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Praca. Historia tego, jak spędzamy swój czas
Rewolucyjne spojrzenie na historię ludzkości przez pryzmat pracy
Praca określa, kim jesteśmy, nasz status w społeczeństwie oraz to, gdzie i z kim spędzamy większość czasu. Odgrywa ważną rolę w kształtowaniu naszej tożsamości i systemu wartości. Ale czy jesteśmy zaprogramowani, by pracować tak dużo i ciężko? Czy nasi przodkowie z epoki kamienia również żyli, żeby pracować, i pracowali, żeby żyć? Jak wyglądałby świat, w którym praca odgrywa o wiele mniej ważną rolę?
By odpowiedzieć na te pytania, James Suzman opisuje historię pracy od początków życia na Ziemi do naszej coraz bardziej zautomatyzowanej teraźniejszości i udowadnia, że przez większą część dziejów nasi przodkowie pracowali znacznie mniej niż my i postrzegali pracę zupełnie inaczej. Pokazuje, że współczesna kultura pracy ma swoje korzenie w rewolucji neolitycznej sprzed 10 000 lat. Natomiast teraz znajdujemy się u progu podobnie przełomowego momentu w historii – automatyzacja pracy może zrewolucjonizować nasze podejście do niej i zapoczątkować bardziej zrównoważoną i sprawiedliwą rzeczywistość.
Praca określa, kim jesteśmy, nasz status w społeczeństwie oraz to, gdzie i z kim spędzamy większość czasu. Odgrywa ważną rolę w kształtowaniu naszej tożsamości i systemu wartości. Ale czy jesteśmy zaprogramowani, by pracować tak dużo i ciężko? Czy nasi przodkowie z epoki kamienia również żyli, żeby pracować, i pracowali, żeby żyć? Jak wyglądałby świat, w którym praca odgrywa o wiele mniej ważną rolę?
By odpowiedzieć na te pytania, James Suzman opisuje historię pracy od początków życia na Ziemi do naszej coraz bardziej zautomatyzowanej teraźniejszości i udowadnia, że przez większą część dziejów nasi przodkowie pracowali znacznie mniej niż my i postrzegali pracę zupełnie inaczej. Pokazuje, że współczesna kultura pracy ma swoje korzenie w rewolucji neolitycznej sprzed 10 000 lat. Natomiast teraz znajdujemy się u progu podobnie przełomowego momentu w historii – automatyzacja pracy może zrewolucjonizować nasze podejście do niej i zapoczątkować bardziej zrównoważoną i sprawiedliwą rzeczywistość.
500 pages, Paperback
First published September 3, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 345 reviews
April 19, 2021
DNF'd, although I did read a substantial amount, Sticking strictly to the Goodreads rating scale, what I read was "3 – liked it". I might have liked it more (or less) should I have finished it, but since the author decided to comment at length (and later deleted his comments) and wanted me to justify what I wrote that he didn't like, as well as promote another of his books, the idea he was standing so close behind me to read what I wrote that I could feel his hot breath on my ear put me off. I don't like authors getting picky.
Reviews are only opinions, authentic feelings. If an author doesn't like someone's opinion and wants to see gushingly good ones, either because it feeds their ego or they think they will sell more books (both valid!) then pay Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus Reviews or give them to the ARC reviewers who have an average of 4.25 or more for 400+ plus books and have therefore proved they will never write a critical review, never let the review 'deterioriate' into personal stories like me, or rate it less than 4 star. Just don't come to me or breathe over my shoulder or tell me why my opinion isn't valid, that's gaslighting and not appreciated.
___________________
Notes on reading, dish-washing with hunter-gatherers up the Amazon (I didn't do any) Interesting, not fascinating. The book doesn't stick to the definition of work most of us would agree on. A cell using energy is also work.... So it is another evolutionary book but with an emphasis on anthropology. Two things stood out, one as something I didn't know, great, and one as something I've read repeatedly.
I didn't know before, and loved learning why the ability of people to be the marathoners of the mammal kingdom, but not the sprinters. A technique practiced by several different groups of widely-separated people is to stalk an animal, say a deer, make it run until it is exhausted. Keep stalking it. Let it run some more. Never let it get to waterholes or escape. Eventually it will be so exhausted the hunters can approach it, lie on its neck and suffocate it. As it is a tool-less technique there is no fossil record, but there is a living one in the hunter-gatherer tribes.
This is what I've read so often, everyone who writes these kind of books or articles writes it. If you don't read these kind of books or watch those sort of documentaries though, it might well be new to you. It used to be considered that hunter-gatherers were that because of poverty and they lived in semi-starvation and weren't anything like as bright as their more technologically inclined neighbours. I don't know how many times I've read that all brains, all language are of the same level of sophistication no matter who or where. And that hunter-gatherers are very good at knowing their sources and tend to do far less work than most people and have a very varied diet.
When I was living in the Amazon with Indians (not the 'painted men' - wooden houses, houseboats, clothes from the city brought out by the captain who went down every week or so to trade fruit and veg), that was a hunter-gatherer life style. They grew cucumbers and hot peppers in old canoes and foraged for the rest. There was an abundance of all sorts of nice things to eat that I do not have names for. They fished every other day and then only because their technique of keeping fish was so lousy.
They would fish with cast nets mostly and would put their catch in a canoe half-filled with water, so that the fish could be alive and not spoil when they wanted them. But pirana would jump in and eat the fish (but they couldn't jump out). It happened all the time, every day or two. So then they would go out looking for mudskipper fish (which they loved) or occasionaly catch a pirarucu, a huge pink-fleshed fresh water fish that is beyond delicious.
As an aside, the washing up was easy. I didn't have to do it. The lady who did it had no legs. She was immensely fat and shuffled on her bottom to the kitchen hole. (The floating houses all had holes in bathroom and kitchen areas). There she would hold plates one by one in the water and little fish would eat off scraps and clean them, and the water gently flowing past would rinse them. It took a while but there was nothing else to do anyway.
(Except play a little instrument like a tiny guitar and pipes and lie around drinking alcohol, singing and swimming and planning crocodile and iguana hunts. They were not underfed, unintelligent or anything else primitive. They were just very lazy, because they could be.
Reviews are only opinions, authentic feelings. If an author doesn't like someone's opinion and wants to see gushingly good ones, either because it feeds their ego or they think they will sell more books (both valid!) then pay Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus Reviews or give them to the ARC reviewers who have an average of 4.25 or more for 400+ plus books and have therefore proved they will never write a critical review, never let the review 'deterioriate' into personal stories like me, or rate it less than 4 star. Just don't come to me or breathe over my shoulder or tell me why my opinion isn't valid, that's gaslighting and not appreciated.
___________________
Notes on reading, dish-washing with hunter-gatherers up the Amazon (I didn't do any) Interesting, not fascinating. The book doesn't stick to the definition of work most of us would agree on. A cell using energy is also work.... So it is another evolutionary book but with an emphasis on anthropology. Two things stood out, one as something I didn't know, great, and one as something I've read repeatedly.
I didn't know before, and loved learning why the ability of people to be the marathoners of the mammal kingdom, but not the sprinters. A technique practiced by several different groups of widely-separated people is to stalk an animal, say a deer, make it run until it is exhausted. Keep stalking it. Let it run some more. Never let it get to waterholes or escape. Eventually it will be so exhausted the hunters can approach it, lie on its neck and suffocate it. As it is a tool-less technique there is no fossil record, but there is a living one in the hunter-gatherer tribes.
This is what I've read so often, everyone who writes these kind of books or articles writes it. If you don't read these kind of books or watch those sort of documentaries though, it might well be new to you. It used to be considered that hunter-gatherers were that because of poverty and they lived in semi-starvation and weren't anything like as bright as their more technologically inclined neighbours. I don't know how many times I've read that all brains, all language are of the same level of sophistication no matter who or where. And that hunter-gatherers are very good at knowing their sources and tend to do far less work than most people and have a very varied diet.
When I was living in the Amazon with Indians (not the 'painted men' - wooden houses, houseboats, clothes from the city brought out by the captain who went down every week or so to trade fruit and veg), that was a hunter-gatherer life style. They grew cucumbers and hot peppers in old canoes and foraged for the rest. There was an abundance of all sorts of nice things to eat that I do not have names for. They fished every other day and then only because their technique of keeping fish was so lousy.
They would fish with cast nets mostly and would put their catch in a canoe half-filled with water, so that the fish could be alive and not spoil when they wanted them. But pirana would jump in and eat the fish (but they couldn't jump out). It happened all the time, every day or two. So then they would go out looking for mudskipper fish (which they loved) or occasionaly catch a pirarucu, a huge pink-fleshed fresh water fish that is beyond delicious.
As an aside, the washing up was easy. I didn't have to do it. The lady who did it had no legs. She was immensely fat and shuffled on her bottom to the kitchen hole. (The floating houses all had holes in bathroom and kitchen areas). There she would hold plates one by one in the water and little fish would eat off scraps and clean them, and the water gently flowing past would rinse them. It took a while but there was nothing else to do anyway.
(Except play a little instrument like a tiny guitar and pipes and lie around drinking alcohol, singing and swimming and planning crocodile and iguana hunts. They were not underfed, unintelligent or anything else primitive. They were just very lazy, because they could be.
June 25, 2021
Um daqueles livros que mudam sua maneira de ver o mundo.
James Suzman é antropólogo e estudou os Khoisan do sul da África, um povo que ainda segue o estilo caçador coletor. E que tem uma relação completamente diferente com a natureza e com a dinâmica de trabalho.
O livro começa com uma explicação sobre o conceito de trabalho como troca de energia e uma perspectiva bem biológica sobre uso do tempo e energia até entre aves que é bastante diferente do resto da obra – se você não curtir essa parte, vale continuar pelo que vem em seguida. E depois entra na dinâmica diferente que nossos antepassados caçadores e coletores tinham com a natureza.
O maior argumento é o de que para caçadores e coletores, a noção de futuro e de retorno do trabalho feito é bem diferente. Porque não dá para acumular posses, o que se come estraga em pouco tempo e a vida migratória não permite acumular objetos. Então se depende muito mais de uma rede de relação entre as pessoas e o que cada um consegue é muito mais distribuído. O conceito de posse é bem diferente.
