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The Dobe Ju/ hoansi
FOURTH EDITION
RICHARD B. LEE
UniversityofToronto
FIRST EDITION PUBLISHED AS THE DOBE !KUNG
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Foreword
ABOUT THE SERIES
The Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology Series was founded in 1960 under the
joint editorship of George and Louise Spindler, both anthropologists at Stanford
University. Since that time, more than 200 case studies have been published, and
the series has enjoyed wide readership in college and university classrooms
around the country and abroad. With Louise Spindler’s death in 1997, their
series was left with one editor. In 2005, anthropologist Janice E. Stockard came
on board as CSCA Series Co-Editor.
The case studies were originally conceived as descriptive studies of cultures
intended for classroom use. By design they are accessible, short, and engaging.
Their authors are anthropologists who have conducted extensive field research
in diverse societies, experienced professionals who have “been there.” They are
also teachers. The goal of the series is to introduce a broad audience of students
to cultural differences—as well as to demonstrate the commonalities of human
lives everywhere.
In the early years of the series, many case studies focused on a single
relatively bounded community—a group, tribe, or village—that could be distin-
guished by its own cultural practices, beliefs, and values. Today the case studies
also reflect a world undergoing dramatic cultural change. One goal of the series
is to continue to describe the distinctive features of the cultures of the world.
Another goal is to analyze the sweeping changes underway as a result of
accelerating trends in migration, urbanization, and the global flows of informa-
tion, technologies, goods, and capital.
Thus for anthropologists today, the task remains to describe the distinctive
featuresoftheculturesoftheworld.Inaddition,thegoalistodocumentcultural
transformations—and to decipher the ways in which the particular forms that
change takes are influenced by the distinctive features of specific cultures and
iii
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iv FOREWORD
local cultural practices. A no less daunting task is to understand the meaning of
these changes for the people who live with them.
Janice E. Stockard and George Spindler
CSCA Series Co-Editors, 2013
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Borshay Lee is a University Professor Emeritus of Anthropology. He
received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. at
the University of California Berkeley. Prior to coming back to Toronto he
held academic appointments at Harvard and Rutgers, and more recently visit-
ing positions at Columbia, Australian National, and Kyoto Universities. He has
guest lectured in over sixty institutions in many countries around the world
including Australia, France, Vietnam, Japan, Germany, Italy, South Africa, and
Russia.
His research interests include human rights and indigenous peoples, ecology
and history, AIDS, the politics of culture and the anthropology of state societies.
Recently, along with his wife Professor Harriet Rosenberg of York University,
he has focused on the critical issues for human health posed by the pharmaceuti-
cal industry.
He is internationally known for his studies starting in the 1960s, of hunting
and gathering societies, particularly the Ju/′hoansi-!Kung San of Botswana and
Namibia. Of his over 20 field trips to the Kalahari Desert the most recent was
July–August 2011. His work has been heralded as stimulating a paradigm shift in
our thinking about deep human history. Lee has pointed out that for 90 percent
of our history as humans, we lived as hunter-gatherers. His research findings and
theories—that sharing and cooperation, not aggression, have been the key to our
success as a species—have influenced philosophers, political scientists, psycholo-
gists and biologists, formulating new theories about human nature and the
evolution of human behavior.
Asanindicationofhisinfluence,his1979book,The!KungSan:Men,Women,
andWorkinaForagingSociety,waslistedinthejournal,AmericanScientist,asoneof
the 100 most important works in science of the twentieth century.
He is a recipient of a number of honors: in 1983, elected to Fellowship in
the Royal Society of Canada; in 1999, appointed as a university professor, the
University of Toronto`s highest honor. In 2005 he was elected as a foreign
member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. And in 2011 he was
elected to the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, one of only
20Canadian scientistsinthatbodyand theonlyanthropologist.
Past-president of the Canadian Anthropology Society, Lee holds honorary
doctorates from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and Guelph University for
his research and advocacy on behalf of indigenous peoples.
