Hunter-gatherers and other people: a re-examination

In this chapter I query the relevance of a question that recently has assumed central place in the study of hunter-gatherers: is the social organization of hunter-gatherers affected by their contact with cultivating and pastoral neighbours? Obversely, as has been the orthodox approach during the 1960s and the 1970s, is hunter-gatherer social organization internally generated (for example, by constraints placed by a foraging mode of subsistence), and thus an influence on patterns of contact? I suggest that this question is anachronistic, for it fails to take into account recent shifts of assumptions in the study-field which recognize that hunter-gatherers are not, and for a long time have not been, isolated. Through examining the social life of a South Indian group, the Naiken, I shall propose that internal relationships (between Naikens) and external relationships (between Naikens and others) are both integral to hunter-gatherer social life. I suggest that an analytical divide between internal relationships, separately conceptualized as social organization, and external relationships, considered as contact, is inappropriate and misleading. Looking for a causal link between social organization and contact is a straw man; it obscures the fundamental problem: how to conceptualize more accurately hunter-gatherers’ social reality. I shall explore a possible framework for an answer to this basic question, drawing on the particular case of the Naiken, and by comparative reference, tentatively generalizing to well-known examples in the hunter-gatherer field, including the Hadza, the !Kung Bushmen, the Mbuti Pygmies and other South Indian groups. I propose that hunter-gatherer relations with non-hunter-gatherers should be understood in terms of role relationships within the hunter-gatherer social system.