Dimensions of variability in Northern Khoekhoe language and culture

This article takes an interdisciplinary route towards explaining the complex history of Hai//om culture and language. We begin this article with a short review of ideas relating to 'origins' and historical reconstructions as they are currently played out among Khoekhoe groups in Namibia, in particular with regard to the Hai//om. We then take a comparative look at parts of the kinship system and the tonology of ≠Âkhoe Hai//om and other variants of Khoekhoe. With regard to the kinship and naming system, we see patterns that show similarities with Nama and Damara on the one hand but also with 'San' groups on the other hand. With regard to tonology, new data from three northern Khoekoe varieties shows similarities as well as differences with Standard Namibian Khoekhoe and Ju and Tuu varieties. The historical scenarios that might explain these facts suggest different centres of innovations and opposite directions of diffusion. The anthropological and linguistic data demonstrates that only a fine-grained and multi-layered approach that goes far beyond any simplistic dichotomies can do justice to the Hai//om riddle

Hide and Seek a Share: The Ethics of Sharing between Presence and Distance

Hiding and sharing things can go together. Haiǁom and other San hunter-gatherers in southern Africa are considered to be a group in which there is a lot of sharing. At the same time, hiding what could be shared is not rare. The ethnographic situation that I explore in this contribution is that of hiding tobacco and other consumables. What happens when Haiǁom divide their tobacco into two pouches, one for sharing with others and one that is kept hidden? I argue that creating presence but also maintaining a degree of distance characterise Haiǁom sharing practices and their way of dealing with numerous sharing demands in everyday interaction. At a comparative theoretical level, I argue that safeguarding minimal interpersonal distance is part of habitualising a performative ethical sense of how to share. In this context, trying to store things is not necessarily considered unethical as long as those who do still continue to be appropriately responsive to the demands made. What is at stake is the learnt judgement of when demands need to be fulfilled and when other responses are in order

The social relationships of changing Hai//om hunter gatherers in northern Namibia, 1990-1994.

This thesis analyses the social relationships of a group of northern Hai//om, who also call themselves Akhoe, in the Oshikoto region of Namibia. The Hai//om are a Khoisan-speaking group, labelled "Bushmen" or "San" by outsiders, who were dispossessed of their land during the colonial period. Today most Hai//om combine hunting, gathering, agriculture, handicrafts, wage labour, and cattle-keeping in a mixed economy. The Hai//om changing economy has elements of an immediate-retum strategy aimed at gaining access to the delayed-return economies of neighbouring groups, particularly Owambo-speaking agropastoralists, and farmers of European origin. Based on long-term participant observation with the Hai//om, this thesis shows the flexibility and versatility of Hai//om social organization and its institutions. Particular reference is made to the ways in which social categories are established on the basis of material transactions (sharing, gift-giving, bartering and commercial exchange), and are grounded in shared classifications of land and its resources. The thesis documents and analyses how Hai//om construct and maintain social relations, including relations with outsiders, in everyday social interaction. Patterns of Hai//om social practice involving these social relations emerge in language pragmatics, in the usage of space, and in ritual activities. The thesis also includes an analysis of representations of ethnic identity and economic difference in Hai//om folklore. The investigation shows that Hai//om social relationships and social values continue to shape the diversity and overall flexibility that characterize Hai//om life today. Although Hai//om have little power to influence the conditions imposed on them by national and international contexts, Hai//om social strategies across changing conditions can be explained on the basis of a set of instituted social practices centred around open accessibility and informal common ground

The temporal dilemma of death

L’un des dilemmes que la mort crée pour les endeuillés concerne le temps. Hertz a montré que la coupure de liens sociaux demande que des rituels puissent étendre le départ d’une personne décédée. Selon Rappaport, les rituels sont aussi un moyen de « numériser » le processus analogique prolongé de pourriture du corps et d’oubli. Dans cet article, j’étudie comment ce dilemme temporel est résolu par des rituels mortuaires dans le nord-ouest de l’Australie. Les objets possédés jouent ici un rôle important, et j’avance l’idée que leur traitement rituel reflète également ce dilemme temporel. Ces biens peuvent utilement être considérés comme l’objectification durable de souvenirs, tout en renvoyant simultanément à l’exclusion « numérisée » d’autres souvenirs. Un bien personnel enchâsse donc le même problème de continuité et de distinction que celui posé par le corps mort. Ceci signifie que ce qui arrive aux objets lors des funérailles va bien au-delà de question d’héritage ou de redistribution de biens.One of the dilemmas that death creates for the bereaved concerns time. Hertz pointed out that the severance of social ties requires rituals that can stretch the exit- (us) of a deceased person. Following Rappaport, rituals also serve as a means to ‘‘digitalize’’ the analogic protracted process of bodily decay and of forgetting. In this paper I investigate how mortuary rituals in northwest Australia solve this temporal dilemma. Property objects here play an important part, and I argue that their ritual treatment also reflects the underlying dilemma. Property can be usefully considered to be the lasting objectification of memories and at the same time to be based on the ‘‘digital’’ exclusion of others. It therefore enshrines the same dilemma of continuity and clarity that is posed by the dead body. This indicates that what happens to objects at a funeral goes far beyond questions of inheritance and the redistribution of property

Wir Staatsmenschen. Das Feld, die Stadt und der Staat in der Kulturanthropologie Afrikas

