In this forum on The Dawn of Everything (Farar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), scholars across the social sciences and the humanities reflect on what authors David Graeber and David Wengrow call “a new history of humanity.” This new history proposes not an alternate timeline for human evolution and development, but an alternate narrative account of the past, one that rejects an Eden-like origin of inequality to imagine how humans might imagine new forms of social organization. Contributors to this forum consider the implications of the arguments advanced by Graeber and Wengrow for understandings of state and society, environmental justice and nonhuman life, gender, scholarly communication, radical pedagogy, and Indigenous epistemologies.

Begin by reading a conversation between editorial board member Lisa Sideris, who cocurated the forum with TIF editor Mona Oraby, and David Wengrow. Here, Sideris and Wengrow discuss the primary themes, questions, and intent of the book as well as its contribution to various literatures and public debates.