↑David Graeber‘s book ‘↑Debt: The First 5,000 years‘ (2011) just arrived on my desk. Unfortunately at the moment I don’t have the time to sit down and read it in peace. Nevertheless I skimmed through it, read a bit here and there, and then couldn’t help but beginning to read it from the front cover on.
    It won’t be long and Graeber will owe me hours :-)
    There are books with which I do maintain a love-hate relationship. While reading those I constantly do have the impression that there really is something more than worthwhile, original, and important in them. But I have a tremendously hard time to really grasp those ideas I sense. That’s because under pains I have to labor myself through overly complicated prose. Have to struggle with a style which is on the brink of illegibility, sometimes well beyond. In particular I do have in mind ↑Foucault‘s ‘Archaeology of Knowledge’ (1972 [1969]), ↑Saïd‘s ‘Orientalism’ (1978), and ↑Bourdieu‘s ‘The Logic of Practice’ (1990 [1980]). Foucault is the worsed. There can’t be a shadow of a doubt about the quality of the ideas contained. But the style of writing is abysmal.
    Not so with Graeber’s ‘Debt.’ Quite to the contrary. Although the ideas, knowledge, and conclusions Graeber conveys are far from being simple or trivial, his prose is clear as glass and perfectly understandable. Above that ‘Debt’ is an interesting, even thrilling read. Deep insights, perfectly readable for both, the specialized anthropological audience, and the wider public.
    But Graeber can’t be reduced to the role of plebeian tribune. He is the kind of engaged intellectual ↑Sartre and Bourdieu demanded. And his is an engaged anthropology of the kind ↑Thomas Hylland Eriksen demands (2006). Plus, Graeber is a high profile scholar praised by the elder sages. ↑Maurice Bloch ↑wrote about Graeber: ‘His writings on anthropological theory are outstanding. I consider him the best anthropological theorist of his generation from anywhere in the world. I have never made such a strong claim for anybody in any reference I have written.’
    After ↑Margaret Mead and ↑Clifford Geertz it seems that anthropology again has a superstar, being read and being effective far beyond the boundaries of anthropology and academia. Deservedly so.