- 135 rue du Faubourg Poissonniere
interphone: Chevalier-Hart
75009 Paris, France - +33684797365
John Keith Hart
University of Cambridge, Centre of African Studies, Department Member
- My intellectual home is the North Atlantic quadrilateral--Britain and France, West Africa, the US and the Caribbean--... moreMy intellectual home is the North Atlantic quadrilateral--Britain and France, West Africa, the US and the Caribbean--that was formed by the slave trade and made the modern world. I am a writer who has lived and worked in 24 countries. My homes are in Paris and Durban. I believe that engaged intellectuals should try to understand and shape emergent world society.
Find 370 papers at my Profile: https://cambridge.academia.edu/JohnKeithHart. Visit my website: https://keithhart.academia.edu/ and 'A better world somewhere': https://johnkeithhart.substack.com/.
A synthesis of my main work in 8 parts starts from https://johnkeithhart.substack.com/p/the-hitmans-dilemma-on-business-personal. A summary of my life's work on the role of economy in this project is at https://johnkeithhart.substack.com/p/economies-connecting-local-and-global.
General:
https://www.academia.edu/97845465/Keith_Harts_Anthropology_Social_Observation_World_History_and_Humanist_Philosophy.
https://www.academia.edu/99766594/The_decline_of_the_West_again_current_affairs_and_historical_analysis_since_2000
https://www.academia.edu/98286552/Deep_explorations_in_transnational_history_whats_the_point.
My philosophy hinges on a human economy with money forms central to it https://www.academia.edu/99447931/Building_the_Human_Economy_Together_introductory_chapter
Money in the making of world society is a lecture in 5 parts starting from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cuu89EmPREA.
https://www.academia.edu/99126941/Human_Economy_as_a_Religious_Project.
https://www.academia.edu/99324737/The_anti_colonial_intellectuals_Thinking_new_worlds; https://www.academia.edu/97504117/Africa_on_my_mind.
https://www.academia.edu/99765658/The_coming_world_crisis_is_here_now
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
An illustrated Lagos interview has a focus relevant to its African readers:
https://bordersliteratureonline.net/globaldetails/keith_hart.
Video interviews cover life up to moving to Paris and Durban 25 years ago:
Part 1 1943-1983: From Manchester via Cambridge to America (2006, 62 mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z8JsVKVJ9M
Part 2.1 1983-1998 Back to Cambridge (2009, 57 mins)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPPxqXGa35k&t=91s
Part 2.2 1986-89 The turning point: Jamaica and C.L.R. James (10 mins)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjQpEtpdHzs
MULTIMEDIA
See me at Ricardo Leizaola's https://www.youtube.com/@arepatv/videos.
Constance Hart helped to compile these pages on three of my main interests
https://www.growkudos.com/projects/a-humanist-approach-to-money-markets-and-technology
https://www.growkudos.com/projects/my-music-the-art-of-movement
https://www.growkudos.com/projects/writing-and-teaching-about-africa-1800-2100 (work in progress).
BOOKS
Self in the World: Connecting Life's Extremes was published in Spring 2022:
https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/HartSelf
https://johnkeithhart.substack.com/p/materials-for-a-proposed-book-on (Marcel Mauss)
Editor: https://www.berghahnbooks.com/series/human-economy.
The Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World and The Hit Man's Dilemma: On business personal and impersonal (2005) are available online:
https://www.academia.edu/43704787/The_memory_bank_book_on_money
https://www.academia.edu/84600911/THE_HIT_MANS_DILEMMA
LIFELONG LEARNING: MY EDUCATION IN RETROSPECT
https://researchfeatures.com/self-world-connecting-lifes-extremes-keith-john-hart/
Life-long learning and modern education
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY6lgyu4nFs
https://www.academia.edu/97762812/LEARNING_REMEMBERING_AND_SHARING
MANCHESTER
https://www.academia.edu/95783361/Manchester_on_my_mind_a_memoir
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY
Self in the World: Connecting Life's Extremes https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/HartSelf.
On international development: a Cambridge perspective (9 parts) from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgF235823HM.
Keith Hart's improvised Cambridge tour: 7 parts from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux7ObPmBPVI&t=69s.
https://www.academia.edu/88348884/Thomas_Clarkson_Cambridge_and_the_Abolition_of_Slavery
https://www.academia.edu/20265273/The_1898_Cambridge_expedition_to_the_Torres_Straits_in_British_social_anthropology
https://www.academia.edu/94550808/Anthropology_and_the_crisis_of_the_intellectuals (with Anna Grimshaw)
https://www.academia.edu/43334273/Decolonizing_Cambridge_University.
DAVID GRAEBER
https://www.academia.edu/44852890/David_Graeber_1961_2020_
https://www.academia.edu/44225307/David_Graeber_and_the_Anthropology_of_Unequal_Society
https://www.academia.edu/65485694/Comment_on_David_Graeber_Debt_The_First_5_000_Years
https://www.academia.edu/82800480/Contribution_to_a_round_table_on_David_Graeber
https://www.academia.edu/48898491/Anthropology_as_a_revolutionary_project_David_Graebers_political_legacy
MY MENTOR, C.L.R. JAMES
https://www.academia.edu/97324744/Nine_papers_on_C_L_R_James_the_Caribbeans_leading_thinker_of_the_last_centuryedit
In the last half-century humanity has begun to form a world society. Its engine (and possibly its means of destruction) is widely believed to be capitalism. But the history of money is much more than capitalism. We must look to that... more
In the last half-century humanity has begun to form a world society. Its engine (and possibly its means of destruction) is widely believed to be capitalism. But the history of money is much more than capitalism. We must look to that history for ways of repairing the damage that modern money has done before it is too late. So where are we in the history of money? Is capitalism nearing its end ('late capitalism') or just beginning as a multi-sited global phenomenon ('one-world capitalism')? Has the bourgeois revolution been replaced in our time by a reversion to the Old Regime that it once conquered? The origins of our times According to writers as varied as John Locke and Karl Marx, ours is an age of money, a transitional phase in the history of humanity. Capitalism is the organization of society by and
The two parts that follow were written in 2001 and 2003, when I was teaching for a term near Chicago and the Iraq war was launched. The first is rather sententious, the second a series of episodes that I participated in and observed. The... more
The two parts that follow were written in 2001 and 2003, when I was teaching for a term near Chicago and the Iraq war was launched. The first is rather sententious, the second a series of episodes that I participated in and observed. The numbering of the sections reflects the chronological sequence of when they were written. Substack shows the most recent post first and I prefer reading them backwards: from the most contemporary into the past, a method of extension from concrete to abstract, local to global, with the summary as conclusions, having not seen the trailer in advance of the movie. You choose.
Covid-19 was a historic moment of rupture in human affairs. The flu pandemic left 50 million dead, but apparently with few political consequences. I ask here if, three years after the first lockdowns, Covid-19 should be thought of as a... more
Covid-19 was a historic moment of rupture in human affairs. The flu pandemic left 50 million dead, but apparently with few political consequences. I ask here if, three years after the first lockdowns, Covid-19 should be thought of as a revolution, strongly linked to the economic collapse and threat of world war. The first part has extracts from a post written in the first lockdown, with some thoughts on revolution and recall of growing up in Britain after WW2. I describe life in Paris during the first lockdown of spring 2020 and consider why I preferred life in then to being out in the world. For some of us, it was a time to reflect on the pros and cons of this period and normal life no longer seemed inevitable. The second part turns to whether Covid-19 was a revolution, citing Lenin and CLR James. As the most disruptive event of my lifetime, it did seem to be a decisive break with the past. It may have unleashed a world crisis more severe than the violence and destruction suffered by the bulk of humanity in the last century; or just a less dramatic stage in social evolution.
Research Interests:
'Preface to the coming world crisis' was written in late 2016 after Britain’s shock Brexit vote and the election of Trump as president. It bears comparison with this update written in the world of 2024 2022-24 after Putin’s invasion of... more
'Preface to the coming world crisis' was written in late 2016 after Britain’s shock Brexit vote and the election of Trump as president. It bears comparison with this update written in the world of 2024 2022-24 after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and in the global economic crisis, when the prospects for world war seem closer now. A recent essay, 'Money and markets after capitalism: toward a new humanism for world society' gives a full account of my position now. **** The world economy is more integrated than in the last Great Depression. Central banks since 2008 have been obsessed with easy money; the present debt crisis if the first truly global one in history. The present crisis has been building since the neoliberal counter-revolution against post-war social democracy and socialism in 1980, when complacent western voters handed over government to the rich. Since 2000 there has been an inexorable move towards democratic deficit everywhere, fueled by plutocracy, autocracy, xenophobia, the replacement of equal citizenship by identity politics, the disempowerment of the working and middle classes, a lawless global money circuit and a collapse of ethical standards in the traditional and new social media. The debt crisis follows four decades of fake credit boom, when leading western central banks lost control of money and turned to maintaining asset prices for the benefit of the corporations and billionaires. We need to develop a perspective on 1800-2100 as a single period. Western progressives must do more than react to the latest news, while reaching out for allies where most of the people live.
Research Interests: African Studies, Comparative Politics, Political Economy, British History, Revolutions, and 11 moreEconomic Anthropology, World History, Neoliberalism, First World War, World War II, Financial Crisis of 2008/2009, Current Affairs, World Economy, Economic Crisis, United States, and Counter-revolution
This essay was published in the year of the Lehman financial crash as a critical assessment of Karl Polanyi’s work. With the benefit of hindsight today, my critique has become more damning. His master concept for capitalism as a... more
This essay was published in the year of the Lehman financial crash as a critical assessment of Karl Polanyi’s work. With the benefit of hindsight today, my critique has become more damning. His master concept for capitalism as a “self-regulating market economy” never reflected a Victorian society based on a reactionary alliance between capitalists and the traditional enforcers in government from the 1860s. Polanyi missed its political and bureaucratic foundations. He could not foresee the postwar revival of the "free market" under the political supervision of the United States, prepared at Bretton Woods at the same time as The Great Transformation was published. When complacent western voters handed over government to plutocracy around 1980, a socially responsible form of industrial capitalism reverted to rentier political corruption. This now resembles the Old Regime that the bourgeois revolution was supposed to have ended for good.
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Africa is held back by the internal confusion of its regional associations. Classical liberalism offers an answer: build the widest possible area of protected free trade and movement, with minimal and harmonized regulation by the... more
Africa is held back by the internal confusion of its regional associations. Classical liberalism offers an answer: build the widest possible area of protected free trade and movement, with minimal and harmonized regulation by the authorities. Africans must develop their own transnational associations to combat those who would deny them self-development. Proposals for integration of trade and finance have taken at the African Union; but this means relying on the political class that has failed Africans. The boundaries of free commerce and of political intervention should be pushed beyond the limits of existing sovereignties. The Southern African Development Community is also mired in nationalist politics, a plethora of tariff arrangements, and bilateral deals. Stability, development and democracy will only be achieved in when a regional hegemon is prepared to underwrite these objectives. South Africa’s economic fate is bound up with the rest of the continent. Its African National Congress government has so far sought to disguise its economic failings by pitting its own citizens against African immigrants. But this is a young country and, if Africa’s population explosion is to pay economic dividends, stronger regional systems—with the active involvement of civil society associations—must overcome the fragmentation of 55 weak nation-states.
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The main problem facing humanity is the consolidation of private property by transnational corporations that are increasingly able to shape emergent world society independently of national governments. This essay has ten sections: 1. The... more
The main problem facing humanity is the consolidation of private property by transnational corporations that are increasingly able to shape emergent world society independently of national governments. This essay has ten sections: 1. The relationship between commerce and private property. 2. John Locke's political philosophy of liberal democracy. 3. The bulk of private property is held by huge impersonal entities, nation-states and corporations. A brief history of the rise of the modern business corporation follows. 4. Private property has not only evolved from individual ownership to predominately collective forms; but its main point of reference has also shifted from “real” to “intellectual” property, that is from material objects to ideas. 5. I offer some reflections on my relationship to intellectual property. How has this affected my own writing and publishing strategies today? 6. A history of intellectual property features Lysander Spooner who coined the term. 7. The US is the prime mover behind the spread of IP today, but it stayed out of international copyright agreements until late in the last century. 8. The struggle over IP constitutes the main contradiction of capitalism today, because the digital revolution has boosted information services whose reproduction is free or nearly so. 9. The issue is how to restore the distinction between real and artificial persons in law. 10. Transnational corporations are the main threat to liberal democracy today, while upholding a travesty of Locke’s original conception of it.
Research Interests: Economic History, Intellectual Property, Business & Society, Personality, Digital Media, and 15 moreLiberalism, Economic Anthropology, Politics, International Political Economy, Public International Law, Capitalism, Individualism, Commerce, Democracy and Good Governance, Privatization, World Economy, United States, Nation-State, Transnational Corporations, and John Locke's Political Philosophy
Brexit needs to be placed in the context of the United Kingdom’s violent, sometimes revolutionary history since its foundation 300 years ago. What happens after the UK breaks up has been the primary issue ever since the collapse of... more
Brexit needs to be placed in the context of the United Kingdom’s violent, sometimes revolutionary history since its foundation 300 years ago. What happens after the UK breaks up has been the primary issue ever since the collapse of empire, not Europe as such. There is a creeping constitutional crisis on many fronts, focusing on parliament's prerogatives, the monarchy, the house of lords, the voting system and centralization of everything in London at the expense of the regions. The main political issue, after Scotland's secession and the reunification of Ireland, will be and already is, decentralization from London in England itself--a trend exaggerated by the pandemic and a disastrous 13 years of Tory rule. A new federation for the former UK is likely. Britain is in some ways the most unstable major polity in the world.
