人类学
椰壳碗外的人生 豆瓣 谷歌图书
A Life Beyond Boundaries: A Memoir
8.9 (80 个评分)
作者:
[美]本尼迪克特·安德森
译者:
徐德林
出版社:
世纪文景 | 上海人民出版社
2018
- 8
☆ 《想象的共同体》作者本尼迪克特•安德森自述“越界”一生
☆ 跨地域之限,越语言之别,消文化之墙,破学科之界。
☆ 如何规避现代教育与研究自有之缚,如何于现实困顿中明理求真。
本尼迪克特•安德森,无法被标签的学术大师,以跳出椰壳碗的青蛙自况,地理的、历史的、语言的、规训的边界都无法束缚他旺盛的好奇和思考的热情。不同于一般回忆录,本书主要着眼于安德森的治学经历,作者主要评述了区域研究、田野工作、比较研究、跨学科研究四方面内容,一如既往的锋利深刻。他亲自见证了区域研究,尤其是东南亚研究的兴起;又经历了学科划分和教育体系从传统到现代的转变;近半生的时间都在东南亚三国——印度尼西亚、泰国、菲律宾实地考察研究。那个时代的学术研究面临着许多现实阻碍:语言不通,资金不足,资料困乏,政治环境。安德森和所有学者一样,面临着导师与学生、理论与实践、勤奋与机缘、权力与真相等等权衡,其反思对当下的中国学界、教育界也颇有裨益。
----------------
《椰壳碗外的人生》是享誉世界的学者本尼迪克特•安德森的回忆性著作。书中回顾了他幼年从昆明到加州再到爱尔兰的辗转,在伊顿和剑桥的求学经历,在美国康奈尔的研究和教学经历,在东南亚印尼、泰国、菲律宾的田野调查经历,以及退休之后的种种新尝试。本书是安德森应日本友人之邀而作,于2003年前后开始构思,2009年日文版面世。英文版的出版有赖于其弟佩里•安德森的促成,然书未面世,作者便于2015年12月在印尼朗玛逝世。
回溯50余年的学术人生,安德森坦陈其以《想象的共同体》为代表的众多学术成就的灵感与起源;直击现代学术和教育体系的弊病;反思认为全球化出路单一的普遍展望,为民族主义和国际主义解锁更多可能。富有个人魅力,不论是学者还是大众读者都会在本书阅读中有所收获。
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本尼迪克特•安德森颠覆了民族主义的研究……不仅以他的理论贡献而闻名,而且也因为他对印尼、泰国、菲律宾的语言与权力的近距离检视。——《纽约时报》
安德森的所有书写都具有无畏的原创性,借助发现被忽视或被压抑的声音,挑战所有假说。他从不满足于告诉读者他们想知道的。——《卫报》(讣告)
虽说《椰壳碗外的人生》是一部学者的回忆录,但本书内容对普通读者而言也大有益处。一个学者能够婉拒三个国家的优渥条件,不断跳出舒适区,挑战新领域,不做“椰壳碗下的青蛙”,这一过程本身就足够振奋人心。——《经济学人》
☆ 跨地域之限,越语言之别,消文化之墙,破学科之界。
☆ 如何规避现代教育与研究自有之缚,如何于现实困顿中明理求真。
本尼迪克特•安德森,无法被标签的学术大师,以跳出椰壳碗的青蛙自况,地理的、历史的、语言的、规训的边界都无法束缚他旺盛的好奇和思考的热情。不同于一般回忆录,本书主要着眼于安德森的治学经历,作者主要评述了区域研究、田野工作、比较研究、跨学科研究四方面内容,一如既往的锋利深刻。他亲自见证了区域研究,尤其是东南亚研究的兴起;又经历了学科划分和教育体系从传统到现代的转变;近半生的时间都在东南亚三国——印度尼西亚、泰国、菲律宾实地考察研究。那个时代的学术研究面临着许多现实阻碍:语言不通,资金不足,资料困乏,政治环境。安德森和所有学者一样,面临着导师与学生、理论与实践、勤奋与机缘、权力与真相等等权衡,其反思对当下的中国学界、教育界也颇有裨益。
----------------
《椰壳碗外的人生》是享誉世界的学者本尼迪克特•安德森的回忆性著作。书中回顾了他幼年从昆明到加州再到爱尔兰的辗转,在伊顿和剑桥的求学经历,在美国康奈尔的研究和教学经历,在东南亚印尼、泰国、菲律宾的田野调查经历,以及退休之后的种种新尝试。本书是安德森应日本友人之邀而作,于2003年前后开始构思,2009年日文版面世。英文版的出版有赖于其弟佩里•安德森的促成,然书未面世,作者便于2015年12月在印尼朗玛逝世。
回溯50余年的学术人生,安德森坦陈其以《想象的共同体》为代表的众多学术成就的灵感与起源;直击现代学术和教育体系的弊病;反思认为全球化出路单一的普遍展望,为民族主义和国际主义解锁更多可能。富有个人魅力,不论是学者还是大众读者都会在本书阅读中有所收获。
-----------------
本尼迪克特•安德森颠覆了民族主义的研究……不仅以他的理论贡献而闻名,而且也因为他对印尼、泰国、菲律宾的语言与权力的近距离检视。——《纽约时报》
安德森的所有书写都具有无畏的原创性,借助发现被忽视或被压抑的声音,挑战所有假说。他从不满足于告诉读者他们想知道的。——《卫报》(讣告)
虽说《椰壳碗外的人生》是一部学者的回忆录,但本书内容对普通读者而言也大有益处。一个学者能够婉拒三个国家的优渥条件,不断跳出舒适区,挑战新领域,不做“椰壳碗下的青蛙”,这一过程本身就足够振奋人心。——《经济学人》
The Fate of Rural Hell 豆瓣
作者:
Benedict Anderson
