This is the third part of five sessions that will be discussing the chapter 4 of the book Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams by David Graeber.
12:00 - 15:00
Lectures, talks and seminars
Centre for Commons Organising, Values Equalities and Resilience (COVER) Research seminar series
Centre for Commons Organising Values Equalities and Resilience
COVER Seminar Organisers coveres@essex.ac.uk
Part three of five in a series discussing the book Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams by David Graeber. In this session we will be reading the chapter 4.
Now a widely cited classic, this innovative book is the first comprehensive synthesis of economic, political, and cultural theories of value. David Graeber reexamines a century of anthropological thought about value and exchange, in large measure to find a way out of ongoing quandaries in current social theory, which have become critical at the present moment of ideological collapse in the face of Neoliberalism. Rooted in an engaged, dynamic realism, Graeber argues that projects of cultural comparison are in a sense necessarily revolutionary projects: He attempts to synthesize the best insights of Karl Marx and Marcel Mauss, arguing that these figures represent two extreme, but ultimately complementary, possibilities in the shape such a project might take. Graeber breathes new life into the classic anthropological texts on exchange, value, and economy. He rethinks the cases of Iroquois wampum, Pacific kula exchanges, and the Kwakiutl potlatch within the flow of world historical processes, and recasts value as a model of human meaning-making, which far exceeds rationalist/reductive economist paradigms.
This seminar will take place online on Wednesday 8 November at 12pm.
This seminar is free to attend with no need to register in advance.
We welcome you to join us online.
Part in series | Date | Reading |
Part 1 | 18 October 2023 | Introduction, Chapters 1-2 |
Part 2 | 1 November 2023 | Chapters 3 |
Part 3 | 8 November 2023 | Chapter 4 |
Part 4 | 15 November 2023 | Chapter 5 |
Part 5 | 22 November 2023 | Chapters 6-7 |