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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Taking Stock in the Kalahari: Accumulation and Resistance on the Southern African Periphery
Author:Solway, Jacqueline S.ISNI
Year:1998
Periodical:Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume:24
Issue:2
Period:June
Pages:425-441
Language:English
Geographic term:Botswana
Subjects:social inequality
social structure
Kgalagadi
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/2637534
Abstract:This paper examines the relationship between the process of accumulation, cultural forms through which change is understood and resistance amongst the Kgalagadi of Western Kweneng District in Botswana. It argues that recent patterns of social differentiation constitute a break from the past and are resulting in an uneven process of class formation. However, the cultural forms through which such changes are perceived and experienced by the participants allow them to be assimilated, to a large degree, within existing ideological and behaviourals models so that discontinuity is not always evident. Prior to relatively recent transformations among the Kgalagadi, the accumulation of wealth (i.e. livestock) on the part of one household or agnatic group did not necessarily have the effect of impoverishing the other. Today, instead of being redistributed within society to enhance social and political status and increase the density of a social network, material wealth is conserved within a narrower circle, converted to cash, and much of it reinvested in production. This transformation, from wealth in people to wealth in things, is accompanied by ideologies which emphasize the individual and, to a certain extent, erode the pervasive sentiment of mutual responsibility in which one's own well-being was inseparable from that of one's kin. Notes, ref., sum.
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