Research Interests: Constitutional Law, Political Economy, British History, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Politics, and 15 moreEuropean Union, Parliamentary Studies, Electoral Systems, Social movements and revolution, Ireland, England, Decentralization, Monarchy, United Kingdom, London, Imperialism, Decolonization, Scotland, Devolution, and Brexit
I address here the affinity between money and religion in social life. I have always thought of money as the religion of capitalism. Science began as a form of knowledge opposed to religious mysticism. If science may crudely be said to be... more
I address here the affinity between money and religion in social life. I have always thought of money as the religion of capitalism. Science began as a form of knowledge opposed to religious mysticism. If science may crudely be said to be the drive to know the world objectively and art is mainly a means of subjective self-expression, religion typically addresses both sides of the subject-object relationship by connecting what is inside each of us to the object world that we share with everyone. Religion binds us to an external force; it stabilizes our meaningful interactions with the world, providing an anchor for our volatility. It helps that money, as well as being a means of separating public and domestic life, was always the main bridge between them. Today it is the source of our vulnerability in society and a practical symbol allowing each of us to make an impersonal world meaningful. If money has separated economic spheres and fragmented human experience, it can join what it has divided. The American economist, Paul Samuelson, in his best-selling Economics textbook said that 10 million New Yorkers go to sleep every night confident that the economy will still be there the next morning; but how do they know? Searching for the source of money’s power is like asking how God gets us to believe in Him. Since what we can only ever know is the past, why would anyone accept a claim to guarantee an unknowable future? But we do, because we must; and faith is the glue sticking past and future together in the present. Money as credit and debt forces us to believe in a future we cannot know. That is why money is a form of religious life.
Research Interests:
Contents: Part 1 is a story about fluctuations in the balance of the relationship between impersonal and personal principles of social organization. This draws heavily on Max Weber’s interpretation of western history. Part 2 reviews the... more
Contents: Part 1 is a story about fluctuations in the balance of the relationship between impersonal and personal principles of social organization. This draws heavily on Max Weber’s interpretation of western history. Part 2 reviews the concept of an ‘informal economy/sector’ from its origin in discussions of the Third World urban poor to its present status as a universal feature of economy. Part 3 asks how we might conceive of combining the formal/informal pair with a view to promoting development. In conclusion, I suggest how partnerships between bureaucracy and the people might be made more equal. **** “Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana” (1973), started out as a conference paper in 1971 where I stressed the mobile interdependence of the formal/informal dialectic. In 1972, the “informal sector” was launched through an International Labor Organization study of Kenya led by the organizers of that conference. I was not mentioned. This set the precedent for defining the informal sector/economy as an independent field of the academic and development bureaucracy. I was invited by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research to give a keynote lecture on the informal economy in 2004. This essay in three parts is the result. Nothing I have written since on the subject has its imaginative scope.
Research Interests:
This essay is based on one I published over three decades ago in a collection on trust (Gambetta 1988). It was an ethnographic analysis of 1960s fieldwork done in the slums of Accra, Ghana’s capital city. My original article had three... more
This essay is based on one I published over three decades ago in a collection on trust (Gambetta 1988). It was an ethnographic analysis of 1960s fieldwork done in the slums of Accra, Ghana’s capital city. My original article had three sections. The first was empirical, which I have greatly reduced here. I address there how durable economic relations could be sustained in an urban environment that was marginal to both traditional and modern society. I illustrate with examples the tenor of commercial life and petty enterprise in Nima. I do not highlight trust at first. Only in the third section do I turn to what we may call the philosophy of trust. I focus there on migrants’ attempts to build viable enterprise. An intermediate section bridges the empirical and theoretical parts by exploring the semantics of trust and the set of terms to which it belongs. Anthropology is philosophy with real life examples. I offer here some reflections on what I have since learned, but first a few empirical observations.
Research Interests:
Neoliberal globalization is now challenged by nationalist 'strong men'. Both sides are market fundamentalists, but with opposed priorities. Africa and Europe are complementary actors in a three-act play: the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.... more
Neoliberal globalization is now challenged by nationalist 'strong men'. Both sides are market fundamentalists, but with opposed priorities. Africa and Europe are complementary actors in a three-act play: the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. In 1900, Africa had only 7.5% of the world's population; Europeans had a third. Africa will have two-fifths of the world's population in 2100, Europe 6%. Europe cannot resolve its monetary, economic, and political problems. In 2100, half the world's children 18 years old and under will be African. Today's world crisis is due to the collapse of national capitalism which flourished in the last century. I examine the European Union's institutional flaws, especially the euro. Africa's urban revolution and population explosion will be the leading factor in reshaping world society in this century. Regional integraton of fragmented nation-states could help Africa join the expanding world market for digital cultural services. The early modern liberal revolutions provide historical precedents.
Research Interests: African Studies, Social Anthropology, Globalization, International Trade, Liberalism, and 13 moreFederalism, Capitalism, European Union, Nationalism And State Building, Money and Banking, Neoliberalism, Social movements and revolution, Regional Integration, Population, World Economy, Economic Crisis, Critical Development Studies, and Political Economy and History
This essay was a keynote address given at the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM)’s conference, Mainstreaming Organic Trade: New Frontiers, Opportunities and Responsibilities, Bangkok, November 2003. The... more
This essay was a keynote address given at the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM)’s conference, Mainstreaming Organic Trade: New Frontiers, Opportunities and Responsibilities, Bangkok, November 2003. The participants were mainly drawn from Japan, Thailand, Germany and New York State. The recent World Trade Organization COP27 conference in Cancun reminded me of papers I wrote soon after 2000. Contents: 1. Organic trade? 2. The political economy of food in an unequal world; 3. Community currencies as a means of achieving local economic democracy; 4. Is an international green currency possible?
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Food is the main obstacle to the achievement of a world economy that serves general human interests. This is because our institutions are still those of agrarian civilization now strengthened by the addition of machines. Western farmers... more
Food is the main obstacle to the achievement of a world economy that serves general human interests. This is because our institutions are still those of agrarian civilization now strengthened by the addition of machines. Western farmers after 1945 ensured that agricultural subsidies fed by tax-rich states excluded non-western farmers from their own and world markets, thereby stalling a progressive rural-urban division of labor there, especially in Africa. I take a very long-run view of the history of this problem and conclude that the struggle for supremacy between money and war has not yet been decided. My main theme is the interdependence of urban and rural areas, of society and nature—in global and national economic development, and as a circulatory way of life within and between countries.
Research Interests:
A review article of Paul Durrenberger and Gisli Palsson eds, Gambling Debt: Iceland's Rise and Fall in the Global Economy (2015); David Graeber. Dbt: The First 5,000 Years (3rd edition, 2014); Deborah James, Money for Nothing:... more
A review article of Paul Durrenberger and Gisli Palsson eds, Gambling Debt: Iceland's Rise and Fall in the Global Economy (2015); David Graeber. Dbt: The First 5,000 Years (3rd edition, 2014); Deborah James, Money for Nothing: Indebtedness and Aspiration in South Africa (2014). 1.The limits of naivety; 2. Debt the first 5,000 years; 3. Money for nothing; 4. Gambling debt 5. Betwen ethnography and world history.
Research Interests: Finance, Economic History, Anthropology, Research Methods and Methodology, Ethnography, and 10 moreEconomic Anthropology, South African Politics and Society, Gambling Studies, International Political Economy, World History, Money and Banking, History of Iceland, Fiscal Policy and debt Management, Credit, and David Graeber
The quote comes from Marcel Mauss in 1924 when he published his famous essay on The Gift. This essay came soon after the Lehman crash. Anthropologists should pay more attention to inequality and the politics of distribution in any given... more
The quote comes from Marcel Mauss in 1924 when he published his famous essay on The Gift. This essay came soon after the Lehman crash. Anthropologists should pay more attention to inequality and the politics of distribution in any given historical moment. The fall of national capitalism and the decline of neoliberal globalization require us to study the making of world society. Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi are our best guides. Mauss embraced the social market and was a great financial journalist, not mention a socialist, anthropologist and philosopher. Polanyi's The Great Transformation (1944) is a brilliant and very readable analysis of the historical causes of the 1914-45 global disaster. His prophecy of the postwar global order was wrong. Both Mauss and Polanyi still have a great deal to teach us in the current world crisis of the 2020s.
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One world, or many? Cosmopolitics has two current meanings. The first is Kant's: we all live in the same world and the aim of anthropology is to explore the politics of that fact starting with each human being’s particular knowledge of... more
One world, or many? Cosmopolitics has two current meanings. The first is Kant's: we all live in the same world and the aim of anthropology is to explore the politics of that fact starting with each human being’s particular knowledge of the world and their judgements about it. The second is newer, but echoes Leibniz: human worldviews are not detachable from the network of perspectives and agencies that help sustain them: humanity has no universal register: human lives exist as elements of ethnologically and ontologically diverse cosmoses-in-the-making: there can be no clear translation between these; only a politics of approximation and negotiation. The Open Anthropology Cooperative's first volume of collected papers sets about exploring this fundamental antinomy in contemporary anthropology drawing on a series of individual works originally published and discussed at its online site. Cosmopolitics: Collected Papers of the Open Anthropology Cooperative Volume I, Editors: Justin Shaffner and Huon Wardle.
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Modern ‘anthropology’ has its origins has in the democratic revolutions and rationalist philosophy of the 18th century. The question then was how the arbitrary inequality of the Old Regime might be replaced by an equal society founded on... more
Modern ‘anthropology’ has its origins has in the democratic revolutions and rationalist philosophy of the 18th century. The question then was how the arbitrary inequality of the Old Regime might be replaced by an equal society founded on what all people have in common, their human nature. Both Marx and Engels were profoundly anthropological thinkers and they felt confirmed by the work of L.H. Morgan and Charles Darwin. A claim is made here that Marx was the greatest economic anthropologist of all time. A second section sketches the ‘anthropology of unequal society’ starting with Rousseau and including US anthropology during the Cold War, when Marxist ideas were generally disguised as ‘cultural ecology’, via Engels’ feminist take on Morgan. The article concludes with French structuralist Marxism in the 1960s and 70s and asks why this small band of writers had such a disproportionate but brief effect on the English-speaking academy.
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Humanity is caught between the institutions of agrarian civilization and a machine revolution whose implications we barely understand. In consequence, the world is becomingly rapidly more unequal as we grow closer together. As a result of... more
Humanity is caught between the institutions of agrarian civilization and a machine revolution whose implications we barely understand. In consequence, the world is becomingly rapidly more unequal as we grow closer together. As a result of digitalization, the paper reviews the evidence for such change and considers the future of money. If we are to displace the old regime of agrarian civilisation, the middle-class revolution with which the modern age needs to be revitalized.
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The main event of the last century was the anti-colonial revolution when peoples forced into world society as part of European empires in the nineteenth century sought to establish their independent relationship to it in the twentieth.... more
The main event of the last century was the anti-colonial revolution when peoples forced into world society as part of European empires in the nineteenth century sought to establish their independent relationship to it in the twentieth. Their leaders included intellectuals who were able to persuade the masses to fight for a world from which racist empire had been removed. Their example is important for us since we too need to think and fight for a world fit for all humanity to live in. The sections are 1. Rethinking the world; 2. Resisting alienation; 3. Pan-Africanism: Du Bois, James, and Fanon; 4. Gandhi's world vision; 5. Anthropological visions of world society.
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I explore here the dialectic of formal and informal economy in development discourse. In post-colonial Africa there seems to be a war waged by the bureaucracy on the people; informal economic practices are a kind of democratic resistance.... more
I explore here the dialectic of formal and informal economy in development discourse. In post-colonial Africa there seems to be a war waged by the bureaucracy on the people; informal economic practices are a kind of democratic resistance. Despite the obvious political value of self-organized economy, the bureaucracy is well-suited to large-scale interventions. The task is both to find ways of harnessing the potential of bureaucracy and informality working together, but also to advance thinking about their dialectical movement.
Research Interests:
This talk has four parts. In the first I excavate the revolutionary origins of modern anthropology and place David Graeber (who died recently) as its leading exponent today. In the second I trace my own political trajectory as an... more
This talk has four parts. In the first I excavate the revolutionary origins of modern anthropology and place David Graeber (who died recently) as its leading exponent today. In the second I trace my own political trajectory as an anthropologist. The third part concerns our friendship and David’s political legacy for anthropologists. The last contains reflections on revolution drawing on V.I. Lenin and C.L.R. James.
Research Interests:
We locate the history of South African national capitalism in global developments from the 1860s to the 2010s. Its principal features since its modern inception have until now been mining, acial domination, and an uneven relationship... more
We locate the history of South African national capitalism in global developments from the 1860s to the 2010s. Its principal features since its modern inception have until now been mining, acial domination, and an uneven relationship between the state, finance , and industry. The balance between inside and outside political and economic factors has varied throughout this history, but in all the periods identified here both sides must be considered together. Since its publication, the condition of society has undergone a dramatic collapse. In this light, our conclusions may seem rather mild. South Africa was founded a century ago and we remain optimistic for its future in the medium and long term. Its citizens have tended to think themselves as isolated from the rest of the world, especially from 'the dark continent' of which they are a part. This attitude must change, for Africa's population explosion will be the dominant feature of world society in the coming century and South Africans have an important role to play in this process.
Research Interests:
Marcel Mauss took some time to resume his academic and political duties after the Great War, but the period 1920-1925 was one of intense activity and achievement on all fronts. He assumed Durkheim's responsibility as leader of a depleted... more
Marcel Mauss took some time to resume his academic and political duties after the Great War, but the period 1920-1925 was one of intense activity and achievement on all fronts. He assumed Durkheim's responsibility as leader of a depleted Année Sociologique group and relaunched the journal. He was optimistic that his international socialist politics would bear national fruit and it did. He was also a prolific financial journalist at this time, writing about the exchange rate crisis of 1922-1924. He maintained a Chinese wall between these compartments of his life, briefly combining them in the last chapter of The Gift, which is only a tentative synthesis. This separation of his intellectual and political commitments makes it easier for anthropologists to ignore his politics and, worse, to perpetuate in his name that opposition between market contracts and gifts as economic principles that he wrote his famous essay to refute.
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Prologue: Alvin. Chapter 1 MONEY IN THE MAKING OF HUMANITY: a. On money, machines, and the market; b. At home in the world; c, Reading ‘The Memory Bank’. ***** Chapter 2 THE MACHINE REVOLUTION TODAY: a. A civilization built on machines;... more
Prologue: Alvin. Chapter 1 MONEY IN THE MAKING OF HUMANITY: a. On money, machines, and the market; b. At home in the world; c, Reading ‘The Memory Bank’. ***** Chapter 2 THE MACHINE REVOLUTION TODAY: a. A civilization built on machines; b. Mechanization in the long run; c. Origins of the communications revolution; d. The birth of the internet; e. Between agrarian civilization and the machine revolution. **** Chapter 3 CAPITALISM, MAKING MONEY WITH MONEY: a. The age of money; b. The theory of capitalism; c. The ongoing origins of capitalism; d. The personal face of capitalism, entrepreneurs. **** Chapter 4 CAPITALISM, THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEVELOPMENT: a. The twentieth century; b. The development of global inequality; c. State capitalism and the informal economy; d. Virtual capitalism. **** Chapter 5: MARKETS FROM A HUMANIST POINT OF VIEW: a. The market, private property and liberal democracy; b. The anthropological critique of economic individualism; c. Market relations in time and space; d. The moral economy of paid and unpaid labour; e. Changing economic relations between men and women; f. Beyond wage slavery? **** Chapter 6 THE CHANGING CHARACTER OF MONEY: a. History of the money form; b. Heads or tails? Two sides of the coin; c. The meaning of money; d. Money, whence it came and whither it went e. Money in the age of the internet. **** Chapter 7 THE FUTURE OF MONEY AND MARKETS: a. Making money, making scenarios; b. The old regime and the middle-class revolution; c. People’s money: beyond economic coercion; d. Building economic infrastructure in the 21st century.
