Keynote address by David Graeber and David Wengrow: ‘The Myth of the Stupid Savage: Rousseau’s Ghost and the Future of Political Anthropology’
15-17 May 2019, University of Amsterdam
The basic premise of the PPA+ Society is that the fields of philosophy, politics, anthropology, and other social sciences have much more in common than is typically acknowledged. Philosophical claims about human beings had to start somewhere and, indeed, they usually began as basic empirical generalisations about the nature of human societies. Anthropology began as an offshoot from the field philosophy in the early 19th century and it continues to carry the same fundamental set of theoretical building blocks with it into the present day. Politics and other social science disciplines have comparable origins, typically traceable to moral philosophy. As an interdisciplinary scholarly society, PPA+ aims to articulate the theoretical principles, methodological orientations, and empirical data that form the basis of philosophy, politics, anthropology and allied disciplines as traditionally distinct fields. Through this collaboration, we hope to identify persistent shortcomings and biases in our thinking about the nature of human social life ways and to find better ways forward.
The Society organises an annual conference. The 2019 event will be hosted by the University of Amsterdam’s Departments of Anthropology and Political Science on 15-17 May.
Further information and instructions for registration can be found here.