Mas tudo isso muda quando começamos a cultivar comida. Aí a noção de posse é essencial para saber quem é o dono de uma terra e do que ela produz. E a noção de trabalho e de futuro se torna muito mais importante, porque você precisa acumular trabalho em uma terra para ela render. E quanto mais terras tiver, mais ela pode gerar riquezas. Também é onde surge o conceito de lucro, de que X cabeças de gado vão virar 2X em tantos anos. É dessa dinâmica que surge a escrita, que começa como o registro de posses, o dinheiro, com troca dessas posses, além de muitas noções financeiras como o empréstimo e juros.
Suzman ainda continua passando pelo conceito de trabalho com a revolução industrial até os dias de hoje e o conceito de trabalho com robôs assumindo muito do que fazemos. Ele dá boas perspectivas e um ponto de vista bastante diferente da maioria que escreve sobre tecnologia. Mas mesmo se o livro parasse antes da revolução industrial já seria uma obra que vale muito ler. Recomendadíssimo, do começo ao fim.
James Suzman é antropólogo e estudou os Khoisan do sul da África, um povo que ainda segue o estilo caçador coletor. E que tem uma relação completamente diferente com a natureza e com a dinâmica de trabalho.
O livro começa com uma explicação sobre o conceito de trabalho como troca de energia e uma perspectiva bem biológica sobre uso do tempo e energia até entre aves que é bastante diferente do resto da obra – se você não curtir essa parte, vale continuar pelo que vem em seguida. E depois entra na dinâmica diferente que nossos antepassados caçadores e coletores tinham com a natureza.
O maior argumento é o de que para caçadores e coletores, a noção de futuro e de retorno do trabalho feito é bem diferente. Porque não dá para acumular posses, o que se come estraga em pouco tempo e a vida migratória não permite acumular objetos. Então se depende muito mais de uma rede de relação entre as pessoas e o que cada um consegue é muito mais distribuído. O conceito de posse é bem diferente.
Mas tudo isso muda quando começamos a cultivar comida. Aí a noção de posse é essencial para saber quem é o dono de uma terra e do que ela produz. E a noção de trabalho e de futuro se torna muito mais importante, porque você precisa acumular trabalho em uma terra para ela render. E quanto mais terras tiver, mais ela pode gerar riquezas. Também é onde surge o conceito de lucro, de que X cabeças de gado vão virar 2X em tantos anos. É dessa dinâmica que surge a escrita, que começa como o registro de posses, o dinheiro, com troca dessas posses, além de muitas noções financeiras como o empréstimo e juros.
Suzman ainda continua passando pelo conceito de trabalho com a revolução industrial até os dias de hoje e o conceito de trabalho com robôs assumindo muito do que fazemos. Ele dá boas perspectivas e um ponto de vista bastante diferente da maioria que escreve sobre tecnologia. Mas mesmo se o livro parasse antes da revolução industrial já seria uma obra que vale muito ler. Recomendadíssimo, do começo ao fim.
February 9, 2021
We often underestimate just how much our current attitudes towards a subject are influenced by relatively recent cultural inventions, and this is particularly true regarding our relationship with work. As anthropologist James Suzman argues in his latest book, Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots, the way we think about work today has its roots in farming and the agricultural revolution that occurred only 12,000 years ago.
The problem is, humanity has spent the majority (95 percent) of its 300,000-year-history as hunter-gatherers, and so something as recent as the invention of farming cannot possibly explain our deeper evolutionary attitudes towards work. To understand this topic at a deeper level, then, requires the exploration of our extended evolutionary past, incorporating the research of physics, evolutionary biology, zoology, and cultural anthropology—research that contradicts much of classical economics.
According to the classical economic model, much of human behavior can be explained by the “problem of scarcity,” or the idea that humans are cursed with insatiable desires for material resources and, because there are not enough resources to satisfy everyone’s wants, everything is scarce.
And yet the idea of scarcity puzzles any modern hunter-gatherer group. What Suzman and other anthropologists have discovered is a paradox: hunter-gatherer groups tend to live in a world of shared abundance and limited work while the modern Westerner lives in a world of artificial scarcity and long hours of labor—despite the fact the Western world has a greater overall abundance of resources.
Suzman explains this shift in attitude by exploring both the physical science of our relationship with energy as well as the cultural and historical evolution of humanity’s ability to capture and expend energy at ever-greater scales—from the control of fire to the Industrial Revolution to the age of automation and beyond.
Suzman starts by explaining that, while work can be defined in several ways, a good general definition is “the purposeful expending of energy or effort on a task to achieve a goal or end.” In this way, and from the perspective of physics, to simply live is to work. All biological organisms work to survive by extracting, storing, and converting energy for the purpose of survival and reproduction in a constant battle against the second law of thermodynamics: the law of entropy. Humans are, like all animals, built to work, and as we find ways to cultivate more energy from the environment, we find ever-creative ways to expend it.
Suzman proceeds to cover the history of life, the energy requirements and behaviors of various animals, and the early evolutionary history of Homo sapiens. Where things get interesting is the human discovery of the control of fire, which correlates with an increase in brain size from about 600 cm3 in volume for Homo habilis to about 1,300 cm3 in Homo sapiens. This increase in brain volume—which demanded 20 percent of our total body energy resources—required more energy-dense foods that only the use of fire and cooking could unlock.
The connection between fire, cooking, and increased brain size in early humans is intensely debated to this day, but I’m not sure whether Suzman has the arrow of causation moving in the right direction. Keep in mind that, in terms of evolution, Lamarckism is the long-discredited idea “that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime.” This “inheritance of acquired characteristics,” like the idea that an adult that loses its arm will produce one-armed offspring, is not an accurate representation of how genes are passed on from parent to child.
Similarly, it seems to me that the idea of fire leading to bigger brains is itself Lamarkian. Simply eating cooked foods as an adult could not in itself alter the genetic code for brain size that would then be passed onto offspring—for this would be a blatant case of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Suzman does not elaborate on the mechanism by which brain size is inherited based on the behavior of eating cooked foods. It seems more plausible that an increase in brain size for other reasons necessitated the use of fire to procure more energy-dense foods that our new bigger brains required.
Either way, what isn’t debatable is that the use of fire was a major energy revolution milestone that freed up time for the pursuit of other activities not related to food acquisition, such as the pursuit of art, language, story-telling, mythology, socialization, games, dance, and the creation of tools and technologies.
This additional amount of leisure time in hunter-gatherer groups resulted in what cultural anthropologist Marshall Sahlins would call the “original affluent society.” Research shows that hunter-gatherers typically spend less than half the amount of time on food acquisition and general chores than the average American, with the remainder spent in leisure.
But what’s also interesting is that hunter-gatherer groups—also unlike modern Westerners—do not live in an artificial state of scarcity. As Suzman wrote:
“‘Wants may be easily satisfied,’ Sahlins noted, ‘either by producing much or desiring little.’ Hunter-gatherers, he argued, achieved this by desiring little and so, in their own way, were more affluent than a Wall Street banker who, despite owning more properties, boats, cars, and watches than they know what to do with, constantly strives to acquire even more.”
Because hunter-gatherers minimize material needs, they also tend to be fiercely egalitarian, sharing equally and communally whatever food is procured and whatever material wealth is created or obtained. Because hunter-gatherers live in “immediate-return economies,” they obtain a direct and immediate return for their labor, and research has shown that all or nearly-all immediate-return economies lack hierarchies, chiefs, or institutional authority figures, and are intolerant of inequality in material wealth.
It is only when humans transitioned to farming and “delayed-return economies”—where the return on labor was disconnected from the activity of work—that social and institutional hierarchy, wealth inequality, exploitation of labor, and the idea of scarcity and competition would surface.
In fact, as Suzman points out—without exaggeration—no technological revolution before or since the invention of farming has had a greater impact on human psychology, culture, and society. Suzman argues convincingly that, compared to the egalitarianism and abundant leisure time of a hunter-gatherer, farmers worked harder and longer days, had less leisure time, and were exposed to a host of diseases, injuries, and catastrophic risks (crop failure, raids, etc.).
Even more significantly, farming changed our relationship to time, the land, and to each other. In immediate-return economies, foragers exhibit minimal material needs, communally-owned property, and a deeper connection to the present moment. Farmers, on the other hand, must always be thinking of the future, investing in the land through hard labor and carefully managing and tracking time.
The concepts of time, money, investments, debt, and scarcity—all elements of the “economic problem” described by classical economics—are not human universals, as is often supposed, but rather recent cultural inventions with roots in farming.
Farming, as humanity’s second major energy revolution, allowed humans to support bigger populations of non-food-producing specialists. And it is here that we see the birth of hierarchies, cities, exploited labor, greed, and large discrepancies in status and wealth. The idea of scarcity is born here as well, along with the pursuit of infinite and perpetual economic growth.
On the other hand, farming is also responsible for the creation of writing, culture, art, science, and the major artistic, scientific, literary, and technological achievements of the human race—not to mention modern medicine and the extension of life itself.
So was the invention of farming a mistake? For those at the time, probably so, but I’m not sure any modern Westerner today would wish to abandon their culture and return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle (and we couldn’t collectively do so anyway). So farming and the subsequent development of civilization is, like much else, a mixed blessing. But Suzman’s larger point is that we can retain our culture without retaining the non-egalitarian mindset that everything is scarce and everything is a competition for the never-ending production and accumulation of material goods, most of which serve no real purpose other than to show others how wealthy we are.
The problem is, the Industrial Revolution and our migration into cities has only exaggerated the problem, further disconnecting our labor from any immediate returns, artificially stimulating our desire for material goods, creating “bullshit jobs” we collectively hate performing, increasing the rate of suicides, exacerbating differences in wealth and status, and destroying the environment. What’s worse, the threat of further automation means that—in the absence of major income or wealth redistribution—inequality will only get worse as the profits from machine labor and automation will enrich executives and shareholders while displaced workers remain unemployed.
We should ask ourselves: Is this the life we really want? Or is there an alternative based on our more cooperative and egalitarian evolutionary past?
