Graeber and Wengrow’s Middle Ages
Anarchist Studies - ISSN 2633-8270
Volume 32 Number 1 (2024)
Graeber and Wengrow’s Middle Ages
Bernard Gowers pages 92-108
Abstract
David Graeber and David Wengrow’s 2021 monograph The Dawn of Everything offers an anarchist approach to world history. It has received considerable critical and popular attention, and is a welcome historiographical contribution, due to its broad range, and rejection of technological and environmental determinism. This review article discusses the book’s treatment of medieval Europe. It identifies serious limitations, which derive from Enlightenment assumptions which remain widespread, and create an impediment to understanding the Middle Ages in particular, and the social possibilities of religion more generally. Drawing on the observations of the anarchist medieval historian Ian Forrest, and the strengths of other elements of The Dawn of Everything, this piece suggests how medieval Europe can contribute to a historiography that is alert to possibilities for human freedom and solidarity.
SORRY - you are not registered as being permitted online access to the full text of this article
You have the following options:
- If you are viewing this via an institution or academic library you can ask that your institution takes out a Subscription to this journal.
- If you already have a Personal Subscription please login below
Forgotten your username / password? Click here to locate
- Purchase an annual Personal Subscription
PRINT + DIGITAL personal subscription (£35 / year)
DIGITAL personal subscription (£30 / year)
A Personal Subscription provides immediate access not only to the single article you are seeking, but also to all past and future articles in this journal up to the expiry of your annual (calendar year) subscription. - Purchase immediate access to this single article (UK£7.00) - Buy article Coming Soon
To cite this article
Bernard Gowers (2024) Graeber and Wengrow’s Middle Ages, Anarchist Studies, 32(1), 92-108