James Suzman

Starts with a review of what “work” really means and then explores the history of human work. I really loved the close attention to what the daily “productive” lives of long-ago people may have been like, long before recorded history. The last few chapters, about what work has become in the last couple thousand years was weaker, I thought, or maybe just more familiar. Anyone who has enjoyed Graeber’s “Debt: The First 5000 Years” or James C Scott’s “Seeing Like a State” would probably like this book also.… (mere)

I started this book during my recent, thankfully brief, period of unemployment earlier this year, for perhaps obvious reasons. I was expecting a sort of sociopolitical examination of our relationship to work, but it is rather more than that. James Suzman is an anthropologist specializing in hunter-gatherers of southern Africa, and he takes a very broad perspective.

Though the book is thoroughly documented with sources in the footnotes and it is written by an academic, it was blessedly not bogged down by acadamese or jargon and was a pleasure to read. Though it can be read as an indictment of capitalism, it is far from a political screed. It is much more an examination of humanity’s relationship to work, a look at the ways various cultures approach work, and some thoughtful suggestions about better ways we could deal with “the Economic Problem.” I learned a lot about more recent economics, such as the “Great Decoupling,” when GDP became “decoupled” from the median household income, and how this means greater wealth inequality. I also learned about alternative approaches to the “Econonomic Problem.” While this is not necessarily a hopeful book, it’s also not entirely gloom and doom.

I’d recommend this to thoughtful millennials who are interested in new economic approaches for reducing inequality and hopefully healthier and more satisfying relationships to work.… (mere)

Das Buch hat mir sehr gut gefallen. Da Geschichte eigentlich nicht zu meinem Interessengebiet gehört, war vieles neu für mich. Das Verhältnis des Menschen zur Arbeit vom ersten prähistorischen Menschen bis heute wird beleuchtet. Letztendlich fand ich es tröstlich, zu sehen, wie sich die Menschen entwickelt haben, dass immer wieder Kulturen untergegangen sind, aber auch neue entstanden. In Dimensionen von Jahrmillionen oder auch nur Hunderttausend Jahren wird unser jetziger katastrophaler Zustand der Welt sicher anders zu bewerten sein, als wenn man mittendrin steckt. Falls es in fernen Zukunft jemand gibt, der einer Bewertung fähig ist.… (mere)