Overview

Throughout this book I have tried to convey some idea of the historical and structural linkages between Khoisan cultures. I have also tried to cover a wide range of ethnographic and related literature on the Khoisan peoples. Still, much has been left aside, in particular much material dealing with rural development, plant and animal ecology, nutrition, and so on. These topics have direct relevance to the lives of Khoisan individuals today, if not so much to the comparative study of Khoisan culture.

There was a time when ‘social organization’ meant mainly kinship, with a dash of politics and economics, and a word or two about religion. In spite of appearances, this is not my own view of that concept in the abstract. Nevertheless, my interest in kinship has in some respects given special prominence to this aspect of society in the present work. Beyond that, the comparison of kinship systems gives a clearer picture of cultural structures than does any other area of anthropological enquiry. The mechanisms for clarifying relatives reflect both the linguistic origins and the social environments of the peoples who possess them. They highlight both the historical connections between cultures and the common structures which underlie them.

The preceding five chapters are, in a sense, themselves ‘conclusions’ to the ethnographic summaries which make up Chapters 3 to 11. The remainder of this concluding chapter will therefore concern some of the methodological and theoretical issues which have emerged, sometimes implicitly, in earlier discussions.