ABSTRACT
In the great debate between Hobbes and Rousseau the Green movement has tended towards the latter’s faith in a state of primitive harmony and nobility rather than the former’s belief in brutality and misery. Greens and fellow travellers have used existing hunter-gatherer groups and their ancient ancestors as an example of ecological good conduct. Social and economic lessons are often also drawn. Conservatively inclined Greens argue that the natural social order of modern peoples, studied by anthropologists, provides a critique of the social practices of unnatural urban civilization. For Goldsmith et al. (1988) questions concerning the status of women, child-rearing, diet, economics and war can be answered best by looking at so-called ‘primitive’ societies. Such peoples lived in a state of nature and were therefore part of a natural order in a social sense. Such an essentialist view that uses biological ‘laws’ to determine social practice has long been a staple of conservative political philosophies. From the left, Marx and Engels, whilst celebrating industrial progress and scientific advance, noting the work of the anthropologist Lewis Morgan, looked back to a state of pre-agricultural ‘Primitive Communism’ (Krader 1979:153-71). Both eco-socialists and Green conservatives note that prehistoric and existing hunter-gather groups developed economies based on sharing rather than competitive exchange. A close knowledge of local eco-systems, many modern anthropologists have argued, allows such groups to live in a state of prosperity in the
harshest of environments such as the Australian or Kalahari deserts. Finally eco-feminists have claimed that archaeological research reveals that such early societies were ecological, equal and matriarchal (Gimbutas 1991). Whether by matriarchal, Marxist or conservative constructions most members of the modern Green movement argue that socalled primitive peoples lived in balance with their environment.