Suzman points out that this is not a prescriptive book, so the reader will not find any specific policy recommendations. Rather, by exploring our deeper evolutionary past, we can widen the scope of possibilities for how we can structure our work arrangements, lives, and societies. By thinking outside the box of classical economics—and realizing that the problem of scarcity is artificial and not universal—we can return to our more egalitarian roots.
The problem is, humanity has spent the majority (95 percent) of its 300,000-year-history as hunter-gatherers, and so something as recent as the invention of farming cannot possibly explain our deeper evolutionary attitudes towards work. To understand this topic at a deeper level, then, requires the exploration of our extended evolutionary past, incorporating the research of physics, evolutionary biology, zoology, and cultural anthropology—research that contradicts much of classical economics.
According to the classical economic model, much of human behavior can be explained by the “problem of scarcity,” or the idea that humans are cursed with insatiable desires for material resources and, because there are not enough resources to satisfy everyone’s wants, everything is scarce.
And yet the idea of scarcity puzzles any modern hunter-gatherer group. What Suzman and other anthropologists have discovered is a paradox: hunter-gatherer groups tend to live in a world of shared abundance and limited work while the modern Westerner lives in a world of artificial scarcity and long hours of labor—despite the fact the Western world has a greater overall abundance of resources.
Suzman explains this shift in attitude by exploring both the physical science of our relationship with energy as well as the cultural and historical evolution of humanity’s ability to capture and expend energy at ever-greater scales—from the control of fire to the Industrial Revolution to the age of automation and beyond.
Suzman starts by explaining that, while work can be defined in several ways, a good general definition is “the purposeful expending of energy or effort on a task to achieve a goal or end.” In this way, and from the perspective of physics, to simply live is to work. All biological organisms work to survive by extracting, storing, and converting energy for the purpose of survival and reproduction in a constant battle against the second law of thermodynamics: the law of entropy. Humans are, like all animals, built to work, and as we find ways to cultivate more energy from the environment, we find ever-creative ways to expend it.
Suzman proceeds to cover the history of life, the energy requirements and behaviors of various animals, and the early evolutionary history of Homo sapiens. Where things get interesting is the human discovery of the control of fire, which correlates with an increase in brain size from about 600 cm3 in volume for Homo habilis to about 1,300 cm3 in Homo sapiens. This increase in brain volume—which demanded 20 percent of our total body energy resources—required more energy-dense foods that only the use of fire and cooking could unlock.
The connection between fire, cooking, and increased brain size in early humans is intensely debated to this day, but I’m not sure whether Suzman has the arrow of causation moving in the right direction. Keep in mind that, in terms of evolution, Lamarckism is the long-discredited idea “that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime.” This “inheritance of acquired characteristics,” like the idea that an adult that loses its arm will produce one-armed offspring, is not an accurate representation of how genes are passed on from parent to child.
Similarly, it seems to me that the idea of fire leading to bigger brains is itself Lamarkian. Simply eating cooked foods as an adult could not in itself alter the genetic code for brain size that would then be passed onto offspring—for this would be a blatant case of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Suzman does not elaborate on the mechanism by which brain size is inherited based on the behavior of eating cooked foods. It seems more plausible that an increase in brain size for other reasons necessitated the use of fire to procure more energy-dense foods that our new bigger brains required.
Either way, what isn’t debatable is that the use of fire was a major energy revolution milestone that freed up time for the pursuit of other activities not related to food acquisition, such as the pursuit of art, language, story-telling, mythology, socialization, games, dance, and the creation of tools and technologies.
This additional amount of leisure time in hunter-gatherer groups resulted in what cultural anthropologist Marshall Sahlins would call the “original affluent society.” Research shows that hunter-gatherers typically spend less than half the amount of time on food acquisition and general chores than the average American, with the remainder spent in leisure.
But what’s also interesting is that hunter-gatherer groups—also unlike modern Westerners—do not live in an artificial state of scarcity. As Suzman wrote:
“‘Wants may be easily satisfied,’ Sahlins noted, ‘either by producing much or desiring little.’ Hunter-gatherers, he argued, achieved this by desiring little and so, in their own way, were more affluent than a Wall Street banker who, despite owning more properties, boats, cars, and watches than they know what to do with, constantly strives to acquire even more.”
Because hunter-gatherers minimize material needs, they also tend to be fiercely egalitarian, sharing equally and communally whatever food is procured and whatever material wealth is created or obtained. Because hunter-gatherers live in “immediate-return economies,” they obtain a direct and immediate return for their labor, and research has shown that all or nearly-all immediate-return economies lack hierarchies, chiefs, or institutional authority figures, and are intolerant of inequality in material wealth.
It is only when humans transitioned to farming and “delayed-return economies”—where the return on labor was disconnected from the activity of work—that social and institutional hierarchy, wealth inequality, exploitation of labor, and the idea of scarcity and competition would surface.
In fact, as Suzman points out—without exaggeration—no technological revolution before or since the invention of farming has had a greater impact on human psychology, culture, and society. Suzman argues convincingly that, compared to the egalitarianism and abundant leisure time of a hunter-gatherer, farmers worked harder and longer days, had less leisure time, and were exposed to a host of diseases, injuries, and catastrophic risks (crop failure, raids, etc.).
Even more significantly, farming changed our relationship to time, the land, and to each other. In immediate-return economies, foragers exhibit minimal material needs, communally-owned property, and a deeper connection to the present moment. Farmers, on the other hand, must always be thinking of the future, investing in the land through hard labor and carefully managing and tracking time.
The concepts of time, money, investments, debt, and scarcity—all elements of the “economic problem” described by classical economics—are not human universals, as is often supposed, but rather recent cultural inventions with roots in farming.
Farming, as humanity’s second major energy revolution, allowed humans to support bigger populations of non-food-producing specialists. And it is here that we see the birth of hierarchies, cities, exploited labor, greed, and large discrepancies in status and wealth. The idea of scarcity is born here as well, along with the pursuit of infinite and perpetual economic growth.
On the other hand, farming is also responsible for the creation of writing, culture, art, science, and the major artistic, scientific, literary, and technological achievements of the human race—not to mention modern medicine and the extension of life itself.
So was the invention of farming a mistake? For those at the time, probably so, but I’m not sure any modern Westerner today would wish to abandon their culture and return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle (and we couldn’t collectively do so anyway). So farming and the subsequent development of civilization is, like much else, a mixed blessing. But Suzman’s larger point is that we can retain our culture without retaining the non-egalitarian mindset that everything is scarce and everything is a competition for the never-ending production and accumulation of material goods, most of which serve no real purpose other than to show others how wealthy we are.
The problem is, the Industrial Revolution and our migration into cities has only exaggerated the problem, further disconnecting our labor from any immediate returns, artificially stimulating our desire for material goods, creating “bullshit jobs” we collectively hate performing, increasing the rate of suicides, exacerbating differences in wealth and status, and destroying the environment. What’s worse, the threat of further automation means that—in the absence of major income or wealth redistribution—inequality will only get worse as the profits from machine labor and automation will enrich executives and shareholders while displaced workers remain unemployed.
We should ask ourselves: Is this the life we really want? Or is there an alternative based on our more cooperative and egalitarian evolutionary past?
Suzman points out that this is not a prescriptive book, so the reader will not find any specific policy recommendations. Rather, by exploring our deeper evolutionary past, we can widen the scope of possibilities for how we can structure our work arrangements, lives, and societies. By thinking outside the box of classical economics—and realizing that the problem of scarcity is artificial and not universal—we can return to our more egalitarian roots.
September 1, 2021
Interesting book, but the author completely leaves women (WE ARE HALF THE POPULATION, DUDE) out of his history of work. The history of work for women is so worth exploring, especially now at a time where being a mother and having paid work is a very difficult balancing act. Can we talk about how we completely devalue care work? How it is endless, exhausting, and not at all compensated? This is a pretty inexcusable omission from a book about the history of work. I would re-name this book Work: A Man’s Perspective About Men Working in Which Only White Men Are Quoted. Come on, Suzman, you have some catching up to do on the issue of including women in history.
July 25, 2021
As the title suggests
This is author James Suzman’s anthropological history of of work.
Defining work as the negentropic capture and conversion of free energy into usable energy.
Suzman begins with single cell organisms at the dawn of organic life, and concludes with contemporary people.
Along the way, Suzman drops that old anthropologist chestnut that people in hunter gatherer societies work far less than most contemporary high tech westerners to meet their basic subsistence and psychosocial needs.
This fact is not posited in a value laden way.
But it does demolish the idea that working the way we do today (40-60+ hours weekly) is a natural fact or forgone conclusion.
The book is far from activistic in its assertions. But some pretty radical conclusions are readily available.
Work doesn’t need to define or dominate our lives in the way it currently does.
Great book.
This is author James Suzman’s anthropological history of of work.
Defining work as the negentropic capture and conversion of free energy into usable energy.
Suzman begins with single cell organisms at the dawn of organic life, and concludes with contemporary people.
Along the way, Suzman drops that old anthropologist chestnut that people in hunter gatherer societies work far less than most contemporary high tech westerners to meet their basic subsistence and psychosocial needs.
This fact is not posited in a value laden way.
But it does demolish the idea that working the way we do today (40-60+ hours weekly) is a natural fact or forgone conclusion.
The book is far from activistic in its assertions. But some pretty radical conclusions are readily available.
Work doesn’t need to define or dominate our lives in the way it currently does.
Great book.
January 23, 2022
If your goal is also to learn about work as in “full-time paid employment”, feel free to skip the first 350 pages. The remaining 50 pages are interesting if you haven’t read “Bullshit jobs” or any HBR articles in the last 5 years. If you did, feel free to skip reading this book altogether.
January 21, 2021
Most of us do work in return for monetary reward, either as pay from somebody else or as profits in the case of an own business. Regardless of the nature of the work, the effort itself is considered as a noble pursuit in all societies. We work to live and live to work, by finding meaning, satisfaction and pride in any job. The work we do defines who we are, determines our future prospects, moulds many of our values and controls our life. This book is a loosely organized narrative of the development of the human species and the techniques with which they choose to spend time with. Very rarely do we come across such books that narrate so many events having such vast scope as the invention of fire or farming and the change in work patterns in the post-industrial age under the influence of artificial intelligence. Naturally it manages to show such huge expanse of ideas with corresponding shallowness in getting under the skin of any major topic. James Suzman is an anthropologist specializing in the Khoisan peoples of southern Africa. He is now the director of Anthropos Ltd, a think tank that applies anthropological methods to solving contemporary social and economic problems. He lives in Cambridge.
