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1986a!Kung Kinship, the Name Relationship and the Process of Discovery, Critical Reflections on!Kung Ethnography: Essays in Honour of Lorna Marshall, Megan Biesele (ed.), Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. 2002 Local Cultures and Global Systems: The Ju/'hoansi-!Kung Forty Years On, Chronicling Cultures: Long-term Fieldwork in Anthropology, 2nd ed., Robert Kemper and Anya Royce (eds.), Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. 2002 Foragers to First Peoples: The Kalahari San Today, Cultural Survival Quarterly, Special Issue: The Kalahari San: Self-Determination in the Desert, R.B. Lee, R. Hitchcock and M. Biesele (eds.), 26(1): 3-10.

Richard Lee's analysis of the role played by gossip and ridicule in maintaining political and economic equality in small-scale societies is reviewed from an evolutionary perspective. Comparative research on early civilizations suggests that, whenever the scale of society increases, these mechanisms eventually fail to be effective and force is used to protect political and economic privileges. While high-level decision making is required to manage complex political systems, this does not explain why managerial elites invariably appropriate disproportionate surpluses for their own use. Such behaviour questions the view that human beings are inherently altruistic, although sometimes corrupted by reactionary or unjust societies. While social engineering was able to curb inegalitarian behaviour in small-scale societies, industrial societies have yet to discover how to produce an analogous result. /// L'analyse faite par Richard Lee du rôle joué par les commérages et le ridicule pour maintenir l'égalité politique et économique des société à échelle réduite est envisagée dans une perspective évolutionniste. La recherche comparative sur les premières civilisations suggère l'hypothèse que chaque fois que la dimension de la société augmente, ces mécanismes finissent par ne plus être efficaces et on utilise la force pour protéger les privilèges politiques et économiques. Même si on doit prendre des décisions à un niveau global pour diriger des systèmes politiques complexes, cela n'explique pas pourquoi les élites dirigeantes s'approprient toujours des surplus disproportionnés. Un tel comportement met en question l'idée que les être humains sont fondamentalement altruistes, malgré qu'ils soient parfois corrompus par des sociétés réactionnaires ou injustes. Alors que l'intervention sociale a pu prévenir le comportement inégal dans les sociétés à échelle réduite, les sociétés industrielles n'ont pas encore découvert comment produire de tels résultats.

Trigger's and Patterson's observations emerge from a similar spirit; they pay special attention to assertions regarding the \"nature\" of human nature that many wish to put forward on the basis of forager ethnography. Because many observers view contemporary foragers as a prism through which to glimpse human origins, easy licence is taken in asserting assumptions about \"primordial\" humans as either \"noble savages\" or \"nasty brutes.\" Sylvain's paper also draws attention to the impact Lee's work has had for re-examining a Hobbesian notion of human nature. She then takes the discussion forward by differentiating ideas of human nature from those of identity and interrogating the latter in relation to San studies. Patterson identifies liberal views whose theoretical genealogy lies, in particular, with Locke and contrasts them with those emerging from a Marxist tradition. Patterson includes many of Lee's critics (the \"revisionists\") with the former who grant analytic privilege to the sphere of exchange while the latter grant theoretical primacy to that of production. In so doing, the \"revisionists\" foreground San relations with encompassing and extractive political economies in which San relations with one another appear largely as a function of their external subordination. Lee, on the other hand, by keeping the primary (but not exclusive) gaze on producton is able to illustrate the means by which San are able to inhibit both political and economic inequality despite the fact (not because of it as some critics would have) the San were enmeshed in power relations not of their own making. Guenther's and Sylvain's papers address issues of theoretical and political importance regarding San identity at the turn of 21st-century post-Apartheid, post-cold war Southern Africa where, as elsewhere, questions of identity and recognition are becomingly increasingly foregrounded and increasingly politicized. The contested terrain of San identity and some of the means by which they attempt to navigate it are addressed by Guenther and Sylvain. Guenther's paper highlights the dilemma faced by San, who despite their participation in the contemporary everyday world, are continually recast as primitive by a public that wishes to ossify them as living fossils. His paper also follows nicely upon Biesele's as it illustrates a variety of San organizations and NGO's, some in which expatriate involvement is central and another that is run solely by San. Guenther's paper exposes a paradox of San artists, who live and work in a very modern world, but cannot escape the western hegemonic perspective that will only view them and their work through a primitivist lens. The western art consuming audience does this by rejecting artistic pieces that incorporate \"modern\" images and thus do not conform to outsiders' vision of the San as \"primordial\" noble savages. More nefarious, is the refusal to grant creativity to individual artists and instead to credit the \"culture\" with \"authorship\" of the works.

This introduction to the work of Richard B. Lee provides both a biographical sketch and an examination of major contributions his research has made to anthropology today. The biographical sketch of Richard B. Lee situates his development as a political anthropologist in the 1960s. The intellectual biography addresses his involvement in key debates about foraging peoples, the historicity of primitive communism, the social construction of gender and gender hierarchies, four-fields approaches in anthropology, and the role of the anthropologist in indigenous rights. /// Cette introduction aux travaux de Richard B. Lee comprend une esquisse biographique et une analyse des contributions les plus importantes que ses recherches ont apportées à l'anthropologie actuelle. L'esquisse biographique situe le développement des intérêts de Richard B. Lee pour l'anthropologie politique dans les années 1960. La biographie intellectuelle rappelle son implication dans les débats-clés sur les chasseurs-cueilleurs, l'historicité du communisme primitif, la construction sociale du genre et des hiérarchies de genre, l'approche de l'anthropologie incluant quatre champs privilégiés et le rôle de l'anthropologue dans les luttes pour les droits des autochtones.

