Peter P. Schweitzer

Robert K. Hitchcock

Megan Biesele

Robert H. Hitchcock

In light of negotiations now going on between people who rely on wild plants and animals and the governments of their territories about civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights, anthropologists explore dimensions of culture and pressures as they are manifested in particular peoples. Their 27 papers, from an August 1993 conference in Moscow, Russian, cover warfare and conflict resolution; resistance, identity, and the state; ecology, demography, and market issues; gender and representation; and world-view and religious determination. The examples come from most of the world's continents. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Conflict, Resistance, and Self-determination

Hunters and Gatherers in the Modern World

Thomas R. Lyons

Aerial Remote Sensing Techniques in Archeology

Pei-Lin Yu

Joseph D. Wardle

Matthew Schmader

New perspectives on transitions in human history This book is about transitional periods of cultural and environmental change as seen through the lenses of archaeology and ethnography. Incorporating data from across six continents and tracing the human experience from the Late Pleistocene to the present, these chapters offer a global comparative perspective on transitional states. Questions of causality are considered, as are hypotheses about the processes of cultural change. Archaeology on the Threshold focuses on major transitions such as the shift from foraging to agriculture, the adoption of new technologies, the emergence of large-scale societies, the transition from egalitarian to inegalitarian leadership, and changes that occur in socioeconomic and ideological systems as a result of climate change and disease. Theoretical approaches range from processual to postprocessual, humanistic, and interpretive. Methodologies include ethnoarchaeology, the use of ethnographic analogy, cross-cultural comparisons and large-scale data approaches, oral history, the historical record, participant observation, and focus group discussions. Challenging archaeologists to query long-held assumptions and theoretical positions, this volume aims to refocus inquiry into change-causing and larger evolutionary processes to problematize notions of revolutionary, irrevocable change. These case studies examine and shed light on assumptions regarding the linearity and oscillations of adaptations, with intriguing implications for archaeological inferences.

Studies in the Processes of Change

Archaeology on the Threshold

Maria Sapignoli

This book presents a critical review of the ethics of conservation-related resettlement. We examine what has become known as the” parks versus people” debate, also known as the “new conservation debate,” which has pitted indigenous and other local people against nation states and social scientists against ecologists and conservationists for the past several decades. Aiming to promote biodiversity conservation and habitat preservation, some biologists, park planners, and conservation organizations have recommended that indigenous and other people should be removed from protected areas. Local people, for their part, have argued that residents of the areas that were turned into protected areas, national parks, game reserves and monuments had managed them in productive ways for generations and that they should have the right to remain there and to use natural resources as long as they do so sustainably. This position is often supported by indigenous rights organizations and social scientists, especially anthropologists. There are also some conservation-oriented NGOs that have policies involving a more human rights-oriented approach aimed at poverty alleviation, sustainable development, and social justice. The book discusses biodiversity conservation, indigenous peoples (those who are ethnic minorities and who are often marginalized politically), and protected areas, those categories of land set aside by nation-states that have various kinds of rules about land use and residence. The focus initially is on case studies from protected areas in the United States including Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite National Park, and Glacier National Park and on national monuments and historical parks where resettlement took place. We then consider issues of coercive conservation in southern Africa, including Hwange National Park (Zimbabwe), the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (Botswana), Etosha National Park, and Bwabwata National Park (Namibia), and Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (South Africa and Botswana). All of these cases involved involuntary resettlement at the hands of the governments. In the book we consider some of the social impacts of conservation-forced resettlement (CfR), many of which tend to be negative. After that, we assess some of the strategies employed by indigenous peoples in their efforts to recover rights of access to protected areas and the cultural and natural resources that they contain. Examples are drawn from cases in Asia, Africa, and South America. Conclusions are provided regarding the ethics of conservation-related resettlement and some of the best practices that could be followed, particularly with regard to indigenous peoples.

The Ethics of Conservation-Related Resettlement

People, Parks, and Power

Wirth H. Wills

Aerial Anthropological Perspectives : a Bibliography of Remote Sensing in Cultural Resource Studies

Remote Sensing

The Ju/'hoan San, or Ju/'hoansi, of Namibia and Botswana are perhaps the most fully described indigenous people in all of anthropology. This is the story of how this group of former hunter-gatherers, speaking an exotic click language, formed a grassroots movement that led them to become a dynamic part of the new nation that grew from the ashes of apartheid South West Africa. While coverage of this group in the writings of Richard Lee, Lorna Marshall, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, and films by John Marshall includes extensive information on their traditional ways of life, this book continues the story as it has unfolded since 1990. Peopled with accounts of and from contemporary Ju>/'hoan people, the book gives newly-literate Ju/'hoansi the chance to address the world with their own voices. In doing so, the images and myths of the Ju/'hoan and other San (previously called "Bushmen") as either noble savages or helpless victims are discredited. This important book demonstrates the responsiveness of current anthropological advocacy to the aspirations of one of the best-known indigenous societies.

