FREE ESSAY ON NISA THE LIFE AND WORDS OF KUNG WOMAN BY MARJORIE SHOSTAK

NISA THE LIFE AND WORDS OF KUNG WOMAN BY MARJORIE SHOSTAK

In this paper I am going to discuss the book Nisa The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, by
Marjorie Shostak. In doing this I will describe the culture of the !Kung people, a small
hunter-gatherer tribe in Africa. Then I will go on with telling about their sociocultural
systems that I have read about in this book. To rap things up I will tell my prediction
where the !Kung population is headed into the future. I will use explanations from the
book to help me describe my prediction. 
!Kung culture is a very simple culture. The norms in this society are hard to define;
norms are shared rules that define how people are supposed to behave under certain
circumstances. Take marriage for example In the book Nisa explains how a women can marry
more than once in her lifetime, a !Kung girl is actually married several times before she
stays with one man. These appeared to me as trial marriages, the women are too young to
want the marriage and usually are the ones to end it. Even after long marriage involving
children things such as death and divorce/ separation occur and a woman finds a new
husband. So as you can see the norms in the !Kung culture are much different than that of
our own norms. 
Even when marriage is involved the idea of having lovers was not shunned. Although some
women do not engage in this act, it is a very common thing among the !Kung. The norm here
is to have a lover to keep that young playful and loving attraction alive with someone,
even after things have began to settle with your husband. Nisa explains, "Even my mother
had lovers. I'd be with her when she met them. But my father, if he had them, I didn't
know..." She recalls many situations like this, as do most !Kung children. "I remember,
when I was still small, seeing my mother with one man. He met her, took her, and made
love to her. I sat nearby and waited. When she came back carrying firewood, I thought, "I
am going to tell!" Then I thought, "Should I tell Daddy or shouldn't I?" But when we
arrived back at the village, I didn't say anything. I thought if I told, my father would
kill my mother." Most children fear their father's beatings, therefore, will not tell on
their mothers. 
Values, standards by which a society defines what is desirable and undesirable, in !Kung
society mainly involve things dealing with sex. The sex they value is not the same sex
that our society views it. It is not about looks or big breasts or broad shoulders. They
place no value on looks, although Nisa does comment on good-looking people, there is no
comments made directly towards ugly people. They do not emphasize on people's bad looks;
therefore, they do not have to feel self conscious of their looks. When derogatory
comments are made it's about peoples genitals. Once when she was too young to have sex
she would decline sex play by saying, "You, Tuma, you've got an enormous penis! I don't
want to be with someone like that!" He said, " We're going to play and have sex with
Big-Vagina over there." He meant me." They used this as a way of insulting each other.
When it comes to sex having big genitals is a bad thing, therefore, the values in the
society are much different from our own. 
The socialization/ enculturation process of a new !Kung child starts at day one.
Enculturation is the process of social interaction through which people learn their
culture. When the mother is feeling well enough after the birth, which is usually a few
days or as soon as the milk comes in, the baby will go gathering with the mother. That
there involves a large part of the culture of everyday life. Although not much is
expected of the !Kung children their curiosity makes up for it. Children are willing and
eager to learn to hunt and gather, as do the adults. Young males are able to learn about
hunting by following their fathers on a hunt. They carefully watch their fathers hunt and
learn from them the skills to make a good kill, although some experience is necessary. So
from day one the child is taught the norms, values, and beliefs of the society.
Social structure, the sum of the patterns of relationships within a society, as presented
in Nisa shows that much goes into a society. The only recognized status, a recognized
position that a person occupies within a society, is that men actually go out and hunt
for food. Both women and men gather food, but the men actually organize hunts. All !Kung
people are equal and even when it comes to the religious healers men and women are equal,
although most healers are men. Even down to raising children both sexes are equally
involved. This keeps the society equal, there is no headman to make a ruling, and
everyone has an opportunity to have the same chances.