Any reference to work and money stirs our thought to the basic principles of economics. Work as an economic activity is a clever strategy of an individual to maximize the benefit from a scarce resource that has alternate uses. The story of progress and the engine or progress is our urge to work, to produce, to build and to exchange, spurred by chronic scarcity of all resources. Suzman defines work as the time and effort we spend meeting our needs and wants. The narrative strictly follows a utilitarian approach and never strays into philosophy or metaphysics.
The invention of fire is claimed to be the primary reason behind the evolution of bigger brains in some hominins. Humans diverged from apes through hominids as they began developing larger brains. Homo habilis is our closest ancestor along this line. But brains consumed tremendous amounts of energy. In a typical human, the brain consumes almost a fifth of the total energy input required for the whole body, even in sleep. Building and maintaining such big brains on raw, plant food was impossible. To do this required eating more nutritionally dense foods or to spend every wakeful moment eating, chewing and ruminating. Fire helped the hominids extend to many more plant types unpalatable till that time. This made preparation of energy-rich foods very fast. Fire’s greatest gift to mankind was thus the gift of free time. In that sense, it was the first labour-saving technology. Mastering the art of fire and cooking, Homo erectus secured greater energy returns for less physical effort. As their brains further grew, so did the amount of time available to apply human intelligence and energy to activities other than finding, consuming and digesting food. They got better at making tools and the road to all future human innovations lay open before them. Suzman suggests that boredom is a good motivator for innovation. So the post-fire hominids might have been heavily burdened with it which edged them to improve and innovate.
The transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer took place in the colder climes. Nature is bountiful in the tropics and people are generally not aware of the marginal scarcity of essential foods. But in cold climes, foragers had to store food in a safe place and organize their work year to accommodate intense seasonal variation. Storage of food took place in safe caves and not entirely coincidentally, the first echoes of art are also reverberating on these cave walls. The community did not have much to do in winter than consuming the food and waiting for the inhospitable spell to pass. Hierarchy developed in human societies in order to better organize the actions of responsible members. Climate change-induced scarcity played an important role in pushing some populations to become food producers. At the start of the current warm inter-glacial period beginning around 18,000 years ago or more specifically, over a 5000-year interval beginning 12,000 years ago, a sequence of unrelated populations in at least eleven distinct geographical locations began cultivating crops and rearing a variety of domesticated animals.
The book details the highly exploitative nature of factory work in the initial stages of Industrial Revolution. Children were frequently employed in the workplace and up to 78 hours of work in a week were fairly common. Trade unions came into being but most beneficial laws for labourers came about when the politicians persuaded the parliament to step out in support. The Bank Holiday Act of 1871 declared eight days as bank holidays which was later extended to the factories too. Under the Master and Servants Act, workers who are disrespectful to their managers were subject to criminal prosecution. Then came the Factories Act of 1835 which limited the working week of women and children to 60 hours. Further reduction in the working hours had to wait till the First World War. Shaped by the carnage men witnessed in the battlefields as well as technological advances and a surge in productivity, working hours quickly declined to 48 hours a week. After another decade, prompted by Henry Ford’s example, the 40-hour week came into effect. Attempts to reduce it still further did not offer rewards. Kellogg’s introduced a 30-hour week, but after a few years, majority of the workers expressed their wish to go back to the 40-hour week as they were spending too much time with irritable spouses back at home!
Much of the discussion is just drifting across a vast sea of closely related ideas without a specific sense of direction. This is to be expected in a work which does not assign a serious place to ‘work’ and may probably be living up to its title. Being a social anthropologist, the author liberally extracts from his rich experience in working with the Ju Hoansi tribe in Namibia which still follows the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The introduction of fire takes up almost a quarter of the book, which amply demonstrates the unhurried pace of the narrative.
The book is highly recommended.
Any reference to work and money stirs our thought to the basic principles of economics. Work as an economic activity is a clever strategy of an individual to maximize the benefit from a scarce resource that has alternate uses. The story of progress and the engine or progress is our urge to work, to produce, to build and to exchange, spurred by chronic scarcity of all resources. Suzman defines work as the time and effort we spend meeting our needs and wants. The narrative strictly follows a utilitarian approach and never strays into philosophy or metaphysics.
The invention of fire is claimed to be the primary reason behind the evolution of bigger brains in some hominins. Humans diverged from apes through hominids as they began developing larger brains. Homo habilis is our closest ancestor along this line. But brains consumed tremendous amounts of energy. In a typical human, the brain consumes almost a fifth of the total energy input required for the whole body, even in sleep. Building and maintaining such big brains on raw, plant food was impossible. To do this required eating more nutritionally dense foods or to spend every wakeful moment eating, chewing and ruminating. Fire helped the hominids extend to many more plant types unpalatable till that time. This made preparation of energy-rich foods very fast. Fire’s greatest gift to mankind was thus the gift of free time. In that sense, it was the first labour-saving technology. Mastering the art of fire and cooking, Homo erectus secured greater energy returns for less physical effort. As their brains further grew, so did the amount of time available to apply human intelligence and energy to activities other than finding, consuming and digesting food. They got better at making tools and the road to all future human innovations lay open before them. Suzman suggests that boredom is a good motivator for innovation. So the post-fire hominids might have been heavily burdened with it which edged them to improve and innovate.
The transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer took place in the colder climes. Nature is bountiful in the tropics and people are generally not aware of the marginal scarcity of essential foods. But in cold climes, foragers had to store food in a safe place and organize their work year to accommodate intense seasonal variation. Storage of food took place in safe caves and not entirely coincidentally, the first echoes of art are also reverberating on these cave walls. The community did not have much to do in winter than consuming the food and waiting for the inhospitable spell to pass. Hierarchy developed in human societies in order to better organize the actions of responsible members. Climate change-induced scarcity played an important role in pushing some populations to become food producers. At the start of the current warm inter-glacial period beginning around 18,000 years ago or more specifically, over a 5000-year interval beginning 12,000 years ago, a sequence of unrelated populations in at least eleven distinct geographical locations began cultivating crops and rearing a variety of domesticated animals.
The book details the highly exploitative nature of factory work in the initial stages of Industrial Revolution. Children were frequently employed in the workplace and up to 78 hours of work in a week were fairly common. Trade unions came into being but most beneficial laws for labourers came about when the politicians persuaded the parliament to step out in support. The Bank Holiday Act of 1871 declared eight days as bank holidays which was later extended to the factories too. Under the Master and Servants Act, workers who are disrespectful to their managers were subject to criminal prosecution. Then came the Factories Act of 1835 which limited the working week of women and children to 60 hours. Further reduction in the working hours had to wait till the First World War. Shaped by the carnage men witnessed in the battlefields as well as technological advances and a surge in productivity, working hours quickly declined to 48 hours a week. After another decade, prompted by Henry Ford’s example, the 40-hour week came into effect. Attempts to reduce it still further did not offer rewards. Kellogg’s introduced a 30-hour week, but after a few years, majority of the workers expressed their wish to go back to the 40-hour week as they were spending too much time with irritable spouses back at home!
Much of the discussion is just drifting across a vast sea of closely related ideas without a specific sense of direction. This is to be expected in a work which does not assign a serious place to ‘work’ and may probably be living up to its title. Being a social anthropologist, the author liberally extracts from his rich experience in working with the Ju Hoansi tribe in Namibia which still follows the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The introduction of fire takes up almost a quarter of the book, which amply demonstrates the unhurried pace of the narrative.
The book is highly recommended.
September 26, 2021
I didn't really enjoy this, perhaps because there was too much overlap with books like Sapiens and Guns, Germs and Steel. The author takes a long time to make his point, and I thought large parts of the book were unnecessary and didn't seem to relate to the question at hand (it felt like 'look how much I know about the various revolutions Homo Sapiens has been through' rather than being to the point). I bumped it up from 2 to 3 stars after looking at my Kindle highlights though because there were some interesting insights.
It's essentially a economics book trying to trash the 'economic problem' which says that we work because our desires are infinite but our means are limited (no, Suzman argues, there's evidence of humans doing work when it wasn't necessary). I think the book spent too much time on prehistory (and even discusses the second law of thermodynamics).
It's broadly chronological: cooking food gave us free time and represented the start of culture (transforming things). Even hunter-gatherers had free time, and this helped language to develop. Then early climate change created food scarcity, prompting people to start producing (farming) food. This led to surplus, writing, and specialisation of jobs but also bad things like pestilence and overpopulation. With the increasing efficiency of the Industrial Revolution (Taylorism), people felt more detached than ever from their work (Durkheim's 'anomie'). This efficiency also served to reduce working hours, but because of consumerism, people continued to work to afford the things they wanted to purchase. The rise of the third sector and 'bullshit jobs' in recent times shows how we continue to work hard because it gives us a sense of community and belonging.
The latter parts of the book were definitely the most interesting. Of course, a book on a huge topic like 'work' can never be exhaustive, but I'd have liked more content on the psychology of work and deeper probing into the notion that work gives us a sense of belonging and identity.
It's essentially a economics book trying to trash the 'economic problem' which says that we work because our desires are infinite but our means are limited (no, Suzman argues, there's evidence of humans doing work when it wasn't necessary). I think the book spent too much time on prehistory (and even discusses the second law of thermodynamics).
It's broadly chronological: cooking food gave us free time and represented the start of culture (transforming things). Even hunter-gatherers had free time, and this helped language to develop. Then early climate change created food scarcity, prompting people to start producing (farming) food. This led to surplus, writing, and specialisation of jobs but also bad things like pestilence and overpopulation. With the increasing efficiency of the Industrial Revolution (Taylorism), people felt more detached than ever from their work (Durkheim's 'anomie'). This efficiency also served to reduce working hours, but because of consumerism, people continued to work to afford the things they wanted to purchase. The rise of the third sector and 'bullshit jobs' in recent times shows how we continue to work hard because it gives us a sense of community and belonging.
