Dr David Graeber MA PhD

David Graeber's original research project focused on relations between former nobles and former slaves in a rural community in Madagascar; it was about magic as a tool of politics, about the nature of power, character, and the meaning of history. He has also worked extensively on value theory, and has recently completed a major research project on social movements dedicated to principles of direct democracy, direct action, and has written widely on the relation (real and potential) of anthropology and anarchism. He is currently also working on a project on the history of debt.

In this first in the Made In Goldsmiths podcast series, David Graeber discusses his best-selling book; Debt, the first 5,000 Years with New Statesman economics writer Alex Hern. Listen to the recording here. 

Teaching

Dr David Graeber convenes the BA in Anthropology and Sociology

He teaches the following courses:

• Introduction to Social Anthropology
• Politics, Economics and Social Change / Economic and Political Anthropology I
• Anthropology and Representation

Areas of supervision

Current MPhil/ PhD students supervised:

Luna Glucksberg, Alternative consumption in conventional settings. An anthropological approach

Stephanie Grohman, Not buying it: Urban survival, resistance and the gendered politics of value

Selected publications

2011 Revolutions in reverse. London New York: Minor Compositions

2011 Debt: The First 5000 Years. Brooklyn, N.Y: Melville House

2009 Direct action: an ethnography. Edinburgh Oakland: AK Press

2007 Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar, Indiana University Press

2005 'Fetishism and Social Creativity, or Fetishes are Gods in Process of Construction' in Anthropological Theory 5(4), pp. 407-438

2005 'La democratie des insterstices', in Revue du MAUSS Semestrielle 26

2001 Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams, Palgrave.