Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

with barter, discover money, and
begin
eventually develop credit systems.
then
happened precisely the other way
It
The reason that economic
around.…
now begin with imaginary
textbooks
is because it has been impossible
villages
talk about real ones. Even some
to
have been forced to admit
economists
Smith’s Land of Barter doesn’t really
that
The question is why the myth is
exist.
has this myth been perpetuated for
Why
long? The issue before us presents a rich
so
of knowledge claims, questions and
study
Does the myth of barter support
implications.
myths, mainly the inevitability of money?
other
assuredly, it displaces the important
More
of gift and casual credit economies.
histories
the nature and popular understanding
Indeed,
tells how one day, after coming home hungry
Freuchen
an unsuccessful walrus-hunting expedition, he
from
one of the successful hunters dropping off several
found
pounds of meat. He thanked him profusely.
hundred
man objected indignantly: ‘Up in our country we
The
human!’ said the hunter. ‘And since we are human
are
help each other. We don’t like to hear anybody say
we
for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow.
thanks
here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by
Up
one makes dogs.’
whips
last line is something of an anthropological
The
and similar statements about the refusal to
classic,
barter myth naturalizes a calculating,
The
pro quo version of human nature,
quid
“it possible to imagine a world that
making
nothing more than a series of cold-blooded
is
says Graeber (2011). The risk is
calculations”,
alternative systems of exchange slowly
that
it would be an absurd mistake to
But
the ills of our economic systems
attribute
the impersonal, acontextual, intertemporal
towards
logic of money; bought and soldby
and investors far-removed from the
traders
enforced by watertight legal contracts
debtors,
asset-seizure, and almost never, ever
and
forgiven.
may not be a coincidence that the governing
It
of many economic models
assumptions
hold onto the myth of the rational
similarly
maximizing their profits and benefits.
human,
is a very different understanding and
This
of debt, and human life, than what
reality
not very long ago. Let’s contrast this
existed
a story provided by Graeber, recounting
with
Freuchen’s encounter with an Inuit
Peter
from Greenland. Whether lyrical
hunter
literal, the story reveals another form of
or
that is entirely different from the
exchange
credits and debits can be found throughout
calculate
anthropological literature on egalitarian hunting
the
It’s not that [the hunter], like untold millions
societies.
similar egalitarian spirits throughout history, was
of
that humans have a propensity to calculate.
unaware
he wasn’t aware of it, he could not have said what
If
did. Of course we have a propensity to calculate.
he
have all sorts of propensities. In any real-life
We
we have propensities that drive us in several
situation,
contradictory directions simultaneously… .
different
real question is which we take as the foundation
The
our humanity, and therefore, make the basis of our
of
the supposed misguided acceptance of
to
and money, and to lament our lost and
barter
past. The point being made here
romanticized
that the way things are is not the way they
is
to be, that by examining the building
have
of our knowledge, and undoing the
blocks
and taken-for-granted falsehoods, we
myths
imagine a different future, and begin to
can
II. Perspectives
II. Perspectives
perpetuated anyway.” (Graeber 2011)
“quid pro quo” of barter.
of credit, and debt, has shifted over time
civilization.” (Graeber 2011)
disappear from our perceived possibilities.
work towards it.
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