Development, Democracy, and Indigenous Voices in Southern Africa

The Ju/'hoan San of Nyae Nyae and Namibian Independence

A Regional Study of Hunter-gatherers, Pastoralists, and Agriculturalists in the Western Sandveld Region, Central District, Botswana

Kalahari Cattle Posts

Diana Vinding

Robert Hitchcock

This book is concerned with the first peoples (those people who are considered indigenous by themselves and others) of southern Africa such as the San, the Nama, and the Khoi, and their rights. Although living in democratic countries like Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Botswana --and in principle sharing the same rights and responsibilities as the rest of the population--practice shows that these peoples more often than not are at the margins of the societies in which they live; they often face extreme poverty, and they frequently are subjected to discriminatory treatment and exposed to all kinds of human rights abuses. Robert K. Hitchcock is professor of anthropology and geography at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA. He has done extensive research and development work in southern Africa in general and among San peoples in particular. Diana Vinding is an anthropologist working with the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) in Copenhagen.

Indigenous Peoples' Rights in Southern Africa

Deborah J. Johnson

DeBrenna LaFa Agbényiga

They are laborers, soldiers, refugees, and orphans. In areas of the world torn by poverty, disease, and war, millions of children are invisible victims, deprived of home, family, and basic human rights. Their chances for a stable adult life are extremely slim. The powerful interdisciplinary volume Vulnerable Children brings a global child-rights perspective to the lives of indigenous, refugee, and minority children in and from crisis-prone regions. Focusing on self-determination, education, security, health, and related issues, an international panel of scholars examines the structural and political sources of children's vulnerabilities and their effects on development. The book analyzes intervention programs currently in place and identifies challenges that must be met at both the community and larger policy levels. These chapters also go a long way to explain the often-blurred line between vulnerability and resilience. Included in the coverage: Dilemmas of rights-based approaches to child well-being in an African cultural context. Poverty and minority children’s education in the U.S.: case study of a Sudanese refugee family. The heterogeneity of young children’s experiences in Kenya and Brazil. A world tour of interventions for children of a parent with a psychiatric illness. An exploration of fosterage of Owambo orphans in Namibia. UNICEF in Colombia: defending and nurturing childhood in media, public, and policy discourses. Vulnerable Children is a must-have volume for researchers, graduate students, and clinicians/professionals/practitioners across a range of fields, including child and school psychology, social work, maternal and child health, developmental psychology, anthropology, sociology, social policy, and public health.

Global Challenges in Education, Health, Well-Being, and Child Rights

Vulnerable Children

Samuel Totten

An estimated 350 to 600 million indigenous people reside across the globe. Numerous governments fail to recognize its indigenous peoples living within their borders. It was not until the latter part of the twentieth century that the genocide of indigenous peoples became a major focus of human rights activists, non-governmental organizations, international development and finance institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank, and indigenous and other community-based organizations. Scholars and activists began paying greater attention to the struggles between Fourth World peoples and First, Second, and Third World states because of illegal actions of nation-states against indigenous peoples, indigenous groups’ passive and active resistance to top-down development, and concerns about the impacts of transnational forces including what is now known as globalization. This volume offers a clear message for genocide scholars and others concerned with crimes against humanity and genocide: much greater attention must be paid to the plight of all peoples, indigenous and otherwise, no matter how small in scale, how little-known, how "invisible" or hidden from view.

A Critical Bibliographic Review

Genocide of Indigenous Peoples

The Ju/’hoan San, or Ju/’hoansi, of Namibia and Botswana are perhaps the most fully described indigenous people in all of anthropology. This is the story of how this group of former hunter-gatherers, speaking an exotic click language, formed a grassroots movement that led them to become a dynamic part of the new nation that grew from the ashes of apartheid South West Africa. While coverage of this group in the writings of Richard Lee, Lorna Marshall, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, and films by John Marshall includes extensive information on their traditional ways of life, this book continues the story as it has unfolded since 1990. Peopled with accounts of and from contemporary Ju>/’hoan people, the book gives newly-literate Ju/’hoansi the chance to address the world with their own voices. In doing so, the images and myths of the Ju/’hoan and other San (previously called “Bushmen”) as either noble savages or helpless victims are discredited. This important book demonstrates the responsiveness of current anthropological advocacy to the aspirations of one of the best-known indigenous societies.

The Ju/’hoan San of Nyae Nyae and Namibian Independence

William A. Lovis

Robert Whallon

Information and its Role in Hunter-Gatherer Bands explores the question of how information, broadly conceived, is acquired, stored, circulated, and utilized in small-scale hunter-gatherer societies, or bands. Given the nature of this question, the volume brings together a group of scholars from multiple disciplines, including archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, and evolutionary ecology. Each of these specialties deals with the question of information in different ways and with different sets of data given different primacy. The fundamental goal of the volume is to bridge disciplines and subdisciplines, open discussion, and see if some common ground-either theoretical perspectives, general principles, or methodologies-can be developed upon which to build future research on the role of information in hunter-gatherer bands.

Information and Its Role in Hunter-gatherer Bands

Information and Its Role in Hunter-Gatherer Bands

Robert K. Hitchcock

Books

Your next favorite book is out there