Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

by James Suzman

A vibrant portrait of the original affluent society - the Bushmen of southern Africa - by the anthropologist who has spent the better part of the last twenty-five years documenting their encounter with modernity.

If the success of a civilization is measured by its endurance over time, then the Bushmen of the Kalahari are by far the most successful in human history. A hunting and gathering people who made a good living by working only as much as needed to exist in harmony with their hostile desert environment, the Bushmen have lived in southern Africa since the evolution of our species nearly two hundred thousand years ago.

In Affluence Without Abundance, anthropologist James Suzman asks whether understanding how hunter-gatherers like the Bushmen found contentment by having few needs easily met might help us address some of the environmental and economic challenges we face today. Vividly bringing to life a proud and private people, introducing unforgettable members of their tribe, Affluence Without Abundance tells the story of the collision between the modern global economy and the oldest hunting and gathering society on earth. In rendering an intimate picture of a people coping with radical change, it asks profound questions about how we now think about matters such as work, wealth, equality, contentment, and even time.

Not since Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Harmless People in 1959 has anyone provided a more intimate or insightful account of the Bushmen or of what we might learn about ourselves from our shared history as hunter-gatherers.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published July 11, 2017

Reviews

[Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

All my anthropology professor told me the same thing, the difference between anthropologists and historians is in their books, while the fieldwork of an anthropologist is amazing (out there, socializing and making connections with people) the books they end up writing are the most boring you'll ever read , meanwhile historians gather resources in a busy library or from other written sources but the books they come up are so amazing. The point that I'm trying to make is that it is a challenge to write about an anthropological topic (the bushmen and the practice of hunting and gathering) and make it interesting to the general public, the lessons we can learn from this group of people are missed by the majority of people .... putting that aside we should also consider that for 90 % of our lives as human we practiced hunting and gathering so something must have worked ...why did we stop and was it a good thing we do ...are we happier as a result of it? or are we poorer for it?. The author tries to answer these questions by using the bushmen as an example, they were among the last people who practiced hunting and gathering in the world , some of them still do but mostly out of ritual than practice. The author does fail in producing a solid answer and goes off in many tangents that feel unnecessary for the topic being discussed, but try he does ..and for such a often ignored topic ..he does a good job...Anyone interested in Anthropology should read this book.

[The Conspiracy is Capitalism (episode 2 is out!) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anthropology 101: Asking the Big Questions…

Preamble:
…Does “human nature” make society’s inequalities inevitable?
…Does “human nature” make destruction of the environment inevitable?
…What even is “human nature”?
--Anthropologist David Graeber has been my go-to author for social imagination since I started exploring nonfiction, synthesizing social theory buried in academic silos and popularizing it in a playful manner for a wider audience.
--Fellow anthropologist James Suzman also asks the big questions in this accessible book, using a more “materialist” lens which is crucial to balance Graeber’s more “idealist” lens.

Highlights:

1) Human Nature and Inequality?:
--Graeber’s last major project (co-authored with archaeologist Wengrow), The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021), was an attempt to rethink the origins of inequality.
…It was a mainstream best-seller but was a mess in anthropology circles because anthropology already had a compelling analysis of the origins of inequality which deserved a popular re-telling, which Suzman summarizes: the legacy of the 1966 “Man the Hunter” symposium on how hunter-gatherers practiced both egalitarianism and leisure (Man the Hunter: The First Intensive Survey of a Single, Crucial Stage of Human Development― Man’s Once Universal Hunting Way of Life).

