The Khoisan peoples

The Khoisan peoples are a large cluster of southern African nations. Some of them are pastoralists, others are hunter-gatherers or hunter-gathererfishermen, and virtually all today include individuals who work as herdsmen or labourers for members of other ethnic groups. Yet, in spite of differences associated with their subsistence pursuits, many otherwise diverse Khoisan peoples share a great number of common features of territorial organization, gender relations, kinship, ritual, and cosmology. These features are not randomly distributed; nor have they simply diffused from one group to another as single culture traits. They represent elements of structures held in common across economic, cultural, linguistic, and ‘racial’ boundaries. The focus of this book is on these structures and on the diversity which they take within Khoisan culture and society.

Theoretical premises

Comparison

Comparison is both a method and a theoretical concept (cf. Śarana 1975; Holy 1987; Parkin 1987). For me, its theoretical importance increases when we compare not just two or three societies, but a range of similar societies, such as those which define a culture area. The kind of comparison I am interested in is what has been called ‘controlled’ (Eggan 1954) and more specifically ‘intensive regional’ (Schapera 1953) comparison.

This approach differs logically from large-scale cross-cultural studies where a ‘global sample’ is envisaged (e.g., Murdock 1949; Goody 1976; Ember and Ember 1983). Equally, it is very different from studies which define similarities, differences, or analogies between either whole cultures or isolated culture traits. In the latter case, comparison is merely illustrative.