Location

A satellite image taken by nasa of the kalahari desert

The Kalahari

The Kung are located in isolated areas of Angola, Botswana and Namibia, The kalahari, a semi arid desert region where they live has few trees and consist of mostly of brush, grass covered low hills and flat lands.During the rainy season the rain can vary from five to forty inches. Winters in the Kalahari are cold with tempratures dropping below freezing and in the summer it can rise to a scorching 100F. The kalahari stretches 350,000 square miles across southern Africa. Unlike a true desert during a good rainy season it's huge tracts for grazing can support a large variety of animals.
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Sources: "The !kung of the kalahari desert" Shostak, M. (1981). Nisa: The life and words of a !Kung woman. New York: Random House.

Change in !kung societies

Foreign encroachment has dramatically influenced the !kung way of life over the decades.Globalization and increased contact with Europeans have now changed the kung! living arrangement's,  diet, and religion. gender roles are now becoming more apparent as !kung families become increasingly more dependent on males.  !kung men would generally hunt while the women foraged for food. The foods that the women collected would provide nearly 60-80% of the food for the entire group, and if men wanted to forage or a woman wanted to hunt they could without worry of shame or ridicule from their peers.
  over the years foreign influences have encouraged !kung men to seek jobs outside of the village. European descended settlers hire them for paid field labor. Renowned as trappers They use their hunting skills for monetary profit instead of just sustenance.This access to wealth has created in balances between the equality of genders in !kung society. Men are now seen as more important due to the families financial reliance on them. The introduction of money has also been detrimental to !kung life and communities. The old ideals of sharing are forgotten as !kung men start to hoard their wealth.!kung villages now consist of houses spread far apart with closed doors whereas  !kung communities of the past were usually very intimate, with small huts clustered together in a circle facing inwards with no doors. This has led to a rise in incidents of domestic violence as outside intervention is restricted  by the more private dwellings.

Above: A !Kung woman with her children in front of a hut with a closed door. She wears more modern apparel
Below: Men in native garb dance in front of traditional !kung huts

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Above: A !Kung woman with her children in front of a hut with a closed door. She wears more modern apparel
Below: Men in native garb dance in front of traditional !kung huts

Sources.
"The !kung san: Men, women and work" by Richardson Borshay Lee Ch 9
"Transformation of the Kalahari !kung" Jhone E Yellen

Three Representations of the !Kung in the Media

In the 1980s, some of the !Kung were featured in the film, “The Gods Must be Crazy”. However, the film is more a comedy than a documentary of the !Kung.

Also released in the 1980s was “N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman”. This film was a documentary and featured some of the filming of "The Gods Must Be Crazy".

In the early 2000s, the !Kung were featured in an episode of the popular children’s program, “The Wild Thornberries”. The episode was more comedic than educational as the !Kung were background characters and more was learned about the main characters than the !Kung.

!Kung views on religion

     The !Kung believe that the spirit world is incorporated into there everyday lives, so much so that when a person falls ill or dies they believe that spirits were shooting invisible arrows at them. !Kung practice there religions by dancing around a fire and smoking. When people begin to fall ill or there is a lack of food they !Kung will dance around a fire until they enter a trance like state that is said to heal and solve all there problems.
     Another reason the !Kung will dance around a fire is to remove evil spirits from females. They believe that women are significantly weaker then men are and that they need to pull the evil spirit out of them. They will usually dance in a circle around the female and pull the spirit from there body into there own, which will cause the men to pass out and when they awake push out the evil spirits from there own bodies.
    Though the !Kung believe in the spirit world, they will not worship or revere the dead. If someone dies they will simply move there camp to a different location, and try to never come across that area again. This is because they believe that the spirit roams the location that they were buried, and to not disturb them they need to avoid it at all cost.

Source
"!Kung San: Religion." !Kung San: Religion. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. <http://social-shadow.tripod.com/religion.html>.

Marriage in !Kung society

        Arranged marriages are the most common form of engagement in the !Kung society. Soon after birth the male's mother will approach the females mother and express intrest in wedding her child. If the females mother agrees they will exchange gifts as a way of "sealing the deal".
        The decison for the child's spouse has a lot of requirements. The !Kung are very big on the idea of not marrying anyone you're related to, so much so that it is prohibited to marry someone with the same name as your mother/sister as a male or father/brother as a female. The male has to be a good hunter and fighter, and this is proven by the male living with the females family for years until he proves himself and can bring his wife back home.
        The wedding rituals are very unique, and will usually last weeks if not months. The ultimate premise of the wedding is the male stealing the female from her family to make her his own. It begins with the male kidnapping the female from her families hut and bringing her to the marriage hut. It ends on a positive note of both accepting the changes.
        The couple will usually have children when the female reaches the ages of 18-22. They will usually have 4-8 more children spaced at 3-4 years each. This is more convent for the family because they will only have one child to focus on at a time. When they have there second or third child the first is capable of taking care of there selves.

Sources
Lephoto, Catherine. "Marriage and Reproduction in !Kung Societies." !Kung San Page (Lephoto and Yarnell, Lawrence University, WI). N.p., 6 Dec. 1996. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. <http://korea.gnu.org/people/chsong/cb/homesteading/kung_marriages.html>.

Substinence

the pallet of the kung! is diverse. Due to the instability of their environment, They forage and hunt a wide variety of animals and plants. Studies conducted in the 50's and 60's where researchers went, and examined the bones at each camp show that !kung men hunted over 60 species of animals ranging in size from hare to buffalo's, and women recognized over 100 species of edible plants.food shortages are not problematic Since the !kung are not reliant on just one animal or crop as a source of sustenance, if a  favorable food is not available The !kung hunters still have a large supply of other animals and plants to live off of. some of the foods that the !kung eat are melons, seeds, nuts, goats, birds, amphibians and a variety of edible plants.  Due to the gradual shifts from a nomadic hunter gatherer lifestyle to sedentary farmers, new crops and larger livestock such as cows and greater kudu (antelope) have become more readily available.

A chart showing the average number of large, medium,  and small mammals, reptiles, amphibeans and bird species eaten in camps at dobe over four periods.

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Sources:
http://orvillejenkins.com/profiles/kung.html
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/18024/1/TSpace0046.pdf
http://www.surveyor.nber.org/home/harvard/library/yellenkung.pdf -transformation of the kalahari !kung

Kinship in the !Kung

In the !Kung, all members in one’s group are kin, regardless of whether or not a member is related by blood. They use both consanguine and affinial relationships, however, they add a third relationship type: the “name relationship”. The name relationship is that a non-kin member is equal to a kin member if they share the same names. The !Kung also trace both their patrilineal descent and their matrilineal descent.

The !Kung also have two other forms of relationships: Respect-avoidance relationships and Joking relationships which divide up the kinship relationships. If one did not create these divisions, then it would be hard for him or her to find someone to marry and also their children to find someone to marry. They would have too close a network of kin if he or she did not make these distinctions.

An example of a joking relationship occurs in Richard Lee’s article, “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari”, where he is teased about his choice in dinner for Christmas day. The !Kung do this so that a hunter does not get too prideful and arrogant.

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Sources:

Howell, Nancy
2010 Kinship Relations as a Support System for Children. In Life Histories of the Dobe !Kung: Food, Fatness, and Well-being Over the Life-span. Pp. 157-182. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lee, R. B.
1969 “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari”, Natural History 78: 14-22, 60-63.