2) Human Nature and Productivity (destroying the Environment)?:
--As I’ve already overviewed the inequality debate in reviewing Graeber/Wengrow’s book, I’ll focus more on the productivity debate here.
--Suzman starts with economist Keynes’ 1930 essay “The Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”, which predicted rising technological productivity will bring about a society of leisure (15-hours work per week). Keynes anticipated a lag in culturally adopting this leisure given our supposed human nature for hard work (from our evolutionary “struggle for subsistence” to solve the “economic problem”).
--Suzman challenges Keynes’ assumption by turning to the 1966 “Man the Hunter” conference, starting with anthropologist Richard Borshay Lee’s conclusion (from energy inputs/labour outputs analysis of the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen of the Kalahari) that hunter-gatherers already achieved Keynes’ leisure society of 15-hours/week to sustain their nutritional needs (indeed, their lives were not nasty/brutish/short), with 15-20 additional hours for domestic activities. This despite the Kalahari’s challenging environment.
--Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (Stone Age Economics, 1974) expanded on this as “the original affluent society”/“primitive affluence”. Note: Sahlins was Graeber’s anthropology PhD supervisor! It’s interesting how Sahlins here is using a materialist lens (see later), while Suzman also describes Sahlins as “one of cultural anthropology’s [i.e. more idealist] most insightful meta-theorists”.
--Suzman notes how “novelty oils the engines of academia”, so once “primitive affluence” became established in academia in the 1980s it received many counters. However, Suzman concludes that the core of “primitive affluence” is still sound.
--Keynes did not focus on the environmental costs of productivity, which “primitive affluence” also provides lessons for. Note: Graeber takes a different approach in unpacking Keynes’ leisure prediction (see: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory).

3) Hunter-gatherers 101:
--How did this mode of living (also known as “forager”) achieve a dynamic equilibrium with the environment, thus relative sustainability rather than reliant on colonization’s endless growth? (I’m using past tense here to focus on human origins as hunter-gatherers).
--The reason the materialist anthropology lens is so useful to start with is because it reveals commonalities shared by diverse hunter-gatherer communities throughout the world due to their shared social relation with their material conditions.
--Anthropologist James Woodburn describes hunting-gathering as an “immediate-return economy”, which actively avoids surpluses (storage; “delayed-return”).
--This is in part due to pragmatism since hunting-gathering requires a nomadic lifestyle, so carrying large surpluses is impractical.
--Environmental relations: there is relative confidence in the environment, i.e. like a parent providing offerings to all beings/autonomously productive. Of course, there are variations, as Suzman adds:

Foraging Ju/’hoansi don’t animate their environment like the [also foraging] Mbuti. They also don’t talk about animal spirits or speak of conscious, living landscapes. Rather, they describe their environment’s providence in more matter-of-fact terms: it is there and it provides them with food and other useful things, just as it does for other species. And just as importantly, even if they consider their environment to be provident, they don’t think of it as “generous”—firstly because it can sometimes be austere, and secondly because Ju/’hoansi do not think of their environment as a “thing” capable of agency. Rather, they describe it as a set of relationships between lots of different things capable of agency—plants, insects, animals, people, spirits, gods, and weather—that interact with one another continuously on what Ju/’hoansi called the “earth’s face.”

…the commonality here is that humans are considered part of nature and not separate (so there is no pure nature). This is shared with indigenous societies that forage but also cross into farming (the materialist lens is particularly useful in deciphering how different relations with material conditions are reflected in cultural practices), ex. The Earth's Blanket: Traditional Teachings for Sustainable Living.
--Time is experienced as cyclical/rhythmic/predictable based on seasons. Suzman’s experience with the Ju/’hoansi suggests a focus on the immediate given the confidence on the environment’s cycles, although this is being disrupted by colonization.
--A key hunter-gatherer innovation as mentioned earlier is egalitarianism (esp. material equality). Gathering is cooperative, while hunting (esp. big game) requires careful redistribution. For the evolutionary advantages of egalitarianism, see:
-Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior
-Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding
--In short, equality secures personal liberties by preventing despotic rule. This counters the modern myth of equality vs. liberty (since liberty is from the perspective of the rich, to be free to exploit the masses). Thus, self-interest for personal liberty is channelled via jealousy/ridicule (social leveling mechanism) to prevent hierarchy/profitable exchange/accumulation/monopolization of production and distribution, flipping Adam Smith’s self-interest (later distorted as “the Invisible Hand”) theory on its head.
…Similarly, private property facilitates sharing; the only delayed exchange is gifts, which are long-term relations rather than market exchange (immediate, between strangers): see Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years.