In families the mother and father have equal roles. They both provide food and they both
support their children. Their decisions about their children are always equal, although
it seems that the mother gets the final say in what the final decisions are. The men on
the other hand often beat their wives if they feel it is needed. One time after her
husband caught her with a lover her lover was beat, then hours later she was beat. She
describes, "When he finished, he came back again, grabbed my arm, and hit me-my back, my
body, all over. He hit me until my back started to swell again and it stood out, as
before. The headman said "Enough! You'll kill her." In most cases if the beating gets too
bad and out of hand others in the village step in and stop the husband, in this case it
is the headman of her husband's tribe. So in a way each gender has his or her own kind of
power.
The religious trance dances are taken very seriously, and religion is a large part of
!Kung culture. In some cases it is a matter of life and death. Both men and women have
the chance to become a healer and enter trance. When you first learn how to go into a
trance a drug is taken to induce trance. Women feel that this is very painful and in turn
don't want to become healers. Also it is considered bad for you to trance while you are
either pregnant or breast-feeding, which makes it difficult for women to be healers. But
they still do it and can if they want to. Most trance dances are healing ones and last
anywhere from one to five days. They report that they talk to God to ask for a person's
soul back. The !Kung truly believe that this works, unless the God won't give the soul
back. Then the ill person dies soon after the trance. Being a healer would be considered
an achieved status, a status that results at least in part from a person's specific
actions.
"Interceding with the spirits and drawing out their invisible arrows is the task of !Kung
healers, men and women who possess the powerful healing force called n/um. N/um generally
remains dormant in a healer until an effort is made to activate it." Shostak explains
what the meaning of n/um.
Nisa tells about the healing experience, "N/um is powerful, but it is also very tricky.
Sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't, because God doesn't always want a sick
person to get better. Sometimes he tells a healer in trance, "Today I want this sick
person. Tomorrow, too. But the next day, if you try to cure her, then I will help you. I
will let you have her for awhile." God watches the sick person, and the healer trances
for her. Finally, God says, "All right, I only made her slightly sick. Now, she can get
up." When she feels better, she thinks, "Oh, if this healer hadn't been here, I would
have surely died. He's given me my life back again. That's n/um-a very helpful thing." 
"I know how to cure people to drum-medicine songs. An elderly uncle taught me a few years
ago. He struck me with spiritual medicine arrows; that's how everyone starts. Now when
the drum starts sounding, "dong... dong... dong," my n/um grabs me. That's when I can
cure people and make them better." As said by Nisa.
Trances don't seem as important anymore since the !Kung culture has been entered by
different tribes. When Shostak was doing her research the !Kung people would go to her
for things such as tobacco and medicine. Nisa goes to get her husband and niece medicine
because she thought a trance dance would not help them. The !Kung culture has started to
diminish in this sense. More and more people have begun to live on their land and have
the !Kung work for them. This is pulling them away from their hunting and gathering
background.
The older people such as Nisa choose to stay in the bush and stick to the old way of
life, but the younger !Kung has begun to go to school and make money. If this continues
to happen the !Kung culture will become extinct. "Working for the Hereros isn't good. I
won't do it again you don't get enough for your work. They only give you food. They don't
give you money to buy blankets or clothing." Nisa feels the other tribes cheat her.
In conclusion I feel that the !Kung culture is very endanger of becoming extinct. We can
find out a lot of things from these people. Life does not need to be so complicated as we
now have it. Once they have become industrialized there is no going back to the simple
bush life. They will soon forget what it foods are good, what game in near by and how to
survive against predators. So my theory is that they will loose the innocence of their
simple bush life, and eventually become more industrialized. 
Bibliography
Works Cited
1. Shostak, Marjorie, Nisa The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, 1981, Harvard University
Press, Cambridge , Massachusetts 
2. DeCourse, Christopher R., Scupin, Raymond, Anthropology a Global Perspective, 1998,
Prentice-Hall Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey