Lavi, Noa, Rudge, Alice and Warren, Graeme (2024) 'Rewild Your Inner Hunter-Gatherer: How an Idea about Our Ancestral Condition Is Recruited into Popular Debate in Britain and Ireland.' Current Anthropology, 65 (1). pp. 72-99.
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Abstract
We examine how hunter-gatherers are imagined in popular debate in Britain and Ireland, demonstrating that aspects of hunter-gatherer lifestyles are presented as both the antithesis and antidote to perceived crises in contemporary society. We apply an anthropological lens to four areas of popular discourse: physical health, mental health, bush-craft and survivalism. We identify how the imagined hunter-gatherer in these debates is constructed through processes of commodification, which often reveal nostalgic colonial values regarding ‘human nature’. This repeats and sustains damaging perceptions of hunter-gatherer lifeways. It also highlights how archaeological, anthropological and other academic research on hunter-gatherers is manifest in popular debates that reinforce assumptions about human nature and the significance of our evolutionary past within a neoliberal, colonialist context.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| SOAS Departments & Centres: | Departments and Subunits > Department of Anthropology & Sociology |
| ISSN: | 00113204 |
| Copyright Statement: | This is the version of the article accepted for publication in Current Anthropology published by University of Chicago Press Journals. https://doi.org/10.1086/728528. Re-use is subject to the publisher’s terms and conditions, and is limited to non-commercial use. |
| DOI (Digital Object Identifier): | https://doi.org/10.1086/728528 |
| Date Deposited: | 24 Jan 2024 15:14 |
| URI: | https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/41257 |
| Related URLs: |
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