Renowned international scholar Keyan Tomaselli has long been an advocate for forcing cultural studies outside of the confines of academia and into real life situations. Through the essays collected in Writing in the San/d, we witness the practice and evolution of a "reverse cultural studies" as Tomaselli and his colleagues immerse themselves in actual fieldwork situations in Southern Africa with revealing and often unexpected consequences. The dual awareness of self and subject explored through writing presents a model for students and academics to develop fieldwork practices for cultural studies in a variety of settings. As such the collection makes an excellent companion to contemporary cultural studies of indigenous populations in South Africa and the surrounding region.

- Matthew Durington, Towson University,

The <i>Writing in the San/d</i> anthology is an intriguing experiment in collaborative methods....The nine articles in the book make a number of important points.

- 2008, Collaborative Anthropologies

These essays capture the spirit of a moment in anthropology.

- Paulla A. Ebron, Journal of Anthropological Research,

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The emergence of Keyan Tomaselli's scholarship across various disciplines over the last twenty five years of the twentieth century is undoubtedly one of the most exciting events in South African intellectual history. Its depth, breadth and intensity surely brings to mind that of Clement Martyn Doke which dominated the first half of the past century. In recent years Tomaselli has engaged himself with the complex splay of modernity in South Africa. In this book, written with his colleagues, he broaches the dark side of this historical experience as is evident in its disastrous effect on the First People (KhoiSan) of South Africa. He poses a challenge to all of us South Africans by making it clear that until the First People are integrated into modernity largely on their own terms, the formation of modernity in our country is still very much incomplete. This incompleteness is a singular expression of the unfinished political and cultural project of the democratic experiment initiated in 1994.

- Ntongela Masilela, Pitzer College,

The San/Bushmen are one of the most studied people in anthropology, subjects of research going back one hundred years, of documentaries, and even of popular movies (The Gods Must Be Crazy). This intriguing new work on the San is a team-based ethnography, collaborative (one of the writers is married to a member of the community), reflexive (the authors become characters in the book themselves), and literary (with poetry, dialogue, interviews, photography, and first person accounts, as well as traditional ethnographic description). In this book, South Africans are studying other South Africans, in a new environment in which many San are no longer hunter gatherers, but are activist and engaged in cultural tourism. It will be an exciting counterpoint to traditional ethnographies and stories about the San people, for anthropologists and Africanists.
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Writing in the San/d details experiences and encounters with First People's ("Bushmen") living in the Kalahari Desert (Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa) (1995-2004), and a Khoi (1984) community in the eastern Cape, South Africa.
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0 Introduction: Setting the Scene
Chapter 1 Representing Representation
Chapter 2 Romancing the Kalihari: Personal Journeys of Methodological Discovery
Chapter 3 'Op die Grond': Writing in the San/d, Surviving Crime
Chapter 4 A Letter to Myself—My Trip to Ngwatle
Chapter 5 Voices from the Kalahari: Methodology and the Absurd
Chapter 6 Meeting Points: Symbiotic Spaces
7 Wit Meisie /Morning Star: Encounters in the Desert
8 In the Sun with Silikat
9 Orality, Rhythmography and Visual Representation

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Qualitative methods are material and interpretive practices. They do not stand outside politics and cultural criticism. This spirit of critically imagining and pursuing a more democratic society has been a guiding feature of qualitative inquiry from the very beginning. The Crossroads in Qualitative Inquiry series will take up such methodological and moral issues as the local and the global, text and context, voice, writing for the other, and the presence of the author in the text. The Crossroads series understands that the discourses of a critical, moral methodology are basic to any effort to re-engage the promise of the social sciences for democracy in the 21st Century. This international series creates a space for the exploration of new representational forms and new critical, cultural studies.

Series Editor: Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna S. Lincoln

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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780759109513
Publisert
2007-04-16
Utgiver
AltaMira Press
Vekt
313 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
155 mm
Dybde
13 mm
Aldersnivå
UU, 05
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
190

Biografisk notat

Keyan G. Tomaselli is professor and chair of Culture, Communication and Media Studies (CCMS) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban. He has written extensively on his Kalahari research in Visual Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Critical Arts and Cultural Studies: Critical Methodologies. He is author of Appropriating Images: The Semiotics of Visual Representation.