Book
The harmless people
Knopf • New York • Published In 1959 • Pages:
By: Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
This source is a popular account of an expedition to the Kalahari Desert in 1955. It concentrates on the life of two groups of San, the Gikwe and the Kung. The author gives a general description of the culture of these slightly differing groups, the Gikwe living in a more arid environment than the Kung, concentrating on the food quest which is the main interest of these marginal people. The book concentrates on the personal relationships between the author and the various members of the families and bands, singling out individuals for fairly detailed description. In this way, the reader gets a good idea of the normal daily round of the people, although little detail is given about various aspects of the culture, particularly in the areas of social organization and material culture. For such detailed studies, the researcher should see other sources in this file, such as 1: Marshall and 5: Marshall.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Observation in research
- Fauna
- Flora
- Life history materials
- Collecting
- Hunting and trapping
- Water and thirst
- Music
- Dance
- Literary texts
- Ingroup antagonisms
- Family relationships
- Behavior toward non-relatives
- External relations
- Disasters
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- San
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2005
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Africa
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Southern Africa
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- Book
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Traveler
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- Timothy J. O'Leary ; 1961
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1951-1955
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- ca. 1950s
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Namibia, Botswana
- NotesAdditional notes
- Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 59005437
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- San (African people)