This is a true story of exodus, the inevitable journey of the last of the First People, as they leave the Great Sand Face and head for the modern world and cultural oblivion. Paul John Myburgh spent seven years with the 'People of the Great Sand Face', a group of /Gwikwe Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert. They were years of physical and spiritual immersion into a way of life of which only an echo remains in living memory. But all does not end there. In The Bushman Winter Has Come, the author imagines a continuing journey towards a place where we may, once again, know who we are in the context of our life on this earth ... towards a time when we may answer the /Gwikwe's morning greeting, Tsamkwa/tge? (Are your eyes nicely open?) with a confident Yes.

A comprehensive and fascinating account of all the major groups of southern African hunter-gatherers.

The San or Bushmen of southern Africa have exerted a fascination over generations of writers and scholars, from novelists and anarchists to ethnologists and geneticists, and also occupy a special place in the popular imagination as the First People and the contemporary remnant of spiritual and natural man. The ways in which particular groups of people from southern Africa have been traditionally categorised and positioned as objects of scrutiny by a range of academic disciplines is increasingly being contested and questioned. There is a growing awareness of the cultural, economic and genetic entanglement of the peoples of the region. This book examines how San and Khoe people are represented, by others, as well as by those who identify as San or Khoe. The book interrogates the ways in which disciplines, through their methodologies and ways of authorising knowledge, not only "discover" or "reveal" knowledge but produce it in ways that involve complex and often ambiguous relationships with power structures and forms of intellectual, symbolic and cultural capital. One major trend that emerges is that the San and Khoe can no longer be seen as people of the past but have to be acknowledged as contemporary and socially situated individuals and communities who are increasingly contesting the representations which others have imposed on them. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Arts: A Journal of South-North Cultural and Media Studies.

Captain Albertus Beeslaar has had enough of the Kalahari. He is about to hand in his resignation, but before doing so he is sent into the heart of an ancient San community: an elder has died after being released from police custody and the San blame the police. The small town of Witdraai borders on the world-famous Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, where the last of the Kalahari San eke out a living. A violent attack on a German tourist has unsettled the whole town – a case that is rubbing up Beeslaar’s new colleague, Colonel Koekoes Mentoor, the wrong way. She wants to turn her back on Witdraai and the bad memories the place holds for her. As the heat rises, all hell breaks loose: a policeman is murdered; deep-seated corruption is threatening a major land-restitution plan for the San; and a mysterious killer is prowling the red dunes. Amid all the controversy, Kytie Rooi, a cleaner at a luxury guesthouse in Upington and self-appointed protector of a strange street child, is fleeing into the deadly heat of the desert with her charge. In this world, places of safety are dangerously elusive. Homeland is the translation of the Number One Bestseller Tuisland, Karin Brynard’s critically acclaimed and most ambitious novel to date.

Just as climate change and environmental sustainability have become growing concerns in public discourse, so too have they become a persistent focus in business and organization studies. It is increasingly acknowledged that humans and animals do not dwell in separate spheres; rather, they are entangled in a number of commercial or organizational settings, and organization theory needs to respond more comprehensively to this more-than-human shift in outlook. Important questions continue to arise about the nature of contemporary organization and organizing practices: who are these for? Who benefits from the operation of increasingly globalized capital markets? What place is there for the nonhuman animals in all this organization? What place is there for multispecies companionship, solidarity, and mutual value creation today and in the future, if any? This volume brings together interdisciplinary work on human-animal relationships within business, management, and organization for the first time. It maps the contours of an emerging new discipline, here termed 'Animal Organization Studies', touching on the politics, theory, and empirical experience of multispecies life-worlds. Spanning a number of disciplinary approaches including critical geography, critical management studies, social studies of science, and human-animal studies, the volume highlights the contact points as well as the tensions in humanity's relationship with a range of animal species and habitats. It holds relevance for those investigating debates around humanism and its futures; environmental and sustainability matters; the experience of working with and on animals, and the future of animal consumption and production.

This book presents a long-term study of the activist campaign that contested the Botswana government's much-publicized removal of the San and Bakgalagadi people from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Sapignoli's multiple points of observation and analysis range from rural Botswana to the nation's High Court, and a variety of United Nations agencies in their Headquarters, focusing on rights claimants and officials from NGOs, states and the United Nations as they acted on the grievances of those who had been displaced. In offering a comprehensive discussion of the San people and their claims-making through formal institutions, this book maintains a consistent focus on the increased recourse to law and the everyday experience of those who are asserting their rights in response to the encroachments of the state and the opportunities inherent in new indigenous advocacy networks.

Foraging persists as a viable economic strategy both in remote regions and within the bounds of developed nation-states. Given the economic alternatives available, why do some groups choose to maintain their hunting and gathering lifeways? Through a series of detailed case studies, the contributors to this volume examine the decisions made by modern-day foragers to sustain a predominantly hunting and gathering way of life. What becomes clear is that hunter-gatherers continue to forage because the economic benefits of doing so are high relative to the local alternatives and, perhaps more importantly, because the social costs of not foraging are prohibitive; in other words, hunter-gatherers value the social networks built through foraging and sharing more than the potential marginal gains of a new mode of subsistence. Why Forage? shows that hunting and gathering continues to be a viable and vibrant way of life even in the twenty-first century.

Southern Africa's first people communities are the groups of hunter-gatherers and herders, representing the oldest human lineages in Africa, who migrated from as far as East Africa to settle in what is now Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. These groups, known today as the Khoisan, are represented by the Bushmen (or San) and the Khoe. In First People, archaeologist Andrew Smith examines what we know about southern Africa's earliest inhabitants, drawing on evidence from excavations, rock art, the observations of colonial-era travellers, linguistics, the study of the human genome and the latest academic research. Richly illustrated, First People is an invaluable and accessible work that reaches from the Middle and Later Stone Age to recent times, and explores how the Khoisan were pushed to the margins of history and society. Smith, who is an expert on the history and prehistory of the Khoisan, paints a knowledgeable and fascinating portrait of their land occupation, migration, survival strategies and cultural practices.

Brought up on stories and myths of the Kalahari Bushmen, Rupert Isaacson journeys to the dry vast grassland -- which stretches across South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia -- to find out the truth behind these childhood stories. Deep in the Kalahari, Isaacson meets the last groups of Bushmen still living the traditional way, caught between their ancient culture and the growing need to protect and reclaim their dwindling hunting grounds. Little by little he is drawn into the fascinating web of ritual and prophecy that make up the Bushman reality. He hears of shamans who turn into lions, sees leopards conjured from the landscape as though by magic. He attends trance-inducing dances and witnesses incredible healings. But he also sees the heart-wrenching social problems of a dispossessed people. What follows is an adventure of an intensity he could never have predicted. The Healing Land records Isaacson's personal transformation amid these extraordinary people, and his passionate contribution to their political struggle. It captures his enchantment with the character, corruption, kindness, and confusion of a place that has wrenched itself from the Stone Age into the new millennium.

Founder of the largest indigenous Christian church in American history, Joseph Smith published the 584-page Book of Mormon when he was twenty-three and went on to organize a church, found cities, and attract thousands of followers before his violent death at age thirty-eight. Richard Bushman, an esteemed cultural historian and a practicing Mormon, moves beyond the popular stereotype of Smith as a colorful fraud to explore his personality, his relationships with others, and how he received revelations. An arresting narrative of the birth of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling also brilliantly evaluates the prophet’s bold contributions to Christian theology and his cultural place in the modern world.