ABSTRACT
While David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years has been hailed since its publication as an influential work in anthropology and academia at large, it has found the most use in the public sphere. Owing to the timing of its publication in the wake of the global financial crisis, Debt joins a great deal of literature written with the aim of inspiring a debate on capitalism. Scholars who have played an important role in popularizing the debate on global inequality and capitalism include the economists Thomas Piketty of France, Joseph Stieglitz of the United States, and Dani Rodrik of Turkey. Brought together by a mutual frustration with inequality, Graeber and Piketty have engaged with each other directly on how to move forward the current scholarship criticizing capitalism and inequality. The two scholars approach the debate from completely different practical viewpoints.
