Professor David Graeber

We are shocked and deeply saddened to hear of David Graeber’s death. All of our thoughts are with his family, friends and colleagues at this difficult time. David was a former Fellow, and also a friend to the ISRF, and he will be greatly missed.

David Graeber 1961-2020

The state as a convergence of heterogeneous elements: a deep historical approach

The premise of this project is that what we refer to as “the state” is not a unitary entity, but an arbitrary historical convergence of a number of forms and principles of power (sovereignty, heroic aristocracy, administrative bureaucracies, various popular and elite deliberative forms) that have separate historical origins and can exist entirely independently of one another. As a result, history affords endless examples of political entities (“chiefdoms”, Mesopotamian temple complexes, Classical “city-states”) that are clearly organized around certain principles we associate with states, and are strikingly absent in others. Our inability to account for such entities is striking. Instead distinguishing these elements and tracing how they have, historically, come together and drifted apart, examining the affinities and tensions between them, can provide both a more compelling way to look at history, and afford important insights into the apparent global crisis of the contemporary state.