The Books of My Life: History and the Media

 

Ever since the advent of historical documentaries on television, something that arguably began in Great Britain with the BBC’s 26 part documentary on World War I titled The Great War in 1964, professional historians have debated the quality of television history. For at least some academic historians, television histories, be they the lecture style, the presenter style, or the you are there form of television history, have a number of inherent problems. They are, some maintain, too image oriented. They are too selective. They make too much use of “historical” reconstructions. They simplify historical, theoretical, and methodological complexities way too much often in the service of seeking a wider audience, something that is always pressing when it comes to television including public television particularly these days. They too often focus on wars.

The fact of the matter, however, is that many television histories are done with the assistance of professional historians, as was the case with The Great War and many others since, and some have even been presented by academic historians themselves, though this hasn’t resulted in a diminishment in the number of those criticising the genre for its supposed simplification and in some cases, perversion of history. Given this it should not be a surprise that not all professional, let alone amateur historians, agree with the negative assessment of television history, something the papers contained in David Cannadine’s edited collection History and the Media (Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England: Palgrave, 2004), a collection of papers presented at a conference on the media and history in London along with a couple of essays reproduced from magazines, point up. For many of the contributors to this collection television history is not inherently ahistorical or anti-historical. For many of these commentators television history is no more or less selective and manipulated than traditional history with its emphasis on the written word. For them the quality of history depends not on whether histories are in written form or not, but on the quality of the history including the television history.

The contributions to History and the Media can be divided thematically into several utlimately ideal types. There are the essays by television insiders which explore the history of television history such as those by Taylor Downing and Roger Smither who tries to the answer to the question as to why so many television histories have focused on war. There are the essays by professional historians like Simon Schama and Ian Kershaw, the two essays that were originally published in magazines, which explore the problems of television histories while offering defences of the BBC television histories they presented, A History of Britain in Schama’s case, or worked on, The Nazis: A Warning from History in Kershaw’s case. There are the essays by those amateur historians responsible for noted television histories of the past including that of Jeremy Isaacs, one of those responsible for what some consider the zenith of television history (me included), the 26 part The World at War a television history of World War II commissioned by ITV and broadcast in 1973, and that of Melvin Bragg, who reflects on his role in the making of and presenting of The Adventure of English from 2003 for the BBC. There is the essay by Max Hastings which raises questions about the genre of television history itself while simultaneously ruminating on the cultural reasons for why so many academics envy those professionals and amateurs who make television histories. There are the somewhat tangential essays by Jean Seaton on approaches to the history of broadcasting, David Puttnam on Hollywood’s special effects laden simplifications and perversions of reality, and John Tusa’s on the need to create a culture of authenticity and truth in broadcast organisations. 

Speaking of authenticity, while some of the essays in the collection do explore the manipulative techniques television histories use to tell their tale, techniques such as historical reconstructions, images and iconography, editing, music, and selectivity, for example, none, and this is not surprising given the fetishising cultures of the historical and journalistic professions, take this to its logical reflexive endpoint, namely to the fact that no television history or documentaries in general for that matter, can and do capture reality or real life. All television histories and documentaries, just like fictional films and fictional television programmes, may represent reality, they may be naturalistic including emotionally naturalistic, but they can’t be real because they are inherently selective and because they use editing, mise-en-scene, and music to manipulate time, space, perspective, and emotions in viewers contrary to the claims expectations of many professionals and amateurs for whom all art should and must be “real". Of course, in reality audiences, particularly lowest common denominator audiences, would be bored to death by a live stream of the real daily lives of any selected someones. Many of them instead genuflect before the altar of that most unreal of movie forms, superhero movies, a genre that includes virtually all films focusing on crime fighters and the military these days. Needless to say, the need many have for fantasy pervades a lot of historical documentaries today as well as fictional books, films and television shows, documentaries that feed their audiences appetite for a history they can be proud of whether it if of the formulaic we did it or the formulaic we are going to do it happy ending variety. The only genre of history documentaries that comes in for this kind of reflexive treatment are the you are there historical documentaries like 1900 House which are regarded by those commentators who bother to comment on them at all as unredeemable, as fundamentally not real television history. 

