“David Graeber discussed some of the ideas set out in ‘Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology’ as part of Indigenous Genius week at the London School of Economics.Whilst Indigenous cultures are often labelled ‘pre-capitalist’ and ‘pre-state’ in popular understandings, we hope to explore how these societies, rather than representing an earlier stage of an inevitable progression, actively work to stop these forms from emerging.
We feel this offers an example of what we can learn from indigenous societies, and supports the case for valuing different epistemologies and therefore making provisions for them to exist, rather than assuming that everyone would, and should, rather join our capitalist state model of existence; particularly at a point when this model is proving so destructive.”
I’m always a bit pained by the public appeal of these sorts of academic arguments for the logics of alternative epistemologies as both political solutions for negotiating with capitalists (and the governments they own) and or as some kind of blueprints for a new form of governance, has this sort of tactic ever worked to bring about some sustainable alternatives?
synthetic zerØ 
Looking forward to listening to this one.. Tried to get Graeber to come to Claremont, CA for the big Whitehead conference next year, but apparently he doesn’t do conferences in the USA anymore.
As for arguments for alternative epistemologies, I don’t see why we should dismiss this as a potentially viable form of resistance to capital. Are there any tactics that have worked yet? Not that I can tell. I don’t think we are in any position to pick and choose how to resist at this point… The more the merrier.
except I don’t see how this sort of abstracted/speculative work counts as actual resistance, when one looks at the state of higher-ed I see few to no signs of organized resistance (piles of “critical” papers being churned out tho) to monied interests ( a few grad-student unions trying not to change the system as much as get their piece of it) and none of those that I know of are based on alternative epistemologies, I would be glad to see an example of such a thing working off the page (and out of a lecture setting) but barring that I think we can let their track-record speak for itself.
i dunno about ‘alternative epistemologies’ but where, dmf, would you put something like gary snyder’s thing about re-learning the environment under the human overlay? so like where the natural water table is, what the plants in different places have to do with it, etc.
that seems like something he committed to long-term, calls for knowledge of localities, reliance on non-standard informants and authorities etc. in ways ‘alt epistemologists’ seem fond of.
but the key distinction vis-a-vis this sort of discussion seems to be that he did it; that it’s not just a piece of intellectual capital in his armament, being deployed more for who it’s being deployed against, or in view of, than because of an actual interest in or commitment to the knowledge or the values that would be served by actual knowing of it.
when I being more optimistic I do take John Dewey’s point that if we want information/knowledge to have some particular ethic-bent/interest than we need to raise kids up in a community/environment that habituates them to relate to their environs in such a way, but I don’t have much faith that we can scale-up such efforts as we all too quickly run into issues of politics/organization/finance of the sort that Lippmann wiped the floor with Dewey on and I don’t think we can teach ‘critical’ thinking so we have the problems of the tyranny of the means as situations/assemblages inevitably shift, that sort of inter-generational effort aside aside the whole idea of consciousness-raising in adults just strikes me as badly misguided as psychology and as social-engineering, one of those 60’s pipe-dream hangovers better left behind.