出版社:
University of Chicago Press
2012
- 6
In 1975, when political scientist Benedict Anderson reached Wat Phai Rong Wua, a massive temple complex in rural Thailand conceived by Buddhist monk Luang Phor Khom, he felt he had wandered into a demented Disneyland. One of the world’s most bizarre tourist attractions, Wat Phai Rong Wua was designed as a cautionary museum of sorts; its gruesome statues depict violent and torturous scenes that showcase what hell may be like. Over the next few decades, Anderson, who is best known for his work,Imagined Communities, found himself transfixed by this unusual amalgamation of objects, returning several times to see attractions like the largest metal-cast Buddha figure in the world and the Palace of a Hundred Spires. The concrete statuaries and perverse art in Luang Phor’s personal museum of hell included, “side by side, an upright human skeleton in a glass cabinet and a life-size replica of Michelangelo’s gigantic nude David, wearing fashionable red underpants from the top of which poked part of a swollen, un-Florentine penis,” alongside dozens of statues of evildoers being ferociously punished in their afterlife. InThe Fate of Rural Hell, Anderson unravels the intrigue of this strange setting, endeavoring to discover what compels so many Thai visitors to travel to this popular spectacle and what order, if any, inspired its creation. At the same time, he notes in Wat Phai Rong Wua the unexpected effects of the gradual advance of capitalism into the far reaches of rural Asia. Both a one-of-a-kind travelogue and a penetrating look at the community that sustains it,The Fate of Rural Hellis sure to intrigue and inspire conversation as much as Wat Phai Rong Wua itself.
Steps to an Ecology of Mind 豆瓣
作者:
Gregory Bateson
出版社:
Jason Aronson Inc. Publishers
1987
- 3
Steps to an Ecology of Mind 豆瓣 Goodreads
作者:
Gregory Bateson
出版社:
University Of Chicago Press
2000
- 3
其它标题:
Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology
Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. With a new foreword by his daughter Mary Katherine Bateson, this classic anthology of his major work will continue to delight and inform generations of readers.
