The most satisfying of western mythological solutions is that of an imaginary country in which everyone knows everyone else. Literally or figuratively. It is a dream in which family or neighbourhood society is miraculously inflated to include millions of people. This fantasy lay at the heart of the nineteenth-century nationalism with its conviction that a nation was one race, one religion, one language, one figurative family. It is a static idea of the nation and is based on a manipulation of fear. In other words, only family can protect you.
In the late-twentieth century, this idea has been actively picked up by the false populists, libertarians, neo-conservatives, and proponents of direct demorcracy...
That's from John Ralston Saul, Reflections of a Siamese Twin: Canada at the End of the Twentieth Century. I don't really know exactly how to call him, but something like a liberal and a multiculturalist.
What made me notice this was that last part, because it makes me think about Graeber (who else do we think of in our class?). And actually, I thought this was a provocative way to think about "anarchism" the way Graeber describes it. His arguments do often go back to hunter-gatherer societies as a template for how direct democracy can work and it is quite clear that this fits into the category of "family or neighbourhood society is miraculously inflated to include millions of people". Graeber would responsd, I imagine, that Saul takes the country or nation (or the State, or the state?) as a given. I guess that is true in a sense. Really, I think it also makes it clear that anyone can play the "your thinking is so WESTERN!" card pretty easy, which I think is quite troubling considering how often this forms the backbone of arguments within anthropology ("your understanding of relatedness/nature/genealogy/substance/gender/religion/belief/evidence/success/truth/politics is so Western!"... "NO, IT'S YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF..."). What's your thoughts?
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