An Ethnology of Control

How the Structure of Dependence in Modern Society Has Misinformed the Western Mind

by

Peter Harrison

1st edition, February 14, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-9832982-1-2

Paperback, TSI Press

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About the Book

With remarkable clarity, Peter Harrison reveals how the assumed escape from ‘savagery’ the Enlightenment promised was ever only the transformation of humans into commodities freely available in a market: independence and autonomy being replaced by dependence and drudgery. His interpretation of the lifestyles of peoples who lived both before the rise of the State and in societies that still live independently of State administration is both original and non-patronizing. Within this framework is developed a convincing challenge to the orthodoxy that the feud in pre-State societies was a means of social control, and this leads into a radical re-evaluation of violence in non-State societies. Inspired by the profound critiques of capitalism posed by Indigenous perspectives, it also serves to chronicle the left’s persistent inability to provide a theory that does not ultimately align itself with the paternalist and controlling ethos at the core of Enlightenment, progressivist, and expansionist values.

Keywords

Indigenous, Anthropology, Marxism, Violence, Knowledge, Community, Peace, Economy, Feud, Labor

Readership

All fascinated by the social organization of hunter-gatherer lifestyles and anyone interested in the implications for the radical left of Marx’s insistence on humanity’s defining animal disposition.

Classification

Critical Social Theory; Sociology & Anthropology; Economics & Political Science; Global Studies & Political Economy

About the Author

Peter Harrison, has long involvement in far left, anarchist and Indigenous discourse and is co-author of Nihilist Communism: A Critique of Optimism in the Far Left (Ardent Press, 2009). He currently lives and works in Australia. For more information or to schedule an interview with Peter Harrison please email at: media@transformativestudies.org



Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction: Four Preludes

Prelude One

Prelude Two

Prelude Three

Prelude Four: Autonomic

1. Notes for the Imagining of the Paradoxical Contra-Historical Society

Interesting Materialism versus Comedic Teleology

Imagining the Tribal Zone

The Neoplastic, or Extrasomatic, State

History Idling

2. The Emancipation of Production

The Productivist Discourse

They Know Not What They Do

Replacing People with Sheep

Communal Production

Production for Use

Drudgery

Centrifugal Society

3. The Emancipation of Labour

The Liberation of Things

The Precipice of Sovereignty

The Cruelty of Humanism

Population Mystifications

Not Enduring

4. Community and Community-ism

Data and Discombobulation

Community-ism

Gulag Channel

Community Style

5. An Outline of a Theory of Limits

Fields and Fences

The Faulty Mechanics of Hope

6. Dependence

Accidental Community

Real Movement-ism Reloaded

Immaterial Community

7. Violence

A Passionate Devotion

Violence, Morality, and Other-Control

Feuding as Social Control

Holy Freedom’s Laws

Violence and Civilisation

Circumscription and Unification

Enemy Relations

The Gender Factory

Refractory Logic

Self-Control and Pain

8. The Prize of Peace and Leaderless Leninism

The Philosopher’s Truncheon

For Violence?

You Don’t Know What’s Good for You

9. Perspective (with Willie Brim) 211

Perspective and Soul

Modes of Living

Villages in Time

Civilisation and Capitalism

Marching from Left to Right with Rousseau and Hobbes

Indigeneity and Capitalism

10. Knowledge

The Indigenous Obstacle

Knowing and Learning

Reconciliation/Empowerment/Subjugation?

Gift or Similitude



Bibliography

Index