Affluence Without Abundance is an elegant and absorbing contribution to our knowledge of the hunting and gathering way of life, both in the present and in the recent past.

"Suzman’s talent for evoking the region’s vast and haunting landscapes, his elegiac account of a passing covenant with nature, and his warm and compassionate character sketches of individual Ju’/hoansi, make this a fascinating and at times profoundly moving work of literary non-fiction."

The Ju/’hoansi people of the Kalahari have always been fiercely egalitarian. They hate inequality or showing off, and shun formal leadership institutions. It’s what made them part of the most successful, sustainable civilisation in human history

Suzman and Scott have both written excellent books, which could serve on reading lists for geography, history and politics, as well as in their natural homes of archaeology and anthropology."

"Fortunately for us, the anthropologist James Suzman did exactly that: he spent more than two decades visiting, studying, and living among the Bushmen of the Kalahari, in southwest Africa. It’s a story he recounts in his new book, “Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen.”

The Jackal and the Donkey: How Stories Saved a People’s Identity
Pushed to the margins, the Ju/’hoansi of Namibia built an enduring folklore from the kinship of humans and animals

This fascinating glimpse into a disappearing way of life leads Suzman to reflect on our world today: a world where wealth and possessions are valued above all other pursuits. Suzman’s account of the lives of Bushmen, past and present, offers plenty of fuel for thought.

The Bushmen Who Had the Whole Work-Life Thing Figured Out- Every year automation and computerization squeeze out new segments of the labor force. In response, trade unions and workers anxiously wring their hands while savvy politicians demonize the “sinister” forces of globalization and make promises about job retention that they almost certainly won’t be able to keep.

Tsumkwe is the closest thing to a town in Namibia’s Nyae Nyae district, the epitome of remoteness in a country where almost everywhere is remote. Tsumkwe is also the capital of roughly 3,500 Ju/'hoansi, perhaps the best known of the few groups of people who continued to live as hunter-gatherers well into the 20th century.

The mantra of the 21st century might be that the world is interconnected everywhere, but the anthropologist James Suzman knows better. For more than two decades, Suzman has researched and gotten to know various groups of Bushmen throughout southern Africa.

But “Affluence Without Abundance” is not simply a description of Bushman life. Mr Suzman deftly weaves his experiences and observations with lessons on human evolution, the history of human migration and the fate of African communities since the arrival of Europeans. The overarching aim of the book is more ambitious still: to challenge the reader’s ideas about both hunter-gatherer life and human nature.

What do Bushman attitudes to pets and dogs in particular reveal about how hunter-gatherers empathised with their prey and how this changed with the Agricultural Revolution.

But what Suzman’s foray into humanity’s past reveals is that leisure has never been the ready default mode we may imagine, even in the chillest of cultures. The psychological cost of civilization, the scourge of the Sunday scaries, and the lesson of the Ju/’hoansi converge in an insight worth taking to heart: Safeguarding leisure is work.

"Antropoloog Voor de toekomst van werk moeten we naar de geschiedenis kijken, zegt antropoloog James Suzman"

Antropoloog James Suzman schreef een boek over de werkende mens. Volgens hem kunnen wij moderne kantoortijgers veel opsteken van de Bosjesmannen, de laatste jager-verzamelaars.

Why work more than 15 hours a week? Unthinkable: It was good enough for your ancestors, says anthropologist James Suzman

Blue sky Thinking: Anthropologist James Suzman says now is the perfect time to rein in our unsustainable work habits. But is it possible?

The study working life tends to be dominated by economists, management consultants and business-school professors. So it is nice to get a new perspective. James Suzman, an anthropologist, provides that fresh appraisal in an ambitious new book called “Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time”.

"The economic trauma induced by the pandemic has provided us with an opportunity to reimagine our relationship with work and to re-evaluate what jobs we consider really important."

A review of Affluence without Abundance from Japan's largest daily.