From the late 1960s onward, two divergent views about human nature came to dominate studies of kin-communal societies. One derives from the liberal views of John Locke (not Thomas Hobbes); the other builds on Rousseau's critique of the liberal contract theorists and incorporates the views of Lewis Henry Morgan, Karl Marx, and Frederick Engels. In the 1970s, the former was associated with the work of Sherwood Washburn and Napoleon Chagnon among others; the latter with the writings of Richard Lee, Eleanor B. Leacock, and Janet Siskind. This paper examines the differences between the two viewpoints; it shows how this dichotomy underpinned subsequent debates about the peoples of the Kalahari. /// À partir des années 1960, deux visions divergentes de la nature humaine en sont venues à dominer l'étude des sociétés communautaires ou à parenté. L'une provient des vues libérales de John Locke (et non Thomas Hobbes); l'autre s'est élaborée à partir de la critique adressées par Rousseau aux théories du contrat libéral et comprend les perspectives de Lewis Henry Morgan, Karl Marx et Frederick Engels. Dans les années 1970, la première perspective était représentée entre autres dans les travaux de Sherwood Washburn et Napoleon Chagnon; la seconde, dans les écrits de Richard Lee, Eleanor Leacock et Janet Siskind. Cet article examine les différences entre ces deux points de vue; il montre comment cette dichotomie sous-tend les débats subséquents sur les peuples du Kalahari.

Both the debate around poverty among the Kalahari San and the discussions of gender autonomy are significant for identifying possibilities for prevention of HIV/AIDS among contemporary Ju/'hoansi. This paper discusses field-work with respect to HIV/AIDS conducted by Richard Lee and myself in Ju/'hoansi villages in Namibia and Botswana in 1996, 1997, 1999 and 2001. Our findings suggest variation in the experiences of both poverty and gender among the different villages which may have implications for the prevention of HIV/AIDS. In the villages where people still constructed simple, moveable homes from clay and branches and foraging was still a possibility, women and men expressed more stable views of their relationships and women seemed to maintain a degree of power and independence in marriage. In contrast, poverty and the disintegration of households seemed markedly manifest in villages which served as administrative and market centres and where most of the population lived in brick houses and had little access to a foraging subsistence. /// Le débat sur la pauvreté chez les San du Kalahari et les controverses au sujet de l'autonomie des genres sont pertinents pour signaler des possibilités de prévention de VIH/SIDA chez les Ju/'hoansi. Cet article rapporte des observations reliées au VIH/SIDA recueillies par Richard Lee et moi dans des villages Ju/'hoansi en Namibie et au Botswana en 1996, 1997, 1999 et 2001. Nos données indiquent des différences selon les conditions de pauvreté et de genre dans les différents villages qui pourraient avoir des implications pour la prévention de VIH/SSIDA. Dans les villages où les gens construisent encore des maisons simples et déplaçables, faites de branches et de terre, et où la cueillette est encore possible, les femmes et les hommes expriment des vues plus stables de leurs relations et les femmes semblent garder un certain degré de pouvoir et d'indépendance après le mariage. À l'opposé, la pauvreté et la désintégration des ménages semblent évidents dans les villages qui sont des centres administratifs et des marchés et où la majorité de la population vit dans des maisons de briques et n'ont pratiquement pas accès à la cueillette.

Marx's \"Ethnological Notebooks\" were among the last of his writings. They comment upon class and state formation in a range of precapitalist contexts. The argument presented here is that after Capital, Marx turned to problems of class formation in socialism, examining the conflict between communities of producers and state agendas, on the one hand, and the entrenchment of bureaucracies and state functionaries, on the other. The commentaries distance Marx from state theories of social evolution: certain social forms may persist and change in opposition to the state, at the same time defending more egalitarian practices. /// Les Carnets ethnographiques de Marx sont parmi les derniers de ses écrits. Ils commentent la formation des classes et des États dans un ensemble de contextes précapitalistes. La position présentée ici est qu'après Le Capital, Marx s'est tourné vers les problèmes de formation des classes dans le socialisme; il a examiné le conflit entre les communautés de producteurs et l'ordre du jour des États, d'une part, et la résistance des bureaucraties et des fonctionnaires de l'État, de l'autre. Ces textes nous font voir un Marx qui abandonne les théories de l'évolution sociale dépendante de l'État: certaines formes sociales peuvent perdurer et changer en opposition à l'État, et ainsi maintenir des pratiques plus égalitaires.

In Africa, indigenous peoples have had difficulties in gaining secure legal rights to land and resources. The Ju/'hoansi San of the Republic of Botswana have had to contend with governmental decisions that have not allowed groups to claim land on the basis of customary tenure or longterm occupation. This article examines some of the innovative ways in which the Ju/'hoansi have dealt with the issues of land and resource rights, including carrying out detailed mapping of their ancestral territories and using Botswana government policies on community-based natural resource management to their advantage in gaining greater control of land, water and wildlife resources. /// En Afrique, les Autochtones ont eu de la difficulté à obtenir des droits stables à la terre et aux ressources. Les San Ju/'hoansi de la République du Botswana ont eu à lutter contre des décisions gouvernementales qui ne permettaient pas à des groupes de réclamer des droits territoriaux sur la base de coutumes ancestrales ou d'occupation prolongée. Cet article examine quelques façons ingénieuses dont les Ju/'hoansi se sont servi dans la question des terres et des droits aux ressources, y compris faire un relevé détaillé de leurs territoires ancestraux et se servir des politiques du gouvernement du Botswana sur l'administration des communautaire des ressources naturelles pour gagner un plus grand contrôle des terres, de l'eau et des ressources de la flore et de la faune.