The !
kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society by Richard Borshay Lee
Review by: James F. Eder
Human Ecology, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Jun., 1981), pp. 248-252
Published by: Springer
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248 Book Reviews
Rappaport,R. A. (1977).Maladaptationin social systems. In Friedman,J., and Rowlands,
M. J. (eds.), The Evolution of Social Systems, Duckworth, London, pp. 49-71.
Lawrence S. Grossman
Departmentof Geography
VirginiaPolytechnicInstitute
and State University
Blacksburg,Virginia
The !Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society. By Richard
BorshayLee. CambridgeUniversityPress, New York, 1979, 526 pp.,
tables, $34.95 (cloth).
Thisbook is a comprehensivereporton Lee's threeyears of fieldwork
among the !Kung San ("Bushmen") of Botswana. It incorporatessome
previouslypublished, now familiarmaterial, particularlythe 1964 "work
diary." Its approach, like the rest of Lee's work, is strongly ecological,
although more recent interestsin Marxismand systems theory now flesh
out this theoreticalperspective.
But if the book is in these senses a familiar one, much is new and
valuable. There is a long and fascinating account of the circumstances
surroundingLee's own three field visits, of 1963-1964, 1967-1969, and
1973,and of the growthof The HarvardKalahariproject, which ultimately
included more than a dozen investigators.Previouslypublished material
is now placed in methodological and historical context: field methods
are carefullyexplained,and the effects upon the !Kungadaptationof the
introduction of cattle pastoralism and, more recently, of the intrusion
of nationaland internationalpolitics are discussedin detail. Finally, there
is substantial new ethnographicmaterial on the !Kung themselves: on
hunting techniques, on plant resources, on material culture, on conflict
and violence.
Much of the interest in this book will likely center on what Lee
contributesto a numberof currentdiscussionsabout the hunting-gather-
ing adaptationin general, and about the San adaptation in particular-
discussionswhich Lee's own earlierpublicationsdid so much to initiate.
Lee himself clearly still believes that many of his findings exemplify the
hunter-gatherer adaptationin general;certainlymany anthropologistshave
employed them in that fashion. But other investigatorshave questioned
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Book Reviews 249
whethersome of Lee's findings even apply fully to other groups of San,
or whetherthe causal relationshipshe emphasizesin interpretinghis data
are in fact the crucial ones. Here I will briefly summarizethe positions
taken in this book on three such currentissues of interestof contention,
focusing on Lee's use of previouslyunpublishedor now-reanalyzeddata
on the !Kung.
1. Are the !Kung really that leisured?Had Lee known, at the time
of his 1967-1969returnvisit, that the 4-week work diary he obtained in
1964 for a camp of approximately30 !Kungat the Dobe watethole [orig-
inallypublishedin Lee (1968) and Lee (1969)]would ultimatelyexert such
a tremendousinfluence on contemporaryanthropologicalthought about
the workload of hunter-gatherers,he might have repeatedthe effort on
a larger scale or over a longer time frame. As it is, his present chapter
on "Men, Women, and Work" incorporatesno new direct data on work
effort nor, as Lee acknowledges, does it benefit from recent methodo-
logical advances in the study of time allocation (e.g., Johnson, 1975).
But Lee does cite comparativedata obtainedby Draper(1976)and his own
continuing field observations as confirming his confidence in the 1964
study and his belief that the !Kung do in fact meet their food needs with
only limited subsistence effort. He also presents and analyzes some
previouslyumpublisheddata, obtained duringthe original 4-week study,
on time devoted by both sexes to tool manufactureand repair, and to
housework.When these data are combined with the original data on the
subsistencesearch, adult men are found to work 44.5 hours per week,
adult women, 40.1 hours.
