Looking for Leisure in All the Wrong Places: What the Ju/ ’hoansi Can Teach Us About Leisure

Abstract

The purpose of this research reflection is to revisit the foundations upon which we constitute our understanding of the good life. Specifically, we think it is important for our field to unmoor itself from the myth that the advent of agriculture led to increased leisure time. To make our case, we recount two strikingly different narratives of the settings in which leisure is proported to flourish that we believe help us make sense of the current 21st century paradox of the most technologically advanced globalized society yearning for leisure, but endlessly falling short of its aspirations. In contrast, we revisit ethnographies of the Ju/’hoansi, hunter-gatherers in the Kalahari Desert of sub-Saharan Africa. Despite cyclical famine, drought, colonial incursions and de facto post-colonial rule, the Ju/’hoansi held superior leisure time to people living in Western societies, begging the question of why our field has paid them so little attention.

Keywords:

• Affluence
• ethnography
• hunter-gatherers
• Ju/’hoansi
• leisure time

Notes

1 As Koot and van Beek (2017) argue, the Ju’/hoansi are often treated by the West as the “standard” archetypical hunter-gatherer. This is in stark contrast to postcolonial sociopolitical realities. We discuss these below.

2 More recent accounts highlight the equivalent amount of time spent ‘sitting’ between hunter-gatherers and 21^st century Westerners. Though the ways in which both groups sit is physiologically different – with disparate implications for health - the congruence between both further dispels the myth of the hunter-gatherer toiling in comparison to the modern ‘couch potato’ (c.f., Lieberman, 2020).

3 See Suzman (2017) for a discussion of egalitarianism within traditional Ju/’hoansi societal structure.