Der vorliegende Band ist in gewisser Weise „außer der Reihe”, da es sich nicht wie bei vielen Heften dieser Reihe um eine Abschlussarbeit oder ein anderes direktes Produkt des Kölner Instituts für Ethnologie handelt. Andererseits ist diese Arbeit in dieser Reihe sehr gut aufgehoben, da der Autor viele Jahre im Kölner Institut gearbeitet hat und hier durch seine Habilitation die Venia Legendi in Ethnologie verliehen bekommen hat. Der vorliegende Text ist die ausgearbeitete Version des Vortrages, der am 29.6.2015 zum Antritt auf die Professur für die Kulturanthropologie Afrikas gehalten wurde. Diese Professur ist im Institut für Afrikanistik und Ägyptologie der Universität zu Köln angegliedert und der Vortrag erlaubt eine ethnologisch/anthropologische Standortbestimmung der kulturwissenschaftlichen Afrikanistik heute. Wie alle regionalwissenschaftlich ausgerichteten Fächer steht auch die Afrikanistik in einem Spannungsverhältnis zwischen dem Anspruch, auf systematische Fragestellung wie dem Verhältnis des Menschen zum Staat eine Antwort zu geben, und der Herausforderung, dies in Anerkennung der Tatsache zu tun, dass diese Fragen sinnvollerweise im Kontext der unterschiedlichen lokalen Ausprägungen zu beantworten sind. Der vorliegende Beitrag meistert diese Herausforderung durch eine Anwendung von praxistheoretischen Ideen, oder durch das, was wir inzwischen „praxeologische Theorie” nennen. Ausgangspunkt sind dabei die Handlungen der Akteure in ihren sozialen Beziehungen, im vorliegenden Fall die Handlungen, die gewichtige und bestimmende Größen wie den „Staat” erst schaffen und erfahrbar, greifbar machen. Die theoretische Kernidee ist, dass soziale und kulturelle Praxis nicht die ausführende Ausübung von vorformulierten Ideen, Strukturen oder Werten ist, sondern dass sie diesen „vorgelagert” ist, d. h. erst die Praxis schafft die Realitäten, die dann wiederum ihre eigene Wirkmächtigkeit entfalten und uns zu „Staatsmenschen” machen. Wenn wir den Staat in seinen unterschiedlichen Ausprägungen verstehen wollen, dann über die wiederholten, weitgehend alltäglichen Handlungen der Menschen, die oft übersehen werden. Der Schwerpunkt liegt im vorliegenden Beitrag auf dem Verhältnis von Staat und Menschen in Afrika, wo dieser Prozess gut zu beobachten ist, weil in vielen Situationen staatliche Einrichtungen erst seit relativ kurzer Zeit eine bestimmende Rolle eingenommen haben und diese Rolle im Leben der Menschen mitunter nur prekär wahrnehmen. Durch das Nebeneinanderstellen von afrikanischen und nicht-afrikanischen Beispielen verweist die Arbeit von Thomas Widlok aber auch auf Kontinentübergreifende, universelle Prozesse und auf die Notwendigkeit, die sozial- und kulturanthropologische Afrikanistik über die Grenzen eines geographischen Kontinents hinaus zu begreifen und auszuüben

Hide and Seek a Share: The Ethics of Sharing between Presence and Distance

Hiding and sharing things can go together. Haiǁom and other San hunter-gatherers in southern Africa are considered to be a group in which there is a lot of sharing. At the same time, hiding what could be shared is not rare. The ethnographic situation that I explore in this contribution is that of hiding tobacco and other consumables. What happens when Haiǁom divide their tobacco into two pouches, one for sharing with others and one that is kept hidden? I argue that creating presence but also maintaining a degree of distance characterise Haiǁom sharing practices and their way of dealing with numerous sharing demands in everyday interaction. At a comparative theoretical level, I argue that safeguarding minimal interpersonal distance is part of habitualising a performative ethical sense of how to share. In this context, trying to store things is not necessarily considered unethical as long as those who do still continue to be appropriately responsive to the demands made. What is at stake is the learnt judgement of when demands need to be fulfilled and when other responses are in order

White Blood, Black Gold: The Commodification of Wild Rubber in the Bolivian Amazon, 1870-1920

The Bolivian rubber boom thrived during the 1880 and 1920 decades throughout the Amazonian fluvial network (Madre de Dios, Beni, Purús, Madeira and Beni rivers). The economic potential of rubber quickly became a decisive phenomenon in the social history of Eastern Bolivia, linked with the definitive ocupation of marginal territories, new interethnic relations, national and international migration, taxation, property entitlement, the foundation of cities, the rise of nationalism, the struggle to settle republican frontiers and a novel regional opening to global economy. The boom also encouraged substantial developments in cartography, hidrography, botanics and ethnology. Our goal is to describe the singularities of the rubber-tapping industry in Bolivia and to analyse the representations of “nature” held by rubber tappers of the period: there was indeed a modernist discourse based on the usual ideas of "progress" and "civilization" of the industry opposed to the "wildness", "savagery" and "barbarism" massively attributed to Amazonia, and also a generalized notion of the jungle as a "desert land" open to opportunities for the self-made man. In retrospect, these discourses can certainly reveal a lack of “ecological awareness”. However, a closer analysis of historical sources also shows the existence of voices that were more nuanced and reflexive, and in some cases even dared to point out the limits of extractivism –not only in "ecological" terms but also in reference to the life of the indigenous and creole populations involved in the rubber boom