The latter parts of the book were definitely the most interesting. Of course, a book on a huge topic like 'work' can never be exhaustive, but I'd have liked more content on the psychology of work and deeper probing into the notion that work gives us a sense of belonging and identity.
February 25, 2021
Although a fascinating topic, the book was ultimately a bit of a disappointment to me. I wish I could have gotten more in-depth insights from his years with the Jo'Hoansi and less about the pre-history of "work" before humans existed. Yes, technically you could say that cells do work as well, but I was expecting insights around human work, not descriptions of ATP.
Not to say that the book completely lacks discussions around hunter-gatherer life, but in total I did end up feeling let down. I was expecting more conclusions, more insights and perhaps even some hint of a suggestion as to what could be done to make society more sustainable in general. Or if not that, at least some more interesting anecdotes, or some deeper comparison between immediate return and delayed return societies than what I already knew going in.
For anyone who isn't an academic and is less concerned about scientific rigour but want to read something that is actually controversial and thought-provoking, I would recommend skipping this book and instead picking up Civilized to Death by Christopher Ryan. It contains many of the same anecdotes around how hunter-gatherer life compares to farming-based civilizations, but isn't afraid to take that comparison and run with it for as far as it can possibly go.
Not to say that the book completely lacks discussions around hunter-gatherer life, but in total I did end up feeling let down. I was expecting more conclusions, more insights and perhaps even some hint of a suggestion as to what could be done to make society more sustainable in general. Or if not that, at least some more interesting anecdotes, or some deeper comparison between immediate return and delayed return societies than what I already knew going in.
For anyone who isn't an academic and is less concerned about scientific rigour but want to read something that is actually controversial and thought-provoking, I would recommend skipping this book and instead picking up Civilized to Death by Christopher Ryan. It contains many of the same anecdotes around how hunter-gatherer life compares to farming-based civilizations, but isn't afraid to take that comparison and run with it for as far as it can possibly go.
July 28, 2023
šī ir ļoti laba grāmata. autors uzskatāmi ilustrē, kā lauksaimniecības izgudrošana akmens laikmetā fundamentāli ir izmainījusi cilvēku priekšstatus par darbu. tagadnes laika vietā darbs ir ieguvis nākotnes laiku, un kļuvis par praksi, kas definē cilvēku, nevis to, ko definējam mēs paši. izrādās, mednieku - vācēju grupām dzīve ir bijusi daudz pašpietiekamāka, nekā tā ir mūsdienu cilvēkiem, kuri izmanto darbu, lai dzītos pēc nākotnes labuma un iedomām, nevis eksistētu reālajā laikā.
July 7, 2021
Incredible but
I simply wanted more of a thesis and more tying together the very very many threads he weaves. Left me asking what was the point or what did he think. Still a fascinating thorough read.
I simply wanted more of a thesis and more tying together the very very many threads he weaves. Left me asking what was the point or what did he think. Still a fascinating thorough read.
May 3, 2021
BANGGGGER of a book. The new Holy Trinity - Bullshit Jobs, Utopia for Realists and Work.
The need to keep up with the Joneses/the malady of infinite aspiration (among other things) is a great answer to why Keynes got it so wrong when he said we'd be working 15 hour work weeks in the 21st century.
We look back at civilisations that sacrificed people ensure the sun rises, burned people for being witches and chalk that up as insane religious beliefs from the past. I reckon people in 200 years will hold similar thoughts about our worship of economics, how we are bleaching TF outta' coral reefs and work most of our adult lives to ensure economic growth stays at 3-4%.
The need to keep up with the Joneses/the malady of infinite aspiration (among other things) is a great answer to why Keynes got it so wrong when he said we'd be working 15 hour work weeks in the 21st century.
We look back at civilisations that sacrificed people ensure the sun rises, burned people for being witches and chalk that up as insane religious beliefs from the past. I reckon people in 200 years will hold similar thoughts about our worship of economics, how we are bleaching TF outta' coral reefs and work most of our adult lives to ensure economic growth stays at 3-4%.
August 31, 2020
This was excellent. It gave me so much food for thought - for example, if machines have helped us be more productive than 150 years ago, why are we still working 40 hours a week rather than, say, 15? How come we grow our food when it could take less time and effort to forage and hunt?
I liked the different chapters and the history of work as a concept, the values we give to work, and the future of work with the development of artificial intelligence. It was well-written and really interesting.
(Free ARC from NetGalley)
I liked the different chapters and the history of work as a concept, the values we give to work, and the future of work with the development of artificial intelligence. It was well-written and really interesting.
(Free ARC from NetGalley)
October 9, 2021
4,5 sterren
ik kwam er een beetje moeilijk in: een heel verhaal over energie en moleculen en sterren en waar gaat dit heen ik dacht dat dit over werk ging!!!! maar de laatste 300 pagina's heb ik echt supersnel uitgelezen en vond ik heel sterk. de schrijfstijl was heel aangenaam en nam me mee in iets wat ook heel makkelijk droge stof had kunnen worden, de verhalen over verschillende tijden en culturen waren super interessant en de eigentijdse inhoud gaf me nog meer redenen om de 40+-urige werkweek & kapitalismne te haten dus <3
ik kwam er een beetje moeilijk in: een heel verhaal over energie en moleculen en sterren en waar gaat dit heen ik dacht dat dit over werk ging!!!! maar de laatste 300 pagina's heb ik echt supersnel uitgelezen en vond ik heel sterk. de schrijfstijl was heel aangenaam en nam me mee in iets wat ook heel makkelijk droge stof had kunnen worden, de verhalen over verschillende tijden en culturen waren super interessant en de eigentijdse inhoud gaf me nog meer redenen om de 40+-urige werkweek & kapitalismne te haten dus <3
Read
February 17, 2021So I was about 2 chapters in before I was like... this dude has to be an anthropologist. and I was right, but I do wish I'd known that going in because I think my expectations from the book would have been very different.
September 29, 2020
I enjoyed this book – it was informative and engaging, covering wide swathes of human history and exploring what work means in its broadest sense. As others have noted, there is much food for thought and things one can take away which have great relevance to our own working lives, no matter what profession we find ourselves in.
For me, the most intellectually gratifying elements of the book were the parts that covered our early history, and particularly the monumental shift to agriculture which took place around 10,500 years ago at the dawn of the Neolithic era. Suzman convincingly describes this as the most revolutionary change in human history. It was fascinating to read of the enduring mystery of such important sites as Gobekli Tepe in Anatolia.
Suzman has covered a lot of ground to bring together all the diverse disciplines whose researches and discoveries have added understanding and complexity to the history of work. That said, the period from the fall of the Roman Empire to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution is only very fleetingly explored. What did the Medieval, Renaissance and Enlightenment authors and thinkers have to say about work? What do the major (and minor) religions have to say of work? Indeed, the concept of work is fundamental to both Christianity and Islam, (The Prophet said, "Nobody has ever eaten a better meal than that which one has earned by working with one's own hands. The Prophet of Allah, David used to eat from the earnings of his manual labor’, Hadith 286) (‘For even when we were with you, we have you this rule ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat’’, 2 Thessalonians 3). This chronological omission also has the effect that outside of the Ju/Hoansi of the Kalahari desert, only really the cultures of the West and the Near East are explored, other than some passages on the Far East in modern times.
Perhaps I am an overly pedantic reader but some historical slip ups were slightly irksome and could have been avoided, i.e.:
p. 249, ‘By 1848 Franklin, aged only forty-two…’ – Franklin was forty-two in 1748.
p. 248, ‘The same principle is also discussed in the writings of fourteenth-century scholars like Thomas Aquinas…’ – Aquinas lived in the thirteenth century (1225 – 1274).
p. 274, ‘There was the Akkadian Empire under Sargon the Great which blossomed briefly in Mesopotamia around 2,250 years ago…’ – the Akkadian Empire was actually in existence around 4,250 years ago.
p. 274, ‘Then there were those like the Muaryan Empire, which after defeating Alexander ruled over much of the Indian subcontinent between 322 BC and 187 BC’. – actually spelled ‘Maurya’, this empire did not defeat Alexander, who never lost a military encounter and died in 323 BC, but rather the satraps left by him after his death, and then Seleukos I, ruler of the successor state the Seleukid Empire.
For me, the most intellectually gratifying elements of the book were the parts that covered our early history, and particularly the monumental shift to agriculture which took place around 10,500 years ago at the dawn of the Neolithic era. Suzman convincingly describes this as the most revolutionary change in human history. It was fascinating to read of the enduring mystery of such important sites as Gobekli Tepe in Anatolia.
Suzman has covered a lot of ground to bring together all the diverse disciplines whose researches and discoveries have added understanding and complexity to the history of work. That said, the period from the fall of the Roman Empire to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution is only very fleetingly explored. What did the Medieval, Renaissance and Enlightenment authors and thinkers have to say about work? What do the major (and minor) religions have to say of work? Indeed, the concept of work is fundamental to both Christianity and Islam, (The Prophet said, "Nobody has ever eaten a better meal than that which one has earned by working with one's own hands. The Prophet of Allah, David used to eat from the earnings of his manual labor’, Hadith 286) (‘For even when we were with you, we have you this rule ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat’’, 2 Thessalonians 3). This chronological omission also has the effect that outside of the Ju/Hoansi of the Kalahari desert, only really the cultures of the West and the Near East are explored, other than some passages on the Far East in modern times.
Perhaps I am an overly pedantic reader but some historical slip ups were slightly irksome and could have been avoided, i.e.:
p. 249, ‘By 1848 Franklin, aged only forty-two…’ – Franklin was forty-two in 1748.
p. 248, ‘The same principle is also discussed in the writings of fourteenth-century scholars like Thomas Aquinas…’ – Aquinas lived in the thirteenth century (1225 – 1274).
p. 274, ‘There was the Akkadian Empire under Sargon the Great which blossomed briefly in Mesopotamia around 2,250 years ago…’ – the Akkadian Empire was actually in existence around 4,250 years ago.
p. 274, ‘Then there were those like the Muaryan Empire, which after defeating Alexander ruled over much of the Indian subcontinent between 322 BC and 187 BC’. – actually spelled ‘Maurya’, this empire did not defeat Alexander, who never lost a military encounter and died in 323 BC, but rather the satraps left by him after his death, and then Seleukos I, ruler of the successor state the Seleukid Empire.
