Powering popular conceptions: The !Kung in the Marshall family expedition films of the 1950s

The paper develops a theoretical framework for the study of ethnographic film out‐takes in relation to material that is included in released ethnographic film, in this case, the films by John Marshall on the Kalahari San. The significance of what is included in relation to that which is excluded is called the theory of structured absences. This theory is then applied to the study of the 700,000 feet of 16 mm out‐takes not used by Marshall in his released films on the Ju/'hoansi.

The difficulties of analysing archival film are discussed, and issues of representation in relation to exposed footage, released films, and the director's own theory of documentary, are critically examined. The anthropological significance of Marshall's filmic contribution on the Kalahari San is assessed.     

Desert Truffles of the African Kalahari: Ecology,Ethnomycology, and Taxonomy

Desert Truffles of the African Kalahari: Ecology, Ethnomycology, and Taxonomy. The Khoisan people of the Kalahari Desert have used truffles for centuries. The extreme conditions in which desert truffles grow means that they fruit only sporadically when adequate and properly distributed rainfall occurs, and then only where suitable soil and mycorrhizal hosts occur. Truffles are hunted in the Kalahari by men and women; they look for cracks in the soil, often humped, caused by expansion of the truffles, which are then extracted with hands or digging sticks. The truffles are eaten raw or cooked (boiled, roasted over fire, or buried in hot ashes). Commercial harvest of Kalahari truffles has increased in the last decade and the quantities harvested have been observed to be declining where livestock have been concentrated.     

Primal Anxiety,Sanctified Landscapes: The Imagery of Primitiveness in the Ethnographic Fictions of Laurens van der Post

An image of Bushmen etched by ethnographers rapidly emerged as a centerpiece of anthropological practice during the first decades (1947-1968) of the Cold War. But that unifying image of a mythic human past--of absolute primitiveness with ethnographic authenticity--was constructed in the Kalahari before any anthropologist arrived there. The popular image was forged in Laurens van der Post's TV films for the BBC, first shown in 1956, and in his books derived from those films, and almost simultaneously by the Marshall family's work. The Cold War forged a crisis in Euroamerican ontology, a crisis of personal and collective identity, of continuity with the past and continuation with the future. It was most forcefully couched in terms of a threat to cultural life as Western Europe and America knew it, a threat perceived to be posed by modernity with its science and technology and its more perplexing questioning of cultural meaning, a threat made tangible in an atmosphere of immanent nuclear annihilation and lingering ecological dissolution reinforced by a modernist communist menace. "A metaphorically powerful response to the crisis arose in a revival of attention to humankind's presumptive primordial roots; along with extinct and extant primates, Bushmen quickly became a main subject of this attention, proposed as examplars of Euroamerica's image of what its evolutionary alter ego ought to be and could become again. I focus on this image as it evolved in the work of van der Post, who articulated most explicitly that diffuse Euroamerican fear smoldering in the ashes of World War II. Van der Post configured his myth in conceptions of natural being and an individualized collective unconsious drawn from Jung and the antimodern reflections of T.S. Eliot. The imagery of his books and films has since been absorbed by countless millions all over the world. The expression of spiritual loss found in them resonates with general cultural fear persisting in Euroamerica; that, coupled with the compensation of mystical love, is what appeals to those who share his faith. Bushmen ethnographers, although moving from a differnt motivation, echoed the essentialist rhetoric embedded in this popular discouse. An analysis of van der Post's contribution to this discourse tells much about the anthropological interest that followed."     

The Griqua of Campbell, Cape Provice, South Africa.

The Griqua of Campbell in the Cape Province of South Africa are reputed to be descended from an amalgam of Khoi ("Hottentots") with various Caucasoid, Negroid and East Asian elements at the Cape of Good Hope. A stormy history of migration and deprivation has left this small residuum on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. It was hoped that a sero-genetic study of these people, who proudly preserve their identity, might provide further insights into the genetic consitution of their Khoi forebears. Despite the retention of the language of their own, an social mores distinct from of other Mixed populations, they have been shown, however, to have received an appreciable inflow of non-Khoisan genes. This has probably resulted from social factors such as the prestige attaching to Griqua membership and the willingness of the Griqua to assimilate outsiders, combined with the tendency of Campbell Griqua to migrate elsewhere. There are no significant differences between "Griqua" members of the population and those who are not recognized as "Griqua."     

