David Graeber facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
David Graeber
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Graeber in 2015
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David Rolfe Graeber
February 12, 1961 New York City, United States
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| Died | September 2, 2020 (aged 59) Venice, Italy
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Nika Dubrovsky
(m. 2019) |
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| Thesis | The Disastrous Ordeal of 1987: Memory and Violence in Rural Madagascar |
| Doctoral advisor | Marshall Sahlins |
| Influenced | Occupy movement |
David Rolfe Graeber (born February 12, 1961, died September 2, 2020) was a famous American anthropologist and activist. An anthropologist studies human societies and cultures. Graeber was also known as an anarchist thinker. An anarchist believes in societies without rulers or forced authority.
His important work in understanding how societies use money and resources, called economic anthropology, made him well-known. He also played a big part in the Occupy movement. This movement protested against economic inequality. These roles made him one of the most important anthropologists and left-wing thinkers of his time.
Graeber was born in New York to a working-class family. He studied at Purchase College and the University of Chicago. For his studies, he did ethnographic research in Madagascar. This means he lived among people to study their culture. He earned his doctorate degree in 1996.
He taught at Yale University from 1998 to 2005. Yale decided not to renew his contract, which caused some debate. After this, he moved to England. He taught at Goldsmiths' College and later at the London School of Economics.
Graeber wrote many books. His early work looked at how people value things and how power works in societies. He also wrote about his research in Madagascar. In the 2010s, he started writing about history. His most famous book, Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011), explored the history of debt. He also wrote about how social inequality started.
He also criticized bureaucracy, which is a system of rules and procedures. He wrote about this in The Utopia of Rules (2015). He also wrote about "pointless jobs" in *** Jobs (2018). He described these as jobs that seem so useless that even the people doing them can't explain why they exist.
Graeber became involved in activism in the 1990s. He protested against big economic meetings. In 2011, he became a key figure in Occupy Wall Street. He is famous for helping create the slogan "We are the 99%". Later, he supported the Rojava revolution and Extinction Rebellion, an environmental movement.
David Graeber passed away suddenly in September 2020 in Venice. His last book, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, was published after his death. He wrote it with archaeologist David Wengrow.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Graeber's parents were working-class thinkers in New York. They were in their forties when he was born. His mother, Ruth Rubinstein, worked in clothing factories. She acted in a musical called Pins & Needles. His father, Kenneth, was part of the Young Communist League. He fought in the Spanish Civil War in Spain. He later worked in printing.
Graeber grew up in Penn South, a housing area supported by unions. This area was known for its strong political ideas.
Graeber first got involved in activism at age seven. He went to peace marches in New York. He said he became an anarchist when he was 16.
He finished high school at Phillips Academy Andover in 1978. He earned his first degree from the State University of New York at Purchase in 1984. He then got his master's and doctorate degrees from the University of Chicago. He received a Fulbright fellowship to study in Madagascar for 20 months, starting in 1989. His PhD paper was about magic, slavery, and politics. It was called The Disastrous Ordeal of 1987: Memory and Violence in Rural Madagascar.
Academic Career
Teaching at Yale University (1998–2005)
In 1998, Graeber became an assistant professor at Yale University. He later became an associate professor. In May 2005, Yale decided not to renew his contract. This meant he could not be considered for a permanent teaching position, called academic tenure.
Many people, including other anthropologists and his former students, said this decision was political. Over 4,500 people signed petitions to support him. Famous anthropologists asked Yale to change its mind. They praised his work and contributions to anthropology.
Yale said that the decision followed their policy of giving permanent positions to only a few junior teachers. Graeber thought his support for a student might have played a role. This student was facing problems because she was part of Yale's graduate student union.
In December 2005, Graeber agreed to leave Yale after a year-long break. He taught two final classes that spring. One was "Introduction to Cultural Anthropology," which over 200 students attended. The other was a seminar on "Direct Action and Radical Social Theory."
Moving to London (2005–2020)
After leaving Yale, Graeber found it hard to get another job at an American university. He applied for more than twenty positions. Even with strong recommendations, he never got past the first interview. However, many universities outside the U.S. offered him jobs.
Some professors thought his political activism might have made it difficult for him to find a job in the U.S. They said that while anthropology often talks about radical ideas, it might not always accept direct political action. Another reason suggested was that Graeber had a reputation for being difficult to work with.
Graeber believed his exclusion from American universities was a direct result of leaving Yale. He compared it to being "black-balled" from a social club. He felt that being called "uncollegial" was a way to hide other reasons. These reasons included his activism and his working-class background.
From 2008 to 2013, Graeber taught at Goldsmiths College in London. In 2013, he became a professor at the London School of Economics.
He was also a founder of the Institute for Experimental Arts in Greece. He gave a lecture there about how society and money affect the art world.
His Writings and Ideas
Graeber wrote several important books. These include Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology and Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. He did a lot of research in Madagascar. His PhD paper was about the social differences between descendants of nobles and former slaves.
A book based on his research, Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar, came out in 2007. Another book of his essays, Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire, was published in 2007. His book Direct Action: An Ethnography came out in 2009.