"This collection amounts to a retrospective exhibition of a working life. . . . Bateson has come to this position during a career that carried him not only into anthropology, for which he was first trained, but into psychiatry, genetics, and communication theory. . . . He . . . examines the nature of the mind, seeing it not as a nebulous something, somehow lodged somewhere in the body of each man, but as a network of interactions relating the individual with his society and his species and with the universe at large."—D. W. Harding, New York Review of Books
"[Bateson's] view of the world, of science, of culture, and of man is vast and challenging. His efforts at synthesis are tantalizingly and cryptically suggestive. . . .This is a book we should all read and ponder."—Roger Keesing, American Anthropologist
"This collection amounts to a retrospective exhibition of a working life. . . . Bateson has come to this position during a career that carried him not only into anthropology, for which he was first trained, but into psychiatry, genetics, and communication theory. . . . He . . . examines the nature of the mind, seeing it not as a nebulous something, somehow lodged somewhere in the body of each man, but as a network of interactions relating the individual with his society and his species and with the universe at large."—D. W. Harding, New York Review of Books
"[Bateson's] view of the world, of science, of culture, and of man is vast and challenging. His efforts at synthesis are tantalizingly and cryptically suggestive. . . .This is a book we should all read and ponder."—Roger Keesing, American Anthropologist
Why I Am Not a Scientist 豆瓣
作者:
Jonathan Marks
出版社:
University of California Press
2009
- 6
This lively and provocative book casts an anthropological eye on the field of science in a wide-ranging and innovative discussion that integrates philosophy, history, sociology, and auto-ethnography. Jonathan Marks examines biological anthropology, the history of the life sciences, and the literature of science studies while upending common understandings of science and culture with a mixture of anthropology, common sense, and disarming humor.Science, Marks argues, is widely accepted to be three things: a method of understanding and a means of establishing facts about the universe, the facts themselves, and a voice of authority or a locus of cultural power. This triple identity creates conflicting roles and tensions within the field of science and leads to its record of instructive successes and failures. Among the topics Marks addresses are the scientific revolution, science as thought and performance, creationism, scientific fraud, and modern scientific racism. Applying his considerable insight, energy, and wit, Marks sheds new light on the evolution of science, its role in modern culture, and its challenges for the twenty-first century.
Genealogies of Religion 豆瓣
作者:
Talal Asad
出版社:
Johns Hopkins University Press
1993
- 8
In Geneologies of Religion, Talal Asad explores how religion as a historical category emerged in the West and has come to be applied as a universal concept.
The idea that religion has undergone a radical change since the Christian Reformation―from totalitarian and socially repressive to private and relatively benign―is a familiar part of the story of secularization. It is often invokved to explain and justify the liberal politics and world view of modernity. And it leads to the view that "politicized religions" threaten both reason and liberty. Asad's essays explore and question all these assumptions. He argues that "religion" is a construction of European modernity, a construction that authorizes―for Westerners and non-Westerners alike―particular forms of "history making."
The idea that religion has undergone a radical change since the Christian Reformation―from totalitarian and socially repressive to private and relatively benign―is a familiar part of the story of secularization. It is often invokved to explain and justify the liberal politics and world view of modernity. And it leads to the view that "politicized religions" threaten both reason and liberty. Asad's essays explore and question all these assumptions. He argues that "religion" is a construction of European modernity, a construction that authorizes―for Westerners and non-Westerners alike―particular forms of "history making."
The Unfolding of Language 豆瓣
作者:
Guy Deutscher
出版社:
Metropolitan Books
2005
- 6
Language is mankind's greatest invention-except, of course, that it was never invented." So begins linguist Guy Deutscher's enthralling investigation into the genesis and evolution of language. If we started off with rudimentary utterances on the level of "man throw spear," how did we end up with sophisticated grammars, enormous vocabularies, and intricately nuanced degrees of meaning?
Drawing on recent groundbreaking discoveries in modern linguistics, Deutscher exposes the elusive forces of creation at work in human communication, giving us fresh insight into how language emerges, evolves, and decays. He traces the evolution of linguistic complexity from an early "Me Tarzan" stage to such elaborate single-word constructions as the Turkish sehirlilestiremediklerimizdensiniz ("you are one of those whom we couldn't turn into a town dweller"). Arguing that destruction and creation in language are intimately entwined, Deutscher shows how these processes are continuously in operation, generating new words, new structures, and new meanings.
