In my new article at FEE, “The Myth of Primitive Communism,” I argue that hunter-gatherers like the Ju/’hoansi share food with each other, not because they are selfless communists, but because favors and obligations are their most valuable commodities.
Please take a look. I’d be very interested in my fellow Notewriters’ erudite responses.
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FEE does a good job on most topics.
Makes sense. Leftist anthropology has ruined the field (i.e the commonality of the noble savage myth)
A good article, Mike (no surprise there).
I want to hone in on this segment of your article, though:
The depiction of the Ju/’hoansi as hunter-gatherers in research as well as mass media, thanks largely to the work of Lee and his students, was the topic of a book by an anthropologist named Edwin Wilmsen titled Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari. The book stirred up a lot of controversy and won a number of prestigious awards.
In the book, Wilmsen draws on archival, ethnographic, and archaeological data to argue, convincingly in my opinion, that the current status of the Ju/’hoansi as foragers is just that: current. Wilmsen, aside from attacking Lee and co’s “primitive communist” theory, draws on a rival Marxian theory (“world systems”) to argue that the Ju/’hoansi are forced to forage because they lost a number of short, unofficial wars to both their “black” neighbors and the Europeans who showed up in the 19th century. That is to say: the narrative of the Ju/’hoansi as longtime hunter-gatherers is utterly wrong and it contributes to their present-day status as second-class citizens in Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa.