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Rewild your inner hunter-gatherer: how an idea about our ancestral condition is recruited into popular debate in Britain and Ireland
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File | Description | Size | Format | |
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LAVI_RUDGE_WARREN_REWILDING_for_repository.pdf | 360.32 KB |
Author(s)
Date Issued
01 November 2023
Date Available
11T16:25:29Z April 2022
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.
Type of Material
Journal Article
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Journal
Current Anthropology
Language
English
Status of Item
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0011-3204
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
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