I enjoyed the essays in History and the Media immensely. I learned a lot from them, thought a lot about what they said, and was ultimately entertained by all of them. I recommend this admittedly only somewhat coherent collections of essays to anyone interested in the intersections between media and history, history and the media.

A Critical Ethnography of Social Media: That’s the Sound of One Hand (Trustpilot) Washing the Other (Labyrinth Books)

 

It is always fascinating to look behind the corporate curtain to see how digital age capitalism actually works. I had this pleasure recently when I tried to review a recent encounter I had with Labyrinth Books online on the Danish owned review site Trustpilot.

I tried to post this review of Labyrinth Books on Trustpilot: 

 "I ordered some books from Labyrinth Books. I had enough to get free shipping which was critical in my ordering the books. When I got the books two were missing. When I contacted Labyrinth and asked them for a revised bill which they never sent before I asked for it (bad form) I discovered I was charged for shipping because they did not have the two books I ordered and which, with the other books, gave me free shipping. CatchLabyrinth22."

I contacted Labyrinth about this, about not informing me that they did not have two books I ordered and that this meant I had to pay almost $9 dollars in shipping now. They wrote back telling me sorry, boy, you are shite out of luck and that if I wanted to send the books back I had to pay shipping. Apparently, Labyrinth’s policy is screw the customer...twice if you can. My response was what it should be: cancel my account, delete my account, I will never order from you again, and I will be filing a complaint about you with the attorney general of the state of New York. Have a good day.”

I dutifully created an account (I had posted before but by invitation of Thriftbooks previously when no account was required), signed in, and posted this review. A day or two letter, however, I got a since disappeared missive from the digital courtiers of the dukes and barons at Trustpilot telling me they could not post my review. Whether this corporation  has stupid bots doing this weeding out of reviews to try to discern fake ones from “real” ones is immaterial given that bots are written by humans and humans are known not only for their stupidity and moronicity but also their technology as utopia hubris.  Nor does it relieve them of responsibility for washing their hands of such censorship though I am sure they hope and think it does.

So regardless of the reason for deep sixing my review it amounts to censorship, of one hand, the muddied of Trustpilot, washing away empirical criticism of another dirty hand, Labyrinth Books. And that is the world of Big Brother Corporation ladies and gentlemen, a world which snake oil salesmen and con men predominate everywhere including online.

Addendum: When I contacted Trustpilot via Facebook message—they have disabled any other option—I felt like I had wondered into Green Acres and The Twilight Zone. When the operative who I was communicating with could not,  presumably, hopefully, after reading the above, could not discern the two paragraphs of my review in the body of the post which, presumably, a bot fuhrered and disallowed, I copied and pasted the review so they could read it. I then asked them why the post was disallowed. They couldn’t even give me a straight answer as to why it was placed in the brave new digital world rubbish bin. If this is Big Brother it is Big Brother as post-baby boom attention deficit disorder farce. Realising that I had gone down the rabbit hole where I had run into Lisa Douglas I departed as quickly as I could for saner shores.

Life as Crisis Management: The Labyrinth Books Kiada

 

I used to like Labyrinth Books, the Princeton, New Jersey shop that sells books both in their brick and mortar store and online. In fact, when I was in the City, which I was quite in the late nineties and early 2000s staying in a flat in Chelsea, I used to wonder up to their store near Columbia University. It was not the best used or new bookstore I have ever been in in the City, in North America, in Europe,  in Australia, or in New Zealand. But it was a decent a middling bookstore.

Then I got to know this firm. And familiarity, as the Chills note, sometimes definitely breeds, under the right empirical circumstances, contempt.

And the right empirical circumstances there have been. I have bought books online from Labyrinth on a couple of occasions. It went fine. Recently, however, I learned that if one bought over $100 dollars worth of books from them one received free shipping. So I dutifully put books in my shopping queue and eventually had enough books at the right cost to get the free shipping. So I ordered the items.

