> Private property first appeared as a concept in sacred contexts
I can't watch a couple of dogs fighting over a bone and believe that the concept of private property is a recent or human or even mammalian invention.
I can't watch a couple of dogs fighting over a bone and believe that the concept of private property is a recent or human or even mammalian invention.
I don't agree with this view of economics, but this is generally the line of thought among leftist thinkers
There's a new film out I just saw at TIFF by Tsangari who produced DOGTOOTH by Yorgos Lanthimos called HARVEST with Caleb Landry Jones, anyhow it's a telling of the early days of the Inclosure Act, an interesting period of transition, performed w anachronistic timelessness
is different from
"all 100 people in my village need a cheeseburger very badly; this piece of paper says that if any of them lay a finger on it, they get carted off to jail"
they're more referring to the latter
but he as an anthropologist has argued in other venues to revise historical origins of various concepts like currency and debt based on available evidence rather than academic myth.
which is an earliest known origins argument based on available archaeological evidence rather than true earliest origins or mythologized origins for propagandized explainability. Of course this isnt relevant to your dog point, but just to contextualize a reoccurring theme of Graeber.
Anecdote: My family went on a walking holiday in England. The entire country is crisscrossed by a network of walking paths. Many go through private farms. The same thing is rare, or even nonexistent, in the US. We were told that although we're allowed to use the land, there are certain stipulations, such as taking care not to damage the crops or disturb the livestock.
Here in the states, my family "owns" the land that our house is on, but with a variety of limitations.
What of the cooperation an ant colony?
People love finding examples that reinforce their biases
This then moves the goal posts to the claim that multi-agent internally cooperative affinity groups can’t coexist. Dogs don’t fight if there are plenty of bones to go around. Plenty of ant groups coexist in the literature.
So, you’re most likely infected with the myth that there’s scarce resources.
This idea of the humans are inextricably and unambiguously violent or in a state where we must compete for scarce resources, is a trope that is both wrong and a threat to long term peace
I think maybe you're referring to personal property.
But of course you could argue that dogs were badly influenced by humans .. but also most other wild animals know the concept of territory and fight over it.
But I think was meant with the quote is formalized property. Ownership tied to a piece of paper eventually - and this is indeed something different at some point.