May 11, 2021
Work: A History of How we spend our Time is an anthropology of the history of work from the stone ages all the way into now. James Suzman is brilliant at showing off an incredible timeline of work that pushes and therefore questions our conception of work. For me, the most intellectually gratifying elements of the book were the parts that covered our early history, and particularly the monumental shift to agriculture which took place around 10,500 years ago at the dawn of the Neolithic era. Suzman convincingly describes this as the most revolutionary change in human history. It was fascinating to read the enduring mystery of important sites like Gobekli Tepe in Anatolia. Definitely recommend to history buffs.
August 17, 2021
A very enlightening read on the original need for work (in terms of physics, biology and history).
As well as a modern study of why obsolete work patterns are still employed at a large scale today and their consequences to workers, environment and society.
This book made me better understand why despite me, now, refusing to do meaningless work for profit. I find myself working a lot on my own projects. And find peace with my eternal striving towards productivity 😌
As well as a modern study of why obsolete work patterns are still employed at a large scale today and their consequences to workers, environment and society.
This book made me better understand why despite me, now, refusing to do meaningless work for profit. I find myself working a lot on my own projects. And find peace with my eternal striving towards productivity 😌
June 7, 2023
3.5 rounded up.
An interesting exploration of homo sapiens relationship with work and thus time from hunter-gathers to today. If you've read 'Sapiens' it's similar but worth reading both for a different lens on history.
I was looking to understand the society and culture we have with work and time today and felt this gave me a good picture.
However, it was very focused on Western history and ignored much of the rest of the world. It also almost solely references (white) men in terms of key changes in human history. It would have been interesting to explore a more diverse voice like women and POC to build the bigger picture.
Fun fact though: in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt almost supported the bill for a standard workweek to 30 hrs but got cold feet at the last minute. This could have changed shit OMG!! FUCK THE 5 DAY 40 HR WORK WEEK I'M RADICALISED BITCH
An interesting exploration of homo sapiens relationship with work and thus time from hunter-gathers to today. If you've read 'Sapiens' it's similar but worth reading both for a different lens on history.
I was looking to understand the society and culture we have with work and time today and felt this gave me a good picture.
However, it was very focused on Western history and ignored much of the rest of the world. It also almost solely references (white) men in terms of key changes in human history. It would have been interesting to explore a more diverse voice like women and POC to build the bigger picture.
Fun fact though: in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt almost supported the bill for a standard workweek to 30 hrs but got cold feet at the last minute. This could have changed shit OMG!! FUCK THE 5 DAY 40 HR WORK WEEK I'M RADICALISED BITCH
December 5, 2021
I almost gave it 2 stars, but at the end of the day, I feel like the bad, far outweighed the good.
The good:
1. Very readable. The author knows how to construct sentences and paragraphs to express ideas clearly and concisely. It’s also divided into small sub-chapters, which I really like. Reading this book was never a slog and I flew through it.
2. By not being afraid to dive into a variety of subject areas, the author did bring some new interesting tidbits of information to my attention.
The Bad:
1. I said the author knows how to construct sentences and paragraphs; unfortunately it’s clear they don’t know how to construct chapters or a book. Ideas are rarely, if ever, connected together in any sort of coherent way. I love short sub-chapters, but after reading for a while it was clear that the author used them as a crutch since he was incapable of connecting the topics covered in each sub-chapter together. He often presents anecdotes that appear to be leading towards a conclusion, before rapidly changing subject and never returning to the train of thought. Other times the information he provides begs an obvious question that he fails to ever answer or even ask.
2. This is an anthropologist who is utterly ignorant of fields other than his own, yet chooses to discuss them as if he is an expert. Like many anthropologists, he HATES economists. Rarely will 5 pages pass without a shot taken at economists or economics. My background is in Econ, so perhaps I’m overly sensitive, but I can appreciate some anthro on Econ criticism. In fact, I was recently laughing out loud at some of the jokes Joseph Heinrich made at the expense of economists in “The Secret of Our Success”. The difference is Heinrich is a well-rounded academic who specializes in anthropology, but has deep knowledge of other fields, while Suzman is a narrowly focused anthropologist with a major inferiority complex. He does not understand economics at all, yet discusses and criticizes it in every chapter. For example, he says Economists have no interest in explaining why diamonds are more valuable than water. That is an insane statement. He has no understanding of the field he clearly resents and misrepresents the field to suit his needs. He also discusses other fields that he is clearly ignorant of. One silly example of how little knowledge he has outside of anthropology is his hilariously bad geography. One section of the book is devoted to Japan, China, and Korea, which he repeatedly refers to as SOUTHeast Asian countries. None of those countries are in what is commonly called Southeast Asia, and two of three have no land in what any sane person could consider to be Southeast Asia while looking at a map. How this wasn’t caught by an editor, I don’t know.
3. Even when sticking to anthro the author fails to ask the important questions or back up his claims with sufficient evidence. I suspect he was avoiding any evidence that would undermine his worldview. For example he writes at length at how easy life was for hunter-gatherers and how prosperous they were, then blames the ailments of humanity on population growth caused by adopting agriculture (to paraphrase: war is caused by agricultural societies needing more land to support their growing populations). However, he never asks the obvious question, If hunter-gatherers were so prosperous, why wasn’t there population growing and causing similar problems since it is a fact that they need more land to support each individual than agricultural societies do? I can’t imagine this question didn’t occur to Suzman, so I’m left to assume that he had no sufficient answer and chose to ignore it rather than undermine his shaky thesis.
At the end of the day I learned nothing from this highly-readable book because, even in the very few instances the author did offer new and relevant information, I had such little confidence in his integrity and intelligence that I could not accept them at face value.
The good:
1. Very readable. The author knows how to construct sentences and paragraphs to express ideas clearly and concisely. It’s also divided into small sub-chapters, which I really like. Reading this book was never a slog and I flew through it.
2. By not being afraid to dive into a variety of subject areas, the author did bring some new interesting tidbits of information to my attention.
The Bad:
1. I said the author knows how to construct sentences and paragraphs; unfortunately it’s clear they don’t know how to construct chapters or a book. Ideas are rarely, if ever, connected together in any sort of coherent way. I love short sub-chapters, but after reading for a while it was clear that the author used them as a crutch since he was incapable of connecting the topics covered in each sub-chapter together. He often presents anecdotes that appear to be leading towards a conclusion, before rapidly changing subject and never returning to the train of thought. Other times the information he provides begs an obvious question that he fails to ever answer or even ask.
2. This is an anthropologist who is utterly ignorant of fields other than his own, yet chooses to discuss them as if he is an expert. Like many anthropologists, he HATES economists. Rarely will 5 pages pass without a shot taken at economists or economics. My background is in Econ, so perhaps I’m overly sensitive, but I can appreciate some anthro on Econ criticism. In fact, I was recently laughing out loud at some of the jokes Joseph Heinrich made at the expense of economists in “The Secret of Our Success”. The difference is Heinrich is a well-rounded academic who specializes in anthropology, but has deep knowledge of other fields, while Suzman is a narrowly focused anthropologist with a major inferiority complex. He does not understand economics at all, yet discusses and criticizes it in every chapter. For example, he says Economists have no interest in explaining why diamonds are more valuable than water. That is an insane statement. He has no understanding of the field he clearly resents and misrepresents the field to suit his needs. He also discusses other fields that he is clearly ignorant of. One silly example of how little knowledge he has outside of anthropology is his hilariously bad geography. One section of the book is devoted to Japan, China, and Korea, which he repeatedly refers to as SOUTHeast Asian countries. None of those countries are in what is commonly called Southeast Asia, and two of three have no land in what any sane person could consider to be Southeast Asia while looking at a map. How this wasn’t caught by an editor, I don’t know.
3. Even when sticking to anthro the author fails to ask the important questions or back up his claims with sufficient evidence. I suspect he was avoiding any evidence that would undermine his worldview. For example he writes at length at how easy life was for hunter-gatherers and how prosperous they were, then blames the ailments of humanity on population growth caused by adopting agriculture (to paraphrase: war is caused by agricultural societies needing more land to support their growing populations). However, he never asks the obvious question, If hunter-gatherers were so prosperous, why wasn’t there population growing and causing similar problems since it is a fact that they need more land to support each individual than agricultural societies do? I can’t imagine this question didn’t occur to Suzman, so I’m left to assume that he had no sufficient answer and chose to ignore it rather than undermine his shaky thesis.
At the end of the day I learned nothing from this highly-readable book because, even in the very few instances the author did offer new and relevant information, I had such little confidence in his integrity and intelligence that I could not accept them at face value.
September 11, 2020
Thank you to NetGalley for letting me read this.
This book looks at work in all its aspects, starting with the scientific definition and moving on to the social and psychological aspects of what we think of as work in day to day language. It's a fascinating exploration, with lots of information pulled together and linked to form a coherent view. I was particularly interested in the ideas about how our "work" informs our world view - hunter gatherers seeing the world as a bountiful mother, farmers being far more transactional. Our complex societies are descended from those farming communities - maybe if we held off working the planet for everything we can get from it, we'd be in a better place.
It was particularly interesting to read this book now, at the end of lockdown, when so many people have been working from home. Suzman talks about the importance of work in generating meaningful activity, but the social aspect is also important. We are social animals.
It's a good read. I didn't have to work at it at all. Sorry. That was a terrible line.
This book looks at work in all its aspects, starting with the scientific definition and moving on to the social and psychological aspects of what we think of as work in day to day language. It's a fascinating exploration, with lots of information pulled together and linked to form a coherent view. I was particularly interested in the ideas about how our "work" informs our world view - hunter gatherers seeing the world as a bountiful mother, farmers being far more transactional. Our complex societies are descended from those farming communities - maybe if we held off working the planet for everything we can get from it, we'd be in a better place.
