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Land filled with flies : a political economy of the Kalahari / Edwin N. Wilmsen.

Land filled with flies : a political economy of the Kalahari / Edwin N. Wilmsen.
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Field name Details
ISBN 0226900142 (alk. paper)
0226900150 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Author Wilmsen, Edwin N. (author)
Title Land filled with flies : a political economy of the Kalahari / Edwin N. Wilmsen.
Publisher and/or associated date/s Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1989.
©1989
Description xviii, 402 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.
Note Includes index.
Bibliography Bibliography: pages 353-387.
Contents 1. The Evolution of Illusion -- Man Hunter: A Nineteenth-Century Legacy -- The Received Past -- Search for Authenticity -- 2. The Poverty of Misappropriated Theory -- Return to Authenticity -- Revival of the Primitive Critique -- As They Begin to Produce, So We Begin to Know Them -- Foragers Come to Class -- The Uses of Ecology -- 3. The Past Recaptured -- The Recovered Past -- The Recorded Past -- 4. The Past Entrenched -- Consolidation of the Underclass -- The Underclass Solidified -- 5. The Ideology of Person and Place -- Concepts of Possession -- Kinship and Tenure -- Convergence of Indigenous Systems -- Coherence in Concepts of Tenure Systems -- 6. The Political Construction of Production Relations -- Economic Correlates of Foraging and Food -- Allocation of Access to the Means of Production -- Production as a Function of Emergent Status -- Structural Divisions in an Appearance of Equality -- Kinship as Practice -- Class Characteristics of Zhu Social Relations -- 7. What It Means to Be Excluded -- The Emergence of Ethnicity as a Central Logic -- Subordinate Tiers in the Labor Reserve -- Contemporary Relations of Production -- Value Flow in an Uncertain Cash Economy -- The Political Economy of Physiology and Physique -- The Direction of Intention -- Notes -- References -- Index
Summary In this momentous work of scholarship, Edwin N. Wilmsen overturns one of the central concepts of anthropologic theory: the idea of remote hunter-gatherer societies untouched by contemporary political and economic forces. His subject is the San-speaking peoples of southern Africa, the so-called Bushmen, whom social scientists and bureaucrats have cited as the quintessential example of pristine prehistoric society. Marshaling ethnographic, archival, archaeological, linguistic, and biological evidence, Wilmsen shows that San have always had ties to other peoples and that their current condition as subsistence foragers is a recent development. Their marginalization-physically, economically, and geographically- began in precolonial, indigenous social formations and continued in the social and economic policies of the colonial era and its aftermath.
Subjects San (African people) -- Economic conditions
Hunting and gathering societies
Economic anthropology
Deserts -- Africa, Southern
Kalahari Desert -- Economic conditions
Call number Smith/M 125
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Add Title to Basket Catalogue Record 100065516
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Item Information
Barcode Shelf Location Collection Volume Ref. Status Due Date
A00853566 Smith/M 125
 Mike Smith Deserts Collection   . Available to Museum Staff .  
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