His work both inspired and transformed people’s thinking, and encouraged many of us to hope that our research will support real change. And he was an incredible teacher, inspiring everyone who listened: For one course a few years ago he put Gregory Bateson’s Naven on the reading list, and over the summer break read just about everything ever written on Naven. LSE Anthropology @LSEAnthropology is world famous and world leading. The lecture notes he prepared went to about a dozen pages for each week, full of his trademark humour and insight. I would like to give my condolences to his family and his friends. Sherry Ortner reminded us some years ago that we live in a time of “Dark Anthropology and its Others”, and David was perhaps the most vibrant exception to this rule. Instead, technology has been marshalled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. Between our paths crossing at Yale and The LSE, he introduced me to like-minded anthropologists around the world – and never turned down a cup of coffee and a chat when we were on the same continent. In any instance, knowing someone first as a teacher, then a friend, and then 15 years later, in a new country, as a colleague…in any instance, that is rare and special. He opened my eyes to the inconsistencies, delusions and misconceptions of the modern world and their incalculable costs to humanity, all through his writings and whatever piece of footage of him ends up on Youtube. He was engaging and encouraging and I feel very privileged to have met him. Every conversation with David watered my imagination and helped me think deeply about how to “fly and still land” as he’d tell me. We will miss you. David was a public intellectual, a best-selling author, an influential activist and anarchist. I remember him as a teacher because he apologized when he returned my first paper—not because he gave me an A-, but because the paper had gotten wet; he had graded it in the bath! After a million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer. To accept cookies, click continue. Rest in peace comrade, and solidarity forever. He will be sorely missed, what a guy. Several years later, we ran into each other (on the mezzanine again). He talking about this was helpful. I never met him but his work is influential in our department at the University of Cape Town. A professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics, Graeber studied anarchism and anti-capitalist movements, and challenged the world to respond to the plight of Kurds in the Middle East. David Graeber, anarchist, ‘anti-leader’ of Occupy Wall Street and LSE professor – obituary He was credited with the Occupy movement slogan 'We are the 99 per cent' but won a … I always read his notes on the meetings of the Academic Board with delight – not because these are generally fun, but because David saw them for what they often were: a gathering of taskmasters, box tickers, and flunkies. We very hope that his messages how things really are, will contribute to the understanding of modern societies. Thank you, David, for this precious lesson! David was a public intellectual, a best-selling author, an influential activist and anarchist. the LSE website. I was lucky enough to have been taught by David during my Master’s at LSE. The article went viral, crashing the magazine’s website. He was the reason I decided to study Social Anthropology at LSE, and is the reason I am doing my masters. David Graeber was a brilliant example of a radical scholar, writer, activist and public intellectual. He will be Lived through his Works! Condolences to his family and loved ones. His lectures and the conversations I had with him were often both confusing and inspiring. Professor David Graeber We are shocked and saddened to learn of David Graeber’s death. It’s just too institutional! Apart from the experience of reading David, I got to know him as a member of a group that brought together activists from XR with academics interested in rebuilding macroeconomics. Because he was David I always forgave him immediately , I’ll miss him walking into our office, usually in his socks and sporting tweed trousers accompanied by a cheerful waistcoat. David was the one scholar — the one friend from afar — whose work I kept up with on an almost daily basis after leaving university. David Rolfe Graeber (/ ˈ ɡ r eɪ b ər /; February 12, 1961 – September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist, anarchist activist, and author known for his books Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011), The Utopia of Rules (2015) and Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (2018). David acquired a global reputation for his role in the Occupy Movement in New York in 2011, his involvement in numerous other protests and movements, and his visits to the autonomous Kurdish Rojava area in northern Syria. My father had also worked in a factory. I am glad to have known him and proud that he generously acknowledged us, the admin folk in the office, in his book, Bullshit Jobs. Supervisions/office hours were always short but hearty. As a department bureaucrat always nagging David about a task he needed to complete or a deadline he had missed, I sometimes worry I might have helped inspire some of his recent work. October 11 @ 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm BST « Graeberfest Picnic in Potternewton Park, Leeds; North Carolina Joins David Graeber Memorial Carnival (remote event) » In solidarity with the Intergalactic Memorial Carnival for David Graeber, we are organizing an informal gathering of our own for Anthropology students at the LSE. the LSE website. He met us all as persons and academics. David’s absence from our future is an incalculable loss. I am not an anthropologist, nor an LSE member. David was passionate about LSE and was made an Honorary Fellow in 1995 in recognition of his devoted service to the School – which included founding the Emeritus Governors. Dearest David, comrade, colleague, revolutionary thinker. As well as a post-fieldwork teacher, David was a “mock-examiner” during the final stages of my PhD. I love his essay on belief and the ontological turn–it had the ferocity and clarity of the debates that brought me into the field. For all of this, I am grateful to him and I will keep him in my thoughts. We created giant, overarching institutions to protect creditors against debtors; we’ve had nothing but debt crises ever since.”. I’m pretty certain I would have not taken up a PhD in anthropology were it not for reading Fragments and Possibilities back in 2009, when I was taught by David at Goldsmiths. He took aim at the pointless bureaucracy of modern life, memorably coining the term ‘b*****t jobs’. When I attended the first lecture with him at Goldsmiths in the late 00s, it was clear that he had many of the sort of insights I had expected anthropologists would have and his style was inimitable. David’s life is a call to be courageous and kind. David is revoluntionary anthropologist in our age. David’s untimely death, and the cessation of his sparkling, original and engaging writing, is a sad loss for Anthropology. Thank you for making that place a home for him. i saw his last video on twitter were he looked exhausted and have been wondering weather he was passing on a coded message to all of us in his talk about writing a book about pirates? What made him restless, I think, was his deep, daily and lived awareness of the inequalities and injustices of our world. The New York Times obituary for David is here: September 2020. I am sending deepest condolences to your wife (although we had not met) and closest friends and family. Although David Graeber co-authored the foreword to the first issue of HAU, his association with the project was mostly ornamental.The author of best-sellers Debt: the First 5000 Years and Bullshit Jobs: A Theory he achieved fame as a political activist during the Occupy Wall Street movement. He will be missed. I have lots of great memories of David, but one of my favourites is David meeting my mum at the MSc graduation reception in 2017. You’ll be missed David. It was so shocking to the learning of David’s expire only at 59. As someone said above, Rest In Power. I didn’t know David at all well, but was astounded by his incisive, creative and witty comments on Friday mornings. Completely unique, full of friendly chatter and daily inspiration – sorely missed – we will have to work harder now. What a loss. It felt like he saw something of great value in our muddled first drafts, full of the unprocessed life of recent fieldwork (I wondered if that is partly what excited him). He never pandered, not to anyone, and least of all a child he promised me would grow up to change the world. I’ll never forget his humourous stance on the election campaign at the time. Dear David, Comrade, friend and revolutionary thinker. I’ll also miss David’s even-handed manner in meetings – the way he would arch his eyebrows and nod whilst rocking his head from side to side when I was saying something reasonable, and screw up his face if the suggestion was just a little bit too wild or ill thought-through. Your commitment to brilliantly illustrate to us, anthropology could be, despite the perverse academic culture, continues to inspire us. Rest in power, David. I knew David almost entirely through reading his work. He was a brilliant and original thinker. Your passing is a deep and tragic loss, most of all, to the global struggle against capitalism, which you devoted yourself to, even in your academic world. You are great, smart, and brave, and really good to students.” Until now, I still keep my printed essays with his marks and keep those valuable memories in my mind. David was passionate about LSE and was made an Honorary Fellow in 1995 in recognition of his devoted service to the School – which included founding the Emeritus Governors. David Graeber, who helped organize the Occupy Wall Street movement, has died in Venice, his agent said. He was already a renowned anthropologist. 45 Beziehungen. Rest in Peace. “In the year 1930,” Graeber wrote, “John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. So I had decided I would continue being one. David Graeber, born February 12 1961, died September 2 2020. And while it was sometimes easy to disagree with him on how things work in practice, it was always difficult to disagree with him on how they should work in theory. What an extraordinary ability to inspire thought and action in the world. Graeber taught a course on the theory of value (economy) — and in doing so, taught a lot about the importance of values (moral indicators) — at LSE. My very first encounter with David confirmed not only the power of the discipline but that this was exactly what I wanted to be doing. The modern era, however, had “got it completely backwards. That twinkle in his eye was there at all times, as if he knew something everyone else did not… which, most likely, in most cases, was the case. What a writer, my goodness. It was an honour to have been his student. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. I am glad that I got to meet someone who inspired my mind early in life, but most of all I am happy to have found out that someone whose books have changed a generation, really wanted to write a children’s book and was a person full of whimsy. My heart goes out to his family, friends and his colleagues at LSE. No anthropologist since Margaret Mead has had a similar influence to David Graeber. The experience confirmed his belief in zero government, and his resulting PhD thesis was later published as Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar (2007). David’s sudden death in Venice on September 2 has sent shockwaves through the activist community and the international left more generally. We have lost an extraordinary person and the world is an emptier place without him. c.l.allerton@lse.ac.uk OLD 6.13. On the front line with students David inspired many movements of resistance. His death is a huge loss. I’m absolutely dismayed at his untimely passing. Against those who saw in the writings of Evans-Pritchard some kind of Foucauldian panopticon, David pointed out that EP carefully avoided giving the British colonial authorities the information they wanted, at the same time used his knowledge of local society to prevent the more ‘idiotic abuses’ of the colonial officials. “I have a strange feeling the world is going to be okay. I was expecting to tell him at this year’s Malinowski lecture that I had become a dv advocate. I am immensely sad that that wise flow of insight has now ceased. Yet “bullshit jobs”, proliferated by administrative empire building and “managerial feudalism”, tend to be comfortable, well paid, and to come with a certain social status. I will miss our SDR conversations about all sorts of topics ranging from Malay and Madagascan kingship to the way neuro-linguistic programming was used in the Trump campaign, and whether this represented the ‘dark legacy’ of Gregory Bateson. 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