In 2017, Graeber and his former teacher Marshall Sahlins published On Kings. This book explored how human leaders, like kings, first appeared. Graeber wrote essays about the Shilluk and Merina kingdoms. He also wrote about the "fight between the king and the people."
He was working on a history book about how social inequality began. This book, The Dawn of Everything, was published after his death. He wrote it with David Wengrow.
From 2013 to 2016, Graeber was an editor at The Baffler magazine. He also wrote about the future of technology there. He was also a main editor for the journal HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory.
Debt: The First 5000 Years
Graeber's first big history book was Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011).
One reviewer called Debt an "unusual book." They said it might be the most widely read anthropology book of the 21st century. They noted that its timing was excellent. The reviewer compared Debt to other big books like Guns, Germs, and Steel for its wide scope. However, they found the book very long. They also felt that Graeber raised many ideas without fully explaining them.
An economic historian, J. Bradford DeLong, criticized the book for some mistakes. Graeber replied that these errors did not change his main argument. He said the biggest mistake found was a small detail about a financial committee. He explained other criticisms were just different ways of seeing things or small editing errors.
Pointless Jobs and Bureaucracy
Much of Graeber's later work focused on jobs that seem pointless. These are jobs where even the employees feel they don't need to exist. He believed these jobs are often found in office, management, and service roles. He explained that many people, especially in Europe and North America, spend their lives doing tasks they secretly think are unnecessary.
Because his ideas were popular, Graeber wrote the book * Jobs: A theory. It was published in 2018. The book was on the Los Angeles Times' bestseller list for four weeks. It was also named "Book of the Year 2018" by several newspapers.
Activism
Besides his academic work, Graeber was very involved in political activism. He was a member of the labor union Industrial Workers of the World. He protested at the World Economic Forum in New York City in 2002. He supported student protests in the UK in 2010. He also played an early role in the Occupy Wall Street movement. He helped start the Anti-Capitalist Convergence group.
Graeber became a strong supporter of the democratic confederalism in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. He visited the region in 2014. He often compared it to the Spanish Revolution that his father fought in.
In October 2019, Graeber spoke at an Extinction Rebellion protest. This was in Trafalgar Square. He talked about how pointless jobs can harm the environment. He suggested that environmental groups should also focus on these jobs. He also mentioned unnecessary building projects and products designed to break quickly.
Occupy Movement
In November 2011, Rolling Stone magazine said Graeber helped give the Occupy Wall Street movement its main idea: "We are the 99 percent". Graeber wrote that this slogan was created by many people working together. Rolling Stone said he helped set up the first meeting of the New York City General Assembly. Only 60 people attended this meeting on August 2.
He spent the next six weeks deeply involved in the growing movement. He helped organize meetings and training sessions. He also helped with legal and medical support. A few days after the protest camp started in Zuccotti Park, he left New York.
Graeber believed the Occupy Wall Street movement was an anarchist project. This was because it did not accept the existing political or legal systems. It used consensus decision-making, where everyone agrees. It also focused on creating the kind of society they wanted to see. He compared it to the Arab Spring protests. He said Occupy Wall Street was the start of talks about the end of the American Empire. He wrote that the Occupy movement was about following a "moral order, not a legal one." He argued that the public should not need permission to use public space.
In 2014, Graeber tweeted that he had been forced to leave his family's home of over 50 years. He said this was because of his involvement with Occupy Wall Street.
Personal Life
After a relationship with anthropologist Lauren Leve, Graeber married artist Nika Dubrovsky in 2019. They worked together on books and workshops called Anthropology for Kids. They also created the Museum of Care. This was a shared space for communication and social interactions. It aimed to promote values like helping each other and sharing.
According to David Graeber's website, the main goal of the Museum of Care was to create and keep social relationships. Graeber and Dubrovsky came up with the idea in an article in April 2020. In the article, they imagined a future after the pandemic. They thought large office buildings and old institutions could become "free city universities, social centers and hotels for those in need of shelter." They called these places "Museums of Care" because they would be spaces for creating social relationships.
Death
Graeber died suddenly on September 2, 2020. He was on vacation with his wife and friends in Venice. He died from a serious illness called necrotic pancreatitis. His death happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of a traditional funeral, his family held an "Intergalactic Memorial Carnival." This was a series of online events in October 2020. His wife, Dubrovsky, thought his illness might be linked to COVID-19. She said they both had strange symptoms for months before he died.
Selected Publications
- Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. New York: Palgrave. 2001. ISBN 978-0-312-24044-8.
- Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press (distributed by University of Chicago Press). 2004. ISBN 978-0-9728196-4-0.
- Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2007. ISBN 978-0-253-34910-1.
- Direct Action: An Ethnography. Edinburgh; Oakland: AK Press. 2009. ISBN 978-1-904859-79-6.
- Debt: The First 5000 Years. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House. 2011. ISBN 978-1-933633-86-2.
- The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement. New York: Spiegel & Grau. 2013. ISBN 9780812993561.
- The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. Melville House. 2015. ISBN 978-1-61219-375-5.
- The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2021. ISBN 978-0-374-15735-7.
See also
In Spanish: David Graeber para niños
