Paper short abstract

Analysis of the role of the foraging ethos among sedentary former hunter gatherers in the Kalahari.

Paper long abstract

The paper looks at a group of settled Ju/'hoansi (San) in the Omaheke region, Namibia, who had been forced to abandon their traditional foraging lifestyle, and had been incorporated at the bottom of an exploitive ethnically segregated labor system. After Independence in 1990 the discourse has shifted from 'segregation' to 'participation', and the Omaheke Ju/'hoansi have been provided with increased access to formal education, health services, food relief schemes, etc. These 'developments' have had little positive effects in practice, and the Ju/'hoansi's pre-sedentary kin organization has remained their most significant source of economic and social stability. The analysis invites for a broader understanding of the foraging ethos as not only rooted in practices related to food production but also as one pertaining to social and kin organization, and its implications for recent former hunter gatherers.