Photoperiodic and physiological adaptations regulating avian breeding cycles and their ecological significance

We wish to dedicate this paper to the memory of Professor A. J. Marshall whose untimely death occurred while it was in press. Professor Marshall was formerly the head of the Department of Zoology, St. Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, London, and subsequently held the Foundation Chair of Zoology and Comparative Physiology, Monash University, Australia. Probably the most valuable of his many contributions to the field of avian physiology was his ability to relate laboratory experimentation to the natural environment. Much of the thought contained in the present paper has been stimulated by his approach and pioneer studies.     

Dispossession in the Age of Humanity: Human Rights,Citizenship, and Indigeneity in the Central Kalahari

Over the past 50 years, the Central Kalahari region of Botswana became a site of struggles over land and resources rights, identity, citizenship, and indigeneity. The policies of the government of Botswana towards the San express the dominant Tswana perspectives on humanity and what is considered human. Since independence in 1966 the goals of the government of Botswana have been to sedentarise the San and to transform them into ‘modern’ citizens who live in villages, keep livestock, and engage in agriculture and business. In this paper I analyse the case of the people of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and their battles over rights and recognition as citizens of Botswana and as human beings. I examine how the government's decisions to deny Central Kalahari residents their distinct rights to natural resources such as wildlife—in spite of High Court decisions in the San's favour—as well as rights to services and development shared by other citizens—are linked to the dominant Tswana understanding of humanity.     

People of the Great Sandface

“The final year in the traditional life of the last free‐living !Gwikwe Bushmen of the central Kalahari Desert of Botswana, before they followed others to a government settlement, becomes a moving and sensitive celebration of their struggle for survival. Having learnt the techniques needed to make the film single‐handedly Paul Myburgh went to extraordinary lengths of physical endurance and deprivation to put on record the last group of bushmen living in the old nomadic way. An anthropologist, he lived for 22 months in the bush. To him it represents their final exodus, and is an informative portrayal of life in a band of people whose way of life represents a vanishing link with our past. Myburgh's photography is superb: sweeping shots setting the scene of the endless desert contrasted with the frenzy of the hunt and the gnarled, wizened face of the oldest woman, the wiggly walk of the youngest child. Myburgh's familiarity with the !Gwikwe allowed him to shoot intimate scenes in which the subjects seem totally unaware of the camera, allowing the viewer a unique experience of their exodus: for instance, the tribal puberty dance, an event which men are prohibited from watching. In the end it is sensible, but immeasurably sad, that the !Gwikwe, for their survival, must concede that the desert has defeated them. The film becomes an uncanny time capsule of man's earlier days and one is left with the feeling that through the ages we've lost something: a spirit of community, perhaps. This film is the final record of these ancient people—the hunters with the poison arrows, the people of the healing dance, the painters of Southern Africa's rock art treasures who speak with a strange clicking tongue—a vanishing phase of human culture. In the closing scene a bush‐man gazes in incomprehension at water splashing from a tap; ironically, beyond contemporary Western understanding too” [Cinema Under Siege, 1990:50].     

Knowledge as the source of progress: The Marshall family testament to the “Bushmen”

There can be no doubt that the Marshalls’ testament to the “Bushmen,” particularly Elizabeth's The Harmless People and John's The Hunters, played a major role in shaping a public image of humankind's ancient ancestors, especially in the United States. John has said, correctly I believe, that simply by being made known through his family's efforts, Khoisan‐speaking “Bushmen” were brought into the surviving ethnographic record that intrigued a growing number of anthropologists as well as the general public at the beginning of the 1960s. I offer here a preliminary account, based on archival materials, personal letters, etc., of the paradigms and politics that underlay their efforts. I begin with an examination of the extent to which Laurence Marshall must be seen as the inspiration for and the driving force behind the family project, then turn to a consideration of J. O. Brew's role in it. Although this was an ethnoarchaeological project from its beginning, Brew's role has been wholly unappreciated, but cannot be exaggerated; he was, in terminology appropriate to the business nature of the case, Chief Executive Officer to Laurence's Chairman of the Board.

