Anarchy - Anarchy and Anthropology

Anarchy and Anthropology

Some anarchist anthropologists, such as David Graeber and Pierre Clastres, consider societies such as those of the Bushmen, Tiv and the Piaroa to be anarchies in the sense that they explicitly reject the idea of centralized political authority.

Other anthropologists, such as Marshall Sahlins and Richard Borshay Lee, have repudiated the idea of hunter-gatherer societies being a source of scarcity and brutalization; describing them as "affluent societies".

The evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker writes:

Adjudication by an armed authority appears to be the most effective violence-reduction technique ever invented. Though we debate whether tweaks in criminal policy, such as executing murderers versus locking them up for life, can reduce violence by a few percentage points, there can be no debate on the massive effects of having a criminal justice system as opposed to living in anarchy. The shockingly high homicide rates of pre-state societies, with 10 to 60 percent of the men dying at the hands of other men, provide one kind of evidence. Another is the emergence of a violent culture of honor in just about any corner of the world that is beyond the reach of law. ..The generalization that anarchy in the sense of a lack of government leads to anarchy in the sense of violent chaos may seem banal, but it is often over-looked in today's still-romantic climate.

Some Anarcho-primitivists believe that this concept is used to justify the values of modern industrial society and move individuals further from their natural habitat and natural needs. John Zerzan has noted the existence of tribal societies with less violence than "advanced" societies. Zerzan and Theodore Kaczynski have talked about other forms of violence against the individual in advanced societies, generally expressed by the term "social anomie", that result from the system of monopolized security. These authors do not dismiss the fact that humanity is changing while adapting to its different social realities, but consider the situation anomalous. The two results are (1) that we either disappear or (2) become something very different from what we have come to value in our nature. It has been suggested that this shift towards civilization, through domestication, has caused an increase in diseases, labor, and psychological disorders. In contrast, Pierre Clastres maintains that violence in primitive societies is a natural way for each community to maintain its political independence, while dismissing the state as a natural outcome of the evolution of human societies.