This book owes much to the inspiration of the two people who, a decade and a half ago, passed judgement on my earliest, awkward attempts at regional comparison (Barnard 1976a) – Isaac Schapera and Adam Kuper. The ethnographic content and general comparative approach to the Khoisan material were foreshadowed by Schapera's The Khoisan peoples of South Africa (1930), and one purpose of the present volume is to bring that masterly work up to date. On the other hand, my theoretical orientation owes more to the structuralist methodology pioneered in southern African ethnography by Kuper's Wives for cattle (1982). A second purpose of this book is to present Khoisan ethnography in a framework comparable to that which Kuper uses for Southern Bantu ethnography. The task is similar, if more complicated due to the greater diversity of social structure among the Khoisan peoples.

None of the chapters in the present book is a reprint of any previous paper, but several include material from earlier papers. Part of Chapter 2 appeared in ‘Kinship, language and production: a conjectural history of Khoisan social structure’, Africa 58: 29–50 (1988). Sections of Chapter 8 were included originally in ‘Sex roles among the Nharo Bushmen of Botswana’, Africa 50: 115–24 (1980). Material in several chapters (especially Chapter 12) is derived from ‘Rethinking Bushman settlement patterns and territoriality’, Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika 7 (1): 41–60 (1986). Part of Chapter 14 originally appeared in ‘Structure and fluidity in Khoisan religious ideas’, Journal of Religion in Africa 18: 216–36 (1988).