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The following essay has three parts. The first is a story about fluctuations in the balance of the relationship between impersonal and personal principles of social organization. This draws heavily on Max Weber’s interpretation of western... more
The following essay has three parts. The first is a story about fluctuations in the balance of the relationship between impersonal and personal principles of social organization. This draws heavily on Max Weber’s interpretation of western history. The second part reviews the concept of an ‘informal economy/sector’ from its origin in discussions of the Third World urban poor to its present status as a universal feature of economy. The third part asks how we might conceive of combining the formal/informal pair with a view to promoting development. In conclusion I suggest how partnerships between bureaucracy and the people might be made more equal.
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In 1938, when he also published his classic The Black Jacobins, CLR James wrote a short summary of Black struggles on both sides of the Atlantic in the 19th and 20th centuries, The History of Negro Revolt. He noted that since the Haitian... more
In 1938, when he also published his classic The Black Jacobins, CLR James wrote a short summary of Black struggles on both sides of the Atlantic in the 19th and 20th centuries, The History of Negro Revolt. He noted that since the Haitian revolution of 1791-1804, Black revolt had been mainly in the New World, but its focus was now Africa. I update here the scope and method of James’ global summary. The growth of Africa’s share of world population will be the dominant factor in this century. Time for another update. **** His prediction that Africans would soon win their independence from colonial empire had no takers at the time. He argued that capitalist production and racism made an explosive combination in the Gold Coast, Eastern Nigeria, and Johannesburg. He was right, since WW2 provided the catalyst for the anti-colonial revolution, first in Asia during the late 1940s, then in Africa and elsewhere in the 1950s and 60s. **** James left out two important categories of the modern African diaspora—Latin America (Cuba, Central America and Brazil) and migrants to North America and Europe (West Indians and Africans). He underplayed the historic role of West Indians in their cultural interaction with American Blacks, Marcus Garvey being an obvious example. But what shines through is his prescient vision.
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Part 1 presents an account of my amateur explorations of the history of the English language off and on for four decades. When the Germanic Franks became French, they switched to their version of Latin. English has a different history.... more
Part 1 presents an account of my amateur explorations of the history of the English language off and on for four decades. When the Germanic Franks became French, they switched to their version of Latin. English has a different history. The builders of Stonehenge 5,000 years ago were North African maritime herders and traders who had the run of Great Britain (Albion) and Little Britain (Ireland) for two millennia. Successive waves of migrants from Europe—first Celts, then Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Danes and Normans—each left their mark on the language as separate registers. **** My research has focused on excavating the residue of these invasions in modern English. I have studies how Germanic, Latin French and latterly ancient Greek registers have taken on class connotations and regional dialects granted inferior social status to those of the dominant peoples occupying the rich agricultural lowlands of southeast England around London. This study of the origins of English is relevant to the current world crisis, when the West’s grip on the world is weakening, along with the dominant social form of the last of the last century that I call “national capitalism”. **** In Part 2, I reveal my personal motives for this investigation. As an upwardly mobile Manchester youth, I began as a specialist in ancient languages. Then at Cambridge University I switched to social anthropology and found a ticket for world travel that way. One theme of my nomadic life is the role of Manchester, Lancashire, and northern England in forming me as a would-be world-citizen; this is linked to my take on English class divisions. A third is my abiding focus on economy, considered here through its rhetoric. Placing myself in the light of Part 1’s general linguistic investigation is thus the theme of Part 2.
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Research Interests: European Studies, Rhetoric, Historical Linguistics, English as the World's Language, British History, and 13 moreDialects of English, Capitalism, Migration Studies, Adam Smith, Social Class, Manchester, Economy, Nation-State, Stonehenge, Keynes, Written and spoken registers via Systemic-Functional Linguistics, Cambridge University, and Lancashire Local History
This is a much improved version of 'The political economy of food in an unequal world, posted recently. **** Food is the main obstacle to the achievement of a world economy that serves general human interests. This is because our... more
This is a much improved version of 'The political economy of food in an unequal world, posted recently. **** Food is the main obstacle to the achievement of a world economy that serves general human interests. This is because our institutions are still those of agrarian civilization now strengthened by the addition of machines. The rebellion of the money-making middle classes against landed military power—itself an echo of the thousand years war in the ancient Mediterranean before Rome settled the outcome—stalled in the mid-19th century when the two main classes made a reactionary alliance based on a merger of industrial capitalism and nation-states. The resulting inequality led to imperialism, two world wars and the economic crises of the 1930s and 1970s. Western farmers after 1945 ensured that agricultural subsidies fed by tax-rich states excluded non-western farmers from their own and world markets, thereby stalling a progressive rural-urban division of labor there, especially in Africa. Arthur Lewis claimed that resolving the food question would require a world revolution. The essay takes a very long-run view of the history of this problem and concludes that the struggle for supremacy between money and war has not yet been decided. Its main theme is the interdependence of urban and rural areas, of society and nature—in global and national economic development, and as a circulatory way of life within and between countries. ****1. Introduction: the problem of development: 2. Agriculture in human evolution' 3. Agrarian civilization and national capitalism; 4. Updating Steuart’s “mercantilist” vision today; 5. Origins of the neoliberal economic crisis; 6. Food in a new economic order: general reflections and specific recommendations.
Research Interests: Anthropology, Political Economy, Marxism, International Trade, Organic agriculture, and 15 moreWar Studies, Markets, World History, Digitization, Capitalism, Food and Nutrition, Agriculture, Nationalism And State Building, Economic Development, Nature, Civilization, Farm Machinery and Mechanization, Industrialization, Society, and Inequality
This essay began life at a conference of IFOAM, now Organics International, in Bangkok, 2003. A book chapter was published next year (Hart 2004); this is a lightly edited version of that chapter. In a revised form and with a new title, it... more
This essay began life at a conference of IFOAM, now Organics International, in Bangkok, 2003. A book chapter was published next year (Hart 2004); this is a lightly edited version of that chapter. In a revised form and with a new title, it will be a keynote lecture at the “Food Science Conference 2024” in Paris on 5-6 July. If you would like to correspond about it, please send me a message here with an email address; and I will send you the current updated version. **** Food is the main obstacle to the achievement of a world economy that serves general human interests. This is because our institutions are still those of agrarian civilization now strengthened by the addition of machines. The rebellion of the money-making middle classes against landed military power—itself an echo of the thousand years war in the ancient Mediterranean before Rome settled the outcome—stalled in the mid-19th century when the two main classes made a reactionary alliance based on a merger of industrial capitalism and nation-states. The resulting inequality led to imperialism, two world wars and the economic crises of the 1930s and 1970s. Western farmers after 1945 ensured that agricultural subsidies fed by tax-rich states excluded non-western farmers from their own and world markets, thereby stalling a progressive rural-urban division of labor there, especially in Africa. Arthur Lewis claimed that resolving the food question would require a world revolution. The essay takes a very long-run view of the history of this problem and concludes that the struggle for supremacy between money and war has not yet been decided.
Research Interests: Anthropology, Political Economy, Marxism, Digital Media, International Trade, and 15 moreWar Studies, Nationalism, World History, History of Capitalism, Agriculture, Economic Development, Democracy, Food Science and Technology, Civilization, Cities, Industrialization, Population, Mercantilism, Poverty and Inequality, and Sociology of the State
I put together a book, Africa 1800–2100: A History of the Future. A French friend asked me what it was about. I told her it was about Africa moving up in the global charts and Europe moving down. Her face hardened, so I made a... more
I put together a book, Africa 1800–2100: A History of the Future. A French friend asked me what it was about. I told her it was about Africa moving up in the global charts and Europe moving down. Her face hardened, so I made a conciliatory gesture:
KH: Of course, Africa is a mess. FF: Yes, it’s a mess! KH: Have you ever been there? FF: No.
I didn’t do any better with Anglophone publishers. Citizens of the leading western nations, especially the former imperial powers, know at some level that their societies are now in decline and losing the world they once made. European surveys of depression are headed by France and Britain. They can accept the rise of China, which was on a par with them in the eighteenth century. But Africa is something else. The Blacks must be forever consigned to the bottom rung of the racial ladder. The Whites’ slide into the dustbin of history is almost acceptable if the Blacks are eternally condemned to being worse off .
KH: Of course, Africa is a mess. FF: Yes, it’s a mess! KH: Have you ever been there? FF: No.
I didn’t do any better with Anglophone publishers. Citizens of the leading western nations, especially the former imperial powers, know at some level that their societies are now in decline and losing the world they once made. European surveys of depression are headed by France and Britain. They can accept the rise of China, which was on a par with them in the eighteenth century. But Africa is something else. The Blacks must be forever consigned to the bottom rung of the racial ladder. The Whites’ slide into the dustbin of history is almost acceptable if the Blacks are eternally condemned to being worse off .
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This is part of a chapter, ‘Mauss and ethnography: reader, teacher, a student, auto-ethnography’, from my book in preparation, Marcel Mauss: The Man is the Message. As the main teacher of France’s first ethnographers, Mauss had many... more
This is part of a chapter, ‘Mauss and ethnography: reader, teacher, a student, auto-ethnography’, from my book in preparation, Marcel Mauss: The Man is the Message. As the main teacher of France’s first ethnographers, Mauss had many distinguished students, but here I single out Germaine Tillion. An outstanding pioneer of reflexive anthropology who is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, she was admitted to the Pantheon of French heroes. **** An ethnographer of Algerian peasants, she joined the Resistance to German occupation in the Second World War and was imprisoned in a concentration camp, about which she later published a book. Then, as a specialist in the region that launched the Algerian war of independence (1954-62), she became once more an active dissident forced to confront French brutality in that genocidal war. **** In the second half of her long life, she became a public intellectual drawing on her “double apprenticeship” to reflect on anthropology, war, feminism, truth, and justice. I provide here a brief account of her life, followed by my translation of her own summary account of a journey to self-knowledge through two political, intellectual, and spiritual crises.
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The relationship between money and power has evolved from the conflict between capitalists and traditional enforcers in the industrial revolution, through their uneasy alliance in national capitalism to contemporary varieties of their... more
The relationship between money and power has evolved from the conflict between capitalists and traditional enforcers in the industrial revolution, through their uneasy alliance in national capitalism to contemporary varieties of their despotic merger in the culmination of a counter-revolution against post-war socialism and social democracy operating under the slogan of a revived market fundamentalism. This last phase has now reached its end, leaving us all in the grip of a world crisis of unknowable extent. **** What could money and markets become after capitalism? My main mentor has been Karl Marx, but I focus here on Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi. These are my main predecessors in exploring the prospects for a human economy. Humanist anthropology could be central to this, but it requires moving on from traditional humanism to what I call Humanism 2.0. The economy at all levels from the local shops to the world market runs on money. Money and markets, in different forms from now, are therefore essential to any version of a human economy, not antithetical to one. **** Contents: Introduction 1. Money and power: conflict, compromise, and merger 2. In the wake of market fundamentalism: Polanyi vs. Smith 3. Marcel Mauss reached out for a more inclusive society 4. Towards a new humanist anthropology 5. Money and markets in a human economy 6. The social context of economic action 7. What is to be done? References.
Research Interests: Anthropology, Comparative Politics, Globalization, War Studies, International Political Economy, and 14 moreWorld History, Capitalism, Karl Polanyi, Neoliberalism, Humanism, Adam Smith, Money, Authoritarianism, Financial Crisis, Marcel Mauss, Society, Market economy, Keynes, and Revolution and Counterrevolution
A new organization of contents with chapter summaries for a book due to be submitted for publication in June 2024. The Title, Introduction, and Afterword will be settled after the main text has been written for submission.
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This essay is based on one I published over three decades ago in a collection on trust. It was an ethnographic analysis of 1960s fieldwork done in the slums of Accra, Ghana’s capital city. My original article had three sections. The first... more
This essay is based on one I published over three decades ago in a collection on trust. It was an ethnographic analysis of 1960s fieldwork done in the slums of Accra, Ghana’s capital city. My original article had three sections. The first was empirical, which I have greatly reduced here. I address there how durable economic relations could be sustained in an urban environment that was marginal to both traditional and modern society. I illustrate with examples the tenor of commercial life and petty enterprise in Nima. I do not highlight trust at first. Only in the third section do I turn to what we may call the philosophy of trust. I focus there on migrants’ attempts to build viable enterprise. An intermediate section bridges the empirical and theoretical parts by exploring the semantics of trust and the set of terms to which it belongs. Anthropology is philosophy with real life examples. I offer here some reflections on what I have since learned; but first a few empirical observations.
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Chapter 15 of my Self in the World: Connecting Life’s Extremes (2022).“Only connect” (E.M. Forster, Howards End, 1910). A much longer draft essay in five parts, “Economics and the human sciences”, locates this short synthesis of my... more
Chapter 15 of my Self in the World: Connecting Life’s Extremes (2022).“Only connect” (E.M. Forster, Howards End, 1910). A much longer draft essay in five parts, “Economics and the human sciences”, locates this short synthesis of my personal research in the context of the leading dissenters from modernism in the early twentieth century, whose example should inform our attempts to build the next intellectual synthesis for this century. **** Self and world, individual and society, personal and impersonal, local, and global often seem to be far apart, even antagonistic, unreachable one from the other. These dualisms are useful and must not be abandoned, but they always form a single whole and overlap closely. Our task is to find what is universal in these pairs and constantly revise their connection in the light of experience. **** In my work and life, I have consistently addressed this dialectic in relation to economy. After the millennium I searched for a way of bringing the gap between human actors on the ground and the sense we have of being one humanity. The idea of a human economy was the result. I briefly sketch this sequence here.