I got a communique from Labyrinth telling me the books had shipped. There was no indication that there was any change to my order so I rationally and reasonably assumed they were the books I ordered. When I got the books, however, the box was missing two items I had ordered and I quickly discovered that I had been charged around $9 dollars in shipping because, in a kind of capitalist catch-22, two of the items I ordered were out of stock. 

I contacted Labyrinth and asked why I was not contacted about this change in my order. They essentially implied that why should we? I responded with the logical riposte: because the order changed and as a consequence there was a change in the charges. Other bookstores, I noted, such as Midtown Scholar, a far superior bookshop to Labyrinth, for example, contacted me, as they should have, to note that a book described as “very good” was actually “good” and did I still want it at a discount? Given this, I responded by saying well then I will ship the books back and could they send me a pre-paid mailing label since it was their fault that the items were not in stock and their responsibility to let me know that the order had changed? They essentially told me tough luck kid. We don’t do that sort of thing here at King Labyrinth Books. They essentially, in doing this, told me that we are going to screw you not only once by by not telling you that there had been a change in the order and do you still want the books, twice by adding a shipping fee, and yet a third time by not paying themselves for a return of items I would never had chosen to receive if I knew a shipping charge would be added. Caveat emptor to the third power.

Since then I have asked them to refund me the shipping charge. It was their fault I was sent an order I no longer wanted, after all. They deigned not even to respond to such a plebeian request which, I presumed, meant a refusal even to consider such a thing. I then asked to delete my account. It took me three emails to finally get them to do this. Next, I asked them to take me off their mailing list. It took only one email to get them to do this. They also told me never to contact them again, which may have been due, in part, to the fact that I accurately described their firm as a skanky and slaggy con-corporation run by snake oil salesmen. The truth sometimes hurts, I guess, doesn’t it.

Postscript: As I suspected the Attorney General of New York, who I filed a formal complaint with about the immoral, never do the right thing, and hence skanky and slaggy corporation—skanky and slaggy being not slurs but empirical facts relating to this corporation and its skanky and slaggy behaviour— could do little to rectify the skanky and slaggy behaviour toward me of Labyrinth Books. The NYAG can only mediate. They suggested I take Labyrinth to small claims court, something I intend to look into. I intend to sue them for as much as I can for the emotional and financial damage this corporation has done to me, $400 or $500 dollars perhaps. I will also, of course, ask the court not only for shipping charges but also for time spent working on this issue at $50 to $75 dollars an hour—I reckon somewhere around $200 dollars total—and for court fees and costs.

On a sociological and ethnographic level what I find so interesting and fascinating is that used booksellers like Labyrinth, in the age of digital media and skanky and slaggy capitalism, have drunk deeply at the wells of conmen and snake oil salesman. Far too many used booksellers these days, for example, inadequately and inaccurately describe the used books they have for sale because, presumably, selling an item is more important to them than describing it accurately. Labyrinth is actually pretty good at describing what their used books actually look like (very good, good, acceptable). Where Labyrinth falls down is in what I described above. Apparently, because they want to sell books or need to sell books they don’t tell customers when an order has changed (in my case two books being out of stock) and they add monies to orders that no longer meet the minimum for the free shipping, something again they do not feel the need to tell the customer about (my case). Labyrinth has become unlike all the used bookstores I dealt with and worked for in the bad old stone age days before the internet and the worldwide web, skanky and slaggy. They have become, in other words, the mirror image of capitalist enterprises like those of Tanholio Trump. Welcome to the brave new world. Welcome to the best of all possible used bookstore worlds.

The Books of My Life: Wisdom’s Workshop

I have long had an interest in higher education. I am interested in academia as a bureaucracy, a bureaucracy that has changed just as broader society has changed over the years. I am interested in the economic aspects of institutions of higher education and the role economic interests have played and continue to play in colleges and universities in the core nation world and particularly in the British settler society world. I am interested in the politics of universities both internally and externally and the impact political bureaucracies have on academic bureaucracies and vice versa. I am interested in the demographics of universities and how these have changed over the years. I am interested in the historical and cultural geography of universities and the ideologies associated with notions of how colleges and universities should look. I am interested in the culture and subcultures and countercultures of universities, a culture and cultures that mirror while the broader world while, at the same time, wanting to change the world for the better (there is a lot of utopianism among university faculty, some of them old bohemians gone bourgeois, though only those in the applied sciences generally manage to change the world if not for the better).

