In ten pages this paper contrasts and compares these cultures as they are depicted in Nisa The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman by Marjorie Shostak and The Dobe Ju/'hoansi by Richard Lee. Two sources are cited n the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: AM2_PPkalaha.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
The so-called "primitive" peoples of the Kalahari region are not only tremendously diverse but fascinating from a number of perspectives. Two of
the more interesting of these peoples are the Ju/hoansi and the !Kung. Two books in particular offer an excellent insight to these peoples. These books are Richard Lees
"The Dobe Ju/hoansi" and Marjorie Shostaks "Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman". These books are quite different in their styles, however. While Shostaks book
provides an intimate and personal look at the !Kung, Lees book is written more as a formal anthropological presentation. Both books, however, provide a fascinating look at their
subject matter. The subsistence behavior of the Ju/hoansi and the !Kung, like that of most cultures, is the result of an equilibrium between
need and supply. The resulting equilibrium is precarious to say the least, balancing between optimality and rationality. The struggles the Ju/hoansi and the !Kung have to endure
just to procure food, clothing and shelter have resulted in a complex societal organization, a complicated relationship between both sociological and biological constraints. These people have been put into
a position of having to cooperate with their society in order to accomplish the sometimes complex tasks of procuring his basic needs. This cooperation resulted in the formation of
societal norms, norms which sometimes are very different from those that exist in Western cultures. Interestingly, however, both of these cultures live in relative ease if we compare the
time they must allot to sustain their basic subsistence to that required by numerous other cultures around the world. Very often in anthropology