Far from rushing blindly for their chains like Rousseau’s savages, Woodburn’s ‘immediate return hunter-gatherers’ understand precisely where the chains of captivity loom, and organize much of their lives to keep away from them. This might sound like the basis of something hopeful or optimistic. Actually, it’s anything but. What it suggests is, again, that any equality worth the name is essentially impossible for all but the very simplest foragers.
