Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time

Title: Work – A History of How We Spend Our Time

Author: James Suzman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Circus, 2020 (First)

ISBN: 9781526605016

Pages: 464

 

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.

 

Rating: 3 Star