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The idea of a sexual division of labor rests on asserting that men and women are fitted to mutually exclusive, but complementary occupational roles owing to their specialized interdependence in reproduction, namely protection of... more
The idea of a sexual division of labor rests on asserting that men and women are fitted to mutually exclusive, but complementary occupational roles owing to their specialized interdependence in reproduction, namely protection of child-bearing females by socially active and physically stronger males. This idea could be as old as the human species itself—or not. If it is true, all previous human societies were built on the premise that this, the most profound of social divisions was originally grounded in our nature as a sexually dimorphic species. Yet today the world is split by a movement to abolish the idea of sex divisions and its institutional practice. The norm of heterosexuality is coming under fire, at least in the western industrial countries. Even when sexuality is admitted to being genetically transmitted, feminists distinguish between nature and society and insist that male and female role differences should be attributed, not primarily to our genes, but to gender, a cultural and therefore malleable construct. **** Introduction; 1. The sexual division of labor in our species history; 2. The agrarian phase of peasant patriarchy and the anomaly of slave labor; 3. AgricultureSex divisions in modern British history; 4. Sex divisions in Caribbean and West African history; Overview: Industrialization, modern society, and reproductive patterns
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Excerpted from the Introduction of Keith Hart Editor. 1996 (1989). Women and the Sexual Division of Labour in the Caribbean. Kingston: Canoe Press, 1-10. This collection of essays is a report of a seminar series held at the University of... more
Excerpted from the Introduction of Keith Hart Editor. 1996 (1989). Women and the Sexual Division of Labour in the Caribbean. Kingston: Canoe Press, 1-10. This collection of essays is a report of a seminar series held at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica in February-March 1987 organized by the Consortium Graduate School of Social Sciences and the Women and Development Studies Project. Women’s groups on all campuses of the UWI were then active and vocal; the sessions attracted large numbers. Two general points do not emerge from the individual papers. First, the Caribbean region has historical significance for international discussions of social and cultural theory. Second, a contended issue in the seminars was whether the sexual division of labor is just the idea that the sexes do different work or is it more complex and specific? These questions concern both social scientists and women activists in the Caribbean.
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I will talk today about people, machines, and money. This, in a reduced form, is the project that I take from Marx. He found that under Victorian capitalism, working people were tied to machines in the new factories and subordinated to... more
I will talk today about people, machines, and money. This, in a reduced form, is the project that I take from Marx. He found that under Victorian capitalism, working people were tied to machines in the new factories and subordinated to the power of big money. He and Engels thought that this order of social organization—giving priority to money which bought the machines and thereby controlling the workers—ought to be reversed. In a broad sense, this is my political project and my writing project too. My lecture has three sections: first on machines, then on money and finally on the emergent world society that humanity is now making.
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The framework for this account of my journey in anthropology is a transcription (edited in 2023) of an interview with Federico Neibourg and Fernando Rabossi at the National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro on May 23rd, 2011. A... more
The framework for this account of my journey in anthropology is a transcription (edited in 2023) of an interview with Federico Neibourg and Fernando Rabossi at the National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro on May 23rd, 2011. A Portuguese version was published in 2019 by Revista de Sociologia & Antropologia in an issue about my anthropological work. This was organized by Fernando Rabossi and included this interview and articles by Horacio Ortiz, Theodoros Rakopoulos, Fernando and me, with a list of my writings (2000-2018).
I have reorganized the interview in five parts: 1. Cambridge University undergraduate (1961-65); 2. Doctoral fieldwork in Ghana (1965-68); 3. Informal economy and the development industry (1969-79); 4. Teaching in the UK and US, money, the Open Anthropology Cooperative (1971-2011); 5. Reflections on the personal/impersonal pair and nomadic anthropology (2011). I conclude with 6. More online links to life history sources (2023). Occasionally I include a link in the text to a relevant online publication of mine.
I have reorganized the interview in five parts: 1. Cambridge University undergraduate (1961-65); 2. Doctoral fieldwork in Ghana (1965-68); 3. Informal economy and the development industry (1969-79); 4. Teaching in the UK and US, money, the Open Anthropology Cooperative (1971-2011); 5. Reflections on the personal/impersonal pair and nomadic anthropology (2011). I conclude with 6. More online links to life history sources (2023). Occasionally I include a link in the text to a relevant online publication of mine.
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On Saint Nicholas Day, the Financial Times and Washington Post both published articles with a wake-up call for democrats everywhere-in the United States and the rest of the world to mobilize against Trump's possible, even likely election... more
On Saint Nicholas Day, the Financial Times and Washington Post both published articles with a wake-up call for democrats everywhere-in the United States and the rest of the world to mobilize against Trump's possible, even likely election in 2024 to what would be a presidential dictatorship. This is my immediate response for any of you who visit me on this platform.
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Critique is the exercise of judgment. Its roots lie in the Enlightenment ’ s response to the printing revolution. The use of exotic ethnography to shock Westerners out of their complacency is well established. The 1980s saw a vigorous... more
Critique is the exercise of judgment. Its roots lie in the Enlightenment
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s response to the printing revolution. The use of exotic ethnography to shock Westerners out of their complacency is well established. The 1980s saw a vigorous American school of cultural critics at home.They have European, feminist, and Marxist counterparts. Recent developments focus on globalization and cultural diversity. The word culture has become omnipresent and this has diluted anthropologists' attachment to their key concept. It would pay anthropologists to revisit Rousseau and Kant.
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s response to the printing revolution. The use of exotic ethnography to shock Westerners out of their complacency is well established. The 1980s saw a vigorous American school of cultural critics at home.They have European, feminist, and Marxist counterparts. Recent developments focus on globalization and cultural diversity. The word culture has become omnipresent and this has diluted anthropologists' attachment to their key concept. It would pay anthropologists to revisit Rousseau and Kant.
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What Money Wants is in truth a work of economic philosophy whose aim is to develop a toolkit and strategy for understanding the modern economy that differ radically from those of orthodox economics. As a startlingly new version of... more
What Money Wants is in truth a work of economic philosophy whose aim is to develop a toolkit and strategy for understanding the modern economy that differ radically from those of orthodox economics. As a startlingly new version of heterodox economics, it aims to challenge the mainstream discipline from the inside, not through some external perspective drawn from sociology, psychology, or anthropology. Yuran’s approach has two anchors, each the dialectical negation of orthodox economics’ twin foundations: its utilitarian focus on individual subjectivity and its ahistorical method. Instead, his topic is the impersonal economy that is foreign to the subject’s point of view and often invisible to him; and he aims to reveal the “historicity” of economic action by showing how the past persists in economic objects.
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Contents 1. Does capitalism rest on universal human principles? 2.The battle over methods in 19th century Germany 3.The formalist-substantivist debate 4. Economic anthropology, development studies, and critical theory 5. Recent works of... more
Contents 1. Does capitalism rest on universal human principles? 2.The battle over methods in 19th century Germany 3.The formalist-substantivist debate 4. Economic anthropology, development studies, and critical theory 5. Recent works of synthesis in economic anthropology. **** Economic anthropologists flourished in the 1960s and 70s. s. But there was no attempt to take on the economists then or now. Most have stuck with the ahistorical cultural paradigms of twentieth century ethnography. Anthropology has not yet illuminated our moment in world history. The birth of the internet and the erosion of state power by money markets give plenty scope for reflection on the century whose defining moment, 1945, marks the end of Heath Pearson’s paper.
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This essay is rather long, but its parts may be read separately: 1. The origins of the internet 2. Political economy of the internet 3. Real and virtual 4. A Kantian anthropology for the internet age. I rely to some extent on... more
This essay is rather long, but its parts may be read separately: 1. The origins of the internet 2. Political economy of the internet 3. Real and virtual 4. A Kantian anthropology for the internet age. I rely to some extent on auto-ethnography, on fieldwork as personal experience. **** Is an ‘anthropology of the internet’ possible? If so, what would it look like? People, machines, and money matter in this world, in that order. Most intellectuals know very little about any of them, being preoccupied with their own production of cultural ideas. I do not advocate a wholesale rejection of the ethnographic tradition, but rather would extend its premises towards a more inclusive anthropological project, better suited to studying world society, of which the internet is perhaps the most striking expression. **** We each enter the internet through a unique trajectory. The world constituted by this ‘network of networks’ does not exist independently of our experience of it. Nor is the internet ‘the world’, but rather an online world to which we all bring the particulars of our place in society offline. We need to combine introspection and personal judgment with comparative ethnography and world history in reaching for the human meaning of the internet. There are as many worlds as there are individuals and their journeys. This model of Kantian subjectivity, at once personal and cosmopolitan, should be our starting point; but it will not do for the study of world society. **** I begin with an account of the internet seen in world-historical perspective—its origins and political economy—before turning to the dialectics of virtual reality that frame our personal journey through cyberspace. I draw on Heidegger’s metaphysics, before turning to Kant’s great example as a source for the renewal of anthropology as an academic discipline that he pioneered.
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What is the main challenge or debate in social science approaches to globalization? How did you arrive at your thinking about these issues? How could a student come to understand the world in a broad way? Africa is showing some... more
What is the main challenge or debate in social science approaches to globalization? How did you arrive at your thinking about these issues? How could a student come to understand the world in a broad way? Africa is showing some significant growth; how are we to interpret these growth rates? Can we understand the global economic cisis without referring to terms like neoliberalism? What is today’s Great Transformation seen through the lens of Polanyi’s work? How relevant is the separation of states and markets for our world? Is technology a driver of social change? How did you arrive at the distinction between formal and informal economy? Does it still have value for you today?
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This is an expanded version of an address to a day of study organized by and for anthropology PhD students in Paris to discuss David Graeber’s political legacy. It has four parts. In the first I excavate the revolutionary origins of... more
This is an expanded version of an address to a day of study organized by and for anthropology PhD students in Paris to discuss David Graeber’s political legacy. It has four parts. In the first I excavate the revolutionary origins of modern anthropology and place David Graeber as its leading contemporary exponent. In the second I trace my own political trajectory as an anthropologist. The third part is a summary of the relevant aspects of my obituary concerning our friendship and David’s political legacy for anthropologists. The last contains some reflections on revolution drawing mainly on V.I. Lenin and C.L.R. James. See also ON DAVID GRAEBER’S LEGACY at https://keithhart.academia.edu/. The English version is followed by one in French.
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Edited extracts from a recorded conversation with Bill Maurer, Los Angeles, August 2007. Bill is Professor of Anthropology and Law, Dean of Social Sciences and Director, the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion at the... more
Edited extracts from a recorded conversation with Bill Maurer, Los Angeles, August 2007. Bill is Professor of Anthropology and Law, Dean of Social Sciences and Director, the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion at the University of California Irvine. We share a passionate interest in the contemporary evolution of money as well as in the future of anthropology. **** The conversation, wide-ranging as it often is between friends, has six sections: 1. Introduction 2. Money as political education 3. The pragmatics of money 4. Money, payment, personal credit and rank 5. Dialectics 6. Getting anthropological knowledge out there.
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Vishnu Padayachee and I met in Cambridge in 1995. He invited me to Durban two years later. We became friends and intermittent writing partners for 25 years. In Self in the World: Connecting Life’s Extremes (Hart 2022), I highlight the... more
Vishnu Padayachee and I met in Cambridge in 1995. He invited me to Durban two years later. We became friends and intermittent writing partners for 25 years. In Self in the World: Connecting Life’s Extremes (Hart 2022), I highlight the need to connect pairs that often seem to be opposed and unreachable one from the other—individual and society, local and global, personal and impersonal, life and ideas, real and virtual—more effectively than the last century’s institutions conventionally allowed. Accordingly, I begin with some observations concerning our personal relationship and place Vishnu as a man in his city before turning to our professional activities. Some key joint publications are then summarised here. These had a common theme – the need to place South Africa’s development in African and world economic history through the concept of ‘national capitalism’. **** In the essay’s third section, I update the full cycle of national capitalism’s rise and fall at the global level in the light of its collapse now in the early 2020s. I believe that we are entering a period comparable to what Winston Churchill called “the second thirty years war” (1914-45), when four decades of financial imperialism driven by unfettered capital flows ran up against its inevitable contradictions. I conclude with some remarks about South Africa’s current crisis and Vishnu’s example as a beacon in the engulfing darkness. **** We must extend our political perspective beyond national boundaries to participate in global solutions more appropriate to humanity’s predicament now. This was always the point of our coversations and writings.
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The main problem human beings face is the consolidation of private property in the form of giant corporations who are increasingly able to shape emergent world society independently of national governments. This essay has ten sections.... more
The main problem human beings face is the consolidation of private property in the form of giant corporations who are increasingly able to shape emergent world society independently of national governments. This essay has ten sections. **** 1. The relationship between market economy and private property. 2. John Locke and the political philosophy of liberal democracy. 3. The bulk of private property is held by huge impersonal entities, states and corporations. A brief history of the rise of the modern business corporation follows. 4. Private property has not only evolved from individual ownership to predominately collective forms. I offer some reflections on how IP has affected my own writing and publishing. 5. IP has also shifted the balance from "real" to "intellectual" property, that is from material objects to ideas. 6. A history of intellectual property, featuring Lysander Spooner who coined the term. 7. The US is the prime mover behind the spread of IP today, but it stayed out of international copyright agreements until the late twentieth century. 8. The struggle over IP constitutes the main contradiction of capitalism today, partly because the digital revolution has boosted costless information services. 9. Our essential task is to restore the legal distinction between real and artificial persons. 10. Corporations are the main threat to liberal democracy today while upholding a travesty of Locke's original conception of it. **** This essay was posted in Academia while writing my Self in the World: Connecting life's extremes (2020). It lacks any scholarly apparatus for the benefit of general readers and beginning students. The book has plentiful references and indexes.
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Contribution to an Academia discussion at https://www.academia.edu/s/e1a90833b1.
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This essay’s central theme and several of its side topics can be found in various chapters of my latest book, Self in the World. The current break in history goes far deeper than the post-war replacement of social democracy by... more
This essay’s central theme and several of its side topics can be found in various chapters of my latest book, Self in the World. The current break in history goes far deeper than the post-war replacement of social democracy by neoliberalism. The social organization of money that we lived by in the last century is unraveling. “National capitalism” is the synthesis of nation-states and industrial capitalism -- the institutional attempt to manage money, markets and accumulation through central bureaucracy for a cultural community of national citizens. The financial crisis since 2008 is only superficially a question of credit boom and bust. Folk models lag behind world history in the making. ******** I sketch here the history of national capitalism -- its origins, growth and decline. Its icon is a national monopoly currency in a fragmented world with many of them. Money as national community’s glue is illustrated by the history of the American dollar ($). Its recent evolution has left world society today in a precarious condition. Business corporations were allied with nation-states, but have now superseded them. Private property has shifted from persons to abstractions and from things to ideas (intellectual property). ******** Xenophobic dictators, national governments, transnational corporations and regional trade federations are locked in a struggle for world domination. As a result, national capitalism is foundering and market fundamentalism has split into two main forms. The compromise between money and power has been resolved by their unification, with capitalists and politicians variously in charge. Another age of war, revolution and economic collapse, such as 1914-45, is likely.