I then turn to the political arena of prehistory—of the living and the dead—that became as important as the arena of its field sites in the 1960s. The Marshalls were thrust into dormancy by academically more powerful rivals who publicly and privately contested their work, but there can be little doubt that their record critically influenced reawakening anthropological interest in hunting societies. Indeed, struggles to be the proprietary heirs to the Marshalls’ “Bushman” legacy ricochetted off the walls of academia from Cambridge (US) to Berkeley to Johannesburg to London to Cambridge (UK).

Finally, I consider the mythic underpinnings of the Marshalls’ work, and conclude that while Elizabeth, in The Harmless People, presents the least occluded view of the Marshalls’ Kalahari, seen as a whole John's “Bushmen” films reveal the expanding of a sensitive consciousness not only to a gestalt of life but to the complexity of filmic (re)presentation and to the limitations of audiences to comprehend what is presented. Collectively, his films constitute important ethnographic documents. They are not, however, dependable documents of the objectified peoples made subjects in the films, but faithful documents of the filmmaker/ethnographer situated in the discourse of a distorted modernity at the time they were made. They permit us to draw inferences about the species of colonial ideology that was pervasive at that time.     

Biogeography in the life and literature of John Muir: a ceaseless search for pattern

John Muir has long been known as a significant figure in the history of conservation, including for promoting the recognition of the Yosemite Valley in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California as a national park by the American people and government. Muir is known particularly for his pivotal involvement in the establishment of the Sierra Club, one of North America’s leading conservation associations. His place in the history of biogeography has been largely unrecognized, although a reading of his books shows that there is a rich seam of innovative historical and ecological biogeographical ideas resulting from his many years living in the Sierras. Added to Muir’s interests in the Sierra Mountains and the Sierra Club were his explorations of the mountain ranges and forests of Alaska, as well as his near world‐wide travels to Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and the Pacific. The literature on biogeography has remained very largely isolated from Muir’s writing, a dissociation that the present paper seeks to remedy.     

Don C. Ohadike: The Man, his Intellectual Legacy and African Historiography

It is difficult to completely understand the life history of an intellectual excluding an understanding of his family upbringing and formative years. Family upbringing and childhood environment, often the less known part of a life history, play crucial roles in shaping the ideas and values individuals espouse in their adult life. Notwithstanding, this paper is not concerned with Don C. Ohadike’s childhood. It rather focuses on the professional career of our able historian – that is the part of his life as revealed by his most outstanding published writings. Ohadike’s published works contain a wellspring of idioms that tell much about his values, quality of mind, and his mission as an African historian. Ohadike was a humanist, an African patriot, and a nationalist crusader. His entire philosophy centered on safeguarding his African identity in an emergent world of cultural imperialism. The funds for this research were provided by a NEH-funded fellowship at the Schomburg Center, New York in the Spring of 2007. I owe a lot of gratitude to Professor John McLeod and Dean Blaine Hudson for granting me the extra incentives to pursue my research in New York. While all errors and misinterpretations are mine, I wish to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for Journal of Dialectical Anthropology for their perspective comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Marshall Barber and the century of microinjection: from cloning of bacteria to cloning of everything

A hundred years ago, Dr. Marshall A. Barber proposed a new technique - the microinjection technique. He developed this method initially to clone bacteria and to confirm the germ theory of Koch and Pasteur. Later on, he refined his approach and was able to manipulate nuclei in protozoa and to implant bacteria into plant cells. Continuous improvement and adaptation of this method to new applications dramatically changed experimental embryology and cytology and led to the formation of several new scientific disciplines including animal cloning as one of its latest applications. Interestingly, microinjection originated as a method at the crossroad of bacteriology and plant biology, demonstrating once again the unforeseen impact that basic research in an unrelated field can have on the development of entirely different disciplines.     

