![]() ![]() After all, part of the current problem in the global economy is not just that we have bad applications of economic theory-we have blinkered economic theory in ascendance, including a profound limit on our understanding of debt, as Graeber points out. Graeber is doing exactly what many of us want university-based social and cultural anthropologists to do more of: not just doing outstanding, useful applied work (which is bloody brilliant, of course), but also showing how our distinctive intellectual perspectives – comparative, evolutionary, cross-cultural, critical, even deconstructive (and ‘post-modern’) – provide academic analyses with important, ‘real world’ implications. Pay no attention to The Man behind the curtain! Students should just put their heads down and do the sorts of degrees that will give them technical jobs. After all, no one needs to understand why US firms are shedding jobs, or take a sober look at the current financial regime in the light of the 5,000-year history of debt. Rick Scott thinks universities should give up. Of course, maybe clear-eyed analysis of our current economic situation, and the ability to point out that other societies do perfectly well with other sorts of economic and political systems, is precisely the sort of academic work that Gov. ![]() The juxtaposition of Florida Governor Rick Scott’s recent comments about anthropology and the fact that Graeber is offering what may be among the most penetrating and accessible analyses of an important dimension of the current global debt crisis is striking. Graeber has been doing a few television and radio interviews of late ( check here for his interview on ABC Radio National, Australia), talking about the organization of the Wall Street occupation as well as his new book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Melville House). Wall Street is in the grips of an ‘occupation,’ and activist and anthropologist, David Graeber, now at Goldsmiths, University of London, is in the centre of the action. NOTE: Images in this archived article have been removed. ![]()
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