2. How well-nourishedare the !Kung?Not all observershave agreed
thatthe !Kungare as physiologicallyfit as Lee originallyclaimed. Truswell
and Hansen (1976), while finding the San to be generallyhealthy, believe
that their small stature and lack of body fat are products of chronic or
seasonalundernutrition,and Willmsen(1979)reportsconsiderableseasonal
weight loss (6%7o) among the !Kung he studied. But Lee generally stands
by his earlier contentions about !Kung well-being. His differences with
Truswelland Hansenappearto be ones of emphasis(with Lee emphasizing
the adaptive advantagesof small stature under hunting-gatheringcondi-
tions), and he attributes Willmsen's findings to the heavy involvement
with the cash economy of the particular!Kung in question, rather than
to any "failure" of the huntingand gatheringeconomy. Lee does himself
document,however, a "Januaryminimum"in !Kungbody weight, based
on repeatedmeasurementsof weight over a 12-month interval. But the
magnitudeof the loss (1-207o)is less than that typically experiencedby
African agriculturalistsand is widely distributed among adult age-sex
categories(childrencontinue to grow throughoutthe year).
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250 Book Reviews
3. What accounts for long !Kung birth spacings? How foraging
peoples like the !Kung traditionallymaintained low fertility (and hence
a stable or only slowly growing population) is a topic of considerable
anthropologicalinterest. That the rate of infanticide among the !Kung
is less than 20Wo (p. 320) rules out that popular explanation;rather, Lee
says, long birth spacings, averaging 44 months among more nomadic
women, keep fertility low. But in the absence of contraceptivedevices
or postpartumsex taboos beyond the first year of the baby's life, what
factors maintainlong birth spacings?
Lee pursuestwo lines of reasoning.First, he continues and expands
his earlier argument, that the prolonged dependency of infants upon
mothers,and the requirementsof female mobilityin the food search,make
the energeticcosts of short birth spacingsextremelyhigh. Combiningdata
on the weights of childrenand the distance women travel annually in the
food search,Lee amplydocumentsthe considerablevariationin a woman's
per-yearwork load under different assumptionsabout birth interval. But
if the work load entailed by 2- or 3-year birth spacings is so large that
"it is not surprising"(p. 317) that birth intervalsaverageclose to 4 years,
we can only take at face value Lee's assertion (p. 319) that "even with
3-year birth spacing the mother's work load may be great enough to
endangerherown fitness and affect the survivalchancesof her offspring,"
for no supportingevidence is offered, other than the !Kung's own ex-
presseddistaste for the burdensof short birth spacings. (Similarlyunsup-
ported is Lee's claim on p. 317, in support of his "small is better" argu-
ment, that if !Kung children grew as fast as they should according to
Western standards, "an intolerable burden would be imposed on the
parentswho would have to do the carrying,thereby reducingthe survival
chancesof both generations.")
Lee's second line of reasoning concerns the actual physiological
mechanism underlying prolonged postpartum amenorrhea. Citing data
in Howell (1979),recentcritiques,and his own doubts, he dismissesFrisch's
extension of her critical fatness hypothesis, that the caloric demands of
prolongedlactation are so great that the fat stores of a nursing mother
are depletedbelow the criticalminimumnecessaryfor ovulation to resume
(Frisch,1975).Rather,Lee says, the strengthand persistenceof the suckling
stimulus itself suppressesovulation, an argumentrecently given a mech-
anism and considerable support (Konner and Worthman, 1980). In a
curious attempt to relate this second line of argumentto his first, Lee
appearsto imply (p. 329), but does not state explicitly,that !Kungwomen
are aware of the contraceptiveeffect of constant suckling, and for this
reason emphasizethe carryingof youngerchildren.In any case, however,
Lee believes that both the decreasingfelt costs of high fertility and the
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Book Reviews 251
advent of suitableweaning foods (and hence earliercessation of suckling
and its attendantcontraceptiveeffects) explainwhy birthintervalsdecrease
among previously nomadic !Kung who become sedentary (p. 319, pp.
329-330).