Review of Japanese Cenozoic (Miocene–Modern) Vertebrate Tracks

One hundred and seventy three Cenozoic vertebrate track sites from Miocene to 1600 A.D have been reported in Japan. Three ichnofaunas can be recognized: a perissodactyl and artiodactyl ichnofauna in the Miocene, an artiodactyl and proboscidean ichnofauna in the Plio-Pleistocene, and human ichnofauna from about 900–800 B.C. to about 1400–1600 A.D. Track data indicate that a predominance of large vertebrates in fluvio-lacustrine environment in lowland changed from perissodactyls to proboscidean through Miocene to Plio-Pleistocene, and ancient people then occupied lowlands instead of large animals. Pes length of proboscidean tracks revealed temporal variation, and the relationship between proboscidean body sizes and tracks was observed. The Cenozoic Japanese proboscidean trackways can be distinguished on the basis of trackway width, as narrow- and wide-gauge, but the difference between of those narrow- and wide-gauge trackways probably indicates generic level differences. The Cenozoic Japanese bird tracks can be identified as four types: ?crane (Family Gruidae?), ?heron (Family Ardeidae?), ?stork (Family Ciconiidae?), and ?shorebird tracks.     

Marshall syndrome associated with a splicing defect at the COL11A1 locus.

Marshall syndrome is a rare, autosomal dominant skeletal dysplasia that is phenotypically similar to the more common disorder Stickler syndrome. For a large kindred with Marshall syndrome, we demonstrate a splice-donor-site mutation in the COL11A1 gene that cosegregates with the phenotype. The G+1-->A transition causes in-frame skipping of a 54-bp exon and deletes amino acids 726-743 from the major triple-helical domain of the alpha1(XI) collagen polypeptide. The data support the hypothesis that the alpha1(XI) collagen polypeptide has an important role in skeletal morphogenesis that extends beyond its contribution to structural integrity of the cartilage extracellular matrix. Our results also demonstrate allelism of Marshall syndrome with the subset of Stickler syndrome families associated with COL11A1 mutations.     

A Review of: “A White Man's Foot”

While conducting research among the Aran Islanders of Ireland between 1958 and 1968, the author and his wife became aware that their interpretation of Aran culture and personality was at variance with those of filmmakers and writers of fame who had portrayed the Aran milieu in film, books, and plays. This article examines the several reasons why his and his wife's interpretation differs from those, in particular, of Robert Flaherty, John M. Synge, Pat Mullen, and P. A. Ó Síocháin, with special emphasis on the influence of nativism and primitivism on their portrayals. The setting of the article is Ireland of four decades ago and mirrors conditions much different from those of today.     

Target-based drug discovery,genetic diseases,and biologics

The last fifteen years have witnessed a major strategic shift in drug discovery away from an empiric approach based on incremental improvements of proven therapies, to a more theoretical, target-based approach. This arose as a consequence of three technical advances: (1) generation and interpretation of genome sequences, which facilitated identification and characterization of potential drug targets; (2) efficient production of candidate ligands for these putative targets through combinatorial chemistry or generation of monoclonal antibodies; and (3) high-throughput screening for rapid evaluation of interactions of these putative ligands with the selected targets. The basic idea underlying all three of these technologies is in keeping with Marshall Nirenberg’s dictum that science progresses best when there are simple assays capable of generating large data sets rapidly. Furthermore, practical implementation of target-based drug discovery was enabled directly by technologies that either were originated or nurtured by Marshall, his post-docs and fellows. Chief among these was the genetic code. Also important was adoption of clonal cell lines for pharmacological investigations, as well as the use of hybridomas to generate molecular probes that allowed physical purchase on signaling elements that had previously been only hypothetical constructs. Always the pure scientist, Marshall’s contributions nevertheless enabled fruitful applications in the pharmaceutical industry, several of them by his trainees. Both the successes and the shortcomings of target-based drug discovery are worthy of consideration, as are its implications for the choices of therapeutic goals and modalities by the pharmaceutical industry.     

