Ju'Hoansi

Ju/’hoansi’s Kinship Community

In most of the western world the ties that bind a family together are viewed as different as the ties a person could have to their community, while one is a part of a community and contributes to it, family life is separate and has a greater value place to it. In many parts of the world your whole community is considered to be your family, or ‘kin’, in places like in the Kalahari Desert in between Botswana and Namibia. The people who live there are called the Ju/’hoansi or Ju/’hoan who live near a water hole called Dobe, these people have been a subject of great interest to the anthropologist community who have been learning from them for decades. Their contrasting way of life, as compared to western standards, has piqued the interest of many, particularly their kinship communities. Part of the interest lies in how that kinship represents their social organization and how it plays an important role in how they conduct day to day activities.

For the Ju/’hoansi a community based on kinship is the basis of their social organization, the principle of their life. This basis on kinship provides structure to everyday life while allowing their culture to be open and flexible at the same time. As anthropologist Richard B. Lee explained in his book The Dobe Ju/’hoansi, “Kin terms are applied to everyone, related or not, …Kinship provides the structure of everyday life and enables the society to reproduce itself socially from generation to generation.” (Lee, pg. 66). As Richard Lee mentions the Ju/’hoansi use these kin terms on everyone related or not, including on him as he describes in the book where in several occasions he is called Mba, meaning father a commonly used form of greeting. To the Ju/’hoansi names play a huge part in their kinship society where if two people have the same name they automatically become family members and their families are united through their namesake, so in that aspect it is common for the Ju/’hoansi to...