Hum Core | Spring 2011 | Unit 2

Societies in Conflict

Humans, the Natural World and the Shifting Boundaries Between Them

Lecture 12. “Primitives,” Progress and the Conquest of Nature

Key vocabulary terms underlined

LO: Learning Objective: opportunity to clarify examples of content, skills and content significant for this unit

Goals

Changing Western/European perceptions of Khoisan peoples as a subject of study

The place of “Bushman” in modern society

Interrogate the boundary between people and nature

Methods Review

Methods Review

Definitions & Concepts

Working definition of history

Historical Materialism

time-place specificity

contingency

causality

Skills

Interpret source material:

primary + secondary, textual + visual, historical + contemporary

Identify components of a historical argument

chronology | evidence | causality | significance

Analyze reasons for change over time (or long-term stability)

[connection to causality]

Differentiate between different scales / units of analysis

Pose humanities research questions

African Landscapes in the Western Gaze

LO: There are multiple ways for human societies to understand “nature.”

LO: The differentiation between humans and the natural world—and understandings of nature—are culturally constructed and historically specific.

What’s at stake in understanding humans and “nature” as distinct categories?

What are the implications of categorizing some people as part of nature?

Who controls access to resources?

What meanings of nature prevail, and why?

Khoisan scholarship since Bleek & Lloyd

LO: Western science is one among many ways of approaching/understanding nature, and not a universal truth.

Denver Expedition

Marshalls

Laurens van der Post

Megan Biesele

Edwin Wilmsen

Pippa Skotnes

Khoisan history & culture as contemporary research subject

LO: Contested ideas about nature—including appropriate uses of natural resources and definitions of human-nature connections—were a significant terrain of colonial interactions.

“Vanishing” peoples

“Primitive” peoples?

Presumptions about progressive, teleological history

Creating an “other” as foil for understanding our own society

Political claims; “Who speaks for Krotoa?”

Basarwa land claims in Botswana