Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari

by Edwin N. Wilmsen

"The image of a pristine isolation has been almost as common in research on foragers as in the popular media. Land filled with Flies is a sustanined argument against such views. Wilmsen marshals an enormous quantity of historical, archival, archeological, ethnographic, and survey data on the Kalahari Zhu to show how far from the reality these images are, how they have their own historical provenance, how they have been analytically distorting, and how they have proven politically pernicious for living groups like the Zhu."—Pauline Peters, Science

"[A] major work. . . . Anthropologists will, and should, use Wilmsen's meticulously detailed study to revise their early lectures in the introductory course, and no future study of African 'foragers' should ignore it."—Parker Shipton, American Anthropologist

"An impressive book. . . . The reader need only read the first few pages to judge both the quality and ambitiousness of the work. . . . Essential reading."—David R. Penna, Africa Today

Genres: Anthropology, Africa, Society, Nonfiction, History

420 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 1989

Reviews

[Yvette Van wijk]

A fascinating view of the modern San in direct opposition to Lee & Devore's. Sympathetic but realisitic. A little boring and wordy with much repeated.