Rudge, Alice;
Lavi, Noa;
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
10.1086/728528.
(In press).
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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, bushcraft, and survivalism. We identify how the imagined hunter-gatherer in these debates is constructed through processes of commodification that 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: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Rewild Your Inner Hunter-Gatherer: How an Idea about Our Ancestral Condition Is Recruited into Popular Debate in Britain and Ireland |
| DOI: | 10.1086/728528 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1086/728528 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Anthropology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10146388 |
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