{"id":26190,"date":"2017-09-28T05:49:12","date_gmt":"2017-09-28T10:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26190"},"modified":"2017-09-28T05:49:12","modified_gmt":"2017-09-28T10:49:12","slug":"affluence-without-abundance-what-moderns-might-learn-from-the-bushmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26190","title":{"rendered":"Affluence Without Abundance: What Moderns Might Learn from the Bushmen"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"l-page-title\">\n<h3 class=\"page-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bollier.org\/blog\/affluence-without-abundance-what-moderns-might-learn-bushmen\">Affluence Without Abundance: What Moderns Might Learn from the Bushmen<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<article id=\"node-1312\" class=\"node node-blog promoted view-mode-full clearfix\" role=\"article\">\n<footer>\n<p class=\"submitted\">Where did things go wrong on the way to modern life, and what should we do instead? This question always seems to lurk in the background of our fascination with many indigenous cultures. The modern world of global commerce, technologies and countless things has not delivered on the leisure and personal satisfaction once promised.\u00a0 Which may be why we moderns continue to look with fascination at those cultures that have persisted over millennia, who thrive on a different sense of time, connection with the Earth, and social relatedness.<\/p>\n<\/footer>\n<div class=\"content clearfix\">\n<div class=\"field field-name-field-summary field-type-text-long field-label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item even\">\n<p>Such curiosity led me to a wonderful new book by anthropologist James Suzman, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fromthebush.com\/\"><em>Affluence without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen<\/em><\/a>. The title speaks to a timely concern:\u00a0 Can the history of Bushmen culture offer insights into how we of the Anthropocene might build a more sustainable, satisfying life in harmony with nature?<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"align-left\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bollier.org\/files\/inline-images\/Screen_Shot_2017-09-21_at_11.58.57_AM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"1064\" data-file-id=\"623\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Writing with the emotional insight and subtlety of a novelist, Suzman indirectly explores this theme by telling the history and contemporary lives of the San \u2013 the Bushmen \u2013 of the Kalahari Desert in Africa. The history is not told as a didactic lesson, but merely as a fascinating account of how humans have organized their lives in different, more stable, and arguably happier, ways. The book is serious anthropology blended with memoir, political history, and storytelling.<\/p>\n<p>After spending 25 years studying every major Bushman group, Suzman has plenty of firsthand experiences and friendships among the San to draw upon. In the process, he also makes many astute observations about anthropology\u2019s fraught relationship to the San.\u00a0 Anthropologists have often imported their colonial prejudices and modern alienation in writing about the San, sometimes projecting romanticized visions of \u201cprimitive affluence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Affluence Without Abundance: What Moderns Might Learn from the Bushmen Where did things go wrong on the way to modern life, and what should we do instead? This question always seems to lurk in the background of our fascination with many indigenous cultures. The modern world of global commerce, technologies and countless things has not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[10119,16193,27,16194,6551,9873],"class_list":["post-26190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-abundance","tag-affluence","tag-anthropology","tag-bushmen","tag-david-bollier","tag-modern-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26191,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26190\/revisions\/26191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}