Demography of the Dobe !Kung

Demography of the Dobe !Kung PDF Author: Nancy Howell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351522698
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 703

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Book Description
First published in 1979, this is a classic study of the population of the Bushmen of the Kalahari Deselt of Botswana. Using methods that are simple and fully illustrated, the author presents empirical descriptions of the fertility, mortality, and marriage patterns of the now famous !Kung hunter-gatherers. The !King "Bushman" people of the Kalahari desert in Africa occupy an anomalous position in the world of science. They have been selected for intensive study precisely because they are geographically, socially, and economically removed from modern, industrialized society, living in a sparsely settled and remote portion of an enormous semidesert. The !Kung maintain the language and culture of a fully develop hunting and gathering society with (until very recently) no dependence on cultivated plants, no domesticated animals other than the dog, no stratification system based on kinship or occupation, no power or authority structure extending further than the local bands composed of a few related families, no wage labor, no use of money, and no settled sites of occupation. At the same time, the !Kung have become well-known figures to students—both undergraduate and professional—of Western social science. The faces of !Kung informants gaze from the covers and the illustrations of many texts in anthropology and sociology. Why has all this attention been developed around the !Kung people? Part of the answer lies in the people themselves. The !Kung are a physically attractive people, with slender, graceful bodies and open small-featured faces that are appealing and photogenic. Their culture is simple and has its striking features. The struggle for subsistence, the click language, the emphasis on sharing and humility, the drama of the curing dances in which individuals go into trance and speak directly to spirits to cure sickness, and the pervasive humor, teasing, and playfulness of the !Kung style are all features that are relatively easy to convey and interesting to l earn about. This work covers areas such as marriage, fertility, disease, mortality, history, and the projected future of the !Kung. This book will be of interest to students of demographic studies, anthropology, and African studies.

Demography of the Dobe !Kung

Demography of the Dobe !Kung PDF Author: Nancy Howell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351522698
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 703

Get Book

Book Description
First published in 1979, this is a classic study of the population of the Bushmen of the Kalahari Deselt of Botswana. Using methods that are simple and fully illustrated, the author presents empirical descriptions of the fertility, mortality, and marriage patterns of the now famous !Kung hunter-gatherers. The !King "Bushman" people of the Kalahari desert in Africa occupy an anomalous position in the world of science. They have been selected for intensive study precisely because they are geographically, socially, and economically removed from modern, industrialized society, living in a sparsely settled and remote portion of an enormous semidesert. The !Kung maintain the language and culture of a fully develop hunting and gathering society with (until very recently) no dependence on cultivated plants, no domesticated animals other than the dog, no stratification system based on kinship or occupation, no power or authority structure extending further than the local bands composed of a few related families, no wage labor, no use of money, and no settled sites of occupation. At the same time, the !Kung have become well-known figures to students—both undergraduate and professional—of Western social science. The faces of !Kung informants gaze from the covers and the illustrations of many texts in anthropology and sociology. Why has all this attention been developed around the !Kung people? Part of the answer lies in the people themselves. The !Kung are a physically attractive people, with slender, graceful bodies and open small-featured faces that are appealing and photogenic. Their culture is simple and has its striking features. The struggle for subsistence, the click language, the emphasis on sharing and humility, the drama of the curing dances in which individuals go into trance and speak directly to spirits to cure sickness, and the pervasive humor, teasing, and playfulness of the !Kung style are all features that are relatively easy to convey and interesting to l earn about. This work covers areas such as marriage, fertility, disease, mortality, history, and the projected future of the !Kung. This book will be of interest to students of demographic studies, anthropology, and African studies.

Demography of the Dobe !Kung

Demography of the Dobe !Kung PDF Author: Nancy Howell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780202020495
Category : !Kung (African people)
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description


Life Histories of the Dobe !Kung

Life Histories of the Dobe !Kung PDF Author: Nancy Howell
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520262336
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
"A clearly presented and terrifically detailed work from the perspective of human evolutionary life histories. Dr. Howell has written a text that manages to raise as many intriguing questions as it provides to answer."_Eric A. Roth, author of Culture, Biology, and Anthropological Demography "Nancy Howell's book on the Demography of the Dobe !Kung became an anthropological classic, the first in-depth analysis of the population structures and life histories of a foraging society. Three decades later, Howell returns to her initial data set to ask new questions inspired by Life History Theory. In the process she examines how variations in group composition impact the well-being of !Kung children, revealing that sharing is not just with one's closest relatives."_Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, author of Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding "This is a unique, scholarly book that reads like a detective novel. Howell uses demographic, anthropometric, and foraging data on the !Kung hunter-gatherers of Southern Africa to investigate what explains variation in the nutritional well-being of their children. Each chapter builds on the previous one, and through a process of elimination brings us closer to the answers, which are often surprising. Along the way, we see how food sharing is necessary to explain the peculiar elements of human life history."_Frank Marlowe, author of The Hadza: Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania

Demography of the Dobe !Kung

Demography of the Dobe !Kung PDF Author: Nancy Howell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351522701
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
First published in 1979, this is a classic study of the population of the Bushmen of the Kalahari Deselt of Botswana. Using methods that are simple and fully illustrated, the author presents empirical descriptions of the fertility, mortality, and marriage patterns of the now famous !Kung hunter-gatherers. The !King "Bushman" people of the Kalahari desert in Africa occupy an anomalous position in the world of science. They have been selected for intensive study precisely because they are geographically, socially, and economically removed from modern, industrialized society, living in a sparsely settled and remote portion of an enormous semidesert. The !Kung maintain the language and culture of a fully develop hunting and gathering society with (until very recently) no dependence on cultivated plants, no domesticated animals other than the dog, no stratification system based on kinship or occupation, no power or authority structure extending further than the local bands composed of a few related families, no wage labor, no use of money, and no settled sites of occupation. At the same time, the !Kung have become well-known figures to students—both undergraduate and professional—of Western social science. The faces of !Kung informants gaze from the covers and the illustrations of many texts in anthropology and sociology. Why has all this attention been developed around the !Kung people? Part of the answer lies in the people themselves. The !Kung are a physically attractive people, with slender, graceful bodies and open small-featured faces that are appealing and photogenic. Their culture is simple and has its striking features. The struggle for subsistence, the click language, the emphasis on sharing and humility, the drama of the curing dances in which individuals go into trance and speak directly to spirits to cure sickness, and the pervasive humor, teasing, and playfulness of the !Kung style are all features that are relatively easy to convey and interesting to l earn about. This work covers areas such as marriage, fertility, disease, mortality, history, and the projected future of the !Kung. This book will be of interest to students of demographic studies, anthropology, and African studies.

The !Kung San

The !Kung San PDF Author: Richard Borshay Lee
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521225786
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 562

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Book Description
For most of human history hunting and gathering was a universal way of life. Richard Borshay Lee spent over three years conducting fieldwork among the !Kung San, an isolated population of 1,000 in northern Botswana. When Lee began his work in 19863, the !Kung San were one of the last of the world's people to live this life. By 1973, when Lee last lived with the group, it appeared that they !Kung were a society on the threshold of a transformation that signalled the end of foraging as an independent way of life, at least in Africa. The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society, an ecological and historical study, is Professor Lee's major statement on his research. By maintaining simultaneous historical and synchronic perspectives, Lee is able to extend his analysis of core features from the contemporary !Kung to prehistoric societies. These basic principles become the means to understanding the form of human life that has been obscured by the developments and complications of societies during the last few thousand years.

Demography and Evolutionary Ecology of Hadza Hunter-Gatherers

Demography and Evolutionary Ecology of Hadza Hunter-Gatherers PDF Author: Nicholas Blurton Jones
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316425215
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 511

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Book Description
The Hadza, an ethnic group indigenous to northern Tanzania, are one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer populations. Archaeology shows 130,000 years of hunting and gathering in their land but Hadza are rapidly losing areas vital to their way of life. This book offers a unique opportunity to capture a disappearing lifestyle. Blurton Jones interweaves data from ecology, demography and evolutionary ecology to present a comprehensive analysis of the Hadza foragers. Discussion centres on expansion of the adaptationist perspective beyond topics customarily studied in human behavioural ecology, to interpret a wider range of anthropological concepts. Analysing behavioural aspects, with a specific focus on relationships and their wider impact on the population, this book reports the demographic consequences of different patterns of marriage and the availability of helpers such as husbands, children, and grandmothers. Essential for researchers and graduate students alike, this book will challenge preconceptions of human sociobiology.

Life Histories of the Dobe !Kung

Life Histories of the Dobe !Kung PDF Author: Nancy Howell
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 9780520262348
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Life Histories of the Dobe !Kung re-examines an important anthropological data set for the Dobe !Kung, the well-known “Bushmen” of the Kalahari Desert, collected by Nancy Howell and colleagues. Using life history analysis, Howell reinterprets this rich material to address the question of how these hunter-gatherers maintain their notably good health from childhood through old age in the Kalahari’s harsh environment. She divides the population into life history stages that correlate with estimated chronological ages and demonstrates how and why they survive, even thrive, on a modest allotment of calories. She describes how surplus food is produced and distributed, and she considers both the motives for the generous sharing she has observed among the Dobe !Kung and some evolutionary implications of that behavior.

Demographic Transition Theory

Demographic Transition Theory PDF Author: John C. Caldwell
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402044984
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
This book has a strong theoretical focus and is unique in addressing both mortality and fertility over the full span of human history. It examines the demographic transition in the change in the human condition from high mortality and high fertility to low mortality and low fertility. It asks if fluctuating populations is a new phenomenon, or if there has long been an inherent tendency in Man to maximize survival and to control family size.

Culture, Biology, and Anthropological Demography

Culture, Biology, and Anthropological Demography PDF Author: Eric Abella Roth
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521005418
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
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Extra Life

Extra Life PDF Author: Steven Johnson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525538860
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
“Offers a useful reminder of the role of modern science in fundamentally transforming all of our lives.” —President Barack Obama (on Twitter) “An important book.” —Steven Pinker, The New York Times Book Review The surprising and important story of how humans gained what amounts to an extra life, from the bestselling author of How We Got to Now and Where Good Ideas Come From In 1920, at the end of the last major pandemic, global life expectancy was just over forty years. Today, in many parts of the world, human beings can expect to live more than eighty years. As a species we have doubled our life expectancy in just one century. There are few measures of human progress more astonishing than this increased longevity. Extra Life is Steven Johnson’s attempt to understand where that progress came from, telling the epic story of one of humanity’s greatest achievements. How many of those extra years came from vaccines, or the decrease in famines, or seatbelts? What are the forces that now keep us alive longer? Behind each breakthrough lies an inspiring story of cooperative innovation, of brilliant thinkers bolstered by strong systems of public support and collaborative networks, and of dedicated activists fighting for meaningful reform. But for all its focus on positive change, this book is also a reminder that meaningful gaps in life expectancy still exist, and that new threats loom on the horizon, as the COVID-19 pandemic has made clear. How do we avoid decreases in life expectancy as our public health systems face unprecedented challenges? What current technologies or interventions that could reduce the impact of future crises are we somehow ignoring? A study in how meaningful change happens in society, Extra Life celebrates the enduring power of common goals and public resources, and the heroes of public health and medicine too often ignored in popular accounts of our history. This is the sweeping story of a revolution with immense public and personal consequences: the doubling of the human life span.