Facing up to a shameful history, this book celebrates the culture and courage of the first people of Africa, the Bushmen, who, over the past 200 years, have been dispossessed and almost exterminated. In Botswana - miraculously saved by the Mandela government - they are now making their last stand.
This title in the World Cultures series is as much a call to end contemporary oppression as it is a celebration of rich traditional culture. The packed chapters trace the history of the San (Bushmen), the earliest people in large parts of southern Africa, who were there 40,000 to 10,000 years ago, until they were driven into the desert, first by Bantu people and then by white settlers. Uncluttered pages filled with color photos show the San life today, as well as the incredible ancient cave rock paintings that still exist. Few San are still hunters and gatherers, but in 2006, the Botswana courts ruled that the San have a right to their ancestral land.
Over the years many books have been written about the San of southern Africa, who are widely known as the Bushmen and frequently viewed as one entity. This is the first international publication in which the San of today step forward to tell their own story in their own words. Covering eight language groups in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, young San interviewers went out into their communities and collected the thoughts and feelings, knowledge and understanding, dreams and fears, of their elders and their peers. The interviews they transcribed present the spirit of their communities and highlight the traditional differences and similarities between the groups, the shared history of suffering, and their desire and enthusiasm for life and most of all, freedom. Voices of the San provides a glimpse into the hundreds of broad, open-ended discussions held amongst the San themselves. It begins with the story of this book and is then divided into four chapters covering the themes they themselves identified as reflecting their current existence. All of this is richly and beautifully illustrated with over 300 photographs, contemporary artworks and drawings. The photographs are both historic and modern; including images from the Bleek and Lloyd Collection (late 19th century), the Duggan-Cronin Collection dating from the early 20th century and the Denver Expedition of 1925, as well as internationally known photographers such as Jens Bjerre (circa 1955), JÃ1⁄4rgen Schadeberg (1959) and Paul Weinberg (1985- ), and the San organizations within the region.
J.D. Lewis-Williams, one of the leading South African archaeologists and ethnographers, uses ethnographic, archival, and archaeological lines of research to understand San-Bushman mythological stories. From this, he establishes a more nuanced theory of the role of myths in cultures worldwide.
A study of the influence of environment on culture and social organization among the Khoisan, a cluster of southern African peoples, comprised of the Bushmen or San "hunters," the Khoekhoe "herders", and the Damara, (also herders).
'The Bushman' is a perennial but changing image. The transformation of that image is important. It symbolizes the perception of Bushman or San society, of the ideas and values of ethnographers who have worked with Bushman peoples, and those of other anthropologists who use this work. Anthropology and the Bushman covers early travellers and settlers, classic nineteenth and twentieth-century ethnographers, North American and Japanese ecological traditions, the approaches of African ethnographers, and recent work on advocacy and social development. It reveals the impact of Bushman studies on anthropology and on the public. The book highlights how Bushman or San ethnography has contributed to anthropological controversy, for example in the debates on the degree of incorporation of San society within the wider political economy, and on the validity of the case for 'indigenous rights' as a special kind of human rights. Examining the changing image of the Bushman, Barnard provides a new contribution to an established anthropology debate. A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org
“Insightful and well-written . . . [Suzman chronicles] how much humankind can still learn from the disappearing way of life of the most marginalized communities on earth.” -Yuval Noah Harari, author of SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMAN KIND and HOMO DEUS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF TOMORROW WASHINGTON POST'S 50 NOTABLE WORKS OF NONFICTION IN 2017 AN NPR BEST BOOK OF 2017 A vibrant portrait of the “original affluent society”-the Bushmen of southern Africa-by the anthropologist who has spent much of the last twenty-five years documenting their encounter with modernity. If the success of a civilization is measured by its endurance over time, then the Bushmen of the Kalahari are by far the most successful in human history. A hunting and gathering people who made a good living by working only as much as needed to exist in harmony with their hostile desert environment, the Bushmen have lived in southern Africa since the evolution of our species nearly two hundred thousand years ago. In Affluence Without Abundance, anthropologist James Suzman vividly brings to life a proud and private people, introducing unforgettable members of their tribe, and telling the story of the collision between the modern global economy and the oldest hunting and gathering society on earth. In rendering an intimate picture of a people coping with radical change, it asks profound questions about how we now think about matters such as work, wealth, equality, contentment, and even time. Not since Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Harmless People in 1959 has anyone provided a more intimate or insightful account of the Bushmen or of what we might learn about ourselves from our shared history as hunter-gatherers.
The data and conclusions presented in this volume were drawn from a series of research and consultancy projects carried out in Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Brought up on stories and myths of the Kalahari Bushmen, Rupert Isaacson journeys to the dry vast grassland -- which stretches across South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia -- to find out the truth behind these childhood stories. Deep in the Kalahari, Isaacson meets the last groups of Bushmen still living the traditional way, caught between their ancient culture and the growing need to protect and reclaim their dwindling hunting grounds. Little by little he is drawn into the fascinating web of ritual and prophecy that make up the Bushman reality. He hears of shamans who turn into lions, sees leopards conjured from the landscape as though by magic. He attends trance-inducing dances and witnesses incredible healings. But he also sees the heart-wrenching social problems of a dispossessed people. What follows is an adventure of an intensity he could never have predicted. The Healing Land records Isaacson's personal transformation amid these extraordinary people, and his passionate contribution to their political struggle. It captures his enchantment with the character, corruption, kindness, and confusion of a place that has wrenched itself from the Stone Age into the new millennium.