Product Description
Published in association with the International African Institute, this is a new and expanded version of "The Tswana", first published in 1953. Since then, anthropology and African Studies have changed a good deal, but the bedrock of both remains unchanged - solid, sensitive ethnographic and historical accounts of the peoples and cultures of the continent. Isaac Schapera's documentation of the life and times in the Bechuanaland Protectorate stands as a starkly detailed chronicle of an African population in a rapidly changing world. He was among the few anthropologists who spoke frankly of the predicament of rural Africans under colonialism. Far from describing the Tswana as a closed or timeless "society", he has always located these peoples in their political and economic contexts, and in so doing he has left behind an extraordinary record. This edition of "The Tswana" consists of the original text, to which has been added a second part by John L. Comaroff covering the transformation of Tswana life in Botswana and South Africa 1953-85, plus a much enlarged bibliography.The addition of the new material ensures that "The Tswana" remains a valuable summary and overview of an exceedingly rich ethnographic and historical record, and should continue to serve as an indispensable tool in research and teaching. ... Read more

Product Description
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. Journeys with Flies weaves together the multilayered experiences of his life among these Kalahari people, capturing at once 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 vividly 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 moving 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.

"Our understanding of other peoples," he writes, "lies not in themselves or in anything that they do but in our experience of them. Experience that is lived partly in their world and partly in a shell of our world that we wear when we meet them."

Sophisticated, lyrical, and passionately written, Journeys with Flies will inspire all those who travel to places far from home. ... Read more