…see comments below for rest of the review…

[Numidica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Other reviewers have noted that the author meanders more than a little in making his points. This is a shame, because the San people are interesting in many ways; they are perhaps the original people of Africa, and hence of homo sapiens since research shows they have lived in Namibia for over 200,000 years. Their traditional diet and way of life is a window into how all humans once lived. But there is far too much academic discussion that does not contribute, in my opinion, to telling the story of the San. Also, because I had already read a good bit about the San, this book was not a revelation in the way that it apparently was to some reviewers.

*** July 1, 2020 ***

I am returning to and revising my opinion of this book, two years on from my first reading of it. I often find myself thinking of the stories of the San that Suzman shared, and of the accounting of their hunter-gatherer diet that he documented before those traditions mostly disappeared. The fact that this book has stayed with me in ways that made me think often of it and the San people means that I judged it too harshly the first time around.

[Brittany McCann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted this book to be about so much more than it was....

It took on the wrong tone for me and started out in a way that made it lose sway with me. Instead of really showing the affluence without abundance, it seemed to be more about breaking down the ideas of the bushman's way of life and spending more time depicting their current state of dependence on aid and how they seem to have given up on their way of life, which makes me feel as though the title should have just been: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen...

I did laugh at the predicted 15-hour workweek when we seem to keep increasing the workweek hours for full-time employees in the US.

I did, however, enjoy the time that was spent cultivating relationships with people. I wish the entire book focused more on that and less on early academia.

3 Stars

[Andrew]

Like James Scott's "The Art of Not Being Governed", this book helps us think outside our implicit assumptions about how society necessarily functions. In this case, Suzman argues, for example, that the work ethic and forward thinking acquisitiveness are tied up with agricultural societies and don't exist in bushman societies. I imagine to people more familiar with the anthropological literature this work would seem less insightful and more as a topical introduction, but for the rest of us it provides a good overview and is well written. Suzman writes with an authoritative voice, and although I would have liked to hear more of contrasting viewpoints, more grit and uncertainty, others will perhaps more appreciate that he writes well and keeps the narrative moving quickly.

[Kevin Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoughtful & somewhat depressing

A kind of rambling look at the three eras: hunter/gatherer agricultural & industrial/post thru the lens of the author's long aquaintance with bushman culture.
Well worth reading on the most fundamental issues facing us personally & as a global human society.

[Dave Main · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I've read in years. It's a beautifully written account of Namibia's hunter-gathers, a culture that has been successful and sustainable for 200,000 years.

The content ranges from topics grand and small. Learn the Bushman's amazing hunting technique in one chapter. In the next, contemplate the impact of an agrarian society on man's relationship with the earth. Evaluate the meaning and necessity of our work ethic, and what it actually supports. And meet fascinating Ju/’hoansi individuals along the way.

When Goodreads voting for the Best Book awards of 2017 was announced, I ran to vote for this amazing work. Somehow this was overlooked.

