Uncivilized Podcast 33- Radical Anthropology (Jamie interview part 2)

Youtube link: https://youtu.be/HIZDAJa-fW8?si=_LSibsgA49-jzcwK
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Reduced description:
Jamie, anarchist and anthropologist, continues our conversation and delves more into his experience with modern hunter-gatherers, diets, and further reading.

Part 1 can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU2LhhQ6ANI&t=0s

READING LIST: (Some of these texts were omitted from the episode in the interest of time but were mentioned regardless.)

Us, Relatives: Scaling and Plural Life in a Forager World by Nurit Bird-David
Anthropology and Contemporary Human Problems by John H Bodley
Hierarchy in the Forest by Christopher Boehm
Society Against the State by Pierre Clastres
How Chiefs Come To Power by Timothy K. Earle
Cultural Materialism by Marvin Harris
Cannibals and Kings by Marvin Harris
Man The Fat Hunter by Miki Ben-Dor, Avi Gopher, Israel Hershkovitz, Ran Barkai
From Equality to Inequality by Csilla Dallos
Ordinary Wolves by Seth Kantner
The Tender Carnivore And The Sacred Game by Paul Shepard
In Search of The Primitive by Stanley Diamond
R. Brian Ferguson's works
The Diversity of Hunter-Gatherer Pasts by Bill Finlayson
The Politics of Eros by Morna Finnegan
The Evolution of Complex Hunter-Gatherers by Ben Fitzhugh
Foragers' Pursuit of Individual Autonomy by Peter M. Gardner
Limited Wants, Unlimited Means by John Gowdy
Ultrasocial by John Gowdy
Pathways to Power by Brian Hayden
Forest Hunter-Gatherers and Their World by Jerome Lewis
Anarchism, Individualism and South Indian Foragers by Brian Morris
Camilla Power's works
Prehistoric hunter-gatherers. The emergence of cultural complexity, Edited by T. Douglas Price and James A. Brown
Complex Hunter-Gatherers in Evolution and History by Kenneth E. Sassaman
The Art of Not Being Governed by James C. Scott
Nomads of the Borneo Rainforest by Bernard Selatto
Affluence Without Abundance by James Suzman
Egalitarian Societies by James Woodburn

Thank you to Jamie for lending us the art for the episode!

There are 9 Comments

Hello - have you heard of the anarchist anthroapologists josh zerzan and kevin tucker? They are very informative and present primitivism in a very straightforward way. It reminds me a lot of reading the bible or how lessons were taught when I went to church growing up.

so now i have a clearer picture as to why Jamie is adamant about wanting other anarchists to support A/P, rewilding. he doesn't want it to become associated with rightists or fascists and he thinks that (mainstream?) anthropologists are trying to do this to discredit A/P / rewilding. do i have that right?

for my part, i have no desire to discredit A/P.
what i am attempting here is to point out what to me are limitations.

as i have said elsewhere, i read JZ a long time ago. i was quite influenced by his critique. i do believe that hunter/ gatherer peoples lived free & healthy lives. i believe progress is a lie. i believe civilization is detrimental to human and more-than-human flourishing. etc.

i also believe there is only so much that can be learned by doing anthropology or science. so i bristle at truth claims. to say words to the effect of this is the truth and if you disagree you are mentally ill, that sets of really clangy alarm bells for me.

i'm saying 2 things: truth claims are provisional, can only be provisional.

& while i don't necessarily disagree with a/p, i don't know what use it has in the present moment. by which i mean, i think the present moment requires something else. some humans have made a big mess, i am a beneficiary of those humans and that mess, so i see cleaning up the mess as my priority.

Please come on Ego Death podcast and chat about this with us! Would love to have Jamie on, too

hey nettle, me again!

are you familiar with the alexander reid ross drama from some years back?

the whole """eco fascism""" canard, separate and distinct from actual ecofascism, which is real but obviously requires a better standard of gauging which values, goals and methods would qualify as fascist or reactionary or something definitely not liberatory for all.

anyway, i think a comparison could be made with some of what jamie is concerned about? overly simple explanation: radical anti-civ ideas getting mischaracterized by liberals (among others) to shut down certain types of discussion, something like that.

i'm painting in broad strokes but the portion i listened to, i was reminded of similar smear tactics used against people i know when they were doing land defense stuff

hey lumpy,

no, for sure for sure. i wasn't questioning to be hostile but to be sure i understood.

Jamie says he is writing a book on this so i assume he is cagey about details because he is saving that for the book, which you know fine, but without the who, what, where, when i will withhold being convinced.

let me say, i have no doubt there is back and forth, even push back from mainstream anthropologists in regards to ap.

exactly what is being argued, and who (as in a named person) is making these arguments, no one has made clear, though.

It is mentioned (part 1, mostly) who and where this is happening. Lavi et all: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10146388/

They bring up solid points, which Jamie, in his drafts, shows admiration for. They do, however, present rewilding and ideas near AP to be essentially reactionary in character. Of course, the episode isn't about that piece, otherwise, we would have spent more time on details, but Jamie directly mentions them.

okay, i will give that a look. in over 3 hours of conversation i must have missed this. (and i couldn't find the link in the show notes.) thx Artxmis.

"Unless people are paying atention to all this stuff then I can't take them seriously....it's pretty clear, and it's not that complicated. It's pretty clear......" Interesting stuff but sounding a tad bit culty there.

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