James Axtell’s Wisdom’s Workshop: The Rise of the Modern University (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016) explores the economic, political, demographic, geographic, and cultural history of the university from the Mediaeval era to the modern American research university or multiversity. and megaversity era. Along the way Axtell briefly, for example, explores the the Mediaeval, Tudor and Stuart (Oxbridge) and 19th century German precedents for the American research university, the historical genealogies of academic bureaucracies, the role faculties play in universities and the cultures associated with university faculties, tensions between the administrative bureaucracy and faculty guilds in universities, the built environment of universities, student life at universities, tensions between universities and the broader society including powerful economic interests particularly over the curriculum, the increasing use of part-time or contingent faculty in American universities (something paralleled in Canadian research universities as well), and the increasing ties between the university, government, and private corporations in his synthetic history of the modern university. Axtell ends his book by noting that American research university are overrepresented among the top universities globally in all the guides which rate universities around the worlds.

As a comparative history Axtell’s book is far too selective. Axtell largely ignores higher education developments Germany and Great Britain in the 20th and 21st century, somewhat surprisingly since the new post-World War II in Britain generally mimicked the post-war American research universities. He ignores Canadian universities like the University of Toronto, which, like the universities he does focus on, is a member of the elite Association of American Universities, the pan-bureaucratic arm of the elite American research university. And while these points may or may not be relevant—Axtell’s focus was on the rise of the American elite research university after all—something else he ignores, namely the fact that the size and wealth of the American economy, itself a product of geography, demography, and culture, is very relevant for why US research universities show up in large numbers in the lists of the top three hundred universities in the world. Sometimes size does matter and the US with its almost 400 million people (2018 estimate) gives it an economic and technological edge over smaller Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, and Germany. He also fails to explore the fact that there is great regional variation in the “quality” of US research universities with most of them being found in the US Northeast, Midwest, and Far West and far fewer in the South, the Northern Plains, and the Intermountain West where, again, size matters as does cultural history, particularly the culture of evangelical and secular anti-intellectualism.

 

Life as Crisis Management: The Community Care Physicians Kiada

 

I should have known that it would not get better. Sisyphus, thou aren’t omnipotent and apparently omniscient too. In fact, I should have know it would have gotten worse. Murphy’s Law, thou too are all powerful and all present in modern America. So what is it (with all apologies to Faith No More). It is bureaucracy. It is human incompetence. It is corporate skankiness.

Let me explain. I got up late this morning around 9:00 am. It was later than I wanted to get up because I had an appointment for an OTM, an Osteopathic adjustment, at Community Care Physicians (CCP) at 391 Myrtle Avenue in Albany, in the heart of the busy Albany Medical Centre complex and it was busy to say the least, and I had thought about going to the Co-op before my doctor’s appointment. I had also wanted to take a shower before I went because taking a shower at my four flat complex is akin to trying to figure out a Rubik’s Cube when you have no idea how it works. If I don’t get in the shower between 8:30 and 8:30 am my shower is interrupted by someone else engaged in water use leading to my shower going cold. It is only then safe to get in the shower sometime between 6 pm and 8 pm. So off I rushed to get ready after turning on my phone and my computer to see if I had any messages from CCP. I did not. So off I drove at 9:15 am for my appointment at 9:40 am.

When I got there I was met not only by the check in artist but by her supervisor The supervisor informed me that they, perhaps even she, had tried to call me to tell me the appointment had been cancelled because—and here I am not clear—the doctor was not in or they had double booked once again. This double booking had happened the second time I went to get an adjustment, this one from a doctor I had not seen before because mine is on pregnancy leave as I type. I had to wait an hour to get the adjustment. Apparently I was lucky in this because one was available. By the way, the second adjustment I went for was a half hour late. Today no other appointment was possible so I was told I was shite out of luck. 