[Amber Foxx · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hunter-gatherers were the original leisure society. It didn’t take as long as we “civilized people” might think to acquire the necessities of a simple life. Life wasn’t all work. And the work people did? Hunting. Modern people do it for recreation. Picking fruits and nuts and wild plants. Again, something moderns do as a special leisure activity, though it may be on a “pick-your-own” farm. The San or Bushmen lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers for centuries, in a society characterized by a lack of hierarchies, a lack of social distinctions or inequalities. When economic life was focused on getting fresh food and water for today, with confidence that there would be more tomorrow, acquisition of excess was both irrational and impractical. The 17 to 20 hour workweek was all it took, with time left for making art and music, visiting friends, playing with children. Life was largely lived in public. Little time was spent inside closed-off dwellings, but rather in in a shared space.
Suzman analyzes the impacts of encounters with agricultural societies, the Neolithic revolution, and the effects of a new economic structure being imposed on a previously egalitarian hunter-gatherer society, bringing with it a new sense of time and work and the concept of money.
The depiction of life in modern Bushmen enclaves in Namibia is central to the book, and it’s used as an anchor for exploration of how the older society functioned, and for historical and anthropological examination of how the San got from point A—affluence without abundance—to point B, bottom of the socio-economic ladder in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.
Perhaps you’ll be curious about the San because you saw The Gods Must Be Crazy (a movie that starred one of their own, and a movie that according the Suzman, the San people embraced) or because you’ve read The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency series, and recall that Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni take in two foster children who are Bushmen. The effect of the beloved cattle of Mma Ramotswe’s pastoralist people and those of other cattle-herding African groups on the lands of the nomadic Bushmen is examined in depth in this book, as well as the impact of German, Afrikaans, and other colonizers.
This is a scholarly book, but a readable one, with portraits of individuals, towns and settlement farms, as well as broader research spanning economics, anthropology, nutrition (he gets one thing wrong in this area—he overlooks the omega three content in the fat of game animals compared to feedlot animals, but aside from that, he’s on solid ground) and sociology. The resources listed at the back of the book for further exploration of his subjects’ history and culture are substantial, taking up the last fifty pages or so.

[Rachel Wexelbaum · Rating 5 out of 5]

The whites in Namibia, South Africa, and Botswana are taking everything from the Bushmen and giving nothing in return. The Bushmen are no longer the people you might have seen in "The Gods Must Be Crazy" movies; they are being resettled, forced into agricultural labor, not given any education, and in some regions no longer allowed to hunt or gather on their land. Displacement and oppression always, always, always leads to trauma; many Bushmen are self-medicating with alcohol. South African anthropologist James Suzman went to record what remained of traditional Bushmen ways, beliefs, and values before it was lost forever. Sadly he was already too late to get most of it.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book that really shows the love the author had of the SAN people. Very well written. . . I wish I had read this before traveling through Namibia. Highly recommend.

[Cindy Leighton · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Might we, like our hunter-gatherer forebears, learn to be satisfied with having fewer needs more easily met, embrace the economic Utopia imagined by Keynes, and in doing so break out of our destructive spiral of endless growth and development?"

Suzman is a cultural anthropologist who has spent 25 years living with and studying the Bushmen groups of Southern Africa (our common genetic ancestor) who have been an incredibly successful hunting and gathering group living continuously for thousands of years in the same area. Without too much romanticization (he definitely discusses the annual weight loss during dry seasons) Suzman portrays the successful H&G lifestyle which provided enough food with a minimal amount of work, little private property, no hierarchy, and an emphasis on sharing, family, friendship, and enjoying life visiting with friends. They also had/have very little in the way of material goods, but seemed to feel happy, without envy as everyone was equal.

He takes us through the shift to farming and notes, as many anthropologists before him, the devastating impact on the health of humans as a result of this shift. Most North Americans have been taught that the shift to farming was a glorious time when people finally were smart enough to figure out how to farm - but most anthropologists disagree, with evidence. Farming resulted in health issues as farming is more susceptible to changing environment; and reliance on a single grain or product is much less healthy than living on a variety of meat, nuts, fruits, grains and vegetables. Not to mention the health hazards of living close to where you defecate for your entire life.

By showing the devastating impacts of interactions of various Bushmen groups with first farmers and later capitalists - where Bushmen were pushed into reservations, pulled into the military and into war, and eventually into a capitalist economy where "some forms of work are more valuable than others? . . . prices rise for no obvious reason. . . and the origin of money is a mystery." - Suzman uses this "test case" to reflect on the impacts of global shifts from H&G to farming to capitalism - and the challenges that come along with that shift - which includes hunger, hierarchies of power with many losers, jealousy, envy, and the transformation of "hard work into a virtue and transforming time into a commodity, objects into assets, and systems of exchange into commerce."