Interactions with John Gurdon – muscle as a mesodermal read-out and the community effect

John Gurdon has made major contributions to developmental biology in addition to his Nobel prize winning work on nuclear reprogramming. With the frog, Xenopus, as a vertebrate model, his work on mesoderm induction led him to identify a community effect required for tissue differentiation after progenitor cells have entered a specific mesodermal programme. It is in the context of this biologically important concept, with myogenesis as an example, that we have had most scientific exchanges. Here I trace my contacts with him, from an interest in histone regulation of gene expression and reprogramming, to myogenic determination factors as markers of early mesodermal induction, to the role of the community effect in the spatiotemporal control of skeletal muscle formation. I also recount some personal anecdotes from encounters in Oxford, Paris and Cambridge, to illustrate my appreciation of him as a scientist and a colleague.     

Some Observations upon Biochemical Causes of Ataxia and a New Disease Entity Ubiquinone, CoQ10 Deficiency

Some hereditary ataxias are treatable and the insight required for this has come from an in depth knowledge of the phenotypes and clinical biochemistry of the conditions. This has required both fundamental and translational clinical research. Prof John Blass was fortunate to begin his career at what we can now recognise as a golden era for such studies and he worked upon two important conditions; Refsum’s disease and Friedreich’s ataxia. More recently the mitochondrial encephalomyopathies have been described and similar investigative work has been undertaken upon them. Ubiquinone, CoQ₁₀, deficiency is the most recently recognised encephalomyopathy and is itself treatable. Though rare, it is becoming increasingly recognised and patients are benefiting from the same scholarly approach to its’ investigation as was afforded Refsums’ disease and Friedreich’s ataxia. A dedication to Professor John P. Blass.     

Ultrastructure in cell biology: do we still need it?

John Heuser is being honored in this special issue for his enormous contributions to cell biology using morphological approaches. Foremost in this context is his ability to use light and electron microscopy to visualize structures and processes such that the information has both scientific and artistic value. The beauty of his images helps to focus the observer more intensely on the scientific messages, which have been numerous and important. His recent studies of living cells using state-of-the-art light and video microscopy fits into a general pattern of a huge explosion in the application of these methods worldwide that is revolutionizing cell biology. However, whereas John Heuser continues to use light microscopy (LM) for a low-resolution global and dynamical overview he then moves on to the electron microscopy (EM) level to see the details; in this he is--unfortunately--in a minority; and EM is an approach that a majority of today's cell biologists never use. The continued drop in EM usage has already been articulated in recent reviews. Here, I suggest that an additional problem for EM in cell biology, in its continued crises, is the declining number of scientists who can confidently interpret the--admittedly--complex information in most electron micrographs of cells. A major re-education is needed, or cell biology as a discipline will have a real problem in the 21st century.     

“Soetwyn”: Visuality,Cultural Tourism,Desire Paths and the ≠Khomani

Witdraai is home to a few hundred ≠Khomani who resettled there after the successful land claim of 1999. In all, the first phase of their claim granted them ownership of six farms totaling about 40,000 hectares of land. Before this restitution, the Bushmen had been an “Other-diaspora” dispersed by the forces of apartheid and colonialism. Being a small settlement in the vast Kalahari in Northern Cape Province, close to the Botswana border, Witdraai is rarely a cartographic highlight where the province’s main towns, cities and localities are concerned. For over a decade the ≠Khomani have been involved in trying to find solutions to the problem of appropriate development of the six farms for sustainable communal benefit. Alcohol abuse among many of the residents, however, seems to be complicating the search for lasting solutions. This article uses visual stills, collected during the 2011 trip to the Kalahari by University of KwaZulu–Natal researchers from the Centre for Communication, Media and Society (CCMS), to investigate alcohol use/abuse amongst some of the people living at or near Witdraai. The article applies “cultural mapping” of a different sort, focusing selectively on visual traces of the corporeal existence of “alcohol” in the sand-dune landscape of Witdraai against a backdrop of commercial tourist branding of the landscape.     

John Marshall: the making of true spectacles.

In 1693 John Marshall of London devised a novel method of grinding batches of identical, good quality, lenses of a specified focal length. Its commendation by the Royal Society led to a trade war between Marshall and rivals in the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers. Despite initial opposition the method was rapidly adopted by London opticians and, though much modified, it forms the unrecognised basis of present day practice.