David Rolfe Graeber (born 12 February 1961) is an American anthropologist and anarchist who currently holds the position of Reader in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London He was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, although Yale controversially declined to rehire him, and his term there ended in June 2007. Graeber has a history of social and political activism, including his role in protests against the World Economic Forum in New York City (2002) and membership in the labor union Industrial Workers of the World. His father, Kenneth Graeber, participated in the Spanish Revolution in Barcelona and fought in the Spanish Civil War and his mother, then Ruth Rubinstein, was part of the original cast of the 1930s labor stage review Pins&Needles, performed entirely by garment workers. Graeber's father ultimately found work as a plate stripper and Graeber has sometimes suggested his working class upbringing might have played at least as large a role in the problems he later encountered in academic life as his political activities.
Graeber received his BA from the State University of New York at Purchase in 1984. He gained his Masters degree and Doctorate at the University of Chicago.
David Graeber is the author of Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology and The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. He has done extensive anthropological work in Madagascar, writing his doctoral thesis (The Disastrous Ordeal of 1987: Memory and Violence in Rural Madagascar) on the continuing social division between the descendants of nobles and the descendants of former slaves. A book based on his dissertation, Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar appeared from Indiana University Press in September 2007. A book of collected essays, Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire was published by AK Press in November 2007 and An Ethnography appeared from the same press in August 2009. He is currently working on three more book projects: one, a history of the concept of debt, its working title Debt: the First Five Thousand Years, scheduled to appear from Melville House in Winter 2010/11; another, a small book version of his Malinowski Lecture; and, finally, a small book tentatively entitled The Archaeology of Sovereignty, along with numerous minor projects. With Stevphen Shukaitis, he also is co-editor of a recently released collection of essays entitled “Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations//Collective Theorization” (May 2007).
In May 2005, the Yale anthropology department decided not to renew Graeber's contract, preventing him from coming up for consideration for tenure as he would otherwise have been scheduled to do in 2008. Pointing to Graeber's highly-regarded anthropological scholarship, his supporters (including fellow anthropologists, former students, and anarchists) have accused the dismissal decision of being politically motivated. The Yale administration argued that Graeber's dismissal was in keeping with Yale's policy of granting tenure to few junior faculty and Yale has given no formal explanation for its actions. Graeber has suggested that his support of a student of his targeted for expulsion because of her membership in GESO, Yale's graduate student union, may have played a role in Yale's decision.
In December 2005, Graeber agreed to leave the university after a one-year paid sabbatical. That spring he taught two final classes: an introduction to cultural anthropology (attended by over 200 students) and a course entitled “Direct Action and Radical Social Theory” — the only explicitly radical-themed course at Yale he ever taught.
On 25 May 2006, Graeber was invited to give the Malinowski Lecture at the London School of Economics. Maurice Bloch, Professor of Anthropology (retired) at the LSE and European Professor at the Collège de France, and world renowned scholar on Madagascar, made the following statement about Graeber in a letter to Yale University:“His writings on anthropological theory are outstanding. I consider him the best anthropological theorist of his generation from anywhere in the world.” The Anthropology Department at the LSE honors an anthropologist at a relatively early stage of his or her career to give The Malinowski Lecture each year, and only invite those who are considered to have made a significant contribution to anthropological theory.
Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of our Own Dreams
Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology
Constituent Imagination (Editor)
Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar
Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire
Direct Action: An Ethnography
Articles
“Anarchism in the 21st Century” an article by David Graeber and Andrej Grubacic
“The New Anarchists”
“Give it Away” — An article about the French intellectual Marcel Mauss.
“Army of Altruists” — an attempt to solve the riddle of why so many working class Americans vote for the Right.
The Twilight of Vanguardism
"Turning Modes of Production Inside Out, or, Why Capitalism is a Transformation of Slavery"
On the phenomenology of giant puppets: broken windows, imaginary jars of urine, and the cosmological role of the police in American culture
Rebel Without A God — a meditation on the anti-authoritarian elements of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, reprinted from the December 27, 1998 issue of In These Times
“The Sadness of Post-Workerism” — an assessment of recent trendy “immaterial labor” theory (à la Negri, Lazzarato, etc.), with some comments on the relation of art, value, scams, and the fate of The Future.
“Hope in Common”
“The Shock of Victory”
“Revolution in Reverse”
“Debt: The First Five Thousand Years”
Interviews
Audio interview by Indymedia on air radio with David Graeber on anarchism and anthropology, April 1, 2005
“Take it From the Top” A Village Voice interview with David Graeber, June 6, 2005
“Teach Me if You Can” An interview with David Graeber on the Toward Freedom website, November 21, 2005
"A conversation with anarchist David Graeber about anthropology" A Charlie Rose interview with David Graeber, April 4, 2006
“Anthropologist and More” — An interview on politics and ethnography, May 8, 2006.
“ReadySteadyBook.com” An interview with David Graeber on the well-known British literary blog, January 16, 2007
“Behind the News” — Doug Henwood interviews Graeber on Yale, imperialism, and anthropology, December 27, 2007
“ArtRadio” — Althea Viafora Viaforakress.com interviews Graeber on fetishism, gifts, and objects, May 5, 2008
“OxMag Interview” on anarchy, capitalism, technology, and consensus process, July 1, 2008
“Korea Indymedia: Struggle News #9.5” on being an anarchist anthropologist, July 22, 2009
“History is made up of those events that couldn’t have been predicted before they happened” Interview of David Graeber by Yiannis Aktimon from Void Network for the Bfest issue of anti-authoritarian newspaper Babylonia, May 18, 2010
“David Graeber interviewed on CBC's Connect with Mark Kelley” on black block tactics prior to Toronto G20 Summit, June 23, 2010
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