Research Interests:
This essay comes at its topic from a number of angles combining history, argument, analysis and description, Its central theme and several of its side topics can be found in various chapters of my latest book, Self in the World (Hart... more
This essay comes at its topic from a number of angles combining history, argument, analysis and description, Its central theme and several of its side topics can be found in various chapters of my latest book, Self in the World (Hart 2022a). The current break in history goes far deeper than the recent replacement of social democracy by neoliberalism. We are witnessing the end of “national capitalism” whose origin was in the 1860s. The social organization of money that we lived by in the last century is unravelling. ******** National capitalism is the synthesis of nation-states and industrial capitalism: the institutional attempt to manage money, markets and accumulation through central bureaucracy for a cultural community of national citizens. New legal conditions for business corporations soon followed. A bureaucratic revolution ushered in the era of mass production and consumption. ******** 1. I sketch the history of national capitalism -- its origins, growth and decline. 2. Its icon is a national monopoly currency (in a world of multiple currencies). 3. The history of the present world currency, the U.S. dollar. 4. The evolution of money today is precarious. 5. Business corporations were allied with nation-states, but have superseded them. 6. Private property has shifted from persons to abstractions and from things to ideas (intellectual property). 7. Xenophobic dictators, national governments, corporations and regional trade federations are locked in a struggle for world domination. 8. National capitalism is foundering and market fundamentalism has split into two main forms. 9. The compromise between money and power had been resolved by their unification with capitalists and politicians variously in charge. 10. Another age of war, revolution and economic collapse, like 1914-45, is likely.
Research Interests:
Our dominant institutions are still those of Bronze Age agrarian civilization. These are grossly unequal societies, territorial states, embattled cities, landed property, warfare, racism, bureaucracy, limited literacy, impersonal money,... more
Our dominant institutions are still those of Bronze Age agrarian civilization. These are grossly unequal societies, territorial states, embattled cities, landed property, warfare, racism, bureaucracy, limited literacy, impersonal money, long-distance trade, work as a virtue, world religion and the nuclear family. ******** I set out here to bring together my work since the world turned in 1989-91: the Soviet collapse, one-world capitalism, money’s escape from government and law, China and India emerge as capitalist powers, the internet goes public. ******** The main turning points after that were: September 11th and the Iraq War (2001-3); the financial crisis (from 2008); neoliberalism’s authoritarian turn (2015-17) and the current world crisis (2020-22).
Research Interests:
The fragments below were written while I struggled to articulate a political perspective. They were written in Europe and the US. Part 1 offers some personal observations I made in Chicago when the Iraq war was launched in 2003: an... more
The fragments below were written while I struggled to articulate a political perspective. They were written in Europe and the US. Part 1 offers some personal observations I made in Chicago when the Iraq war was launched in 2003: an "auto-ethnography". I wondered then whether the US was descending into fascism. This question is more urgent today. Part 2 was written in Paris soon after the attacks of September 11th , 2001 and offers some general reflections that may clarify what happened in 2003. ******** My theme is "the long counter-revolution." A revolution in world society took place after the Second World War that culminated after the Cold War ended in a widespread sense of enhanced freedom from repressive states. Since the millennium, the lid has been screwed back on and the battle cry of this counter-revolution was the "war on terror". ******** Basic freedoms that came to be taken for granted in the last century's second half are now being lost. This paper's point is to illuminate the rise of fascism in the West. Bush and Cheney now try to pass as reasonable politicians. Their path to power was laid in the 1990s when the centre-left parties (Clinton, Blair and the French socialists) accepted the bankers' hegemony as inevitable. To understand our times, we need to revisit 2001-3. The seeds of Trump and Brexit were laid then.
Research Interests:
I start from the premise that, in the modern era, money and power have passed from the conflict of the bourgeois revolution through the compromise of national capitalism to their contemporary despotic union. The latest version of market... more
I start from the premise that, in the modern era, money and power have passed from the conflict of the bourgeois revolution through the compromise of national capitalism to their contemporary despotic union. The latest version of market fundamentalism has reached its end, leaving us all in the grip of an unfathomable crisis. My impulse under these circumstances is to draw inspiration from great predecessors in the struggle for a better world. My focus here is on money and markets after capitalism and my mentors are Karl Polanyi and Marcel Mauss. I then summarise their place in my programme on "human economy". Parts 2-4 address the question of humanism in our world and as anthropology. Market fundamentalism didn't come from nowhere; it was a counter-revolution against postwar social democracy. I address the social context of economic action from Locke to Keynes. Only another world revolution will get humanity out of the present mess. I wonder what part a humanist anthropology might play in that. ******** 1. Money and power: conflict, compromise and unification 2. In the wake of market fundamentalism 3. Marcel Mauss: reaching out for a new humanism 4. Money and markets in a human economy 5. The social context of economic action. 6. What is to be done?
Research Interests:
This essay was written in August 2008 for a book that then folded, a month before my retirement from British universities (but not from academic life), a month before the financial crash. I discovered it in my folders much later and found... more
This essay was written in August 2008 for a book that then folded, a month before my retirement from British universities (but not from academic life), a month before the financial crash. I discovered it in my folders much later and found it to be one of the better products of my thinking on the human economy. 2007-8 saw my first conference and publication on that idea (Hart 2008). The owl of Minerva (wisdom) takes wing at dusk (Hegel). There are six sections: 1. In the wake of market fundamentalism 2. Our moment in world history 3. Karl Polanyi vs. Adam Smith 4. Marcel Mauss' economic movement from below 5. Commoditization: The dialectics of social abstraction 6. Money in a human economy' I have now edited it and added some references to my own publications since 2008, including relevant posts on Academia at https://goldsmiths.academia.edu/KeithHart (Papers and Drafts) and a link to my latest book, Self in the World (Hart 2022).
Research Interests:
The COP27 conference in North Africa reminded me of something I wrote soon after 2000. This paper started out as a keynote address for the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, IFOAM's conference, Mainstreaming... more
The COP27 conference in North Africa reminded me of something I wrote soon after 2000. This paper started out as a keynote address for the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, IFOAM's conference, Mainstreaming Organic Trade: New Frontiers, Opportunities and Responsibilities, Bangkok, November 2003. It offers a rather striking summary of the Big Historical Picture, but limits discussion of possible solutions to community currencies. Two decades later I find my writing about the first to have deteriorated and about the second I have narrowed the gap between local and global solutions. A first step was published in 2006: https://www.academia.edu/87126051/Common_Wealth_Building_Economic_Democracy_with_Community_Currencies. I need to update this thinking soon. For now, I offer a lightly edited and renamed version of the IFOAM original.
Research Interests:
Although the parliamentarian, William Wilberforce is now more identified with leadership of the international movement to abolish slavery, Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) was its driving force. This was England's social revolution in the 19... more
Although the parliamentarian, William Wilberforce is now more identified with leadership of the international movement to abolish slavery, Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) was its driving force. This was England's social revolution in the 19 th century, combining anti-slavery, free trade, economic individualism and evangelical Christianity. ****** Cambridge, in and outside the university, was the English hub of the movement. Its éminence grise was William Pitt the younger, prime minister in his 20s and Cambridge's member of parliament. The local network of activists was diverse, bringing together the African former slave, Olaudah Equiano, non-conformist ministers, high churchmen, bankers and radical journalists. Clarkson pioneered modern single-issue politics. He drew on a range of campaigning methods: field trips, petitions, lobbying, pamphlets, a portable museum, deselection of MPs. ****** This forces us to revise how the dialectic of conservatism and innovation has played out in Cambridge University's history. The international movement for human rights grew out of the abolition of slavery. Graduate students and junior fellows from around the world today want to use their knowledge for the benefit of their own people and humanity, but they are often frustrated by university's archaic features. Revisiting 1800 and thereabouts reveals that their present circumstances may be more conducive to social change than they imagine.
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This is a provisional outline of a book I have begun to write about Marcel Mauss' relevance for our times. He was Émile Durkheim's nephew and junior partner in establishing French sociology, an active cooperative socialist and political... more
This is a provisional outline of a book I have begun to write about Marcel Mauss' relevance for our times. He was Émile Durkheim's nephew and junior partner in establishing French sociology, an active cooperative socialist and political journalist with strong ties to England. He served with distinction as an interpreter for English-speaking troops in the WW1 trenches. Afterwards he became the de facto leader of French sociology. The years 1920-25 were very full, academically and politically. He published his best-known essay on The Gift and his French Workers' Party joined a socialist coalition government that failed, wrecking most of his political aspirations. He also suffered a number of personal losses at this time. Mauss won a prestigious chair in the Collège de France and switched his efforts into teaching the first generations of French ethnographers. He had kept a firewall between his academic and political writing and now became less overtly political. He never did fieldwork, but embraced ethnography as a method of writing, reading and teaching. He is recognized, with Malinowski and Boas, as the founder of ethnology or sociocultural anthropology in their respective countries. In his later life, Mauss developed an inspiring humanist approach that is recognized internationally, even though most of his writing is untranslated from French. One purpose of my book is to make this writing accessible to English readers, since there are few founders of social thought who, like Marcel Mauss, are so often misinterpreted, especially by Anglophones.
Research Interests:
In the course of the twentieth century West Africa went through a revolution consisting of an explosion in population, the rise of huge cities and the political division of the region into nominally independent states. While becoming more... more
In the course of the twentieth century West Africa went through a revolution consisting of an explosion in population, the rise of huge cities and the political division of the region into nominally independent states. While becoming more closely integrated into the world economy than ever before, the region remains poor when compared with most other parts of the world. If we wish to understand why this is so and what the prospects are for a more prosperous future, it will not do to focus solely on external determinants of economic backwardness. Many of West Africa’s problems have deep-seated causes, while others are the result of quite recent factors. I attempt here to place contemporary political economy within a long-run framework emphasizing the region’s unity and variety. If I devote more than usual attention to the traditional variety of West African societies, it is because they still shape the present strongly, especially if we wish to take into account the many differences between them.
Research Interests:
I sketch here a history of financialization in the leading capitalist countries since the Industrial Revolution. I identify several stages from when many peasants first exchanged non-market production and consumption for urban wage labor... more
I sketch here a history of financialization in the leading capitalist countries since the Industrial Revolution. I identify several stages from when many peasants first exchanged non-market production and consumption for urban wage labor up to the present when the privatization of politics, public institutions and personal life is rampant. The first stage was the bourgeois revolution soon after 1800; the second saw the revolutionary launch of national capitalism in the 1860s based on an alliance of the traditional enforcers and capitalists. This spawned a bureaucratic revolution and led to mass production and consumption by the end of the nineteenth century. National capitalism became general in the leading countries after the First World War and went global after 1945 in a form favorable to the working masses adopted by western industrial countries, the Soviet bloc and the former colonies. A counter-revolution against these developmental states was led by Reagan and Thatcher in 1979-80 when neoliberal globalization was launched and eventually today’s system of government for the rich and powerful was established. Subordination of society to money now became so blatant that the term financialization was coined. This is the culmination of a historical process lasting two centuries.
Research Interests:
Intellectual property' is now the focus for the main conflict in global capitalism today. Anthropologists have generally approached the question through the issue of indigenous cultural rights. More effort should go into placing this... more
Intellectual property' is now the focus for the main conflict in global capitalism today. Anthropologists have generally approached the question through the issue of indigenous cultural rights. More effort should go into placing this discourse within the historical context of world economy. Anthropologists, like most members of modern societies, often confuse impersonal and personal dimensions of social organization. This arises from accepting uncritically the hegemony of corporate bureaucracy. 1. I introduce an 'extended case study' of the minefield that intellectual property has become for many ethnographic researchers. 2. Review some of Marilyn Strathern's writing on this topic. 3. Present an outline history of property rights 4. This leads to the present attempt to privatize the cultural commons. 5. Why have most academic intellectuals failed abysmally to resist the harm inflicted on their own way of life by the intellectual property regime. 6. An apt way of describing the struggle we live in today is 'information feudalism'; anthropologists could play a significant part this struggle for democracy if the myopia of a narrow ethnography based on fieldwork more than reading ethnographic did not prevent us from seeing the wood for the trees.
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This essay has an Introduction and four parts. In Part 1 I refer briefly the relationship between economics and the human sciences drawing on Foucault in The Order of Things (1970). ******** 1. Max Weber, General Economic History (1930);... more
This essay has an Introduction and four parts. In Part 1 I refer briefly the relationship between economics and the human sciences drawing on Foucault in The Order of Things (1970). ******** 1. Max Weber, General Economic History (1930); 2. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904); 3. V.I. Lenin, The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899); 4. Talcott Parsons, The Theory of Social Action (1937); 5. J.M. Keynes, Essays in Persuasion (1932); 6. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (1944); 7.Marcel Mauss, Essay on the Gift (1925). ******** Each of these individuals, with others of course, launched a branch of knowledge that dissented from professional economics: socio-economic history; institutional economics; neo-Marxism and development economics; economic sociology; macroeconomics; the economic history of world crisis; and economic anthropology. ******** Part 3 summarises, in a manifesto, two decades of the human economy approach. Part 4 has two sections: on organized knowledge, especially the two great principles of our civilization, democracy and science; and the relationship between the humanities and popular culture.
Research Interests:
This essay was written in August 2008 for a book that subsequently folded. The timing is important, my retirement from the British academy (but not from university life), a month before the financial crash. I discovered it in my folders... more
This essay was written in August 2008 for a book that subsequently folded. The timing is important, my retirement from the British academy (but not from university life), a month before the financial crash. I discovered it in my folders much later and find it to be one of the better expressions of my thinking on the human economy. 2007-8 saw my first conference and publication on the human economy idea (Hart 2008). The owl of Minerva (wisdom) takes wing at dusk (Hegel). It has six sections: ******** 1. In the wake of market fundamentalism 2. Our moment in world history 3. Karl Polanyi vs. Adam Smith 4. Marcel Mauss 5. Commoditization: The dialectics of social abstraction 6. Money in a human economy. ******** In this revival (summer 2022), I have added some references to my own publications since 2008; some are posted online at Academia.
