Justice and anthropology Class notes

Week 3: The anthropology of anarchy

Ryan Schram

March 9, 2026

Week 3: The anthropology of anarchy

ANTH 3623: Reconciling justice with anthropology (Semester 1, 2026)
March 9, 2026

Main reading: Graeber (2007); Overing (2003)

Other reading: Graeber (2004); Kropotkin et al. (2021)

Notes

For David Graeber, anarchism (or better termed communal self-government and self-organization) has long lineage in human history, and may in fact be the dominant mode of life for the world’s poorest societies, especially rural societies like those he studied in Madagascar. These societies are not ideals. They have inequalities of many kinds. But in societies that successfully hold the state at arm’s length everyone has a stake in everyone else and the commonwealth of society itself. They have a commitment to egalitarianism which arguably is fundamental to certain kinds of kinship orders too. What do theories of hierarchy and egalitarianism offer our discussion of praxis for change?

References

Graeber, David. 2004. Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-fragments-of-an-anarchist-anthropology.

———. 2007. “Provisional Autonomous Zone: Or, the Ghost-State in Madagascar.” In Possibilities: essays on hierarchy, rebellion and desire, 157–80. Edinburgh: AK Press.

Kropotkin, Peter, N. O. Bonzo, David Graeber, Andrej Grubačić, Ruth Kinna, Allan Antliff, and GATS. 2021. Mutual Aid: An Illuminated Factor of Evolution. Oakland, UNITED STATES: PM Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/usyd/detail.action?docID=6645883.

Overing, Joanna. 2003. “In Praise of the Everyday: Trust and the Art of Social Living in an Amazonian Community.” Ethnos 68 (3): 293–316. https://doi.org/10.1080/0014184032000134469.