LAND FILLED WITH FLIES: A POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE KALAHARI by Wilmsen, Edwin N.

ISBN: 9780226900155

University of Chicago Press | 15 September 1989

Paperback | 420 pages

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 sustained argument against such views. Wilmsen marshals an enormous quantity of historical, archival, archaeological, 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

From the Back Cover:
When rains descend on Southern Africa, especially on those parts where cattle are kept, flies regenerate in numbers intolerable to Western sensibilities. Photographs of these winged invaders of eyes and nostrils, of milk pails and teacups, found in dozens of coffee-table books and television documentaries, faithfully depict this reality of rural African life. In stark contrast, the modern pesticides, drainage projects, and absentee ownership that keep cattle at a respectable rural distance have reduced the fly population or urban centers to insignificance. But the wealth and comfort of the capital metropole and its town satellites have been bought at the price of rural poverty and degradation. The process is centuries old.