Research Interests:
This short essay grew out of our work when editing C. L. R. James' American Civilization for publication in 1993 (now out of print). It compares three visitors from Europe to America: Alexis de Tocqueville, James and Jean Baudrillard. The... more
This short essay grew out of our work when editing C. L. R. James' American Civilization for publication in 1993 (now out of print). It compares three visitors from Europe to America: Alexis de Tocqueville, James and Jean Baudrillard. The last doesn't come out of it particularly well, but he made up for that elsewhere.
Research Interests:
Paper for a 2015 Paris seminar, "Singular or plural money? Multi-disciplinary approaches and theoretical challenges”, organized by Jérôme Blanc and Bruno Théret. It has five sections: ******** 1. LETS and me 2. The euro crisis 3. The... more
Paper for a 2015 Paris seminar, "Singular or plural money? Multi-disciplinary approaches and theoretical challenges”, organized by Jérôme Blanc and Bruno Théret.
It has five sections:
********
1. LETS and me
2. The euro crisis
3. The collapse of national capitalism
4. A human economy approach
5. Harnessing bureaucracy to grassroots democracy
*********
The first two are the longest sections, being concerned with the potential and limits of community currencies, especially a system known as LETS; and the reasons for the euro crisis which are traced to the formation of a single currency by means that privileged markets before politics. The euro, launched as notes and coins in 2002, is juxtaposed with the Argentinian peso crisis of the same period. This is one symptom of the general collapse of the dominant social form of the 20th century, 'national capitalism', in our times -- the attempt to control money, markets and accumulation through national bureaucracies.
In this historical context, I outline a 'human economy' approach which is grounded in people's economic activities, relations and aspirations, while advocating a drive to link up with humanity as a whole through global social networks and large-scale bureaucracies. Finally, some existing examples of this approach are discussed with particular emphasis on a South African case study.
It has five sections:
********
1. LETS and me
2. The euro crisis
3. The collapse of national capitalism
4. A human economy approach
5. Harnessing bureaucracy to grassroots democracy
*********
The first two are the longest sections, being concerned with the potential and limits of community currencies, especially a system known as LETS; and the reasons for the euro crisis which are traced to the formation of a single currency by means that privileged markets before politics. The euro, launched as notes and coins in 2002, is juxtaposed with the Argentinian peso crisis of the same period. This is one symptom of the general collapse of the dominant social form of the 20th century, 'national capitalism', in our times -- the attempt to control money, markets and accumulation through national bureaucracies.
In this historical context, I outline a 'human economy' approach which is grounded in people's economic activities, relations and aspirations, while advocating a drive to link up with humanity as a whole through global social networks and large-scale bureaucracies. Finally, some existing examples of this approach are discussed with particular emphasis on a South African case study.
Research Interests:
INCLUDES A DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS AND TWO SAMPLE CHAPTERS: 1. The Abolition of Slavery: An English Revolution 2. Waiting for Emancipation in West Africa. **** Introduction: Africa’s share of world population was 7.5% in 1900... more
INCLUDES A DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS AND TWO SAMPLE CHAPTERS:
1. The Abolition of Slavery: An English Revolution
2. Waiting for Emancipation in West Africa.
****
Introduction:
Africa’s share of world population was 7.5% in 1900 and will be 40% by 2100. Asia’s manufacturers (unlike the West) know this will make Africa central to world markets in the 21st century. How might Africans make this new preponderance count in global political economy? ****
The 20th century’s dominant economic form, national capitalism, is in disarray; it never took root in Africa. Strong men (Trump, Putin, Xi, Erdogan, Modi etc) combine nationalism with a market fundamentalism that overlaps with, but is distinctive from that promoted by neoliberal globalization. ****
I place Africa’s current prospects within North Atlantic history and juxtapose its development now with the early liberal revolutions. These pursued free trade in an expanded home region while protected it from global predators. ****
Africa was said not have ‘developed’ in the last century. But population growth fuelled an urban revolution that brought its main regions together in and Old Regime, whose antidote is liberal revolution. ****
The world market for cultural commodities (entertainment, sport, education, media, information services, mobile phone apps) is the fastest growing. The history of liberal revolutions shows that the support of capitalist firms is vital. Women and youth will lead the struggle to replace societies made by and for old men. ****
Religion and the media will also be strategic. ‘Human unity’, thanks to universal communications, markets and money flows is now an empirical fact. Humanity’s tool of connection is money. The internet is now a global marketplace that goes largely unregulated. Smart phones place Africans on the cutting edge of this revolution. The new African diaspora will ensure that remittances and return migration will play a big role in Africa’s future. ****
A “human economy” links people in the real economy to our global predicament. Human economy 1.0 was a Victorian synthesis of free trade, anti-slavery, economic individualism and evangelical Christianity. It drove colonial empire, however. I point towards a new synthesis, this time coming out of Africa not imposed on it. The concept of ubuntu is a good place to start.
1. The Abolition of Slavery: An English Revolution
2. Waiting for Emancipation in West Africa.
****
Introduction:
Africa’s share of world population was 7.5% in 1900 and will be 40% by 2100. Asia’s manufacturers (unlike the West) know this will make Africa central to world markets in the 21st century. How might Africans make this new preponderance count in global political economy? ****
The 20th century’s dominant economic form, national capitalism, is in disarray; it never took root in Africa. Strong men (Trump, Putin, Xi, Erdogan, Modi etc) combine nationalism with a market fundamentalism that overlaps with, but is distinctive from that promoted by neoliberal globalization. ****
I place Africa’s current prospects within North Atlantic history and juxtapose its development now with the early liberal revolutions. These pursued free trade in an expanded home region while protected it from global predators. ****
Africa was said not have ‘developed’ in the last century. But population growth fuelled an urban revolution that brought its main regions together in and Old Regime, whose antidote is liberal revolution. ****
The world market for cultural commodities (entertainment, sport, education, media, information services, mobile phone apps) is the fastest growing. The history of liberal revolutions shows that the support of capitalist firms is vital. Women and youth will lead the struggle to replace societies made by and for old men. ****
Religion and the media will also be strategic. ‘Human unity’, thanks to universal communications, markets and money flows is now an empirical fact. Humanity’s tool of connection is money. The internet is now a global marketplace that goes largely unregulated. Smart phones place Africans on the cutting edge of this revolution. The new African diaspora will ensure that remittances and return migration will play a big role in Africa’s future. ****
A “human economy” links people in the real economy to our global predicament. Human economy 1.0 was a Victorian synthesis of free trade, anti-slavery, economic individualism and evangelical Christianity. It drove colonial empire, however. I point towards a new synthesis, this time coming out of Africa not imposed on it. The concept of ubuntu is a good place to start.
Research Interests:
Conference: ‘Building bridges around David Graeber (1961-2020)’s legacy’, University of Lyon 2 (France), 7-9th July 2022. My comments respond to three questions posed by the chair, Véronique Dutraive, to whom many thanks for organizing... more
Conference: ‘Building bridges around David Graeber (1961-2020)’s legacy’, University of Lyon 2 (France), 7-9th July 2022.
My comments respond to three questions posed by the chair, Véronique Dutraive, to whom many thanks for organizing this event. The other speakers were Steve Keene (Western Sydney) and Gabriela Cabana Alvear (LSE).
1. Could you summarise your relationship to David?
a. We had a close informal partnership for 15 years – I learned more from him than anyone else.
b. We were involved in his up and down academic career (Yale, US and London).
2. What do you consider to have been David’s main contribution?
a. He brought the anthropology of unequal society into 21st century (Rousseau, Morgan, Engels, Levi-Strauss, Sahlins, Wolf, Goody), Debt book.
b. His revolutionary political approach to anthropology; and great width of scholarship.
3. What were the main things that David missed?
a. National capitalism was a compromise between money and power: born in the 1860s and early 70s; became general after the First World War.
b. Western plutocracy since 1971 has unified money and power; wealth is now derived from rent, not profit: the bourgeois revolution ends up as the Old Regime it once overthrew.
My comments respond to three questions posed by the chair, Véronique Dutraive, to whom many thanks for organizing this event. The other speakers were Steve Keene (Western Sydney) and Gabriela Cabana Alvear (LSE).
1. Could you summarise your relationship to David?
a. We had a close informal partnership for 15 years – I learned more from him than anyone else.
b. We were involved in his up and down academic career (Yale, US and London).
2. What do you consider to have been David’s main contribution?
a. He brought the anthropology of unequal society into 21st century (Rousseau, Morgan, Engels, Levi-Strauss, Sahlins, Wolf, Goody), Debt book.
b. His revolutionary political approach to anthropology; and great width of scholarship.
3. What were the main things that David missed?
a. National capitalism was a compromise between money and power: born in the 1860s and early 70s; became general after the First World War.
b. Western plutocracy since 1971 has unified money and power; wealth is now derived from rent, not profit: the bourgeois revolution ends up as the Old Regime it once overthrew.
Research Interests:
This is an edited transcription of an oral interview published in Academia on June 17th. ‘Only Connect’ was a slogan coined by the novelist, E.M. Forster, in Howard’s End. My latest book, Self in the World (2022), has as a subtitle... more
This is an edited transcription of an oral interview published in Academia on June 17th. ‘Only Connect’ was a slogan coined by the novelist, E.M. Forster, in Howard’s End. My latest book, Self in the World (2022), has as a subtitle ‘Connecting life’s extremes’: self/world, individual/society, personal/impersonal, local/global, real/virtual, life/ideas, speech/writing. The interview in Rio de Janeiro, May 2011, takes some time to get to this point, but firmly establishes that my fixation with these pairs as an anthropologist is rooted in the contradictions of my schooling as a teenager. The first half of my professional history is focused on my early years as a student in Manchester, Cambridge and Accra. But the second half achieves greater depth with the development industry, the United States, studying money, building an online community, South Africa and reflections on the global condition of anthropology today. There are important gaps, such as Britain, the Caribbean, Africa and Europe, with no mention of prolonged mental illness, even if it is a known hazard of professional academic life. These topics are explored more fully in Self in the World.
Research Interests:
‘Only Connect’ was a slogan coined by the novelist, E.M. Forster, in Howard’s End. My latest book, Self in the World (2022), has as a subtitle ‘Connecting life’s extremes’: self/world, individual/society, personal/impersonal,... more
‘Only Connect’ was a slogan coined by the novelist, E.M. Forster, in Howard’s End. My latest book, Self in the World (2022), has as a subtitle ‘Connecting life’s extremes’: self/world, individual/society, personal/impersonal, local/global, real/virtual, life/ideas, speech/writing. The interview in Rio de Janeiro, May 2011, takes some time to get to this point, but firmly establishes that my fixation with these pairs as an anthropologist is rooted in the contradictions of my schooling as a teenager. The first half of my professional history gives is focused on my early years as a student in Manchester, Cambridge and Accra. But the second half achieves greater depth with the development industry, the United States, studying money, building an online community, South Africa and reflections on the global condition of anthropology today. There a important gaps, such as Britain, the Caribbean, Africa and Europe, with no mention of prolonged mental illness, even if it is a known hazard of professional academic life. These topics are explored more fully in Self in the World.
Research Interests:
The global economic crisis is not merely financial, a moment in the historical cycle of credit and debt. The removal of political controls over money in recent decades has led to a situation where politics is still mainly national, but... more
The global economic crisis is not merely financial, a moment in the historical cycle of credit and debt. The removal of political controls over money in recent decades has led to a situation where politics is still mainly national, but the money circuit is global and lawless. Events since 2008 should be seen as the collapse of “national capitalism”, the money system that the world lived by in the twentieth century. This has been unravelling since the US dollar went off gold in 1971 and money derivatives were invented the following year. The idea of central bank money or legal tender is tenacious despite this development. As the need for international cooperation intensifies, the disconnect between economy and political institutions undermines effective solutions. The crisis of the eurozone in 2011-2012 may be understood best as a Sophoclean tragedy in which good intentions cannot remedy the consequences of past mistakes.
Research Interests:
McNeill’s aim is to shift understanding of Marx’s discoveries away from a narrow economistic approach to a focus on his theory of value grounded in the quasi-religious concept of “fetishism”. This idea is explored with great originality... more
McNeill’s aim is to shift understanding of Marx’s discoveries away from a narrow economistic approach to a focus on his theory of value grounded in the quasi-religious concept of “fetishism”. This idea is explored with great originality and wide scholarship in the opening sections. McNeill then turns to the importance of money and language in structural linguistics and Marxism. He argues that limiting analysis to labour and relations of production is too restrictive. He extends his own reach to economic analysis of exchange and consumption. The last section updates Marx’s relevance for our century by addressing recent Marxist literature on the global issues of environment and financialization.
Research Interests:
This is a personal reflection on the origins of our times, times that are currently dominated by Putin’s war on Ukraine. It draws on various writings since the millennium. The essay begins with 'a brief history of the last half-century in... more
This is a personal reflection on the origins of our times, times that are currently dominated by Putin’s war on Ukraine. It draws on various writings since the millennium. The essay begins with 'a brief history of the last half-century in the West’, written now. It hinges on the neoliberal counter-revolution of 1980 against a world revolution launched after 1945. The end of the Cold War in 1989 opened up the world in confusing ways, but this was closed down by a second counter-revolution after September 11th initiated by George W Bush’s White House as the ‘War on Terror’ and the Iraq War. Part 1 considers this period through an essay written in Paris in 2001 and Part 2 consists of an auto-ethnography of my experiences in the Chicago area while teaching for a term in Spring 2003. The common theme is how the West lost the impetus gained by the Second World War when handing government over to capital around 1980. This, not principally Putin or Trump, is why we find ourselves in the current mess of criminality, corruption and decadence.
Research Interests:
This essay is based on one I published over three decades ago in a collection on trust. It was an ethnographic analysis of 1960s fieldwork done in the slums of Accra, Ghana’s capital city. My original article had three sections. The first... more
This essay is based on one I published over three decades ago in a collection on trust. It was an ethnographic analysis of 1960s fieldwork done in the slums of Accra, Ghana’s capital city. My original article had three sections. The first was empirical, which I have greatly reduced here. I address there how durable economic relations could be sustained in an urban environment that was marginal to both traditional and modern society. I illustrate with examples the tenor of commercial life and petty enterprise in Nima. I do not highlight trust at first. Only in the third section do I turn to what we may call the philosophy of trust. I focus there on migrants’ attempts to build viable enterprise. An intermediate section bridges the empirical and theoretical parts by exploring the semantics of trust and the set of terms to which it belongs. Anthropology is philosophy with real life examples. I offer here some reflections on what I have since learned; but first a few empirical observations.
