Utilité et inutilité du travail / The Revolt of the Caring Classes
Conversation with Philippe Descola
Thursday, March 22, 2018, 6:30pm
In English with simultaneous translation.
David Graeber is an anthropologist of international stature, professor at the London School of Economics and author of influential work on the theory of value, the long-term evolution of social inequalities and the comparative study of the roots of political power. He also applies his anthropological knowledge to a radical critique of contemporary capitalism. In particular, his lecture Utilité et inutilité du travail - The Revolt of the caring classes defends the thesis that useful occupations are often poorly paid and little considered, while jobs linked to the upper echelons of the bureaucracy are highly paid, even when their usefulness may be questioned.
Trained at the University of Chicago, he conducted research on Madagascar while developing an ethnography of direct action and anarchism. He was a lecturer in anthropology at Yale University until June 2007.
David Graeber is the author of numerous books, including:
- Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams (2001)
- Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar (2007)
- Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire (2007)
- Direct Action: An Ethnography (2009)
- Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011) (French translation: Dette : 5 000 ans d'histoire, Les liens qui libèrent, 2013)
- The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy (2015) (trans.: Bureaucratie, Les liens qui libèrent, 2015)
- The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement, (2013) (trans. Comme si nous étions déjà libres, Lux, 2014)
- On Kings, co-written with Marshall Sahlins (2017)
David Graeber is best known to the general public for being one of the first personalities involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, as well as for his 2013 article on "bullshit jobs" in Strike!
