Possibilities : Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire

Notes
Failure to recognize this is the weakness, I think, of much of the existing theoretical literature on the subject. Mary Douglas’ essay on “jokes” for instance starts out as an analysis of joking relations. The result is a brilliant reflection on the nature of humor, but, it seems to me, is of little use in understanding the nature of joking relations in the traditional anthropological sense of the term. Though cf. Stasch 2002. Again, I remind the reader that I am using the term “joking” here in a special, technical sense, meaning “along the lines of the sort of construction of human relations typical of joking relations”; hence I do not simply mean “humorous.” “Sacred” implies “not to be touched” in most European languages as well—a fact which Durkheim made much of—though I do not know how widespread this is elsewhere. (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Part 3, Chapter 12
12 — On The Phenomenology of Giant Puppets: Broken Windows, Imaginary Jars of Urine, and the Cosmological Role of the Police in American Culture What follows is an essay of interpretation. It is about direct action in North America, about the mass mobilizations organized by the so called “anti-globalization movement,” and especially, about the war of images that has surrounded it. It begins with a simple observation. I think it’s fair to say that if the average American knows just two things about these mobilizations, they are, first of all, that there are often people dressed in black who break windows; second, that they involve colorful giant puppets. I want to start by asking why these images in particular appear to have so struck the popular imagination. I also want to ask why it is that, of the two, American police seem to hate the puppets more. As many activists have observed, the forces of order in the United States seem to have a profoun... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Part 3, Chapter 11 : There Never Was a West: Or, Democracy Emerges From the Spaces In Between
11 — There Never Was a West: or, Democracy Emerges From the Spaces In Between What follows emerges largely from my own experience of the alternative globalization movement, where issues of democracy have been very much at the center of debate. Anarchists in Europe or North America and indigenous organizations in the Global South have found themselves locked in remarkably similar arguments. Is “democracy” an inherently Western concept? Does it refer a form of governance (a mode of communal self-organization), or a form of government (one particular way of organizing a state apparatus)? Does democracy necessarily imply majority rule? Is representative democracy really democracy at all? Is the word permanently tainted by its origins in Athens, a militaristic, slave-owning society founded on the systematic repression of women? Or does what we now call “democracy” have any real historical connection to Athenian democracy in the first place? Is... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Part 3, Chapter 10 : Social Theory As Science and Utopia: Or, Does The Prosect of a General Sociological Theory Still Mean Anything in an Age of Globalization?
10 — Social Theory As Science and Utopia: or, Does The Prosect of a General Sociological Theory Still Mean Anything in an Age of Globalization? I can address the organizers’ questions from two possible vantages: as an anthropologist, or as a political activist who has been working for some years with the globalization movement (the so-called “anti-globalization movement”), which has been reformulating the whole idea of revolution in accord with changing global conditions. In what follows, I will try to do a little bit of both, by offering some reflections on the history of social theory in general and its changing relation to the prospects of social revolution. I’m taking this approach not just because it provides a useful point of entry, but because I believe there is an integral relation between the two—or, more specifically, between the revolutionary imagination and the idea that there is something I will call... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Part 3, Chapter 9 : The Twilight of Vanguardism
Part III — Direct Action, Direct Democracy, and Social Theory 9 — The Twilight of Vanguardism Revolutionary thinkers have been declaring the age of vanguardism over for most of a century now. Outside a handful of tiny sectarian groups, it’s almost impossible to find radical intellectuals who seriously believe that their role should be to determine the correct historical analysis of the world situation, so as to lead the masses along in the one true revolutionary direction. But (rather like the idea of progress itself, to which it’s obviously connected), it seems much easier to renounce the principle than to shake the accompanying habits of thought. Vanguardist, even sectarian, attitudes have become so deeply ingrained in academic radicalism it’s hard to say what it would mean to think outside them. The depth of the problem really struck me when I first became acquainted with the consensus modes of decision-making employ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Some Thoughts On The Origins of Our Current Predicament
Part I — Some Thoughts On The Origins of Our Current Predicament 1 — Manners, Deference, and Private Property: or, Elements For A General Theory of Hierarchy This is an essay about the nature of hierarchy. In it, I want to delve into hierarchy’s most elementary forms: the way people avert their eyes or stand at attention, the sort of topics they avoid in formal conversation, what it means to treat another human being as somehow abstract, sacred, transcendent, set apart from the endless entanglements and sheer physical messiness of ordinary physical existence—and why something like that always seems to happen when some people claim to be inherently superior to others. It seems to me an investigation like this is impor... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Fetishism As Social Creativity: Or, Fetishes Are Gods In The Process of Construction
4 — Fetishism As Social Creativity: or, Fetishes Are Gods In The Process of Construction In this paper, I would like to make a contribution to theories of social creativity. By social creativity, I mean the creation of new social forms and institutional arrangements. Creativity of this sort has been the topic of some discussion in social theory of late, although up to now anthropology has not played much of a role in it. Here, I would like to bring anthropology into an area that has traditionally been seen as its home turf: by looking at the literature on “fetishism” in Africa. Now one could argue that creativity of this sort has always been one of the great issues of social theory, but it seems to me the current interest ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Turning Modes of Production Inside Out: Or, Why Capitalism Is A Transformation of Slavery (Short Version)
3 — Turning Modes of Production Inside Out: or, Why Capitalism Is A Transformation of Slavery (Short Version) What follows is really just the summary of a much longer argument I hope to develop elsewhere at greater length. A lot of the issues it addresses—the state of Marxist theory, the notion of the mode of production, World-Systems analysis—are ones most anthropologists in the United States (or for that matter, most political activists) have come to think of as tiresome and passé. However, I think that, if well employed, these concepts can still tell us new and surprising things about the world we inhabit. The problem is that they haven’t always been employed particularly well. This is particularly true of ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Oppression
8 — Oppression In Malagasy there is a word, tsindriana, that means “oppressed.” The literal definition is “to be pressed down, crushed by a heavy weight.” Used in a political context, it means to suffer under some kind of unjust power or authority. Malagasy is hardly alone in having such a word. Actually, most languages do. The English sentence “the people are oppressed” (or the Malagasy equivalent, tsindriana ny vahoaka) could be translated directly into the languages spoken by a majority of human beings, using the same metaphor, with no need for exegesis or elaboration. Even in those languages that do not have an explicit term for “oppression,” I would hazard to say that if a competent... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Introduction I decided to call this collection Possibilities because the word encompasses much of what originally inspired me to become an anthropologist. I was drawn to the discipline because it opens windows on other possible forms of human social existence; because it served as a constant reminder that most of what we assume to be immutable has been, in other times and places, arranged quite differently, and therefore, that human possibilities are in almost every way greater than we ordinarily imagine. Anthropology also affords us new possible perspectives on familiar problems: ways of thinking about the rise of capitalism from the perspective of West Africa, European manners from the perspective of Amazonia, or, for that matter, West Af... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)