Beyond "The Original Affluent Society": A Culturalist Reformulation [and Comments and Reply]

Towards a Synthesized Critique of Neoliberal Biodiversity Conservation

“…As Graeber and others argue, however, this acts to throw the baby out with the bath water*i.e., to deny that there ever can exist qualitatively different assumptions for organizing social and ''society-with nature'' relationships. Also see Nurit Bird-David (1992).…”

Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy

“…The above discussion shows that many ethnographers and others have observed strong expressions of contentment by people in band society (Turnbull 1968: 136;Bird-David 1992;Kelly 1995: 16;Hill and Hurtado 1996: 78-9;Tacitus 1996 ;Lee and Daly 1999: 4). Unwillingness to be incorporated into larger-scale societies is a running theme among stateless peoples (Marshall III 2002;Marshall III 2005;Brown 2007;Scott 2009).…”

“…She fi nds that hunter-gatherers are confi dent that nature is abundant and that it will share its fruits with them in normal circumstances, even though they know they will face occasional hard times. This confi dence is deep and refl ected in a widely held view among foragers of the earth as a "giving environment" which seems to always allow the certainty of at least a suffi cient amount of food, if not for maximum health, then at least for survival (Turnbull 1968: 136;Bird-David 1992;Lee and Daly 1999: 4). Few people in the slums around the world today working 70-hour workweeks or foraging in the garbage of others view their environment as giving.…”

“…They make group decisions collectively (Leacock 1998: 144). They can count on each other to share food even if they are unable to produce food to share in return (Bird-David 1990;Bird-David 1992;Hawkes et al 2001). Many ethnographers have remarked on the excessively social nature of band societies.…”

“…(Sahlins 1974: 89) Sahlins, as mentioned above, is controversial. His claims about "the original affl uence society" were exaggerated, but Nurit Bird-David (1992) argues that anthropologists never dismissed him entirely, because on this issue he "had a point." She fi nds that hunter-gatherers are confi dent that nature is abundant and that it will share its fruits with them in normal circumstances, even though they know they will face occasional hard times.…”