Suzman uses his focus on political economy to envision the "post-work world" envisioned first by Keynes but popularized recently by the development of AI and "robots taking our jobs" Many persons have worried about how we will find value in life without work to define our identity. I think Suzman gives us great hope for a world that is happier with less, and that the millennials are the people to get us there - "a group in the first world who have known nothing but abundance and who seem increasingly inclined to seek out work that they love rather than persuade themselves to learn to love the work they find - they lead the way in doing this."

[Blythe · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could choose one book for everyone to read, it would be this one. Every time people try to tell me truths about humanity and the economy and the market, I just want to scream that there are no truths about humanity to do with the market! The market, the current economy, everything to do with the construction of our agricultural society, including all the civilizations we know and all the religious text and everything, is a super recent experiment in the life span of homo sapiens. There is a lifestyle we're evolved to do and it has nothing to do with how we live now. And I wish we would take more lessons from that time because what we do-- constant labor in order to buy distractions from our life-- requires constant complex problem solving and doesn't provide joy and doesn't provide for everyone and is clearly unsustainable. I wish we were hunter-gatherers. I wish that the way of life wasn't almost entirely extinct. And I wish the most brutal, aggressive, and selfish style of living didn't spend the last 10,000 years murdering every other way of life until we can't even fathom how we used to be. :(

[James Empson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had read a few less than glowing reviews and, without either an anthropological background or knowledge of bushmen in Southern Africa, didn’t start this book with too many expectations. So what jumped out at me was a new way of seeing conflict between hunter gatherer society and agricultural development and - maybe simply speaking for myself - of the way in which so many of our first world attitudes towards economics and societal structures could do with a deeper review. That said, I still enjoyed the personal stories (and photographs) of many of the individual ju/‘huansi whose lives are the core of this book.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Affluence Without Abundance takes a roundabout approach to getting at what the author wants to say. In fact, it was so roundabout I'm not sure I got all the points Suzman was trying to convey. But I did enjoy his stories of getting to know the bushmen, also called San, he met and the land. What stuck with me were the stories of how the San Suzman met used to interact with the land and how those interactions have changed over time. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the topic as long as they have a fair enough of patience.

[Jonathan-David Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting book which gives a thorough picture of the history of the Bushmen, who lived for thousands of years as hunter-gatherers in relative harmony and happiness with nature and each other. I felt misled by the subtitle, as there is very little about what we can learn from them; only a few paragraphs here and there have to do with that, and overall the book is rather a history of extinct traditions and hunting methods and the rapid progression of agriculture which brought us to the relative unhappiness and disharmony of our world today.

[Zubair Junjunia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I met, was fed dinner and given this book by the author...

I had the incredible pleasure of meeting James and hearing his story before diving into the book. I've always had a little difficulty sticking to non-fiction book but following stories of people rather than drumming you down with facts makes the biggest of differences. And this book does just that. Set across his many travels and stays, James slides us across the timeline as well as explaining the relevant historical context in an incredibly engaging and articulate way. The topic itself, the lifestyle of the Bushmen, is revealing and lends us to critically consider our own modern lifestyle. Flat hierarchies, community driven and shared economics. There is much to consider from the climate change perspective too - considering how these (now) indigenous communities have lived in harmony with nature, particularly in some of the harshest conditions on our planet.

I've not met many authors and having the opportunity to speak to one really affected the way I read the book but also considered if I ever want to do something of the sort. To realise that the author had sat with a pillow across his face trying to figure out how best to phrase a single sentence adds so much significance and tells of the effort and love that crafting a book requires.

[Cheryl Olseth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only when a book completely changes my thinking on a topic, opens my eye to a different place, time person and is well written do I give five stars. Affluence Without Abundance completely changed my perspective of hunter / gatherer societies, thus the five star rating. Like most Americans, I was taught hunter / gatherers were primitive peoples who unfortunately for them, lacked all the advantages of "modern" society. Author and anthropologist James Suzman's spent years researching hunter/gatherer communities in Namibia. These communities successfully survived for millennia (much longer than our current societies.). The communities were much more egalitarian, worked fewer hours and focused on the betterment/sustainability of the group rather than the individual. It worked, these peoples were happy and content.

