an education and training in anthropology and/or archeology? Maybe you do. When I read the criticisms in the press and blogs about the work, I found it telling that most of the criticism about Graeber and Wengrow's book is from non-experts. While experts seem to find it a breathe of fresh air. I personally don't have enough training and education in anthropology and archeology to properly interpret the evidence. I suspect most readers here do not. That's why it's such an important work, because it synthesizes the latest research. Turns out a lot of it is counter to a lot of contemporary works that don't rely on such depth.
    - 2y ago
unmole 2y ago
Cherry picking and misrepresenting evidence to argue for his fringe political beliefs was Graeber's whole shtick. You're better off not reading Debt.
- mempko 2y ago
  You are kidding right? Dawn of everything was a synthesis work. The amount of research it references is insane (a quarter of the book is references) How exactly would you write, an already long book, that doesn't look like cherry picking by those that disagree with the content?

Willish42 2y ago

> I recently read Graeber’s book “the Dawn of Everything” and it bent the truth so much every which way to get to his POV that I won’t read another book by him. Do you mind elaborating on why this is the case? I've read and liked some of his other work (Bullshit Jobs is a great one) and I have Dawn of Everything on my reading list -- was it due to his politics in general or because of disingenuous interpretations of the evidence?

Nicholas_C 2y ago
Disingenuous interpretations of the evidence and stating things as facts that are very much still debated or denied by other experts. A good example: Graeber posits that the European Enlightenment came directly from contact with Native American ideals rather than being a home grown movement. To support this, Graeber repeatedly references a book written by a French Army officer named Lahontan about his travels in North America in the late 1600s[0]. In this book Lahontan has dialogue with a fictional Native American named Adario that is more or less a disguised critique of European society. Adario bears similarities to Iroquois Chief Kondiaronk[1]. It's thought that Adario was a literary device for Lahontan's ideas but Graeber makes a very hand wavy argument that Adario was actually Kondiaronk and the dialogue was real. Graeber then uses this as his main piece of evidence to support his theory about the origins of the European Enlightenment. I couldn't finish the book because I kept looking up the evidence Graeber was presenting and it usually ended up like the Kondiaronk situation. Graeber is also very condescending when he's writing about ideas held by other anthropologists (like Jared Diamond), it was off-putting and came off as unprofessional for someone who was supposed to be a leading academic. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Voyages_to_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Voyages_to_North_America [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondiaronk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondiaronk
- Willish42 2y ago
  Have you read any of his other stuff? His essay on Bullshit Jobs (https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/) is a good example that isn't book-length (though he did write a book of the same name that came out later) Here I definitely take his condescending / snarky tone with a grain of salt, but as a reader I understand it as largely a literary technique to build a narrative and suggest / propose an alternative, usually somewhat contrarian, viewpoint. I can't at all disagree with you here re: Dawn of Everything, as I haven't read the book, but is it at all possible that -- given we're analyzing the reported history of indigenous societies and the book talks about a proposed alternative viewpoint -- some level of "matter of fact"-ness works in a similar way as a literary technique? In this context it seems impossible to truly make a definitive claim one way or the other, as we're talking about histories for groups of people (who were largely extinguished by invading colonialist armies; Guns Germs and Steel and all that...) that are no longer around in serious enough numbers to have an oral history, let alone a quasi-accurate one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything#Recepti... seems largely like reception was a mixed bag, and that while there are parts that are a bit of a stretch, most anthropologists and reviewers found it a refreshing read contrary to the "canonical" (imperialist) narrative(s) commonly taught in history class. Is it as "mixed" from your read as that Wikipedia summary says, or do you find the discrepancies/inaccuracies significantly more egregious than the way I'm characterizing them?
- mempko 2y ago
  I honestly don't know your background. Do you have an education and training in anthropology and/or archeology? Maybe you do. When I read the criticisms in the press and blogs about the work, I found it telling that most of the criticism about Graeber and Wengrow's book is from non-experts. While experts seem to find it a breathe of fresh air. I personally don't have enough training and education in anthropology and archeology to properly interpret the evidence. I suspect most readers here do not. That's why it's such an important work, because it synthesizes the latest research. Turns out a lot of it is counter to a lot of contemporary works that don't rely on such depth.
  - 2y ago

unmole 2y ago

Cherry picking and misrepresenting evidence to argue for his fringe political beliefs was Graeber's whole shtick. You're better off not reading Debt.

mempko 2y ago
You are kidding right? Dawn of everything was a synthesis work. The amount of research it references is insane (a quarter of the book is references) How exactly would you write, an already long book, that doesn't look like cherry picking by those that disagree with the content?