Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen by James Suzman

In Affluence Without Abundance, anthropologist James Suzman presents a poignant and eye-opening portrait of the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, one of Africa’s oldest cultures. The Bushmen – also known as the Ju|’hoan or !Kung – inhabit the world’s second largest desert and are renowned for the way they eke out their living from the semi-arid landscape. But in the era of globalization and industrialization, their way of life is rapidly disappearing, leaving them with "affluence without abundance".

Suzman sets the tone with a vivid description of the Bushmen’s nomadic lifestyle, including their diet of wild game, milk and plants, and the various stories and rituals that embedded them in their environment. He paints a nuanced picture of their world, one of both suffering and joy, where the possibility of material needs being met waxes and wanes but is ultimately never out of reach. As the author notes, “The !Kung have enjoyed affluence without abundance over many generations.”

The Bushmen’s contact with the wider world is what ultimately leads to the breakdown of their traditional lifestyle, as technologies such as guns and vehicles bring a new set of possibilities and problems. With guns, the Bushmen can leverage their intimate knowledge of the land to hunt larger game and bring home more meat, while vehicles allow them to travel much farther than they ever could on foot. But the downside is that with increased access to the market economy, their archaeological and cosmological beliefs and practices start to lose their relevance and meaning.

Ultimately, Suzman shows how the Bushmen’s plight mirrors the changes in many former hunter-gatherer societies around the world, and how access to new modes of production can lead to a complete transformation of a traditional culture. He concludes with a trenchant analysis of the modern Bushmen’s struggle to survive in a world where their values and way of life are no longer respected or appreciated.

Affluence Without Abundance is an important and necessary work of anthropology that sheds light on an often-ignored part of the human story. It’s a recognition of a people that have maintained their way of living in the face of tremendous environmental, political, and cultural pressures, and serves as a useful model for understanding the complexities of such societies in the modern age. It’s a timely reminder, not only of the need to respect the fading Bushmen but of the need to respect everything and everyone we share this planet with, our ways of life and our stories.