Things have changed drastically, as like most indigenous peoples, they are considered at the "bottom" of society and now are less healthy than when they hunted and gathered rather than relying on government hand outs.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book while staying in Namibia and finished just about a year after my return. Having seen many of the things this book is about myself, it was an even more emotional read. It provides an overview of southern Africa’s history and contains a detailed and sometimes very painful description of the past (the accuracy of which I cannot evaluate) and present life of different bushman peoples while also transforming old and almost lost ideas into what could be a concept for our future life. It is a book that made me rethink human nature once again.

[Joey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I would have preferred an ethnography instead of literary non-fiction, this was an insightful, moving collection of information, histories, and stories about the San peoples of southern Africa, among the world's longest-lasting hunter-gatherer civilisations until recent colonialism.

[timv · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book's title and cover photography were odd considering the text. It's basically a updated version of the anthropology of the Bushmen of South Africa especially of the Kalahari area. I found much of the book quite interesting. It's rather amazing that the Bushmen remained a isolated Hunter and Gathering tribe for over a hundred thousand years. Their eventual fate seems to be the same as other hunter gatherers; the loss of their hunting grounds, battling the influence of alcohol and trying to adapt to capitalism and globalism as they become less isolated.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very compelling! I found this in a box of random books in the living room, no idea where I got it, or even if I got it - maybe Tom got this one? Anyway, picked it up out of curiosity just to take a look, started reading, and then could not put it down. The title is not inaccurate, the author does indeed write about what we might learn from the people commonly referred to as "Bushmen" (now called "San"). However, the book was more compelling to me as a combination of history and personal stories, rather than for any hope of our learning lessons about how to be in the world. No doubt that's partly due to the distressing moment in which I happen to be reading, but I'm not sure it would be all that different if I had read this in a more hopeful time. The insights the author shares are potentially valuable, but I have a hard time imagining our society really learning from them and applying them. Not that we are going to become hunter-gatherers, necessarily, but that we might learn some of what makes them better off than we are. I hope we can.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating history of Homo sapiens, of Africa, of the Neolithic Revolution, and of the spread of European culture around the world. It was also an interesting glimpse at another way of living and full of interesting anthropological tidbits. I feel like the title was misleading, since the actual discussion of affluence could probably be summed up in less than a chapter's worth of words, but it was interesting nonetheless.

[Martin Pienaar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating insights into the plight of the San

[Taylor Ahlstrom · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the book was less a focus on the underlying societal forces of the bushmen that lead to happiness without material goods, and more a dark tale of their marginalization and demise by a capitalist society that didn't understand or care for their culture, it was still a worthwhile read. Dry and anthropological at times, human and relatable at others, it leaves you with nothing but a saddened sense that this way of life has been lost forever--replaced by a system that rewards only material success without providing the means for them to achieve it in the lands their people have inhabited for tens of thousands of years. Yet another heartbreaking tale of the white man fucking shit up.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hoping for information about Bushman society, or at least how they used to live. And there is some of that, spread throughout the book. But it's mostly the long, sad story of how greedy (and often white) men pushed their way of life on basically everyone in the world.

[Clivemichael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, disturbing and a dose of reality awareness. A moving memoir, fascinating ethnography, timely and prescient.
"The history of archeology is littered with broken fragments of grand hypotheses that have imputed extraordinary significance to unremarkable discoveries."
"…economics became a problem only with the transition to agriculture and that our preoccupation
with solving this problem was a consequence of our ancestors’ having created it in the first place."

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the author did a good job weaving the different narratives into a coherent piece of work. The book is provocative in suggesting that the modern world has lost something in the pursuit of more and more of everything. Our thirst for more will never be quenched, and yet we continue perpetuating this cycle.