As entertaining as it is erudite, The Unfolding of Language moves nimbly from ancient Babylonian to American idiom, from the central role of metaphor to the staggering triumph of design that is the Semitic verb, to tell the dramatic story and explain the genius behind a uniquely human faculty.
Drawing on recent groundbreaking discoveries in modern linguistics, Deutscher exposes the elusive forces of creation at work in human communication, giving us fresh insight into how language emerges, evolves, and decays. He traces the evolution of linguistic complexity from an early "Me Tarzan" stage to such elaborate single-word constructions as the Turkish sehirlilestiremediklerimizdensiniz ("you are one of those whom we couldn't turn into a town dweller"). Arguing that destruction and creation in language are intimately entwined, Deutscher shows how these processes are continuously in operation, generating new words, new structures, and new meanings.
As entertaining as it is erudite, The Unfolding of Language moves nimbly from ancient Babylonian to American idiom, from the central role of metaphor to the staggering triumph of design that is the Semitic verb, to tell the dramatic story and explain the genius behind a uniquely human faculty.
Distinction 豆瓣 Goodreads
La Distinction : Critique sociale du jugement
作者:
P Bourdieu
译者:
Richard Nice
出版社:
Harvard University Press
1984
- 7
No judgement of taste is innocent. In a word, we are all snobs. Pierre Bourdieu brilliantly illuminates this situation of the middle class in the modern world. France's leading sociologist focusses here on the French bourgeoisie, its tastes and preferences. Distinction is at once a vast ethnography of contemporary France and a dissection of the bourgeois mind. In the course of everyday life people constantly choose between what they find aesthetically pleasing and what they consider tacky, merely trendy, or ugly. Bourdicu bases his study on surveys that took into account the multitude of social factors that play a part in a Frenchperson's choice of clothing, furniture, leisure activities, dinner menus for guests, and many other matters of taste. What emerges from his analysis is that social snobbery is everywhere in the bourgeois world. The different aesthetic choices people make are all distinctions-that is, choices made in opposition to those made by other classes. Taste is not pure. Bourdieu finds a world of social meaning in the decision to order bouillabaisse, in our contemporary cult of thinness, in the "California sports" such as jogging and cross-country skiing. The social world, he argues, functions simultaneously as a system of power relations and as a symbolic system in which minute distinctions of taste become the basis for social judgement. The topic of Bourdieu's book is a fascinating one: the strategies of social pretension are always curiously engaging. But the book is more than fascinating. It is a major contribution to current debates on the theory of culture and a challenge to the major theoretical schools in contemporary sociology.
