In the summer, traditional women were living in single family units where they were almost entirely dependent for survival on their fathers and brothers. The innuit tended to accept the principle of ultimate male authority. As one elder recalls, she was the first to rise and the last to sleep. Her husband was always right. She could be punished by her parents for not pleasing her husband. He had the final word, and that's just the way it was.
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Episode notes
In this episode we cover the rest of chapter 3 of David Graeber and David Wengrow’s book The Dawn of Everything.
In this chapter, the authors claim that the seasonal social structures of the traditional Nambikwara, Lakota and Kwakiutl were the result of conscious choice, grand theatre, play and expedience.
In doing so, they repeatedly invent various things that they attribute to famous anthropologists like Clause-Levi Strauss and Marcel Mauss which those authors never said.
They also claim that those authors attribute social phenomena to conscious choice when in reality they attribute them to material conditions.
We also discover that Claude Levi-Strauss goofed up Nambikwara social organization.
And we look at materialist explanations for phenomena such as:
Why did the traditional Inuit have private patriarchy and private property in summer but gender equality and communal property in winter?
Why did the Lakota have an Akicita police force that would punish crimes and enforce rules in the buffalo season but not the rest of the year?
The similarities between Nuer prophets and ancient Israelite prophets in the Old Testament.
Finally, we apply the authors’ logic about conscious choice and seasonal social structures to McDonalds employees and have a good a laugh.
PATREON (I refuse to monetize my YouTube because I don’t want to subject you to ads, and it takes me 2-6 weeks to make one episode of these, so please help out if you can!)