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I trace the human economy approach to my association with French and Latin American activist sociologists, especially Jean-Louis Laville. Based on the work of Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi, this approach occupies a position on change... more
I trace the human economy approach to my association with French and Latin American activist sociologists, especially Jean-Louis Laville. Based on the work of Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi, this approach occupies a position on change between reform and revolution. The events of 2011 (Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and a global increase in political activism) persuaded me to revisit the politics of a human economy, this time with greater emphasis on world revolution. Second, I explore this dialectic through my friendship with David Graeber. We more or less agree on the economics, but an initial opposition between centre- and extreme-left politics has been moving perceptibly on my part. My third point of reference is what I have learned about revolution from Lenin and C.L.R. James. Fourth, I examine reports hot from the blogosphere, Gabriella Coleman's study of Anonymous along with Ernst Bloch's principle of hope and a critical view of OWS. The human economy exists everywhere in dialectical tension with the dominant economic institutions of our day. I conclude by drawing on Marx's method in Grundrisse for studying the relationship between people, machines and money in history.
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This analysis is based on the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report for 2011-2012. It identifies twelve "pillars" of sustainable national competitiveness: institutions; infrastructure; macroeconomic environment; health and... more
This analysis is based on the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report for 2011-2012. It identifies twelve "pillars" of sustainable national competitiveness: institutions; infrastructure; macroeconomic environment; health and primary education; higher education and training; goods market efficiency; labour market efficiency; financial market development; technological readiness; market size; business sophistication; and innovation. 142 countries were ranked in a Global Competitiveness Index. South Africa came number 50 overall, but the BRICs were not much different: China 26, Brazil 53, India 56 and Russia 66. The top ten was dominated as usual by European countries, with Switzerland (the source of the report) number 1. Inequality is endemic to this world economy, but South Africa's profile is two-tiered to an astonishing degree.
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Don Quixote was a pastiche of the main fiction genres of his day. This science fiction murder mystery is a pastiche of the western novel, drawing on Cervantes, Goethe's Faust, Mann's The Magic Mountain, Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon and... more
Don Quixote was a pastiche of the main fiction genres of his day. This science fiction murder mystery is a pastiche of the western novel, drawing on Cervantes, Goethe's Faust, Mann's The Magic Mountain, Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon and Roddenberry's Star Trek. The main clue to the book's theme is Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
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This was a presentation at the World Bank PSD Forum 2006, Washington DC, April 4-6. This collation has some features not found elsewhere in my writings and the whole is a unique essay formed by the rare opportunity to address the... more
This was a presentation at the World Bank PSD Forum 2006, Washington DC, April 4-6. This collation has some features not found elsewhere in my writings and the whole is a unique essay formed by the rare opportunity to address the institution that did more than any other to promote "the informal sector" in the 1970s. After 1980, this fed the campaign to free global capital flows through "structural adjustment policies" (SAPs) aimed at weakening national governments' ability to protect their citizens from global predators. In 2006, the international organizations promoted a world economy favourable to inward investment by transnational corporations, policed by governments with reduced capacity for making economic laws. When I googled PSD, I found the Philadelphia School for the Deaf and other unrelated entities. The acronym was for "Private Sector Development", meaning corporations based in the leading rich countries. This was a long way from the World Bank's original mandate, as an institution formed in 1944, first to help countries rebuild after the war and then to develop backward areas, initially through infrastructure development. The informal economy was now seen as an obstacle to development, mainly by escaping tax burdens. At this Forum, someone from the McKinsey Company showed that, if VAT collection in Turkey could be raised from two-thirds to 90%, the rate charged could be reduced from 17% to 13% with obvious benefits for corporate payers (figures from memory).
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Nettime-l is a long-running platform for discussion of media and politics. In 2011, two events persuaded some of us that the world was moving again: the 21st January uprising in Egypt’s Tahrir Square which, together with a revolution in... more
Nettime-l is a long-running platform for discussion of media and politics. In 2011, two events persuaded some of us that the world was moving again: the 21st January uprising in Egypt’s Tahrir Square which, together with a revolution in Tunisia, seemed to promise an Arab Spring at last; and Occupy Wall Street in New York which promised political movement in the heart of the American Empire.
Conversation is one of the two main ways that thought moves, the other being story. Dialectic is its formal expression. New year 2012 opened with some optimism on the left. A thread, 'A movement without demands?', was launched on 5th January, summarising a paper claiming, among other things, that an anarchist movement that made no political demands could not mobilise the social divisions necessary for revolution. Like most nettime conversations, what followed was an exercise in free thinking. I took part.
I reproduce an edited version now for several reasons. It may be useful to revisit political ideas aired a full decade ago. We can learn from both positive and negative aspects of what transpired. I don’t expect readers to plough through all 13,000 words. But I guarantee that a selective reading with feed your intellect and perhaps even your politics.
Conversation is one of the two main ways that thought moves, the other being story. Dialectic is its formal expression. New year 2012 opened with some optimism on the left. A thread, 'A movement without demands?', was launched on 5th January, summarising a paper claiming, among other things, that an anarchist movement that made no political demands could not mobilise the social divisions necessary for revolution. Like most nettime conversations, what followed was an exercise in free thinking. I took part.
I reproduce an edited version now for several reasons. It may be useful to revisit political ideas aired a full decade ago. We can learn from both positive and negative aspects of what transpired. I don’t expect readers to plough through all 13,000 words. But I guarantee that a selective reading with feed your intellect and perhaps even your politics.
Research Interests:
My talk is in three parts. Organic trade seems to contain a contradiction, in that 'organic' implies 'natural' and trade entails buying and selling with money which many people think of as extremely unnatural. An attempt to reconcile... more
My talk is in three parts. Organic trade seems to contain a contradiction, in that 'organic' implies 'natural' and trade entails buying and selling with money which many people think of as extremely unnatural. An attempt to reconcile opposites seems to be built into the project. Here I explore the need to combine 'natural economy' with the market, the rural and the urban, production and consumption, global and local, money and democracy. The second part refers to my paper, 'The political economy of food in an unequal world'. The fact that food must be central to any serious attempt to redress world development problems was brought home at Cancún. The motor of development is exchange between rural and urban areas, at first within a nation or region, but now also at the level of the world market. I present a summary of this argument. Third, I look at some options for building local economic democracy, focusing on exchange circuits formed by money issued by the people themselves. Can these be expanded to have potential relevance for international trade? Combining the themes of all three parts should be intrinsic to any 'organic' movement or indeed 'organization'.
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I was asked to compile three short biographies for a Dictionary of Anthropological Biography, edited by Vered Amit and published by Routledge in 2003. This has been republished and updated since under another name. I was given only 800... more
I was asked to compile three short biographies for a Dictionary of Anthropological Biography, edited by Vered Amit and published by Routledge in 2003. This has been republished and updated since under another name. I was given only 800 words for each and a very rigid format. They were: Jack Goody, Raymond T Smith and Peter Worsley. As far as I can see, they dropped out subsequently and were granted a pathetically small word count in the first place.
I knew them all very well. Jack was my PhD supervisor and mentor; Ray and I shared Manchester, Cambridge, Ghana, the Caribbean and Chicago; and Peter was a companion and guide when I taught in Manchester and like me was a strong United fan. What struck me when I wrote them all up was that they were almost variations on a common biography. They all fought in the Second World War when very young, went to Cambridge University, developed their personal brand of egalitarian politics afterwards and, despite moving in different directions, shared a lot, temperamentally and intellectually.
I return to this theme of collective biography after reproducing what I wrote then about each. I should say that I am in biographical mode right now – publishing a personal account in Self in the World (Spring 2022), followed by a biography of Marcel Mauss in preparation.
I knew them all very well. Jack was my PhD supervisor and mentor; Ray and I shared Manchester, Cambridge, Ghana, the Caribbean and Chicago; and Peter was a companion and guide when I taught in Manchester and like me was a strong United fan. What struck me when I wrote them all up was that they were almost variations on a common biography. They all fought in the Second World War when very young, went to Cambridge University, developed their personal brand of egalitarian politics afterwards and, despite moving in different directions, shared a lot, temperamentally and intellectually.
I return to this theme of collective biography after reproducing what I wrote then about each. I should say that I am in biographical mode right now – publishing a personal account in Self in the World (Spring 2022), followed by a biography of Marcel Mauss in preparation.
Research Interests:
I sum up here what a lifetime of learning has taught me, how I share it with others and some of the techniques of storage, retrieval and performance that I have picked up along the way. I start with how I spent my time as a young child... more
I sum up here what a lifetime of learning has taught me, how I share it with others and some of the techniques of storage, retrieval and performance that I have picked up along the way. I start with how I spent my time as a young child and what I learned from it. I then turn to learning and teaching as an academic. How do we combine ideas and life, when they are usually kept in separate compartments? They move together through dialectic (conversation) and story. Memory and communication are strongly linked. I conclude by assessing the claims of organized knowledge and popular culture as sources of education.
Research Interests:
This joint keynote takes the form of a dialogue between a young African student and an old European professor. For each of us the idea of Africa has been a beacon in our personal struggles to overcome the racial, national and economic... more
This joint keynote takes the form of a dialogue between a young African student and an old European professor. For each of us the idea of Africa has been a beacon in our personal struggles to overcome the racial, national and economic divisions of unequal society. Taking Livingstone’s life and times as a point of comparison, we ask how Africa’s place in the world may be changing now. The continent’s relative economic and demographic weight is growing and economic progress there in the coming century may undermine the racial foundations of world society. More inclusive visions are needed to situate Africa in this new world. The “human economy” approach is one. We conclude with reflections on its relevance for African development. Our presentation has four parts.
Part 1 (SM, KH) Personal struggles with division
Part 2 (SM, KH) Livingstone’s life and times
Part 3 (KH, SM) Africa in the world today
Part 4 (KH, SM) Towards a human economy
Part 1 (SM, KH) Personal struggles with division
Part 2 (SM, KH) Livingstone’s life and times
Part 3 (KH, SM) Africa in the world today
Part 4 (KH, SM) Towards a human economy
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An expanded text of an address to a day of study organized by and for anthropology PhD students in Paris to discuss David Graeber’s political legacy. It has four parts. In the first I excavate the revolutionary origins of modern... more
An expanded text of an address to a day of study organized by and for anthropology PhD students in Paris to discuss David Graeber’s political legacy. It has four parts. In the first I excavate the revolutionary origins of modern anthropology and place David Graeber as its leading contemporary exponent. In the second I trace my own political trajectory as an anthropologist. The third part is a summary of the relevant aspects of my obituary concerning our friendship and David’s political legacy for anthropologists. The last reflects on revolution drawing mainly on V.I. Lenin and C.L.R. James. See https://www.academia.edu/44852890/David_Graeber_1961_2020_ for the original English obituary and the French translation in the pdf itself and at https://www.ethnographiques.org/2020/Hart.
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Edited extracts from a recorded conversation with Bill Maurer, Los Angeles, August 2007. Bill is Professor of Anthropology and Law, Dean of Social Sciences and Director, the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion at the... more
Edited extracts from a recorded conversation with Bill Maurer, Los Angeles, August 2007. Bill is Professor of Anthropology and Law, Dean of Social Sciences and Director, the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion at the University of California Irvine. We share a passionate interest in the contemporary evolution of money as well as in the future of anthropology. The conversation, wide-ranging as it often is between friends, has six sections:
Introduction
Money as political education
The pragmatics of money
Money, payment, personal credit and rank
Dialectics
Getting anthropological knowledge out there.
Introduction
Money as political education
The pragmatics of money
Money, payment, personal credit and rank
Dialectics
Getting anthropological knowledge out there.
Research Interests: Anthropology, Pragmatics, Politics, Payment Systems, Money, and 3 moreCredit, Dialectics, and Ranking
I spent most of 2017-2021 writing Self in the World: Connecting Life's Extremes. It will come out with Berghahn Books as a trade hardback (and other formats) in Spring 2022. Towards the end of some nine rewrites I ran into Michael Geyer,... more
I spent most of 2017-2021 writing Self in the World: Connecting Life's Extremes. It will come out with Berghahn Books as a trade hardback (and other formats) in Spring 2022. Towards the end of some nine rewrites I ran into Michael Geyer, a University of Chicago historian interested in world history. These are one-sided extracts from our correspondence. As a result of this exchange, I included in my book a chapter, "Explorations in transnational history", based on amateur investigations almost half a century ago. The book is semi-autobiographical and these letters produce a different spin on what may be found there.
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This is a freewheeling account of the most formative experience of my life, the two years I spent in a West African slum when researching a Cambridge PhD in social anthropology. I squeezed a doctorate out of this, but was never able to... more
This is a freewheeling account of the most formative experience of my life, the two years I spent in a West African slum when researching a Cambridge PhD in social anthropology. I squeezed a doctorate out of this, but was never able to write up a monograph from it. My form of adaptation to the Badlands on Accra’s outskirts was to become an apprentice to a small-time Ghanaian crook. I tried to play it from the middle, but soon realised that I would have to join the criminal side of the law if I was to survive. I was principally a receiver of stolen goods, then a money lender. I recount some chastening moments and give some examples of life on the fringes of the postcolonial economy. I end by reflecting on how hard it was in those pre-postmodern times to make an academic career out of this material without lying.
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A human economy places living people at the centre of economic theory and practice. We must also think of humanity as a whole, since making a viable world society is an urgent necessity. This entails learning how to combine small-scale... more
A human economy places living people at the centre of economic theory and practice. We must also think of humanity as a whole, since making a viable world society is an urgent necessity. This entails learning how to combine small-scale humanism with large-scale bureaucracy. How to rethink the world? The anti-colonial revolution of the last century offers rich material. Its leading intellectuals persuaded the masses to fight for a post-racial society. I consider here the visions of some Pan-Africanists and Gandhi. Connecting people to the project of remaking world society requires us to reassess the relationship between religion and economy. Mobilising solidarity, belief and hope is the task of religion more than political science.
