James Suzman
Why Do We Work So Hard?
Summary
James Suzman explores the historical perspective of work and shares insights from his experiences with the Ju/‘hoansi, challenging the notion that scarcity has been the driving force behind the human work ethic. He contrasts the hunter-gatherer society view of abundance and immediate return economies with the scarcity-focused mindset of agricultural societies.
James Suzman
James Suzman is a social anthropologist. He is the author of Affluence Without Abundance (2017) and Work (2020). He holds a PhD from Edinburgh University. In 2001 he was awarded the Smuts Commonwealth Fellowship in African Studies at Cambridge University. He is a fellow of Robinson College Cambridge. For much of the past three decades, James has been documenting the encounter between one of the world’s last community of autonomous hunter-gatherers, the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, and the expanding global economy. Since 2014 he has been director of the anthropological research and support organization Anthropos based in Cambridge. In addition to his academic work, Suzman has written for theFinancial Times, the Guardian, the Observer, the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Sunday Times, New African, and Aeon.
Bushmen occupied all of Southern Africa for most of human history. Now, there are about a hundred thousand people there who identify themselves as Bushmen, all part of 14 language groups. Khoekhoegowab, Khoekhoe, Juǀʼhoan. All of them are marginalised, very few of them have access to the land. None are able to live their traditional life.
No, I’m absolutely not saying that there’s no hardship. What I’m saying is that there was indeed hardship and it’s certainly easy to think when I said people weren’t obsessed about scarcity, they certainly endured hardship. Living a hunting life as a hunter-gatherer can be tough. Long history and indeed even Ju/‘hoan histories, their periods when things were very difficult, every year, three consecutive years of no rain. Food is scarce. People get hungry. People suffer. The point is that they didn’t obsess about it.
To put the answer very simply, yes, of course. I think in historical terms it’s a different question. You know, the legacy of contact and the expansion of the global economy is certainly a mixed thing. You know, they’ve been quite wiped off plant farming populations and they’re very small populations now.