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FOREWORD v
ABOUT THE CASE STUDY
Fourth Edition, 2012
By Janice E. Stockard, CSCA Series Co-Editor
This case study classic is considered among the most important studies of one of
the world’s last remaining groups of foragers—the Ju/′hoansi—who practiced
hunting and gathering until the 1970s. Since the introduction of the first edition
in 1984, The Dobe Ju/′hoansi has continued to enjoy broad audiences of students
in classrooms across the country. Richard B. Lee began his first ethnographic
fieldwork in the early 1960s, and since then has regularly returned to live
among and study the Ju/′hoansi in Dobe (Botswana). Although his primary
focus has been Dobe, he has also studied Ju/′hoansi bands elsewhere in Bots-
wana, and more recently in Namibia. Part of the lasting appeal of this case
study is the richness of Lee’s perspective, based as it is on long-term research
and his commitment to the people he studies.
In addition, unlike the projects conducted by many cultural anthropologists,
Lee focuses on multiple dimensions of Ju/′hoansi life, integrating cultural, envi-
ronmental, medical, biological, and historical perspectives into his account. As
Series Editor George Spindler wrote in his forward to the second edition
(1993), Lee’s study is “broadly oriented, including environment, resources, sub-
sistence techniques, ecology, and ethno-archeology, as well as kinship, marriage,
social control, ritual, and belief systems.” With each additional decade of field-
work (and with each new case study edition) Lee’s research has followed devel-
opments and change in all of these areas.
With this fourth edition, Richard B. Lee brings a perspective on cultural
change that now spans fifty years of observations, interviewing, and engagement.
This long experience enables him to present not only updates about people and
eventsinDobe(andinotherJu/′hoansivillages),buttotrackandassessthelong-
term outcomesofdramaticpoliticalandcultural shifts, underwayfor decades.He
assesses the legacies of colonial violence and of the displacement of Ju/′hoansi
from long-held territories. In addition, Lee analyzes the political and economic
challenges that have confronted the Ju/′hoansi since Namibian independence in
1990, including struggles over recognition, representation, and land reclamation.
He evaluates the outcomes (good and bad) of post-colonial development pro-
grams and NGO projects. All of these recent struggles have taken place within
the context of soaring rates of HIV/AIDS that have struck and decimated other
peoples and communities around them.
Althoughwemighthaveanticipatedthat,inthewakeofsomanydecadesof
change and challenge, the Ju/′hoansi would inevitably suffer cultural loss, Lee
describes a different picture. The Ju/′hoansi have proved to be a resilient people,
in spite of their struggles. Although out of necessity they have adapted to the
new economic and political realities of contemporary southern Africa, at the
same time they have retained and reproduced core Ju/′hoansi cultural values,
based on egalitarianism and reciprocity.
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vi FOREWORD
In his author’s Preface to the Fourth Edition, that follows, Lee introduces
the new discussions and chapters that are features of this edition of The Dobe
Ju/′hoansi. By way of introducing Lee’s remarks and this fourth edition, we
include the forward written by CSCA Editor and Series Founder, George Spin-
dler, on the occasion of the publication of the third edition of this case study.
Third Edition, 2003
By George Spindler, CSCA Founding Editor
This third edition contains new information and insights that enhance
the status of this valuable and useful case study. Of particular importance is a
new Chapter 7, “Complaint Discourse, Aging, and Caregiving among the
Ju/′hoansi,” by Harriet Rosenberg. Her participation in the project is of long
standing, and she is married to the author. In this chapter she answers the ques-
tions, “how do Ju/′hoansi care for elders and what is the language through
which care is negotiated?” Suffice it to say here that both the language and the
care are representative of the core of Ju/′hoansi society and culture and help us
to understand that core.