The supervisor did tell me they tried to call and they did at 9:34 am, so my phone tells me, six minutes before my appointment. Since I was in the car and I don’t carry my phone around with me as if it were a shot of heroin to which I am thoroughly addicted (apologies to Layne Staley and a host of others), I was already in the car driving the few miles to CCP Myrtle Avenue.

Let me end this immoral tale by stating the obvious again. Bureaucracies are not fully efficient though the mythology about them claims otherwise even in a world where that myth is clearly and indisputably false. Human incompetence is omnipresent and has simply been made more tangible and visible by digital toys. And Sisyphus and Murphy’s Law are omnipresent and all powerful and have been made worse thanks to the toys of the brave new digital age. Bah humbug.

And oh, by the way, my shower, which I took when I got home from my no longer existent appointment with a CCP doctor, was indeed disrupted by someone else using the water. Thank you CCP for not calling me forty minutes before my appointment to tell me it was kaput, no more, gone with the wind.

Life as Crisis Management: The Grocery Store Again

 

It never ceases to amaze me how life is just one Sisypehan crisis after another. Take today...

Today I got up early to go to the grocery store, the Hannaford grocery store to be more precise. I did this because Hannaford had Impossible ground on sale beginning today and while I prefer Beyond ground sale prices matter particularly since Beyond costs over $5 dollars at Walmart now, when they have it which is not very often these days, up almost $2 dollars from before the New Year, and costs over $11 dollars at the Honest Weight Food Coop. I wanted it because I cook Beyond or Impossible burgers with chips for Danish hygge on Friday night for me and my friend.

I should have known, and I actually thought about this, before I went to the grocery at 7:30, that they would not have the item I sought, an item that was, to add insult to injury, to be the foundation of a coupon I had for $10 dollars off of $60 dollars. Nor did they have the Noosa Strawberry and Rhubarb yoghurt I sought or the Brown Cow large Maple Yoghurt I sought. And this was Sunday, the day items went on sale and one of the busiest days for grocery shopping during the week.

I asked the meat stock person if they had the Impossible ground. She said no and that the item had been out of stock for a couple of weeks at, one assumes, the distributors. I then asked why have a sale on the item in the first place if it is unavailable. She rightly said to contact Hannaford headquarters.

Annoyed, not angry as the cash person assumed but then most humans can’t work outside of binary modes of coded thought and realise that annoyed it not anger and vice versa, I complained again about the lack of the item and the fact that I could not use my coupon which expires on Tuesday. He contacted the manager and arranged for me to get a rain cheque for the Impossible and for me to use the coupon whenever I can get the Impossible. Quite nice.

Of course, whether I will be able to get the Impossible ground or use the coupon in the future is another matter. Time will, as it always does, tell.

Life as Crisis Management: The Pharmacy Kiada, Again

I hate the US health insurance system. It is easily the worst in the core nation world. I have used the health insurance systems of Canada, England, France, Australia, and even Russia and all of them, including the Russian one, were easier to use than that of the US in my experience.

More than any part of the US health insurance system the prescription part of the health care system is by far the worst. Since the 2000s I have had problems with Walgreens, with CVS, and with CVS Silver Script, the corporation the New York State and Local Retirement System now farms their retiree prescription medication plan out to, and now Lincoln Pharmacy.

I used Lincoln Pharmacy for my prescription needs because it was close and because it is independent. The fact that it is independent, however, is also why it is a problem for me to use Lincoln Pharmacy. First, I had a problem with Wixela, something I was forced to take for my asthma because my prescription plan no longer covered the similar costing Advair. They did not carry it so I had to get it from the mail order service of CVS Caremark (CVS, of course, is trying to run independents out of business). Then it was Cyclobenzaprine, which I take for muscle pain. As I had turned seventy I was cut off by the prescription drug coverage company not because my doctor said I should be but because the prescription company said I should be. Lincoln only told me this fact after I walked through snow and thirty mile per hour wind to go there to pick it up. Today it was Linzess, which I take for bowel issues, that I learned I could not get. When I went up to get it today Lincoln told me they no longer had a contract with MVP, yet another health insurance company who unbeknownst to me covered this for me through my state insurance, until today, because it was not cost effective for them to do so any longer.

