Rewild Your Inner Hunter-Gatherer: How an Idea about Our Ancestral Condition Is Recruited into Popular Debate in Britain and Ireland

Lavi, Noa; Rudge, Alice; Warren, Graeme

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.

Citation

Lavi, N., Rudge, A., & Warren, G. (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), 72-99. https://doi.org/10.1086/728528

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 21, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Jan 17, 2024
• Publication Date: Feb 1, 2024
• Deposit Date: Jan 24, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 24, 2024
• Journal: Current Anthropology
• Print ISSN: 0011-3204
• Electronic ISSN: 1537-5382
• Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 65
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 72-99
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/728528
• Related Public URLs: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/728528?journalCode=ca