The authors are doing a lot of work for me, exploring ideas I have been thinking about but with much more skill…a couple of passages I found interesting:
[I]t was only at this point, in the mid to late eighteenth century, that European philosophers first came up with the idea of ranking human societies according to their means of subsistence, and therefore that hunter-gatherers should be treated as a distinct variety of human being. As we’ve also seen, this idea is very much still with us. But so is Rousseau’s argument that it was only the invention of agriculture that introduced genuine inequality, since it allowed for the emergence of landed property.
Rousseau had something to say about the first person to erect a fence and claim land as theirs but the authors explore this in much more depth, citing his quote that “people ran to their chains” instead of staying free of the system we see today. So much of the book so far has been about reading more deeply and getting the facts behind simplistic takes we have already heard.
Let’s first ask why even some experts apparently find it so difficult to shake off the idea of the carefree, idle forager band; and the twin assumption that civilization properly so called – towns, specialized craftspeople, specialists in esoteric knowledge – would be impossible without agriculture. Why would anyone continue to write history as if places like Poverty Point could never have existed? It can’t just be the whimsical result of airy academic terminologies (‘Archaic’, ‘Jömon’and so on). The real answer, we suggest, has more to do with the legacy of European colonial expansion; and in particular its impact on both indigenous and European systems of thought, especially with regard to the expression of rights of property in land. P 148
It seems that idea of land as shared commodity, owned by none but used by any, was so obvious no one knew it was a thing — not unlike how we see the ownership of land, as it underpins everything we rely on, include the unequality the authors are unpacking and what actually looks like autonomy — the power to own your own life, to say no, to avoid being dependent on anyone or having anyone dependent on you.
Central to all of this is the idea that the Americas are the birthplace of democracy but the europeans rejected it, saw it as a threat to their hierarchical society of churches and monarchs. It was already here — the idea of “governing” with the consent of the governed, representation, even the ability to opt out, to say no, as there was no government monopoly on force. There were times when discipline and hierarchy were needed but these were based on events/seasons or locations (a chief’s court, in one example). It was neither hereditary nor universal.
Not even 1/3 through and it’s simultaneously overturning old ideas and vindicating my own suspicions and doubts.