跨越边界的社区(修订版) 豆瓣 谷歌图书 Goodreads
9.6 (99 个评分)
作者:
项飙
出版社:
生活·读书·新知三联书店
2018
- 3
其它标题:
跨越边界的社区:北京“浙江村”的生活史
持续至今的真实“北漂”史。转型中的中国城市、流动人口、经济与社会。北京“浙江村”与“浙江村人”三十年生活记录研究。
“浙江村”,20世纪80年代起渐次于北京天安门以南5公里的 南苑地 区汇聚成形。30年来,其经济生产与社会再生产的特殊面貌、内部空间与外部环境的互动演变,已成为研究改革开放以来中国流动人口与城市社会经济发展,体制、权力与政策的鲜活样本。
作者借同乡之便,于90年代中期6年时间里对“浙江村”进行实地调查,深入“浙江村人”的日常生活,以近乎白描的写作手法,细致呈现了“浙江村”这一流动群体的落地、发展和变化中的诸多细节。对于“浙江村”的形成、结构、运作、变迁,“浙江村人”作为“外来人口”在北京的生活、生产经营、乡情民愿、与流入地及户籍所在地管理部门的互动等等,均加以极近距离的分析记录。
本书时隔20年后修订再版,除对前版内容进行补充订定外,于新增序言部分特别回顾了“浙江村”和中国社会自2000年以来的变化,对“正规化”及“分割—攫取模式”进行了分析阐述。同时为便于历史比照,增绘了2017年“浙江村”疏解前分布示意图。
“浙江村”,20世纪80年代起渐次于北京天安门以南5公里的 南苑地 区汇聚成形。30年来,其经济生产与社会再生产的特殊面貌、内部空间与外部环境的互动演变,已成为研究改革开放以来中国流动人口与城市社会经济发展,体制、权力与政策的鲜活样本。
作者借同乡之便,于90年代中期6年时间里对“浙江村”进行实地调查,深入“浙江村人”的日常生活,以近乎白描的写作手法,细致呈现了“浙江村”这一流动群体的落地、发展和变化中的诸多细节。对于“浙江村”的形成、结构、运作、变迁,“浙江村人”作为“外来人口”在北京的生活、生产经营、乡情民愿、与流入地及户籍所在地管理部门的互动等等,均加以极近距离的分析记录。
本书时隔20年后修订再版,除对前版内容进行补充订定外,于新增序言部分特别回顾了“浙江村”和中国社会自2000年以来的变化,对“正规化”及“分割—攫取模式”进行了分析阐述。同时为便于历史比照,增绘了2017年“浙江村”疏解前分布示意图。
古礼足征 豆瓣
作者:
高崇文
出版社:
上海古籍出版社
2016
- 1
《古礼足征(礼制文化的考古学研 究)》主要从考古学的角度对古代礼制进行研究,共分为五部分:第一部分是礼制文明篇,研究了中国古 代礼产生、形成、发展、演变的全过程,探讨了古礼 在不同历史发展阶段的特点和发挥的作用。第二部分都城礼制篇,探讨聚落的形成、都市的形成、由聚落 到都市发展的社会转化、中国古代都城礼制文明的形 成过程。第三部分丧葬礼制篇,将考古材料与文献材 料相结合,研究了先秦至两汉时期的丧葬礼制及其演变,复原了古代丧葬礼仪中早已失而不传的内容。第四部分青铜礼器篇,用考古类型学方法,对两周时期青铜壶、东周时期晋和楚国青铜器进行了形态学研究 。第五部分江汉地区古文化与楚文化研究篇,主要探讨了楚文化起源和发展,楚文化的特征及楚都屡迁地望等问题。
Nations Unbound 豆瓣
作者:
Basch, Linda G.; Basch, Landa; Schiller, Nina Glick
出版社:
Routledge
1993
- 11
时间与他者 豆瓣
Time and the Other : How Anthropology Makes Its Object
作者:
[德]乔纳斯·费边
译者:
马健雄
/
林珠云
出版社:
北京师范大学出版社
2018
- 7
本书被英语学术界视为人类学经典读物,重点检讨人类学家与他们的研究对象之间的关系,特别提出“人类学是西方世界的一种宇宙观”的看法,并为文化批评学家、哲学家和历史学家所从事的有关人类社会的研究提出了新的方向。费边指出,人类学家常常将自己的立场假定为“在此时此地者”,与此同时将他们的研究对象假定为“在彼时彼地者”。因而,人类学将其研究对象作为与研究者所处的时代错开的“他者”。费边在这本书中挑战了西方人类学的“他者”假定。根据他的洞见,在西方人类学发展的历史中,由于人类学家们对“多样性时间”的娴熟运用,人类学的产生、发展和转变,都涉及到人类学背后的权力与不平等关系。许多著名学者因此给了该书极高的评价,乔治?马库斯认为,该书“是对人类学书写的彻底的认识论批评。”
Death Without Weeping 豆瓣
作者:
Nancy Scheper-Hughes
出版社:
University of California Press
1993
- 11
When lives are dominated by hunger, what becomes of love? When assaulted by daily acts of violence and untimely death, what happens to trust? Set in the lands of Northeast Brazil, this is an account of the everyday experience of scarcity, sickness and death that centres on the lives of the women and children of a hillside "favela". Bringing her readers to the impoverished slopes above the modern plantation town of Bom Jesus de Mata, where she has worked on and off for 25 years, the author follows three generations of shantytown women as they struggle to survive through hard work, cunning and triage. It is a story of class relations told at the most basic level of bodies, emotions, desires and needs. Most disturbing - and controversial - is her finding that mother love, as conventionally understood, is something of a bourgeois myth, a luxury for those who can reasonably expect, as these women cannot, that their infants will live. The author also wrote "Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland".
