Keyan G. Tomaselli

Julie Grant

The San (hunter- gatherers) and Khoe (herders) of southern Africa were dispossessed of their land before, during and after the European colonial period, which started in 1652. They were often enslaved and forbidden from practicing their culture and speaking their languages. In South Africa, under apartheid, after 1948, they were reclassified as “Coloured” which further undermined Khoe and San culture, forcing them to reconfigure and realign their identities and loyalties. Southern Africa is no longer under colonial or apartheid rule; the San and Khoe, however, continue in the struggle to maintain the remnants of their languages and cultures, and are marginalised by the dominant peoples of the region. The San in particular, continue to command very extensive research attention from a variety of disciplines, from anthropology and linguistics to genetics. They are, however, usually studied as static historical objects but they are not merely peoples of the past, as is often assumed; they are very much alive in contemporary society with cultural and language needs. This book brings together studies from a range of disciplines to examine what it means to be Indigenous Khoe and San in contemporary southern Africa. It considers the current constraints on Khoe and San identity, language and culture, constantly negotiating an indeterminate social positioning where they are treated as the inconvenient indigenous. Usually studied as original anthropos, but out of their time, this book shifts attention from the past to the present, and how the San have negotiated language, literacy and identity for coping in the period of modernity. It reveals that Afrikaans is indeed an African language, incubated not only by Cape Malay slaves working in the kitchens of the early Dutch settlers, but also by the Khoe and San who interacted with sailors from passing ships plying the West coast of southern Africa from the 14th century. The book re- examines the idea of literacy, its relationship to language, and how these shape identity. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies.

Rethinking Khoe and San Indigeneity, Language and Culture in Southern Africa

The iconographic people, The 'Bushmen' or 'San' of the Kalahari, have been the subject of abundant social research over the years. Keyan Tomaselli and his research team from the University of KwaZulu-Natal reflect critically on the way the San have been represented. He uncompromisingly and aptly illustrates the many ethical contradictions in doing fieldwork among the San.

Research Stories from the Kalahari

Where Global Contradictions are Sharpest

J. A. F. Van Zyl

Media and Change

Writing in the San/d details experiences and encounters with First People's ("Bushmen") living in the Kalahari Desert (Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa) (1995-2004), and a Khoi (1984) community in the eastern Cape, South Africa.

Autoethnography Among Indigenous Southern Africans

Writing in the San/d

The S.A. Film Industry

Kirsten Hastrup

Peter Loizos

David MacDougall

Terence Wright

André Singer

Alan Macfarlane

Christopher Pinney

Felicia Hughes-Freeland

James C. Faris

Timothy Asch

Marcus Banks

Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology

Dai Vaughan

Wilton Martinez

Kathleen Kuehnast

Richard Chalfen

Homer Williams

Gary Seaman

This work examines the reasons why anthropologists have not used the camera as a research instrument or film as a means of communicating ethnographic knowledge. It suggests that images and words in this discipline operate on different logical levels; that they are hierarchically related; that whereas writings may encompass the images produced by film, the inverse of this cannot be true. The author argues for this position further by suggesting that the visual is to the written mode as "thin description" (giving a record of the form of behaviour) is to "thick description" (giving an account of meaning).

Film As Ethnography

Twentieth Century South African Cinemas

Encountering Modernity

Keyan G. Tomaselli

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