David Graeber is an American-born, London-based anthropologist who practises anarchism. He is Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, and the author of Debt: The First 5000 Years (2015) and The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy (2015). His latest book, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, will be published in May 2018.
Imagining a World with No Bullsh*t Jobs
Bullshit jobs are ones where the person doing them secretly believes that if the job (or even sometimes the entire industry) were to disappear, it would make no difference — or perhaps, as in the case of say telemarketers, lobbyists, or many corporate law firms, the world would be a better place.
August 9, 2018
New Insights into the Evolution of Hierarchy and Inequality throughout the Ages
For instance, almost everyone nowadays insists that participatory democracy, or social equality, can work in a small community or activist group, but cannot possibly ‘scale up’ to anything like a city, a region, or a nation-state. But the evidence before our eyes, if we choose to look at it, suggests the opposite.
March 16, 2018
Two notions of liberty revisited – or how to disentangle Liberty and Slavery
"Freedom is the natural faculty to do whatever one wishes that is not prevented by force or law. Slavery is an institution according to the law of nations whereby one person becomes private property (dominium) of another, contrary to nature."’
May 23, 2013