Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa Paperback: A Comparative Ethnography of the Khoisan Peoples: 85 (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Series Number 85) - Tapa blanda

'Alan Barnard has written a book that no scholar in the area of Khosian studies and few students in the wider field of hunter-gatherer studies can afford to ignore ... To assemble all of the relevant ethnographic data on so crucial a group of hunter-gatherers in one volume and to accompany the same with crisp, topical discussions of some of the current issues of theory ... is to produce a book of the highest scholarly relevance. Hunters and Herders is a worthy successor indeed to The Khoisan People!.' Current Anthropology

'Because of its detailed and comprehensive nature, this book should be used extensively by both scholars of the Khoisan people in all disciplines as well as by government and other agencies working for their welfare. It undoubtedly makes a great contribution to our understanding of the Khoisan and their cosmology, and indeed will serve as a refernce book on the subject for a long time to come.' SOAS

'Barnard's book is at once an encyclopedic compendium of Khoisan ethnography, in the widest sense, and an attempt at structuralist comparison between the various ethnographies. His survey is exemplary ... both as description and as controlled comparison, his books is immensely valuable.' African Affairs

' ... immensely valuable.' African Affairs

'brilliantly written and as excellently documented and produced ... as one would expect from a book of such high standard.' Anthropos

The Khoisan are a cluster of southern African peoples which include the famous Bushmen, or San, 'hunters', the Khoekhoe 'herders' (in the past called 'Hottentots'), and the Damara, also a herding people. The present-day Khoisan include hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and wage labourers. In spite of differences associated with their economic pursuits, as well as differences in language and other aspects of culture, the Khoisan peoples share features of territorial organization, gender relations, kinship, ritual, and cosmology. These represent elements of structures held in common across economic, cultural, linguistic, and 'racial' boundaries. This book focuses on these structures and the diverse forms which they take within Khoisan culture and society. It is written within the framework of regional structural comparison.