It was particularly interesting to read this book now, at the end of lockdown, when so many people have been working from home. Suzman talks about the importance of work in generating meaningful activity, but the social aspect is also important. We are social animals.
It's a good read. I didn't have to work at it at all. Sorry. That was a terrible line.
March 2, 2021
"Work is now used to describe all transfers of energy, from those that occur on a celestial scale when galaxies and stars form to those that take place at a subatomic level. Science also now recognises that the creation of our universe involved colossal amounts of work, and that what makes life so extraordinary and what differentiates living things from dead things are the very unusual kinds of work that living things do..."
This was an interesting look at the topic of work, through a cross-disciplinary lens.
Work: A History of How we spend our Time takes the reader through a myriad of work-related topics - from entropy to peacocks.
Author James Suzman is an anthropologist and the author of Affluence Without Abundance published by Bloomsbury in 2017, as well as this book.
James Suzman:
Suzman covers lots of ground here, and although he touches on philosophy, physics, and economics in these pages; the book is mostly centered around anthropology and zoology.
Suzman takes the reader through the history of early hominids as well; covering some of their hand tools. He also talks about the evolutionary significance cooking had to our species; allowing greater nutrient absorption, and in turn - allowing our brains to grow larger and more complex.
As mentioned above, he writes about entropy in the first part of the book; analogizing it to the state of a child's bedroom and a Rubik's cube:
Although this one got off to a great start and opened with some great writing, I felt that it somewhat lost its pace ~midway through... This may be a subjective thing, but I didn't find the writing in the second ~half of the book met the high water mark established in the first ~half.
I did still enjoy this one, and would recommend it.
3.5 stars.
This was an interesting look at the topic of work, through a cross-disciplinary lens.
Work: A History of How we spend our Time takes the reader through a myriad of work-related topics - from entropy to peacocks.
Author James Suzman is an anthropologist and the author of Affluence Without Abundance published by Bloomsbury in 2017, as well as this book.
James Suzman:
Suzman covers lots of ground here, and although he touches on philosophy, physics, and economics in these pages; the book is mostly centered around anthropology and zoology.
Suzman takes the reader through the history of early hominids as well; covering some of their hand tools. He also talks about the evolutionary significance cooking had to our species; allowing greater nutrient absorption, and in turn - allowing our brains to grow larger and more complex.
As mentioned above, he writes about entropy in the first part of the book; analogizing it to the state of a child's bedroom and a Rubik's cube:
"Even if there are many orders of magnitude simpler than a child’s bedroom, the now venerable Rubik’s cube gives us a sense of the mathematical scales involved. This puzzle, with its six different-coloured faces made up of nine squares and organised on a fixed central pivot that makes it possible to rotate any one of the faces independently of the others and so mix up the coloured squares, has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible unsolved states and only one solved state..."
Although this one got off to a great start and opened with some great writing, I felt that it somewhat lost its pace ~midway through... This may be a subjective thing, but I didn't find the writing in the second ~half of the book met the high water mark established in the first ~half.
I did still enjoy this one, and would recommend it.
3.5 stars.
December 24, 2021
Also reviewing Energy: A Human History by Richard Rhodes. It was a stroke of blind luck that I happened to come across & to read in close succession "Work" & "Energy". These are two of the best written, most informative, critically relevant, & pleasurable books of recent years, not only of this year but I'm inclined to think that these are among the 10 "must reads" of our new millennium! & they go together like hand & glove while simultaneously covering mostly differing territory despite the physical & conceptual similarities of the terms "work" & "energy". While covering different territory, both directly address our current critical dilemmas of inequality, resource depletion, & global climate disruption.
"Work" is first rate social science in the new style of ranging over our full stock of relevant facts & theories no matter which academic branch would claim ownership, from zoology, evolutionary paleontology, economics, politics, anthropology & thermodynamics. The focus is - as you would expect - on why work is performed in the animal kingdom, how humankind has adapted the activity to meet special needs, the disconnect between work performed & work required for survival, the split between competing survival strategies, & consequently how the evolved, dominant strategy which has persisted over recorded millennia has lead humankind to what appears to be an unsustainable dead end in the present & foreseeable future.
"Energy" combines a technological approach with anecdotal asides & examples of significant side issues. The subject matter is the various sources of energy mankind has utilized to assist in the work which has been considered necessary or desirable with particular emphasis on the science, invention, conceptual maturation, engineering, & development of whatever infrastructure was required for general proliferation of the specific energy. The economics, availability & residues of required inputs is discussed along with descriptions of "dead ends" & side tracks along the way. Forgotten significant contributors are brought back to light.
At least in terms of existential crisis of global warming, both approaches arrive in overall agreement at the same present situation. Rhodes, in my estimation, has more to offer in terms of possible futures from this point forward.
These two books provided the reader with tremendous levels of learning, appreciation & pleasure. They ought to be studied. They ought to be required reading.
"Work" is first rate social science in the new style of ranging over our full stock of relevant facts & theories no matter which academic branch would claim ownership, from zoology, evolutionary paleontology, economics, politics, anthropology & thermodynamics. The focus is - as you would expect - on why work is performed in the animal kingdom, how humankind has adapted the activity to meet special needs, the disconnect between work performed & work required for survival, the split between competing survival strategies, & consequently how the evolved, dominant strategy which has persisted over recorded millennia has lead humankind to what appears to be an unsustainable dead end in the present & foreseeable future.
"Energy" combines a technological approach with anecdotal asides & examples of significant side issues. The subject matter is the various sources of energy mankind has utilized to assist in the work which has been considered necessary or desirable with particular emphasis on the science, invention, conceptual maturation, engineering, & development of whatever infrastructure was required for general proliferation of the specific energy. The economics, availability & residues of required inputs is discussed along with descriptions of "dead ends" & side tracks along the way. Forgotten significant contributors are brought back to light.
At least in terms of existential crisis of global warming, both approaches arrive in overall agreement at the same present situation. Rhodes, in my estimation, has more to offer in terms of possible futures from this point forward.
These two books provided the reader with tremendous levels of learning, appreciation & pleasure. They ought to be studied. They ought to be required reading.
July 12, 2021
When one sees books with such general topics as "work", they often feel as if the author had an agenda and cherry-picked studies on which to base the argument. That can be annoying if you have spent some time studying the topic.
This is not the case. Suzman provides a fascinating narrative of the history of work in its broadest sense - from the "work" of bacteria million years ago to the automation of labour force now. His book does not feel repetitive, although it is clear that his own fieldwork with the Ju/'hoansi Bushmen, a hunter-gatherer society, provided the groundwork for his perspective and argument - that we all should just work less, as has been the case for the vast majority of human history.
Suzman's writing is very enjoyable and accessible, even more than similar books traditionally written by academics. While there is some chronology in his writing, the issue-based chapters grow more and more gripping as the book progresses.
What makes this book wonderful for me specifically, someone who gave a year of his life to economic anthropology, is the fact that he builds on traditional "greats" of the anthropological (and social studies in general) literature - Sahlins, Graeber, Levi-Strauss and others that often question general narratives of early human history, mixing them with more mainstream economic theory, while avoiding the traditional trappings of too ideological or activistic perspectives. That is not an easy feat and I believe that both the quality of the narrative as well as the quality of research should make this a compulsory reading for anyone trying to understand not just how this social and economic order came to being, but also what we all can do to make it more humane.
This is not the case. Suzman provides a fascinating narrative of the history of work in its broadest sense - from the "work" of bacteria million years ago to the automation of labour force now. His book does not feel repetitive, although it is clear that his own fieldwork with the Ju/'hoansi Bushmen, a hunter-gatherer society, provided the groundwork for his perspective and argument - that we all should just work less, as has been the case for the vast majority of human history.
Suzman's writing is very enjoyable and accessible, even more than similar books traditionally written by academics. While there is some chronology in his writing, the issue-based chapters grow more and more gripping as the book progresses.
What makes this book wonderful for me specifically, someone who gave a year of his life to economic anthropology, is the fact that he builds on traditional "greats" of the anthropological (and social studies in general) literature - Sahlins, Graeber, Levi-Strauss and others that often question general narratives of early human history, mixing them with more mainstream economic theory, while avoiding the traditional trappings of too ideological or activistic perspectives. That is not an easy feat and I believe that both the quality of the narrative as well as the quality of research should make this a compulsory reading for anyone trying to understand not just how this social and economic order came to being, but also what we all can do to make it more humane.
June 9, 2021
Work is too unfocused.
Many books have extensive scopes, but good books of this genre either have some original viewpoints or engaging styles while staying focussed on macro arguments. They do not bog down on needless details and attempt to discuss over-arching trends that spawn millions of years or billions of people.
On the other hand, Work aims to cover vast stretches of human history through short essay-length chapters on what appears like randomly selected topics. The author has to try hard to somehow link everything to the word he uses in the title, but he could have equally covered "work" at the Big Bang explosion, "work" done for the Great Wall, or "work" done by soldiers in wars or the painters or the housewives as topics. The point is the thread connecting the chapters is thin and with enormous gaps in between.
It does not help that almost every chapter is based on commonly available, well-discussed material on those subject matters. Chapters are too brief to throw light on nuances (dearly needed in highly biased, subjective later chapters) and too quick to make any lasting impact.
Many books have extensive scopes, but good books of this genre either have some original viewpoints or engaging styles while staying focussed on macro arguments. They do not bog down on needless details and attempt to discuss over-arching trends that spawn millions of years or billions of people.
On the other hand, Work aims to cover vast stretches of human history through short essay-length chapters on what appears like randomly selected topics. The author has to try hard to somehow link everything to the word he uses in the title, but he could have equally covered "work" at the Big Bang explosion, "work" done for the Great Wall, or "work" done by soldiers in wars or the painters or the housewives as topics. The point is the thread connecting the chapters is thin and with enormous gaps in between.
It does not help that almost every chapter is based on commonly available, well-discussed material on those subject matters. Chapters are too brief to throw light on nuances (dearly needed in highly biased, subjective later chapters) and too quick to make any lasting impact.