Affluence Without Abundance 豆瓣
作者:
James Suzman
出版社:
Bloomsbury
2017
- 11
“Insightful and well-written . . . [Suzman chronicles] how much humankind can still learn from the disappearing way of life of the most marginalized communities on earth.” -Yuval Noah Harari, author of SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMAN KIND and HOMO DEUS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF TOMORROW
WASHINGTON POST'S 50 NOTABLE WORKS OF NONFICTION IN 2017
AN NPR BEST BOOK OF 2017
A vibrant portrait of the “original affluent society”-the Bushmen of southern Africa-by the anthropologist who has spent much 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 vividly brings to life a proud and private people, introducing unforgettable members of their tribe, and telling 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.
Reviews
“An insightful and well-written book, describing the hard transition of foraging communities in Namibia from relative affluence during the Stone Age to contemporary poverty and misery. Avoiding both modern conceits and romantic fantasies, Suzman chronicles how economics and politics have finally conquered some of the last outposts of hunter-gatherers, and how much humankind can still learn from the disappearing way of life of the most marginalized communities on earth.” – Yuval Noah Harari, author of SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMAN KIND and HOMO DEUS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF TOMORROW,
“To know what it is like to live as people lived for most of human history, you would have to find one of the places where traditional hunting-and-gathering practices are still alive…Fortunately for us, the anthropologist James Suzman did exactly that…The news here is that the lives of most of our progenitors were better than we think. We're flattering ourselves by believing that their existence was so grim and that our modern, civilized one is, by comparison, so great.” – John Lancaster, The New Yorker
“Suzman's descriptive prose and affection for his subjects generate the reader's genuine empathy…This fascinating glimpse into a disappearing way of life leads Suzman to reflect on our world today: a world where wealth and possessions are valued above all other pursuits. Suzman's account of the lives of Bushmen, past and present, offers plenty of fuel for thought.” – Rachel Newcomb, The Washington Post
“Mr Suzman deftly weaves his experiences and observations with lessons on human evolution, the history of human migration and the fate of African communities since the arrival of Europeans. The overarching aim of the book is more ambitious still: to challenge the reader's ideas about both hunter-gatherer life and human nature.” – The Economist
“[Suzman creates] a feeling for the landscape, the difficulties encountered by the Bushmen, and the pleasures of their simple, if rapidly changing, way of life... In all, this is a delightful book, full of perceptiveness and understanding.” – Science
“[A] fascinating book. . . Part-ethnography, part-memoir, this is a poignant account of a culture on the brink of extinction.” – Sunday Times
“Suzman's talent for evoking the region's vast and haunting landscapes, his elegiac account of a passing covenant with nature, and his warm and compassionate character sketches of individual Ju'/hoansi, make this a fascinating and at times profoundly moving work of literary non-fiction.” – The Irish Times
“[T]hrough neglect, abuse and misunderstanding, an ancient way of life is being finally extinguished… Yet, Suzman argues, even now the Bushmen have much to teach us about a social order that, in many ways, offered a freer, fairer existence and a non-invasive adaption to ecology.” – Ben Collyer, New Scientist
“This book has truth on every page and is filled with important insights that range from hunting and tracking to how we think about time, money, value or success.” – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of THE HARMLESS PEOPLE and THE OLD WAY,
“This beautiful book--part memoir, part ethnography--offers a window into the lives of one of the most enduring of human cultures . . . If you have ever wondered how it might be to measure wealth not by material possessions but by the strength of social relations between people, read this book.” – Wade Davis, author of THE WAYFINDERS and INTO THE SILENCE,
“[A] beautiful, heartfelt paean. AFFLUENCE WITHOUT ABUNDANCE is learned without being condescending, tender yet unsentimental. It is both a celebration of an ancient way of life and a lament for all that has been lost in our own headlong pursuit of the material.” – Peter Godwin, author of MUKIWA and WHEN A CROCODILE EATS THE SUN,
“A spirited ethnography of the ancestral peoples of the Kalahari . . . A welcome contribution to a once-vibrant anthropological literature without many recent entries.” – Kirkus Reviews
“In his thoughtful, in-depth look, [Suzman] focuses on the Ju/'hoansi people, whom he has been working with for more than two decades… A fascinating examination of a society drastically changed by forced modernity.” – Booklist
WASHINGTON POST'S 50 NOTABLE WORKS OF NONFICTION IN 2017
AN NPR BEST BOOK OF 2017
A vibrant portrait of the “original affluent society”-the Bushmen of southern Africa-by the anthropologist who has spent much 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 vividly brings to life a proud and private people, introducing unforgettable members of their tribe, and telling 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.