The Kalahari Debate about the origins of Ju/’hoan culture has animated the
pages ofleading anthropology journals for over adecade. Inthe new Appendix B,
“TheKalahariDebate:Ju/’hoanImagesof TheColonialEncounter,” theterms
of this controversy are laid out for the reader. Revisionists take the view that
Ju/′hoansi culture is the result of their being long-term servants of cattle kee-
pers and at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Their notable traits of sharing
and egalitarianism are thought of in the revisionist view as the result of their
history of servitude. Lee and his associates, by contrast, see these traits rather
as the result of a long-standing free and independent hunting and gathering
life. Lee went to the people themselves, something no one else had apparently
considered, and asked them about their past. The evidence of oral history
together with evidence from archeology and from early explorers’ accounts
makes a convincing case for the argument centering on independence and
autonomy.
AddedtoChapter12arenewmaterialsonacentralproblemofourtimes:the
survival of indigenous peoples in a globalizing world. In the section, “Ju/′hoansi
at the Millennium: Progress and Poverty,” positive aspects of change are
described, including the development of schools and education and the estab-
lishment of wildlife conservancies, combing eco-tourism, controlled hunting,
and wildlife conservation.
The small and hard-won gains of recent decades are threatened by the ons-
weep of the HIV/AIDS pandemic that reaches staggering proportions in south-
ern Africa (an estimated 35.8% of adults in Botswana are carrying the virus).
Though reliable figures are lacking, there is strong evidence the Ju/′hoansi are
not nearly as affected as most other Botswana groups. Lee examines causes of
these lower rates, notably that Ju/′hoansi women are in a different position vis
a vis sexual encounters than most southern African women: they are more inde-
pendent and can insist on the use of condoms or refuse sexual advances.
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FOREWORD vii
This case study is enhanced by these new additions and provides valuable
insights into the changing circumstances of one of the best-known hunting
and gathering populations on the face of the earth. Instead of collapsing, the
Ju/′hoansi show remarkable resilience in the face of rapid change. Also enhanced
is our understanding of anthropological interpretation in the areas of gender and
aging, the symbolic order in history and prehistory, and in theories of “modern-
ization.” Each of these is of great value to students approaching anthropology
from a variety of perspectives.
George Spindler
CSCA Series Founder & Editor, 2003
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✵
Preface
AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION
Almost fifty years have passed since I first arrived in the Dobe Area of Botswana
and it has been close to thirty years since the first edition of this book appeared
in 1983. Since the publication of the Third Edition in 2003, I have made eight
further trips to the Kalahari, the most recent in 2010 and 2011. The Dobe and
Nyae Nyae Areas have continued to transform and the people have had
to respond and adapt to the pressures of capitalist economics and bureaucratic
governance of the Namibian and Botswana states.
This Fourth Edition chronicles and bears witness to these evolving social
conditions and their impacts on lives of the Ju/′hoansi. Chapters 1–11 have
been reviewed and revised to reflect these changes. However, since they repre-
sent Ju/′hoan life as it was in the 1960s to 1980s, much of the original narrative
has been preserved. Chapter 12, tracking developments up to 2011, has been the
most thoroughly revised, in particular bringing the story up to date in the crucial
areas of political evolution, land tenure, education, and health.
Chapter 13 of this edition “Tsumkwe at 50” is brand-new. It relates the
results of a social survey of the town of Tsumkwe in 2010 and 11. The adminis-
trativecapitaloftheNyaeNyaedistrictofNamibia,Tsumkweistheepicenterof
change for the Namibian Ju/′hoansi. It is the site of most of the major institu-
tions of modern life affecting the Ju, including the schools, clinic, courts, police
station,tradingposts,andmissionchurches.Thechapterisaversionofthereport
presented to the officers of the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, the main community-
based organization (CBO) founded by the Ju/′hoansi to protect the land base
and guide future development of the Ju/′hoan. The Conservancy endorsed the
survey and the results were presented to the executive in June 2011.
The survey of Tsumkwe focuses on five key areas of life: subsistence,
integration into the cash economy, education, health, and religious life. The
questions addressed include the following: To what extent do the people rely
viii
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