Scan barcode
A review by ethanhedman
The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber, David Wengrow
challenging
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Fascinating book to someone that has no background in Sociology, Anthropology, or Archaeology.
Graeber and Wengrow are attempting to answer the question "where does inequality come from?" and soon realize that the question is as futile as it is pointless to ask, but raises dozens of other questions along the way and poke holes in conventional wisdom from Rousseau to Diamond, using recently unearthed examples on every inhabited continent to do so. I have no background, but their arguments against previously accepted theories are mostly compelling and always fascinating.
The question the authors end up posing and attempting to answer is "How did humans become stuck in a world where we do not have the freedom to 1) move away, 2) to disobey, and 3) to create or transform social relationships?" Their conclusion is anything but definitive, like the rest of the book, but interesting nonetheless.
Graeber and Wengrow are attempting to answer the question "where does inequality come from?" and soon realize that the question is as futile as it is pointless to ask, but raises dozens of other questions along the way and poke holes in conventional wisdom from Rousseau to Diamond, using recently unearthed examples on every inhabited continent to do so. I have no background, but their arguments against previously accepted theories are mostly compelling and always fascinating.
The question the authors end up posing and attempting to answer is "How did humans become stuck in a world where we do not have the freedom to 1) move away, 2) to disobey, and 3) to create or transform social relationships?" Their conclusion is anything but definitive, like the rest of the book, but interesting nonetheless.