There are only a few of the many issues which this book addresses
and for which it deserves to be widely read. Other well-coveredtopics
includemale-femalerelationshipsand !Kungconcepts about land owner-
ship. DespiteLee's professedinterestat the outset in a Marxistconceptual
framework,it surfacesonly periodicallyin his analysis,functioningmainly
to direct our attention to topics which, while important (e.g., the ideo-
logical superstructureof the foraging mode of production), would seem
to be equallywell treatablein non-Marxistterms. His use of the dialectic
appearsto entail little more than the recognition(albeit important)that
the relationshipbetweenecological and social variablesis two-way rather
than one-way (p. 443), and where Lee prefers a "Marxist approach"
because"it recognizesabove all that the populationswe are dealing with
are human, composed of actors who make conscious and unconscious
choices based on their perceptionsof external realities and on the set
of rulesor ideologiesprovidedby theirculture"(p. 434), he seemsto forget
that other anthropologicalapproachesshare this recognition. The book
is marredhere and there by gratuitous political commentary;whether
inclusionof Vietnamesewar fatalities,for example,in a calculationof the
Americanhomicide rate (p. 398) yields a useful comparativestatistic is
doubtful. But just as the book as a whole helps bring home the humanity
of the !Kung, so too, perhaps do such elements teach us something
of the humanismand concernof their principalethnographer.
REFERENCES
Draper,P. (1976). Social and economicconstraintson child life among the !Kung.In Lee,
R. B. and DeVore, I. (eds.), KalahariHunter-Gatherers, HarvardUniv. Press, pp.
199-217.
Frisch, R. E (1975). Demographicimplicationof the biological determinantsof female
fecundity.Social Biology 22: 17-22.
Howell, N. (1979). Demographyof the Dobe Area !Kung. Academic Press, New York.
Johnson,A. (1975). Time allocationin a Machiguengacommunity.Ethnology 14: 301-310.
Konner,M., and Worthman,C. (1980). Nursing frequency,gonadal function, and birth
spacingamong !Kunghunter-gatherers. Science207: 788-791.
Lee, R. B. (1968). What huntersdo for a living, or, how to make out on scarceresources.
In Lee, R. B., and Devore, I. (eds.), Man the Hunter, Aldine, Chicago, pp. 30-48.
Lee, R. B. (1969). !KungBushmensubsistence:An input-outputanalysis. In Vayda, A. P.
(ed.), Environmentand CulturalBehavior, Natural History Press, Garden City,
New York, pp. 47-79.
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
252 Book Reviews
Truswell, A. S., and Hansen, J. D. L. (1976). Medical research among the !Kung. In Lee,
R. B. and Devore, I. (eds.), Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers, Harvard Univ. Press,
Cambridge, Mass. pp. 166-194.
Willmsen, E. (1979). Diet and Fertility among Kalahari Bushmen. Boston University, African
Studies Center, Working Papers, No. 14.
James F. Eder
Department of Anthropology
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona
The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan. By M. Nazif Mohib Shahrani.
Universityof WashingtonPress, Seattle and London, 1979, 264 pp.,
photographs,maps, tables $16.50 (cloth).
The anthropologicalliteratureon CentralAsia is thin. Few anthro-
pologists have done fieldwork in the area and there is correspondingly
little first-hand, up-to-date ethnographic information available on the
societies located there. If for no other reason, The Kirghizand Wakhiof
Afghanistanwould be most welcome.
In this book the author, Nazif Shahrani,presentsthe reader with
solid ethnographicinformationon both the Kirghizand Wakhi societies
located in the Wakhan corridor of Afghanistan, a small, extremely
mountainous strip of land bordering the Soviet Union, Pakistan, and
China. The Kirghizare a Turkic-speakingCentral Asian nomadic group
who, like the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, and Turkmens figured importantly in
the history of Central Asia. The Wakhi are a little known ethnic group
often referredto as "MountainTajiks," who speak an Iranianlanguage,
and whose subsistenceis based primarilyon agricultureand, to a much
lesserdegree,herding.Such topics as dyadic kinship,lineage organization,
politics, and economics are covered in detail for both societies, although
the informationon the Kirghizhas more depth.
Expertson the mixed herdingand agriculturalsocieties of the neigh-
boring Hindu-Kushand Karakorammountainswill find the data on the
Wakhi most useful since there are particularlyinterestingsimilaritiesand
differencesbetweenthe Wakhi and the mountaintribes to the south. This
allows fruitful comparisons which help in understanding particular
social and cultural elements found throughout the high mountain
areas of Afghanistanand Pakistan.
However,the book is much more than an interestingpresentationof
ethnographicdata on little-known Central Asian societies. Shahraniis a
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