So where does all this bureaucratic bullshite leave old, infirm, and always weary me? Well, it leaves me to clean up yet another US health insurance mess and yet another corporate bureaucratic mess. It left me to change all my prescription information in the online account pages for all four medical groups I go to (Community Care Physicians, Albany Med, Trinity for St. Peter’s, and Albany ENT). It left me to ask Lincoln to switch all my prescriptions to yes hated CVS, the CVS in Delmar. It left me to try to get my Linzess before it runs out, a medicine which causes diarrhoea when you start it again. It left me to whinge once again, just like many other Americans with health insurance, about the royal slaginess that is the US health care system. 

Up yours US health care system. You, to put it nicely, suck.

Life as Crisis Management: Hello Sisyphus, Remember Me?

It never stops, it being fuckups in the digital age. Today I was gifted a lingload of them.

Fuckup number one: I put in an order early this morning for two prescription renewals by phone. I was told they would be ready by 10:30 this morning. They weren’t. So I had to wait five or so minutes for them when I arrived at around 11:25 am.

Fuckup number two: When I went to pay for my prescriptions my credit card was declined. This was news to me since I just paid off my credit card bill on 30 December. Thankfully I had emergency cash, something I have learned is essential in the digital fuckup age.

Fuckup number three: I chatted with my credit card company. They said my card was fine and should not have been declined. They said the problem was probably on the merchant’s end of the equation.

Fuckup number four: When I contacted my credit card company I not only went into my account and hit chat I also called them. When I got a call back they wanted my unique password which I have stashed in my computer somewhere because I can’t remember them all (there are a lot of them to remember, too many, in fact). I declined saying that chat had answered my question, that I did not want to spend minutes opening my file, and that I wanted to take a shower after walking to the pharmacy through 30 mile per hour winds and blowing snow only to find that my credit card was declined.

Fuckup number five: I ordered some books from Labyrinth Books. I had enough to get free shipping which was critical in my ordering the books. When I got the books two were missing. When I contacted Labyrinth and asked them for a revised bill which they never sent before I asked for it (bad form) I discovered I was charged for shipping because they did not have the two books I ordered and which, with the other books, gave me free shipping. CatchLabyrinth22. 

I contacted Labyrinth about this, about not informing me that they did not have two books I ordered and that this meant I had to pay almost $9 dollars in shipping now. They wrote back telling me sorry, boy, you are shite out of luck and that if I wanted to send the books back I had to pay shipping. Apparently, Labyrinth’s policy is screw the customer...twice if you can. My response was what it should be: cancel my account, delete my account, I will never order from you again, and I will be filing a complaint about you with the attorney general of the state of New York. Have a good day.

The Books of My Life: The Dawn of Everything

 

Social scientists over the years have conceptualised societal evolution in a number of ways. In the late 19th and into the 20th century many social scientists argued (and many ethnocentrically inclined amateurs still do) that all human societies evolved from hunter-gatherer societies to horticultural societies to agricultural societies and finally to modern industrial technological societies in succession. For polemicists wedded to this approach it was the last societal form, the industrial, that was the zenith and pinnacle of human and human societal evolution, a conclusion not surprising given that those who made such claims lived in “modern” societies and saw their own modern industrial societies, modern technological societies, and modern political societies as the best of all possible societal worlds (without any of the irony associated with such a statement). Those still engaged in hunting and gathering, horticulture, and agriculture were seen, in this linear conception of societal evolution, as remnants of societal worlds gone by and as possible guides as to what humans and human societies were like the the past before writing evolved (the ethnographic analogy, a metaphor or allegorical that still underlies a lot of bioanthropological studies of prehistoric humans past). 

Given the criticism that the linear model of societal evolution was too ethnocentric, too imperial, and too unilinear many later social scientists ditched the unilinear model of societal evolution for others that were regarded as less unilinear and more, at least theoretically anyway, multilinear. One model of societal evolution that has become popular in historical sociological and historical circles is one that hypothesises that human societies have evolved from the hunter-gatherer society form to the agricultural society form (small scale and large scale), to the modern society form, and to the postmodern society form. In this model, it is argued, all of these societal forms and subforms within societal forms, which can still be found across the globe, were, in Darwinian fashion, adaptations to specific environments. So, it was maintained, no one societal form was or is any better or superior to any other. With this assumption the proponents of this view believed they had conquered human ethnocentrism (Icarian hubris).

Both the unilinear model of societal evolution and the multilinear model of societal evolution held that  societal evolution was driven primarily by economic change. In both models the change from hunting and gathering, to agriculture, to industry, and finally to a service and retail economy is conceptualised not only as driving societal change but also, as a consequence, the driving force behind demographic change (though it is often admitted that demographic change can and often does simultaneously drive economic change), political change, cultural change, and geographic or environmental change. 

Though it still dominated societal evolution discourse the hunter-gatherer/agriculture/modernity/postmodernity model is not the only model of societal evolution, change, or development out there in social science land. There is another model of societal change that is less tied to changes in economic modes of production than the hunter-gatherer, agriculture/modernity/postmodernity paradigm. This alternative model of societal evolution, one that is particularly prevalent in anthropological circles, focuses on kinship structures and political forms and sees the latter, in particular, as the driving force of societal evolution or development. In this approach to societal development it is held that there have been four forms of human societies: band societies, tribal societies, and chieftain societies. Sociologists and political scientists might add monarchical societies, authoritarian societies, autocratic and totalitarian societies, and democratic societies into the mix since they, historically speaking, have been more interested in “modern" and "postmodern” “complex” societies than have anthropologists traditionally.

In this politics oriented model band societies are those societies which engage in hunting and gathering, which are demographically small consisting of 20 to 40 members, and which are largely egalitarian. Tribal societies, in this model, are seen as those societies which engage in horticulture, which farm often with ploughs but which do not engage in irrigation projects. Tribal societies in this model are seen as largely egalitarian but only for the in-group, the in-kin group which is defined on the basis of lineage or totemic identity, save when it comes to age and gender. Tribal societies, so the story goes, generally live in more permanent settlements and are characterised by Big Men who sponsor and create the conditions for those in the in-group to engage in rituals and feasts. Ritual specialist roles and craft specialist roles in tribal societies are generally part-time “positions”. Demographically, tribal societies are larger than band societies. Chieftain societies, in this theoretical model, are grounded in conceptions of kin identity as well but chieftain societies are characterised by hierarchical ranks and greater inequality compared to band or tribal societies. This is because, so the argument goes, they live in permanent communities and engage in agriculture which produces a surplus that can be expropriated from the peasants by the few elites who  dominate ranked or hierarchical chieftain societies. Many chieftain societies, polemicists for this model claim, are also often characterised by slavery. 

In their comparative anthropological history The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (New York: Picador, 2021) cultural anthropologist David Graeber and comparative archaeologist David Wengrow, argue that all of these models of societal evolution are problematic for a variety of reasons. They are all, Graeber and Wengrow argue, too ethnocentric, too teleological, too technologically reductive, and too lacking in empirical support. Though the proponents of the multilinear and anthropological models, argue Graeber and Wengrow, claim that they are not teleological and are multilinear rather than unilinear, they still, if more subtly perhaps than the proponents of the unilinear societal and human evolution, continue to assume that their society is the culmination of societal evolution, something that makes these models the kissing cousins kin of the unilinear models of economic (e.g., Rostow) and political (e.g., Fukuyama with his shades of Hegel) evolution that were prominent in Western intellectual culture in the 1950s and 1960s and in the immediate aftermath of the-Cold War in the “modern” West.

