The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity – Ch 12, CONCLUSION

Renowned anthropologist and public intellectual David Graeber teams up with professor of comparative archaeology David Wengrow to deliver a trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution — from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state," political violence, and social inequality — and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.

This is a biweekly book discussion group on The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021) by anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow. The book is available in multiple formats and languages. We cover 1 chapter per meeting.

For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike — either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could only be achieved by sacrificing those original freedoms, or alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. Graeber and Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today.

Drawing on path-breaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what's really there. If humans did not spend 95% of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? What was really happening during the periods that we usually describe as the emergence of "the state"?

The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.

The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action.

[Read the critical acclaim for the book here.]

------------------------------------------------------------------

It's been a wonderful group journey along some of the past pathways winding through human possibility space. You all have contributed such deep, interesting, heart-felt thoughts and questions. Thank you to everyone who has participated!

For this final meeting on the book, please read Chapter 12 “Conclusion: The Dawn of Everything.”

You are very welcome to attend if you didn’t do the reading; discussion preference will be given to those who did.

We will discuss the entire chapter, book pages 493-526. Discussion will be of all 33 pages of this chapter. (Book page numbers refer to the first edition, Macmillan 2021. Page numbers may vary in different editions and formats.)

You can find the book here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YXXaVEwZ-cIc37Y0Z9ujEcK3_X2Jpmnh/view?usp=sharing

Or purchase it here: https://www.amazon.ca/Dawn-Everything-New-History-Humanity/dp/0771049846/

This final chapter gives an overview of the book, including "In Which We Finally Learn the Origins of the Book's Title" ;)

We'll be discussing the overarching ideas of the book:

Part I: Discussion of first part of Ch 12. From the beginning of the chapter through the section on the Wendat. If you’re searching a PDF, that ends on book page 514, with the phrase “other than a transition from larger to smaller cages.”

Part II: Discussion of second part of Ch 12. From book page 514 through to 526. if you’re searching a PDF, that starts with the phrase “In the course of writing this book, we have”

Part III: Consolidation of learning via group discussion. This is a way for each participant to verbalize their own thinking about the book and their own learning process. What did you learn that was new to you? If you were already familiar with some or all of the material, what did you get out of a group discussion? Did the authors’ biases help or hinder you? In general, was a group setting more, or less, helpful than reading it on your own? In what ways?

End of Scheduled Session.

The Afterparty: At the close of the two hours, those who want to can stay on for a general discussion of any book-related topics. One topic will be, If you were able to choose one of these cultures to live in, which one would it be, and why? Which social role would you choose? Would you want to be in that culture if you had a different social role?