Thread by @radicalanthro

#Theteatimeofeverything vs actual #thedawnofeverything
🧵No.4 on Ch.4, immediate return, James Woodburn, yay-they-agree-on-deep-rooted human aversion to dominance (thanks guys!)🥰 And getting stuck, plus ritual 'property'. Lots here 1/

Not much to argue with in the 1st part. @davidgraeber and @davidwengrow only refer to Upper Pal again, but we'd strongly agree that the #HumanRevolution in Africa, taking us beyond Africa involved transcontinental chains of connection. We've only got more parochial ever since 2/

@davidgraeber @davidwengrow As they say (pp.124-5), ever-growing parochialism makes getting stuck under domination more likely. Global horizons of free movement prevent that. We'll leave aside quibbles on egalitarianism (NOT 'being the same') and go to James Woodburn, expert of egalitarian societies 3/

James identified the mechanisms underpinning egalitarianism, finding that the most egalitarian societies were 'immediate return' (with no surplus or storage) as against 'delayed return' where people became trapped into dependencies for resources. 4/

G + W find this terribly disheartening (p.129) because, they say, it implies only the 'very simplest foragers' (incl. African h-gs, + some S. Asian groups) could ever be free and equal, and the rest of us are doomed. But hold on. James says it's conscious choice to be IR
5/

Immediate return h-gs are eating everything up, sharing it, choosing NOT to work extra to stockpile to prevent anyone gaining control of resources, and greater power. Suppose 'immediate return' is NOT causative here. What if being egalitarian allows a society to do this?
6/

G + W usually celebrate people's intentional choices, except for some reason they keep hating on choices made by African h-gs to remain resolutely egalitarian! James always describes egalitarianism as 'politically assertive'; it can't be taken for granted.
7/

Egalitarian people can AFFORD to be IR because they know stuff is going to be shared, they can eat everything today because the storage is in the social relations. It's not because they are miserably impoverished, they live in abundance.
8/

RAG has always been doubtful about the causality of 'immediate return' from an evolutionary perspective because, here, take a look at a real IR society, these chimps tearing apart a colobus monkey, eating it alive. No delayed return here! Certainly NOT egalitarian either
9/

Humans don't only produce, they have exchange economies, producing for others. These G/wi hunters carrying a huge gemsbok a long way across the scorching Kalahari suddenly do not look so IR compared to those chimps.
10/

And this Hadza hunter is carefully cutting up a bush pig, having taken it off the man who shot it, according to special 'epeme' rules of distribution. Portions are stowed by non-hunters for later consumption. IR in itself does not explain these rules.
11/

James realised there were problems for 'immediate return' economy determining egalitarianism, because certain Australian Indigenous groups showed just as much IR but were gerontocracies (rule by elders, imposed in male initiations) so NOT egalitarian. 12/

G + W give an example of such a society, the Aranda (or Arrernte), on p.162 with an excerpt from Strehlow's ethnography on the imposition of circumcision and then subincision on youths to ensure obedience to elders. It takes a lot to do this because, as G + W admit, p.132...
13/

humans 'do appear to have begun [their history] with a self-conscious aversion to being told what to do'. In an apparently IR economy, Arrernte elders could control young hunters by controlling access to wives through intricate kinship and marriage proscriptions.
14/

James got round this anomaly by arguing that the elders were operating an effective 'delayed return' economy because they performed rituals of increase (Intichiuma) for totemic species in ceremonial exchange with other clans. But this was a bit of a trick, and leaves open...
15/

...leaves open the idea that in fact ritual power and performance (which G + W call ritual 'property') may have a more decisive role in egalitarianism or its absence. James explored ritual as the pathway for transition from immediate to delayed return economy.
16/

Actually these are probably !Xo hunters!

The Hadza, most famously associated to James Woodburn, provided a case in point, where men initiated as hunters gained apparent ritual privilege of secretly eating meat from epeme (large, fatty) animals. Women could not come near under pain of punishment or illness.
17/

But James acknowledged that Hadza men did not gain control over women this way. Hadza women maintained significant autonomy, and they had ritual pathways of resistance. Their maitoko initiation dramatically reenacts stories of when women held the epeme secrets. Fightback!
18/

G + W ask 'How did we get stuck in systems of dominance?' Not 'when did chiefs or kings or epeme men first appear?' but when was it no longer possible to 'simply laugh them out of court?' A Stuckometer measuring 'stuckness' is a brilliant idea for assessing egalitarianism.
19/

The best way to measure stuckness could be asking 'Can you always laugh at anyone you like?' especially women at men! There'll be fine grade differences in relative egalitarianism. BaYaka forest h-g women pretty much 'yeah!'. Hadza women a bit more tricky at times
20/

Anywhere near Arrernte men's secrets, nope.
On p.158, G + W talk about men's secrets, in the form of sacred trumpets, flutes bullroarers etc, said to be voices of the spirits, with which men terrorise women. But with African h-g groups, the pattern is women sing/dance back!
21/

In Turnbull's famed ethnography of Mbuti ritual The Forest People he realised that far from women having to hide and cower from men's Molimo, at a certain point an old lady led an army of initiate Elima girls to take over singing of molimo songs, and stomp out the men's fire
22/

So if you talk about men's molimo without women's elima, or for BaYaka men's ejengi without women's ngoku, or for the Hadza men's epeme without maitoko, you're missing the lesson about how not to get stuck! Sorry G + W, it IS African h-gs who teach this to us. The lesson is..
23/

...egalitarianism resides in women's fightback. Women's ritual power and performance (which G + W strangely call 'property') is what creates and maintains egalitarianism. It's not IR economy, it's whether women have the solidarity and collectivity to dance the men out
24/

G + W write (p.162) "behaviour observed in ritual contexts takes exactly the opposite form to the free and equal relations that prevail in ordinary life" Only within such contexts do sacred forms of property exist, and "strict and top-down hierarchies" get enforced.
25/

Why does an anarchist never imagine 'bottom-up' hierarchies? reverse-dominant ritual 'property'? Possibly G + W just can't recognise this because the h-g women who are NOT stuck are having such a whale of a time, laughing and having fun! But they still make the rules!
26/

If we are talking about women's bodies as their own 'property' being sacred in ritual performance -- yes, we would agree property's origins are as old as the 'sacred'. But women in this mode of ritual power form a collective body, not privatised.
27/

Tomorrow, if time, I may do a bonus thread on Hadza ritual property -- power objects as @SkaanesThea calls them --which, surprise, surprise, belong to women! But to muddle these up with 'private property' is simply peculiar.

Great quote by G + W: 'The freedom to abandon one's community, knowing one will be welcome in faraway lands; the freedom to shift back and forth, depending on the time of the year; the freedom to disobey authorities without consequence -- all appear to have been simply assumed...

..by our distant ancestors' (pp.132-33)

The only thing we'd change there would be
'depending on the time of the moon'!