July 17, 2021
3,5
Dieses Buch war nicht schlecht. Im Gegenteil es war sogar ziemlich gut. Aber es war leider nicht das, was ich erwartet habe. 13 von 15 Kapitel behandelten fast ausschließlich Urzeit/ Jäger und Sammler/Historie der Sklaverei/ Industrielle Revolution, etc.
Alles sehr interessant und teilweise auch wirklich neu für mich. Allerdings hätte mich eine ausführlichere Ausarbeitung der letzten beiden Kapitel, aktuelle und zukünftige Arbeitskonzepte weitaus mehr interessiert.
Trotzdem eine Empfehlung für alle die sich für das Thema interessieren.
Dieses Buch war nicht schlecht. Im Gegenteil es war sogar ziemlich gut. Aber es war leider nicht das, was ich erwartet habe. 13 von 15 Kapitel behandelten fast ausschließlich Urzeit/ Jäger und Sammler/Historie der Sklaverei/ Industrielle Revolution, etc.
Alles sehr interessant und teilweise auch wirklich neu für mich. Allerdings hätte mich eine ausführlichere Ausarbeitung der letzten beiden Kapitel, aktuelle und zukünftige Arbeitskonzepte weitaus mehr interessiert.
Trotzdem eine Empfehlung für alle die sich für das Thema interessieren.
February 4, 2021
Excellent view dispelling many myths people hve bout our associations with work, including its importance. It offers a great narrative through human history along with insights into how we could spend our time.
Read
February 27, 2022Zajímavý antropologický exkurz od prehistorických analýz toho, co nás přivedlo k práci, až po současné diskuze o tom, proč pracujeme víc než naši předkové, i když nemusíme, a jak naše životy ovlivní automatizace práce.
January 29, 2023
A compelling and thoroughly researched investigation into the history of human employment, looking at how evolutionary biology has shaped our relationship with work from hunter-gather societies to the first agricultural settlements and finally investigating our technologically advanced cities and civilisations today.
The author successfully attempts to dispel the myths surrounding Keynes’ ‘Economic Problem’ - the idea that humans have a naturally insatiable appetite for material resources that cannot be fulfilled which results in an economy driven by scarcity rather than abundance - through an anthropological dissection into the development of human societies to understand the resulting capitalist economic distributions of the 21st century.
The book surprisingly took a historic and scientific study of early human history and defined work as a capacity to capture and transform energy from the sun and surrounding environment in order for living organisms to grow and reproduce. Using this fundamental principle - as well as Neolithic discoveries and observations of existing hunter gather tribes of the 20th century - to predict how our early ancestors may have used work to organise their societies, the author suggests that contrary to previous sociological debate, our ancestors lived in a state of abundance whilst meeting a healthy daily calorie intake, all the while working no more than 15 hours a week. As these societies mainly focused on meeting immediate short term needs which their abundant environments always provided, they had no need for foresight or preparation for future scarcity.
Following migration and changes in climate, the first agricultural societies developed settlements and experienced harsher winters where food was less abundant, resulting in the need to prepare for future scarcity through farming, harvesting and storing food surpluses. This helped to spark the initial idea of accumulating material wealth and developing the first trade economies - where abundances were altered into scarcities and the first social hierarchies consequently developed. The availability of additional energy through surplus food is thought to have contributed to the development of work - from carving artefacts to constructing architecture - where humans suddenly had more energy to expend on tasks and which also served as providing purpose and fulfilment.
Looking at work from this early perspective, it is easy to criticise our modern relationship with work and the associated economies propelling inequalities and exacerbating scarcity - especially considering the arrival of automation to potentially reduce workloads whilst also considering how the average work week is around 40 hours. Although work has the capacity to provide fulfilment, the author states that only 15% of people find meaning out of their employment and suggests that some jobs (particularly middle management service sector roles) have developed for the work’s sake. Surely given that most roles can be automated it should follow that there will be less time for work and more time for leisure. Whether that follows is a question of how global economies will continue to require scarcity as a means to an end or whether we realise resources can be shared fairly and our energy can be expended in activities of our choosing, rather than continuing on an unsustainable economic trajectory that requires scarcities to drive inequalities. Given the evidence of our ancestors societies we now know that this need not be the case.
The author successfully attempts to dispel the myths surrounding Keynes’ ‘Economic Problem’ - the idea that humans have a naturally insatiable appetite for material resources that cannot be fulfilled which results in an economy driven by scarcity rather than abundance - through an anthropological dissection into the development of human societies to understand the resulting capitalist economic distributions of the 21st century.
The book surprisingly took a historic and scientific study of early human history and defined work as a capacity to capture and transform energy from the sun and surrounding environment in order for living organisms to grow and reproduce. Using this fundamental principle - as well as Neolithic discoveries and observations of existing hunter gather tribes of the 20th century - to predict how our early ancestors may have used work to organise their societies, the author suggests that contrary to previous sociological debate, our ancestors lived in a state of abundance whilst meeting a healthy daily calorie intake, all the while working no more than 15 hours a week. As these societies mainly focused on meeting immediate short term needs which their abundant environments always provided, they had no need for foresight or preparation for future scarcity.
Following migration and changes in climate, the first agricultural societies developed settlements and experienced harsher winters where food was less abundant, resulting in the need to prepare for future scarcity through farming, harvesting and storing food surpluses. This helped to spark the initial idea of accumulating material wealth and developing the first trade economies - where abundances were altered into scarcities and the first social hierarchies consequently developed. The availability of additional energy through surplus food is thought to have contributed to the development of work - from carving artefacts to constructing architecture - where humans suddenly had more energy to expend on tasks and which also served as providing purpose and fulfilment.
Looking at work from this early perspective, it is easy to criticise our modern relationship with work and the associated economies propelling inequalities and exacerbating scarcity - especially considering the arrival of automation to potentially reduce workloads whilst also considering how the average work week is around 40 hours. Although work has the capacity to provide fulfilment, the author states that only 15% of people find meaning out of their employment and suggests that some jobs (particularly middle management service sector roles) have developed for the work’s sake. Surely given that most roles can be automated it should follow that there will be less time for work and more time for leisure. Whether that follows is a question of how global economies will continue to require scarcity as a means to an end or whether we realise resources can be shared fairly and our energy can be expended in activities of our choosing, rather than continuing on an unsustainable economic trajectory that requires scarcities to drive inequalities. Given the evidence of our ancestors societies we now know that this need not be the case.
January 9, 2023
To me this was just the simplest, most effective cover ever: The History of Work.
Sold.
I've been thinking about work so much, reading about it so much.
And I've been writing some long, fiery reviews here, throwing a lot of shade on work.
Because fuck work.
To me it's a human rights issue and a giant blind spot.
It's just... too much for me to understand: how can people sell everything with such a low price? And how can most people in the world be grateful for it?
This had also good points about us actually paying in order to work: commuting, lunches, just to name a few.
Insane.
Of course for the individual it's primary the basic things: food, shelter, necessities. And secondly: doing your part and finding your place in a society and finding meaning – we really do need something to do and somebody to actually benefit from it.
And yes, we need workers in our cities, but more than that we need a way to keep these systems running, to keep people in line, to create demand and then be trapped by it and feel miserable and then worrying about life and status and stuff, stuff, buying happiness and that's how the world rolls on its wheels.
This was so insightful. From metaphysical things to bugs to animals to the dawn of man to hunter-gatherers and indigenous people to Ben Franklin, his daily rhythms and ideas to Adam Smith and Kellogg's and and their shorter work weeks and back to the formation of cities and cultures and religions and... everything.
Extremely interesting parts on how work and money worked before agriculture, how status and dynamics work. How you can just claim something to be yours and it is. How, when you brought a bunch of meat back home you'd get dissed for its taste or quality so you won't get cocky.
Money, status, jealousy... it's such a complicated, yet understandable web.
Hunting-gathering has been the most effective system for the human, the most lasting economic model, truly it has worked for humans very well in many ways. And no, we are not going back, but there's so much we could learn and try and of course we are also forced to do it, but unfortunately it seems to be too late.
It's about the qualities of our lives, of the perception of time, of the qualities of our relationships (the most important thing in life), about generations and our place in the world. We used to be a part of nature, we were grateful for it and loved the forests for its gifts, seemingly never-ending.
Now the nature rages, gets rid of us, the virus we are.
We destroyed the world and in order to do that we needed to destroy ourselves first.
Sold.
I've been thinking about work so much, reading about it so much.
And I've been writing some long, fiery reviews here, throwing a lot of shade on work.
Because fuck work.
To me it's a human rights issue and a giant blind spot.
It's just... too much for me to understand: how can people sell everything with such a low price? And how can most people in the world be grateful for it?
This had also good points about us actually paying in order to work: commuting, lunches, just to name a few.
Insane.
Of course for the individual it's primary the basic things: food, shelter, necessities. And secondly: doing your part and finding your place in a society and finding meaning – we really do need something to do and somebody to actually benefit from it.
And yes, we need workers in our cities, but more than that we need a way to keep these systems running, to keep people in line, to create demand and then be trapped by it and feel miserable and then worrying about life and status and stuff, stuff, buying happiness and that's how the world rolls on its wheels.
This was so insightful. From metaphysical things to bugs to animals to the dawn of man to hunter-gatherers and indigenous people to Ben Franklin, his daily rhythms and ideas to Adam Smith and Kellogg's and and their shorter work weeks and back to the formation of cities and cultures and religions and... everything.
Extremely interesting parts on how work and money worked before agriculture, how status and dynamics work. How you can just claim something to be yours and it is. How, when you brought a bunch of meat back home you'd get dissed for its taste or quality so you won't get cocky.
Money, status, jealousy... it's such a complicated, yet understandable web.
Hunting-gathering has been the most effective system for the human, the most lasting economic model, truly it has worked for humans very well in many ways. And no, we are not going back, but there's so much we could learn and try and of course we are also forced to do it, but unfortunately it seems to be too late.
It's about the qualities of our lives, of the perception of time, of the qualities of our relationships (the most important thing in life), about generations and our place in the world. We used to be a part of nature, we were grateful for it and loved the forests for its gifts, seemingly never-ending.
Now the nature rages, gets rid of us, the virus we are.
We destroyed the world and in order to do that we needed to destroy ourselves first.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 345 reviews