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4+ oeuvres 375 utilisateurs 8 critiques

Œuvres de James Suzman

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The Analog Sea Review: Number One (2018) — Contributeur — 9 exemplaires

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Partage des connaissances

Sexe
male
Pays (pour la carte)
UK
Lieu de naissance
Johannesburg, South Africa
Professions
anthropologist

Membres

Critiques

Starts with a review of what “work” really means and then explores the history of human work. I really loved the close attention to what the daily “productive” lives of long-ago people may have been like, long before recorded history. The last few chapters, about what work has become in the last couple thousand years was weaker, I thought, or maybe just more familiar. Anyone who has enjoyed Graeber’s “Debt: The First 5000 Years” or James C Scott’s “Seeing Like a State” would probably like this book also.… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
steve02476 | 4 autres critiques | Jan 3, 2023 |
This is an interesting, if maybe a bit too wide-ranging book on work and its role in our lives. Many of us take work to be essential to human life. Suzman writes that not only did work only really begin with agricultural practices, but that they way we work now is a very recent phenomenon. Even the standard workweek only came into being with consumer capitalism.

History gives us ways to reconsider our obsession with work.
 
Signalé
timoroso | 4 autres critiques | Jun 21, 2022 |
I started this book during my recent, thankfully brief, period of unemployment earlier this year, for perhaps obvious reasons. I was expecting a sort of sociopolitical examination of our relationship to work, but it is rather more than that. James Suzman is an anthropologist specializing in hunter-gatherers of southern Africa, and he takes a very broad perspective.

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

I’d recommend this to thoughtful millennials who are interested in new economic approaches for reducing inequality and hopefully healthier and more satisfying relationships to work.
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
Charon07 | 4 autres critiques | Nov 7, 2021 |
Das Buch hat mir sehr gut gefallen. Da Geschichte eigentlich nicht zu meinem Interessengebiet gehört, war vieles neu für mich. Das Verhältnis des Menschen zur Arbeit vom ersten prähistorischen Menschen bis heute wird beleuchtet. Letztendlich fand ich es tröstlich, zu sehen, wie sich die Menschen entwickelt haben, dass immer wieder Kulturen untergegangen sind, aber auch neue entstanden. In Dimensionen von Jahrmillionen oder auch nur Hunderttausend Jahren wird unser jetziger katastrophaler Zustand der Welt sicher anders zu bewerten sein, als wenn man mittendrin steckt. Falls es in fernen Zukunft jemand gibt, der einer Bewertung fähig ist.… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
Patkue | Aug 29, 2021 |

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Statistiques

Œuvres
4
Aussi par
1
Membres
375
Popularité
#64,333
Évaluation
3.8
Critiques
8
ISBN
25
Langues
8

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