{"id":6183,"date":"2023-03-16T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-16T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/?p=6183"},"modified":"2023-01-01T17:42:26","modified_gmt":"2023-01-01T17:42:26","slug":"looking-at-david-graeber-and-david-wengrows-chapter-2021-why-the-state-has-no-originpart-12-of-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/?p=6183","title":{"rendered":"Looking at David Graeber and David Wengrow&#8217;s Chapter (2021) &#8220;Why The State Has No Origin&#8221;(Part 12 of 13)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>0247 Throughout their book, Graeber and Wengrow wonder whether social scientists ask the wrong questions.&nbsp;&nbsp;Social scientists ask questions about the material causes of state formation at one location or another.&nbsp;&nbsp;Indeed, the authors do not wander too far from their colleagues, because they suggest that the &#8220;state&#8221;<sub>2b<\/sub>&nbsp;manifests according to their definition of the term, &#8220;domination&#8221;<sub>2a<\/sub>.&nbsp;&nbsp;The material (perhaps, instrumental) causes underlying the term, &#8220;domination&#8221;<sub>2a<\/sub>, includes controlling violence<sub>1a<\/sub>, administrating information<sub>1a<\/sub>, and charismatic influence<sub>1a<\/sub>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0248 Graeber and Wengrow suggest that these three instrumental potentials account for the state<sub>2b<\/sub>.&nbsp;&nbsp;They are correct, as far as definitions go.&nbsp;&nbsp;But, in their correctness, they fail to draw from the foundational insights in layers A:A&#8217; and B:B&#8217;.&nbsp;&nbsp;It matters&nbsp;<em>what people think<\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;These comments propose ways to visualize&nbsp;<em>what people think<\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;People think triadic relations.&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>Diagrams of judgments and category-based nested forms&nbsp;<\/em>allow the inquirer to visualize&nbsp;<em>what people think<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0249 How is this possible?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Humans adapt into&nbsp;<em>the ultimate niche of triadic relations<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0250 Graeber and Wengrow assert that social scientists need to rethink&nbsp;<em>the premises of social evolution,<\/em>&nbsp;as well as&nbsp;<em>the very idea of politics, itself.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0251&nbsp;<em>What the authors do not know,<\/em>&nbsp;thus&nbsp;<em>cannot assert,<\/em>&nbsp;is found in three masterworks by Razie Mah:&nbsp;<em>The Human Niche, An Archaeology of the Fall<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>How To Define The Word &#8220;Religion&#8221;.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0252&nbsp;<em>The history of civilization<\/em>&nbsp;is not&nbsp;<em>the history of the state<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the German historian, Eric Voegelin (1881-1985 U0&#8242;),\u00a0<em>the history of civilization<\/em>\u00a0entails\u00a0<em>a search for order<sub>1b<\/sub><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Order<sub>1b<\/sub>&nbsp;virtually situates righteousness<sub>1a<\/sub>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0253 Is this the lesson that&nbsp;<em>the history of the state<\/em>&nbsp;tells us over and over again?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0254 When&nbsp;<em>the ill-fated indigenous Americans of the Eastern Woodlands<\/em>&nbsp;<em>critique late-medieval European civilization,<\/em>they say that Europeans dominate one another.&nbsp;&nbsp;Europeans are not righteous.&nbsp;&nbsp;Europeans order one another around.&nbsp;&nbsp;Europeans do not respect one another.&nbsp;&nbsp;Europeans feel obliged to obey commands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Surely,&nbsp;<em>the indigenous people of North America<\/em>&nbsp;practice sovereignty<sub>3b<\/sub>, but they do not have states<sub>2b<\/sub>, defined by the explicit abstraction, &#8220;domination&#8221;<sub>2a<\/sub>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These unfortunate people express&nbsp;<em>the virtues of liberty, equality and fraternity<\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;And, they have no state<sub>2b<\/sub>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>0247 Throughout their book, Graeber and Wengrow wonder whether social scientists ask the wrong questions.&nbsp;&nbsp;Social scientists ask questions about the material causes of state formation at one location or another.&nbsp;&nbsp;Indeed, the authors do not wander too far from their colleagues, because they suggest that the &#8220;state&#8221;2b&nbsp;manifests according to their definition of the term, &#8220;domination&#8221;2a.&nbsp;&nbsp;The material [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[280],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intimations-of-political-philosophy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - 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