The fault lines are starting to show in society.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice intro to the bushmen of Namibia / Botswana. Historical impact of Europeans on their livelihood gave better appreciation of the challenges they face in 21 century.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a host of issues with this book, none of which prevent the book from being enjoyable as a sympathetic (perhaps overly sympathetic) guide to the Bushmen in their contemporary existence, but which keep it from being as insightful a book as the author thinks this is.  This book takes the complaints that the civilized peoples of the world have had for hunters and gatherers and simply looks at things from the other side of the picture, with the essential stereotypical picture intact.  So rather than castigating the Khoisan people of Southwestern Africa for being lazy, the author celebrates them for it.  Instead of blaming them for short-term thinking and the inability to refrain from present pleasure for the sake of future benefits, as farmers and capitalists and the like have to do, the author praises this tendency as being possible if one has a nomadic hunter and gatherer lifestyle with the commensurate low amount of population density allowed for minimum burden on a given particular area.  The author notes that hunters and gatherers and farmers made very different choices with very different consequences, but in light of that, can hunters and gatherers like the Khoi and San the author lovingly chronicles be considered civilized at all?

This book is three parts and eighteen chapters long and is about 250 to 300 pages in length.  The book begins with an author's notes, some comments on names and clicks, and some maps that show the limitation of the Khoisan range due to Bantu expansion.  The first six chapters explore old times and the author's attempts to interview people who might have some understanding of those times so as to provide a picture of how life was like before the expansion of populations of whites and Bantus in Southern Africa constricted the range of the Bushmen to such an extent that it was impossible for them to live as free nomads (I).  After that the author gives a picture of the beneficent relationship between the Bushmen and their environment given low population densities and low demands on that environment (II).  Finally, the author closes with five chapters that provide a look at the contemporary experience of the Khoisan peoples as small and oppressed minorities in Namibia, struggling to be respected and find a place in a world that seems to have no more room for them.

There are at least two levels that a critique of this work can take.  For one, is the author being fair-minded to the people he is discussing?  The author certainly makes himself a friend of the Bushmen and a partisan for their cause, such as it is, but at the same time the author admits that he simply does not understand the approach of them and is at best a friendly observer and chronicler of their ways and not an insider in their culture.  As a result, this book and others like it, which serve to use the Bushmen as a means of critiquing the attitudes and behavior of contemporary Western culture, are inherently dishonest because what we are getting is not an account by the subjects themselves, who have their own opinions and their own insights, but rather an agenda that uses the subjects as a means by which to promote an agenda about anti-capitalism, anti-agriculture, pro-drastic family planning to lower the population, and so on.  This fundamental dishonesty makes a book like this greatly suspect, because if it could be enjoyed as a clueless white man visiting the bush and seeking insight, as cliched a view as that would be, it most certainly cannot be respected as a guide to how it is that contemporary Westerners could and should live ourselves.

[Joe Bruno · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hey, I had a particular idea I wanted to explore. I had read somewhere that for at least 90% of the history of anatomically modern humans was spent in Hunter Gatherer societies. It seemed to me that understanding those societies would make more sense when trying to determine how or what mankind was supposed to feel about the universe and some of the bigger questions about life compared to the artificial 21st century life we live. This book came up in the library search and I checked it out. It did not really address my questions. However, it was a pretty good book told in non-scientific terms to a non-science audience. Suzman has another book that would have been a better fit for my needs, "Work: A History of How we spend our Time." Clearly these were written to reach a broad market and not the narrow anthropological crowd he is a part of.

Suzman has probably published more than a little about his studies in scientific journals during the course of his career. This book was not written like something for those type of journals, in fact, there was a good amount of poetry in his writing, in the beginning anyway. This is not a tough read and is about his study of the HG population in Namibia, a group he studied for many years. It is interesting enough, despite not really answering the questions in which I was interested. But hey, nothing is lost in learning something new.

If anthropology is your thing this is an easy read about a vanishing (vanished?) people. I got a little bored with it in the end but I thought it done well enough. Again, I was looking for something a little different, so my interest in this waned a bit.