Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa
  • Cited by 245
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
June 2012
Print publication year:
1992
Online ISBN:
9781139166508
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139166508
Subjects:
Area Studies, African Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Anthropology
Series:
Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology (85)
Information

Book description

The Khoisan are a cluster of southern African peoples, including the famous Bushmen or San 'hunters', the Khoekhoe 'herders' (in the past called 'Hottentots'), and the Damara, also a herding people. Most Khoisan live in the Kalahari desert and surrounding areas of Botswana and Namibia. In spite of differences in their way of life, the various groups have much in common, and this book explores these similarities and the influence of environment and history on aspects of Khoisan culture. This is the first book on the Khoisan as a whole since the publication in 1930 of The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa, by Isaac Schapera, doyen of southern African studies.

Reviews

‘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!.’

Source: 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.’

Source: 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.’

Source: African Affairs

‘ … immensely valuable.’

Source: African Affairs

‘brilliantly written and as excellently documented and produced … as one would expect from a book of such high standard.’

Source: Anthropos

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.