Review: Documenting the Great Kalahari Debate

The Kalahari Debate: A Bibliographical Essay. By Alan Barnard. Edinburgh: Centre for African Studies, Edinburgh University, 1992. £3/86.25

Alan Barnard's valuable, timely annotated bibliography on the Great Kalahari Debate lists 582 items which deal directly with the debate or provide necessary background to it. "The very core" of the debate, he writes in his introduction, "is represented by three articles in Current Anthropology"—the initial restatement of the Lee position (Solway and Lee, CA 31:109-46), the response from Wilmsen and Denbow (CA 31:489-524), and the comeback by Lee and Guenther (CA 32:593601). Barnard's intention is "to be fair to both sides, but equally to offer [his] own assessment of the problems involved and critiques of sources where appropriate." His bibliography covers publications by scholars in related disciplines and material in a number of languages.

Even a neutral and comprehensive bibliography will not be free from controversy, and my own reservation is that Barnard could have given more emphasis to the contribution of Richard Elphick, whose Kraal and Castle: Khoikhoi and the Founding of White South Africa (1977) includes probably the first clear description of a long-term oscillation between foraging and pastoral adaptations among Khoisan peoples (which Elphick called "the ecological cycle of hunting and herding").

References Cited