Edwin N. Wilmsen - Böcker

"The image of a pristine isolation has been almost as common in research on foragers as in the popular media. Land filled with Flies is a sustanined argument against such views. Wilmsen marshals an enormous quantity of historical, archival, archeological, ethnographic, and survey data on the Kalahari Zhu to show how far from the reality these images are, how they have their own historical provenance, how they have been analytically distorting, and how they have proven politically pernicious for living groups like the Zhu."—Pauline Peters, Science"[A] major work. . . . Anthropologists will, and should, use Wilmsen's meticulously detailed study to revise their early lectures in the introductory course, and no future study of African 'foragers' should ignore it."—Parker Shipton, American Anthropologist"An impressive book. . . . The reader need only read the first few pages to judge both the quality and ambitiousness of the work. . . . Essential reading."—David R. Penna, Africa Today

According to most social scientists, the advent of a global media village and the rise of liberal democratic government would diminish ethnic and national identity as a source of political action. Yet the contemporary world is in the midst of an explosion of identity politics and often violent ethnonationalism. This volume examines cases ranging from the well-publicized ethnonationalism of Bosnia and post-Apartheid South Africa to ethnic conflicts in Belgium and Sri Lanka. Scholars including John Comaroff, Stanley J. Tambiah and Ernesto Laclau argue that continued acceptance of imposed ethnic terms as the most appropriate vehicle for collective self-identification and social action legitimizes the conditions of inequality that give rise to them in the first place. This attempt to explain the inadequacies of current approaches to power and ethnicity forges more realistic alternatives to the volatile realities of social difference.

According to most social scientists, the advent of a global media village and the rise of liberal democratic government would diminish ethnic and national identity as a source of political action. Yet the contemporary world is in the midst of an explosion of identity politics and often violent ethnonationalism. This volume examines cases ranging from the well-publicized ethnonationalism of Bosnia and post-Apartheid South Africa to ethnic conflicts in Belgium and Sri Lanka. Scholars including John Comaroff, Stanley J. Tambiah and Ernesto Laclau argue that continued acceptance of imposed ethnic terms as the most appropriate vehicle for collective self-identification and social action legitimizes the conditions of inequality that give rise to them in the first place. This attempt to explain the inadequacies of current approaches to power and ethnicity forges more realistic alternatives to the volatile realities of social difference.

From 1973 to 1994, anthropologist Edwin Wilmsen lived and worked among the Zhu, Mbanduru and Tswana people of the Kalahari desert in southern Africa. Thousands of miles from his home, immersed in what first seemed a radically different place and operating in languages he initially did not understand, he began a record of his impressions and reflections as a complement to his scientific fieldwork. This book weaves together the multilayered experiences of his life among these Kalahari people, capturing the intellectual challenges an anthropologist faces in the field, and the myriad and strange ways that unfamiliar experiences come to resonate with deeply personal thoughts and recollections. Combining biography, poetry and anthropology, Wilmsen portrays the intense realities of life in the Kalahari and carries the reader across space and time as events in the present trigger emotions and memories. Images of apartheid, for example, evoke memories of Wilmsen's childhood in the segregated South.Poems, journal entries and accounts of deepening personal relationships all intertwine as Wilmsen conveys the experiences he shares with his "subjects" in spite of vast differences in their backgrounds - extreme thirst under the desert sun, grief over the death of a child and the constant irritation of ubiquitous flies.

We Are Here: Politics of Aboriginal Land Tenure edited by Edwin N. Wilmsen brings together leading anthropologists to examine how indigenous systems of landholding have been understood, misrecognized, and increasingly asserted within the legal and political frameworks of modern nation-states. Long dismissed as “foragers” without institutions of tenure, Aboriginal peoples across Africa, Australia, and North America have faced the unique burden of proving that their land relations are legally commensurate with those of agricultural and pastoral societies. This volume traces both the colonial origins of this dichotomy and the contemporary efforts—by communities, courts, and anthropologists—to dismantle it. From Pintupi property claims in Australia to Cree negotiations in Canada and San land struggles in southern Africa, the essays demonstrate that indigenous tenure systems are coherent, dynamic, and integral to arguments for restitution and sovereignty.At once a comparative study and a political intervention, the collection highlights how concepts of tenure emerge not as static “rules” but as embedded practices in extended social processes of cooperation, competition, and ritual life. Contributors probe the challenges of translating these practices into European-derived legal categories while showing how anthropologists themselves have been called to testify, mediate, and interpret in contested land claims. A recurring theme is the constructed opposition between “forager” and “husbandman” that has shaped colonial law and persists in policy debates today. By questioning the very terms in which rights to land are defined, We Are Here offers both a critique of liberal-democratic institutions and a defense of the inherent integrity of diverse attempts to live with land. Essential reading for anthropologists, legal scholars, and policymakers, this volume reframes land rights as not only a matter of law but of social justice and cultural survival.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.

We Are Here: Politics of Aboriginal Land Tenure edited by Edwin N. Wilmsen brings together leading anthropologists to examine how indigenous systems of landholding have been understood, misrecognized, and increasingly asserted within the legal and political frameworks of modern nation-states. Long dismissed as “foragers” without institutions of tenure, Aboriginal peoples across Africa, Australia, and North America have faced the unique burden of proving that their land relations are legally commensurate with those of agricultural and pastoral societies. This volume traces both the colonial origins of this dichotomy and the contemporary efforts—by communities, courts, and anthropologists—to dismantle it. From Pintupi property claims in Australia to Cree negotiations in Canada and San land struggles in southern Africa, the essays demonstrate that indigenous tenure systems are coherent, dynamic, and integral to arguments for restitution and sovereignty.At once a comparative study and a political intervention, the collection highlights how concepts of tenure emerge not as static “rules” but as embedded practices in extended social processes of cooperation, competition, and ritual life. Contributors probe the challenges of translating these practices into European-derived legal categories while showing how anthropologists themselves have been called to testify, mediate, and interpret in contested land claims. A recurring theme is the constructed opposition between “forager” and “husbandman” that has shaped colonial law and persists in policy debates today. By questioning the very terms in which rights to land are defined, We Are Here offers both a critique of liberal-democratic institutions and a defense of the inherent integrity of diverse attempts to live with land. Essential reading for anthropologists, legal scholars, and policymakers, this volume reframes land rights as not only a matter of law but of social justice and cultural survival.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.

The Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona is a peer-reviewed monograph series sponsored by the School of Anthropology. Established in 1959, the series publishes archaeological and ethnographic papers that use contemporary method and theory to investigate problems of anthropological importance in the southwestern United States, Mexico, and related areas