The Place of Stunted Ironwood Trees: A Year in the Lives of the Cattle-herding Himba of Namibia

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A&C Black, 2000 - 269 pages
1 Commentaire
This is an intimate account of the lives of a small group of cattle herders, the Himba, who live in and around the settlement of Otutati in northwestern Namibia. The narrative chronicles the events of a single year, though within tat year are found the events of a lifetime: birth, maturation, aging, death, generosity, meanness, accomplishment and failure.Through subtle yet vivid description, the author draws the reader into a human world that appears so utterly different. However, as the leading characters' lives and perosnal qualities, their joys, hopes and anxieties unfold, the exoticism of their world fades and the experience of life rings strangely familiar. Indeed, the narrative's power lies in its finely woven depiction of the great commonality of human life and the human condition in the midst of a peculiar and foreign world. If this is an admission anthropologists are traditionally loathe to make, yet it is so; and the reader is left with a beautiful and compelling portrait of a world and a people in which the familiar and the strange freely mix and mingle.>
 

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The place of stunted ironwood trees: a year in the lives of the cattle-herding Himba of Namibia

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With poetic nostalgia, Crandall (anthropology, Brigham Young Univ.) describes the year he spent with his wife and small daughter at Otutati, "the place of stunted ironwood trees," a Himba settlement ... Consulter l'avis complet

Table des matières

The Path of a Man
94
Reflection
129
The Prophet Cometh
134
To Ripen and Dry
146
A Spirit Must Be Driven
165
Learning the Truth
182
Found and Lost
194
When Words Are Spoken
207

The Living and the Dead
219
Offering the Pipe
234
The Road Is Filled with Dust
257
Droits d'auteur

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Page 81 - I want to tell you something. I want to tell you what I wish I had been told when I was a maiden.
Page 130 - ... experienced a sensation and perceived its cause, an expectancy is created that the sensation will be reproduced when the object is again presented to the sense that has been affected by it. We look out for the old sensation and the cause to which we have assigned it. Thus the eye to a large extent sees, and the ear hears, and the nose smells, and the tongue tastes, and the skin feels, what they bring with them the power to see, and hear, and smell, and taste, and feel. We bring our past experiences...

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À propos de l'auteur (2000)

David P. Crandall is an Oxford Univeristy trained anthropologist who has lived and worked extensively among the Himba and explored the varied cultural and natural landscapes of southwestern Africa. He teaches in the Department of Anthropology at Brigham Young Univeristy.

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