keith hart
intro’d to keith via nika dubrovsky and museum of care meetings..
ie m of care – apr 28 – at 6:45 in this 8 min clip from hour ish long session – [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk5YIujTHX8]:
k: need to get rid of us (adults) first..
1 yr to be 5 ness et al
k: you’ve been bombarded by the idea when you were a baby that you are incompetent.. and that they only way to that is getting a phd.. via subversive ness et al.. you have to find your power and who you want to do it with
k: i was 50.. learned most.. via james.. he taught me by ie and not in any org’d way.. he used to tell me.. you have to follow your own nose.. this was the turning point of my life.. before then.. i couldn’t find anything in the world to connect with .. or who.. not based on rejecting formal political associations.. i’ve lived in 24 countries.. i’m a nomad.. i had this principle that if it doesn’t work here i’ll move on.. my nomadism was the means of being free.. met up w people like him.. but i always knew i was a loner.. i’ve got all these credentials.. but thru being w him for 3 yrs.. i was able to devise a path for myself..
itch-in-the-soul ness
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adding page after steve bachelor shared topics to cover with upcoming hart m of care sessions:
— Anthropology as revolutionary project: the need to personalize anthropology in ways that help us discover the golden mean or middle ground in our collective humanity.
— Money, debt, morality, and redemption: how money connects us collectively and individually.
— The internet and Direct Action: how to leverage both to become more fully human and (where I live at least) wage the unfinished Second American Revolution.
1st and 3rd in particularly intriguing/resonating
1\ to me.. the golden mean – maté basic needs – and org- ing around those legit needs (middle ground.. golden mean)
we need a problem deep enough to resonate w/8bn today.. a mechanism simple enough to be accessible/usable to 8bn today.. and an ecosystem open enough to set/keep 8bn legit free
ie: org around a problem deep enough (aka: org around legit needs) to resonate w/8bn today.. via a mechanism simple enough (aka: tech as it could be) to be accessible/usable to 8bn today.. and an ecosystem open enough (aka: sans any form of m\a\p) to set/keep 8bn legit free
and
3\ using tech/ai/internet/whatever as means to detox us via those/that golden mean.. ie: ai as nonjudgmental expo labeling et al
ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
mufleh humanity law: we have seen advances in every aspect of our lives except our humanity– Luma Mufleh
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find/follow keith:
Keith Hart (born in Manchester, England) is a British anthropologist and writer living in Paris. His main research has focused on economic anthropology, Africa and the African diaspora, and money. He has taught at universities including East Anglia, Manchester, Yale and the Chicago, as well as at Cambridge University where he was director of the African Studies Centre. He contributed the concept of the informal economy to development studies and has published widely on economic anthropology. He is the author of The Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World and Self in the World: Connecting Life’s Extremes. His written work focuses on the national limits of politics in a globalised economy.
to me.. econ we need: oikos (the economy our souls crave).. ‘i should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.’ – gaston bachelard, the poetics of space
perhaps let’s try/code money (any form of measuring/accounting) as the planned obsolescence w/ubi as temp placebo.. where legit needs are met w/o money.. till people forget about measuring
literacy and numeracy both elements of colonialism/control/enclosure.. we need to calculate differently and stop measuring things
need a nother way (for 8b to live) sans any form of m\a\p
In 1993, Keith Hart and Anna Grimshaw started a small press called Prickly Pear. Together, they published a series of ten pamphlets. “We emulate the passionate amateurs of history who circulated new and radical ideas to as wide an audience as possible,” they said. “And we hope in the process to reinvent anthropology as a means of engaging with society.” In 2001, Prickly Paradigm established itself as a new incarnation of Prickly Pear with Marshall Sahlins as publisher.
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rip nov 2025
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be you. 