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Contribution short abstract:

In its examples of cultural contact, TDE emphasises people's oft-ignored awareness (manifest in schismogenesis and play) of the contingency of their own social forms and practices. Linked to Graeber's earlier work on imagination, this can provoke anthropology to reconsider some fundamentals.

Contribution long abstract:

"Imagination" is a key term in the work of David Graeber, at least since "Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value" (2001); as an anthropological topic, he uses it to cast light on various aspects of human sociality including hierarchy and bureaucracy. While not even included in the index of TDE, people's imagination of other ways to live and organize themselves is a thread running through the entire book. Even more: that people have not only been able to self-consciously reorganize their societies and that anthropology and other disciplines have systematically neglected this ability, is arguably one its key arguments. The evidence of past people's awareness of the "otherwise" comes out best in TDE's reconstructions of cultural contact in the Americas, and how there, models, ideas and ideologies seem to have been spread, imitated, ignored and rejected. Gregory Bateson's old notion of "schismogenesis" makes a furious come-back here as encapsulating that cultural change is never simply endogeneous, but a knowledge-based reaction; "play", another key term of TDE, expresses that people were aware of the contingency of their own social forms and practices. For anthropology, this reminder that (with Kopytoff) "pace introductory textbooks in anthropology, people do not always consider their culture to provide them with the best of all possible worlds" is a welcome reality check to reconsider not only phenomena like cultural change, identity, and conflict, but also some theoretical temptations.