The problems with this approach should be obvious anyone with a college education but far too often is not. Empirically speaking, not every society is part of the core, the rich industrial and postindustrial “democratic" nations of the West, which are implicitly and sometimes explicitly regarded, by Western promoters of the models of societal evolution we have been discussing, the best of all possible economic, political, and technological worlds, a notion that is, of course, inherently ethnocentric and inherently teleological (“natural" landmarks on the road to the radiant future). Additionally, the models of societal evolution we have been discussing tend to either elide or forget the fact that Western imperialism, Western geographic imperialism, Western political imperialism, Western economic imperialism, and Western cultural imperialism, and the power and authority associated with all of those forms of imperialism and the globalisation of that power, have played in remaking large parts of the globe in the Western image via coercion or force and convincement, something that can take many forms including the use of loans and aid to promote Western political, Western economic, and Western cultural forms. Finally, these models of societal evolution forget or elide the fact that the archaeological record does not, as Graeber and Wengrow point out, show a straight line from foraging to agriculture to an increase in inequality to the rise of the city to the advent of the state and later nation-state, to the rise of private property and to the advent of writing. In fact, as Graeber and Wengrow point out, there is ample archaeological evidence for the intentional abandonment of states and the inequalities and abuses of power that have often characterised them.

While Graeber and Wengrow give readers an excellent summary of the current state of the art of the archaeological record, a summary that undermines all linear and teleological models of societal evolution, from the stone age to the bronze age, it is their conception of freedom and power and the relations between the two that is perhaps the most interesting, innovative, and enlightening aspects of their book. Graeber and Wengrow argue that there are and have been, historically speaking, three elementary or primal forms of freedom which have existed in human communities since the beginning, the freedom to move, the freedom to disobey. and the freedom to create new social realises, all of which humans have engaged in for millennia via migration and through schismogenesis, a concept they borrow from anthropologist Gregory Bateson. As Graeber and Wengrow note, early humans could and did create societies that were intentionally different from those of their neighbours. If, for example the neighbours of one cultural group were hierarchical and rent through by power imbalances and hierarchical authority structures, the other culture could and did, as they did in the culture regions of Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, for instance, create societies that promoted greater equality and greater freedom of choice. 

Over time, Graeber and Wengrow argue, these three elementary forms of freedoms could be and sometimes were curtailed by the three elementary forms of power they delineate: sovereignty, bureaucratic power, and charismatic power, all different forms of power that have different historical roots, a fact that problematises the social evolutionist claim that with large scale agriculture came larger numbers of people and, as a consequence big men who were often considered to have some relationship to the divine, who thus were able to dominate, control, and expropriate surpluses from those they ruled along with bureaucracies that helped big men dominate, control and expropriate the surpluses of their populations.

Needless to say, those of us who live in the core nations today with their vast inequalities, their vast expropriations, their vast and supposedly impersonal bureaucracies, their vast surveillance apparatuses, their vast militaries, their vast border patrol militaries, and their passports have lost the freedom to move with ease (something corporate driven globalisation policies do as well), much of our freedom to disagree, given the prominence and success of their socialisation for conformity, a socialisation for conformity aided and abetted by media bureaucracies and educational bureaucracies, and the police-surveillance apparatuses that almost all core nations now have in order to, at least in part, control their populations. In a message of hope Graeber and Wengrow argue that despite these powerful forms of social control we humans still have the freedom, the potential freedom, to be creative and to escape from the golden and gilded cages that trap us. But can we? Will we? I am not so sure. Stay tuned.

The Dawn of Everything is an important and impressive synthesis of anthropological, sociological, and archaeological evidence melded to social theory. It is, a book that is sure to be one of the classics of comparative history and wholistic anthropology. I can’t recommend this sure to be seminal book enough. It is a must read for anyone interested in history, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, human evolution, political science, and social change, and represents, along with the works of Noah Yuval Harari, Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker—all of whom Graeber and Wengrow critique for their teleologism—and others a much needed return to the grand historical and theoretical sociology, anthropology, and history of Karl Mark, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim. Essential.