Reviews
“An insightful and well-written book, describing the hard transition of foraging communities in Namibia from relative affluence during the Stone Age to contemporary poverty and misery. Avoiding both modern conceits and romantic fantasies, Suzman chronicles how economics and politics have finally conquered some of the last outposts of hunter-gatherers, and how much humankind can still learn from the disappearing way of life of the most marginalized communities on earth.” – Yuval Noah Harari, author of SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMAN KIND and HOMO DEUS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF TOMORROW,
“To know what it is like to live as people lived for most of human history, you would have to find one of the places where traditional hunting-and-gathering practices are still alive…Fortunately for us, the anthropologist James Suzman did exactly that…The news here is that the lives of most of our progenitors were better than we think. We're flattering ourselves by believing that their existence was so grim and that our modern, civilized one is, by comparison, so great.” – John Lancaster, The New Yorker
“Suzman's descriptive prose and affection for his subjects generate the reader's genuine empathy…This fascinating glimpse into a disappearing way of life leads Suzman to reflect on our world today: a world where wealth and possessions are valued above all other pursuits. Suzman's account of the lives of Bushmen, past and present, offers plenty of fuel for thought.” – Rachel Newcomb, The Washington Post
“Mr Suzman deftly weaves his experiences and observations with lessons on human evolution, the history of human migration and the fate of African communities since the arrival of Europeans. The overarching aim of the book is more ambitious still: to challenge the reader's ideas about both hunter-gatherer life and human nature.” – The Economist
“[Suzman creates] a feeling for the landscape, the difficulties encountered by the Bushmen, and the pleasures of their simple, if rapidly changing, way of life... In all, this is a delightful book, full of perceptiveness and understanding.” – Science
“[A] fascinating book. . . Part-ethnography, part-memoir, this is a poignant account of a culture on the brink of extinction.” – Sunday Times
“Suzman's talent for evoking the region's vast and haunting landscapes, his elegiac account of a passing covenant with nature, and his warm and compassionate character sketches of individual Ju'/hoansi, make this a fascinating and at times profoundly moving work of literary non-fiction.” – The Irish Times
“[T]hrough neglect, abuse and misunderstanding, an ancient way of life is being finally extinguished… Yet, Suzman argues, even now the Bushmen have much to teach us about a social order that, in many ways, offered a freer, fairer existence and a non-invasive adaption to ecology.” – Ben Collyer, New Scientist
“This book has truth on every page and is filled with important insights that range from hunting and tracking to how we think about time, money, value or success.” – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of THE HARMLESS PEOPLE and THE OLD WAY,
“This beautiful book--part memoir, part ethnography--offers a window into the lives of one of the most enduring of human cultures . . . If you have ever wondered how it might be to measure wealth not by material possessions but by the strength of social relations between people, read this book.” – Wade Davis, author of THE WAYFINDERS and INTO THE SILENCE,
“[A] beautiful, heartfelt paean. AFFLUENCE WITHOUT ABUNDANCE is learned without being condescending, tender yet unsentimental. It is both a celebration of an ancient way of life and a lament for all that has been lost in our own headlong pursuit of the material.” – Peter Godwin, author of MUKIWA and WHEN A CROCODILE EATS THE SUN,
“A spirited ethnography of the ancestral peoples of the Kalahari . . . A welcome contribution to a once-vibrant anthropological literature without many recent entries.” – Kirkus Reviews
“In his thoughtful, in-depth look, [Suzman] focuses on the Ju/'hoansi people, whom he has been working with for more than two decades… A fascinating examination of a society drastically changed by forced modernity.” – Booklist