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Outline and reading list for a course of 12 improvised lectures given in Pretoria, South Africa (2013) and posted as MP3s at https://soundcloud.com/soasradio/sets/africa-in-world-history-lectures-by-keith-hart
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The human economy approach is an interdisciplinary alternative to orthodox economics drawing initially on anthropology and development studies. This paper was written soon after the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street suggested that the... more
The human economy approach is an interdisciplinary alternative to orthodox economics drawing initially on anthropology and development studies. This paper was written soon after the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street suggested that the historical moment had revolutionary potential. Advocates for a human economy at first argued against radical upheaval and proposed building on what people were already doing for themselves outside mainstream institutions. Here I revisit the last century's contrast between "reform" and "revolution". I relate the latter to that struggle for "happiness" that animated the early modern liberal revolutions and the anti-colonial democratic revolutions of the last century. I compare my own and David Graeber's use of the term "human economy". Marx's method, as outlined in Grundrisse, offers some guidelines. Perhaps analogue and digital versions of revolution are not antagonistic, but two sides of the same coin.
Research Interests:
This is the draft final chapter of a book in preparation, Self in the World: Connecting Life’s Extremes (Berghahn 2021). It sums up what a lifetime of learning has taught me, how I share it with others through teaching and writing and... more
This is the draft final chapter of a book in preparation, Self in the World: Connecting Life’s Extremes (Berghahn 2021). It sums up what a lifetime of learning has taught me, how I share it with others through teaching and writing and some of the techniques of storage, retrieval and performance that I have picked up along the way. I spent my time as a young child on reading, ball games, playing cards and music. What did I learn from those activities? How does thought move and why are ideas and life usually kept in separate compartments? Dialectic (conversation) and stories try to overcome that divide. I move on to communication and memory, oral and written. Teaching is often the best way of learning. I also learn something about teaching by doing it. I have found beginning students more rewarding to teach than others closed off by longer exposure to specialist higher education. An important subset of my intended readers are anthropologists and their students. I urge them to be open to the possibilities of the next world synthesis in knowledge. I conclude by assessing the relative claims of organized knowledge (science and the humanities) and popular culture as sources of education.
Research Interests:
On one side a puny self; on the other, a vast unknowable universe. We need to scale the world down and scale up the self so that they can meet somewhere with the prospect of making a meaningful connection. The classic means of bridging... more
On one side a puny self; on the other, a vast unknowable universe. We need to scale the world down and scale up the self so that they can meet somewhere with the prospect of making a meaningful connection. The classic means of bridging life’s extremes is prayer. Religion sustains a binding link between something deeply personal and subjective inside each of us and the impersonal world out there. Many people in our world still bridge the gap this way.
The main way of connecting self and world in the last two centuries was through consuming fiction: plays, novels and movies. Here the world is reduced in scale to a stage, paperback or screen, allowing the audience to enter it on any subjective terms they wish.
Global communications are in transition between the age of the mass media and one where ideas large and small can be expressed by anyone through new universal media. The main event of the twentieth century was the anti-colonial revolution, whereby people coerced into world society by western imperialism before established an independent relationship to it. I study the intellectuals of this movement, of whom the greatest was M.K. Gandhi.
The escalating power of human production has introduced a rift between individuals and society. James Crutchfield, a theorist of complexity, asks “What lies between order and chaos?” He answers “human innovation”. The middle ground is where life and creativity grow. In Vladimir Nabokov’s words: “There is, it would seem, in the dimensional scale of the world a kind of delicate meeting place of imagination and knowledge, a point, arrived at by diminishing large things and enlarging small ones that is intrinsically artistic”.
We need to build bridges between local interests and world society. Collaboration between grassroots initiatives and some large-scale bureaucracies is one way to go. Using money teaches us to be more fully human. It connects the extremes of existence. With some money, we can do almost anything; money allows us to imagine universal society. Spending it also anchors us in our most intimate locations. We do this many times a day and this is how money schools us to combine personal and impersonal, finite and infinite, abstract and concrete, analysis and synthesis, local and global.
The main way of connecting self and world in the last two centuries was through consuming fiction: plays, novels and movies. Here the world is reduced in scale to a stage, paperback or screen, allowing the audience to enter it on any subjective terms they wish.
Global communications are in transition between the age of the mass media and one where ideas large and small can be expressed by anyone through new universal media. The main event of the twentieth century was the anti-colonial revolution, whereby people coerced into world society by western imperialism before established an independent relationship to it. I study the intellectuals of this movement, of whom the greatest was M.K. Gandhi.
The escalating power of human production has introduced a rift between individuals and society. James Crutchfield, a theorist of complexity, asks “What lies between order and chaos?” He answers “human innovation”. The middle ground is where life and creativity grow. In Vladimir Nabokov’s words: “There is, it would seem, in the dimensional scale of the world a kind of delicate meeting place of imagination and knowledge, a point, arrived at by diminishing large things and enlarging small ones that is intrinsically artistic”.
We need to build bridges between local interests and world society. Collaboration between grassroots initiatives and some large-scale bureaucracies is one way to go. Using money teaches us to be more fully human. It connects the extremes of existence. With some money, we can do almost anything; money allows us to imagine universal society. Spending it also anchors us in our most intimate locations. We do this many times a day and this is how money schools us to combine personal and impersonal, finite and infinite, abstract and concrete, analysis and synthesis, local and global.
Research Interests:
David Graeber died unexpectedly on September 2nd, 2020 aged 59. This unpublished review of his Debt: The first 5,000 years (Melville House, New York, 2011, 534 pages) is 7,000 words long and unchanged from 2012. With his death, our long... more
David Graeber died unexpectedly on September 2nd, 2020 aged 59. This unpublished review of his Debt: The first 5,000 years (Melville House, New York, 2011, 534 pages) is 7,000 words long and unchanged from 2012. With his death, our long intellectual friendship takes on new priorities; but the need for a political anthropology of democratic revolution continues.
The review starts from a sketch of debt as a central feature of our world. Next, I summarize the anthropology of unequal society, from Rousseau though Morgan and Engels to Lévi-Strauss, Sahlins, Wolf and Goody. David brought this tradition into the 21st century. A short biography follows. I then provide a detailed summary of the book’s argument, concluding with a comparison of our divergent uses of the term “human economy”.
The review starts from a sketch of debt as a central feature of our world. Next, I summarize the anthropology of unequal society, from Rousseau though Morgan and Engels to Lévi-Strauss, Sahlins, Wolf and Goody. David brought this tradition into the 21st century. A short biography follows. I then provide a detailed summary of the book’s argument, concluding with a comparison of our divergent uses of the term “human economy”.
Research Interests:
THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH THE DISPLAY. THE PDF DOWNLOADS OR READS IN BROWSER AS INTENDED This short paper was a response to Oxfam International’s proposal at the World Economic Forum in 2017 to make a “human economy” the centrepiece of... more
THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH THE DISPLAY.
THE PDF DOWNLOADS OR READS IN BROWSER AS INTENDED
This short paper was a response to Oxfam International’s proposal at the World Economic Forum in 2017 to make a “human economy” the centrepiece of their global policies. Since 2011, we -- the directors and post-doctoral fellows in the University of Pretoria’s Human Economy Programme – had developed a strong African research output and North-South dialogue inspired by World Social Forum of 2001 and subsequent networks, mainly in Latin America, France and Southern Europe. We summarise here overlaps and difference’s with Oxfam’s approach.
We locate our historical moment in a three-act drama (1800-2100) where free trade and protection, far from being mutually antagonistic, are complementary as external and internal dimensions of all economies. The early modern liberal revolutions provide striking examples of this. We summarize some guiding principles of a human economy, stressing the need to articulate small-scale humanism with selective large-scale bureaucracies. What forms and principles of political association might help build human economies? Emergent world society is currently hamstrung by the dominant nation-state form.
A human economy approach should bring to light and learn from how people everywhere experience everyday life. Above all, bottom up initiatives must benefit from resources supplied by some powerful bureaucracies. The drive for a human economy requires both ends of the social spectrum and all levels in between to work together. Arguments supported by statistics are useful, but how will the voices of ordinary human beings be heard in the great debate about our common future?
THE PDF DOWNLOADS OR READS IN BROWSER AS INTENDED
This short paper was a response to Oxfam International’s proposal at the World Economic Forum in 2017 to make a “human economy” the centrepiece of their global policies. Since 2011, we -- the directors and post-doctoral fellows in the University of Pretoria’s Human Economy Programme – had developed a strong African research output and North-South dialogue inspired by World Social Forum of 2001 and subsequent networks, mainly in Latin America, France and Southern Europe. We summarise here overlaps and difference’s with Oxfam’s approach.
We locate our historical moment in a three-act drama (1800-2100) where free trade and protection, far from being mutually antagonistic, are complementary as external and internal dimensions of all economies. The early modern liberal revolutions provide striking examples of this. We summarize some guiding principles of a human economy, stressing the need to articulate small-scale humanism with selective large-scale bureaucracies. What forms and principles of political association might help build human economies? Emergent world society is currently hamstrung by the dominant nation-state form.
A human economy approach should bring to light and learn from how people everywhere experience everyday life. Above all, bottom up initiatives must benefit from resources supplied by some powerful bureaucracies. The drive for a human economy requires both ends of the social spectrum and all levels in between to work together. Arguments supported by statistics are useful, but how will the voices of ordinary human beings be heard in the great debate about our common future?
Research Interests:
This is a discursive essay on Africa's past, present and future. It started out as a keynote for a conference on "Informality, international trade and customs" in 2013. I later developed the argument in a book, Africa 2100: A History of... more
This is a discursive essay on Africa's past, present and future. It started out as a keynote for a conference on "Informality, international trade and customs" in 2013. I later developed the argument in a book, Africa 2100: A History of the Future, which remains unpublished.
In 1900 Africa had only 7.5% of the world’s population. Europe had 25% (36% including the lands of new settlement). Today Africa has 15% of world population with a median age of 19 years. Its annual population growth rate is 2.5% while the rest of the world is ageing. Its urban share approaches the global average, but in a much shorter time. Africa could contain 40% of humanity in 2100; Asia 42% (60% now); the rest 18% (25% now). Europe's share will be around 6%. Asian exporters recognize that Africa will soon be the most buoyant sector of the world market.
Can sustained economic growth in the continent match its growing share of global consumption? Being divided into 54 corrupt and undemocratic countries will not help. What strategies might secure significant economic improvement? What political forms should replace or complement nation-states? For centuries now the alternative has been federal, with trading blocs sometimes evolving into political federations. Comparison with the liberal revolutions that made the US, France, Italy and Germany offers ways of thinking about possible African futures.
This demographic explosion, the largest since Europe's in the 19th century, presents a long-delayed opportunity for Africans to raise their collective profile in the world. If they succeed, it will be a world revolution. Everyone else will have to react to it.
In 1900 Africa had only 7.5% of the world’s population. Europe had 25% (36% including the lands of new settlement). Today Africa has 15% of world population with a median age of 19 years. Its annual population growth rate is 2.5% while the rest of the world is ageing. Its urban share approaches the global average, but in a much shorter time. Africa could contain 40% of humanity in 2100; Asia 42% (60% now); the rest 18% (25% now). Europe's share will be around 6%. Asian exporters recognize that Africa will soon be the most buoyant sector of the world market.
Can sustained economic growth in the continent match its growing share of global consumption? Being divided into 54 corrupt and undemocratic countries will not help. What strategies might secure significant economic improvement? What political forms should replace or complement nation-states? For centuries now the alternative has been federal, with trading blocs sometimes evolving into political federations. Comparison with the liberal revolutions that made the US, France, Italy and Germany offers ways of thinking about possible African futures.
This demographic explosion, the largest since Europe's in the 19th century, presents a long-delayed opportunity for Africans to raise their collective profile in the world. If they succeed, it will be a world revolution. Everyone else will have to react to it.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This piece, written in honour of Keith’s life and works, was never going to be a conventional Festschrift. Rather, we felt it was entirely in Keith’s spirit that it should be rendered as an open-ended, far-reaching, and multi-voiced... more
This piece, written in honour of Keith’s life and works, was never going to be a conventional Festschrift. Rather, we felt it was entirely in Keith’s spirit that it should be rendered as an open-ended, far-reaching, and multi-voiced conversation, in which Keith was an active participant.
The current version published on Cultural Anthropology's Member Voices site, is a transcription of the conversation we held for Keith, which took place at the 2018 European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) meeting in Stockholm. We asked people to think about the great themes of Keith’s work, including both methods and topics: money and currency; and scale and how to bridge individual experience, global process, and world history.
The current version published on Cultural Anthropology's Member Voices site, is a transcription of the conversation we held for Keith, which took place at the 2018 European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) meeting in Stockholm. We asked people to think about the great themes of Keith’s work, including both methods and topics: money and currency; and scale and how to bridge individual experience, global process, and world history.
Research Interests:
Keith Hart é um antropólogo que sempre desafiou os moldes da disciplina, tanto em seus formatos institucionais quanto em suas práticas de conheci-mento. A entrevista que publicamos neste número de Sociologia & Antropologia, realizada por... more
Keith Hart é um antropólogo que sempre desafiou os moldes da disciplina, tanto em seus formatos institucionais quanto em suas práticas de conheci-mento. A entrevista que publicamos neste número de Sociologia & Antropologia, realizada por nós na ocasião de sua participação no Colóquio Novas Perspec-tivas em Etnografia Econômica, no Museu Nacional, em 2011, apresenta os múltiplos engajamentos, questionamentos e apostas de um antropólogo que encarna um momento da antropologia e do mundo, mas que o faz de forma extremamente singular, tanto por sua trajetória como por sua perspectiva e suas apostas intelectuais, que transcendem a antropologia enquanto discipli-na acadêmica. Conhecido como o autor que formulou o conceito de informalidade-e por esse motivo reconhecido fora dos círculos antropológicos-, Hart inicia-se na etnografia na década de 1960 na recém-independente Gana. Orientado por Jack Goody, pertence a uma geração de antropólogos que observa e participa de um mundo em transformação, produto da descolonização e da consolidação do "capitalismo de Estado" (Hart, 1992). 1 Geração que produzirá uma renovação da antropologia britânica, não sem conflitos, com figuras de referência tais como Meyer Fortes e Evans-Pritchard. A entrevista ilumina essas tensões ge-racionais de forma primorosa. Originário dos setores populares de Manchester, Keith Hart carrega o orgulho de quem chegou por seu próprio mérito na tradicional Cambrigde-primeiro na escola, depois na universidade-, mas também guarda as marcas deixadas pelo sacrifício necessário para estar e se manter nesse espaço de
Research Interests:
Eds.: Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Parker Shipton