The David Graeber Institute began as a platform for projects building on the legacy of David Graeber. We are now launching an educational institution to address the challenge of strengthening communities most vulnerable to climate change, beginning with island nations in the Caribbean. The institute will organize essential research around David’s archive and collaborate with other initiatives and institutions around the world focusing on building resilience in a time of crisis. 

The David Graeber Institute announces the launch of an educational institution in  St. Vincent and the Grenadines to address the challenge of strengthening communities most vulnerable to climate change, beginning with island nations in the Caribbean. Our sustainably run physical space in Saint Vincent will offer students and faculty access to a library and archive of published and unpublished works by David Graeber and like-minded thinkers in the fields of anthropology, economics, political philosophy, art, and technology. 

Our main thematic emphasis will be on the Carnival as an economic, political, and artistic structure that is fundamental to almost every human society, and especially for Caribbean culture.  Our participation in the St. Vincent Carnival will become the basis for collaboration between the Institute and the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The Institute will join the network of initiatives around the world focusing on building resilience in a time of crisis. We aim to establish local systems where essential resources—like food, education, energy, and medicine—can be produced in abundance and distributed freely. Building on David’s idea of technology as an expression of social relations, DGI aims to foster a system of equal participation of all three disciplines: technology, arts, and humanities.  We hope to support the development of intellectually intensive, but not labor intensive, non-proprietary open-source technologies that can be produced and maintained locally.

We believe that just and equitable resource redistribution is critical in the development of crisis-resistant social structures. It is our mission to establish the abundant production and free distribution of that which sustains human life, natural ecosystems and social cohesion. Beginning in St Vincent, we hope to to create a decentralized network of David Graeber Institutes to secure community resilience in the face of climate change all over the globe. 

Eventually, we would like to expand to other regions to create a decentralized network of resource sharing.