Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time

Product Description

A major book chronicling the history of work, and how our relationship with it has shaped our civilisation.
The work we do brings us meaning, moulds our values, dictates who we spend our time with and determines our future prospects. But this wasn't always the case- for 95% of our species' history, work held a radically different importance.

How, then, did work become the central organisational principle of our societies? How did it transform our bodies, our environments, our views on equality and our sense of time? And why, in a time of material abundance, are we working more than ever before?

Charting three major milestones o the discovery of fire, which liberated our ancestors to develop skills unrelated to the food quest; our transition from foraging to farming; and our migration from fields to the factories of sprawling cities o James Suzman explores the ways work has changed us. Arguing that we stand at the cusp of a similarly transformative point in the history of our relationship with work, he compels us to see how automation and artificial intelligence could be the key to unlocking a more sustainable future.

Work is a stunning appraisal of how humans have kept busy, from stone tools to the stock exchange and into the digital era.A major book chronicling the history of work, and how our relationship with it has shaped our civilisation.
The work we do brings us meaning, moulds our values, dictates who we spend our time with and determines our future prospects. But this wasn't always the case- for 95% of our species' history, work held a radically different importance.

How, then, did work become the central organisational principle of our societies? How did it transform our bodies, our environments, our views on equality and our sense of time? And why, in a time of material abundance, are we working more than ever before?

Charting three major milestones o the discovery of fire, which liberated our ancestors to develop skills unrelated to the food quest; our transition from foraging to farming; and our migration from fields to the factories of sprawling cities o James Suzman explores the ways work has changed us. Arguing that we stand at the cusp of a similarly transformative point in the history of our relationship with work, he compels us to see how automation and artificial intelligence could be the key to unlocking a more sustainable future.

Work is a stunning appraisal of how humans have kept busy, from stone tools to the stock exchange and into the digital era.
James Suzman is an anthropologist specialising in the Khoisan peoples of southern Africa. A recipient of the Smuts Commonwealth Fellowship in African Studies at Cambridge University, he is now the director of Anthropos Ltd, a think tank that applies anthropological methods to solving contemporary social and economic problems. He has written for publications including the New York Times, the Observer, the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Independent, and has advised organisations including the Foreign Office, the World Bank and the European Commission. He lives in Cambridge.