Fragmented Worlds, Coherent Lives: The Politics of Difference in Botswana

(Hardback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

In the context of fieldwork among the Tswapong people of Botswana, the author delivers a critical reflexive discussion that explores the tension between data recorded at a particular historical moment and the interpretive frames offered to make sense of such data. When the author first went to Botswana in the early 1980s to study the impact a major land reform had on rural life in this impoverished African country, social theory and ethnographic practice seemed solid and convincing. A decade later, and again in 1999, she returned to Bostwana and to the Tswapong people whose lives she had shared, and she encountered not only a rapidly shifting social reality, but she also began to ask questions that stemmed from and were shaped by theoretical frames quite different from those she had employed in her earlier work. At the center of the narrative that runs through this study is a critical reflexive discussion that explores the tension between data recorded at a particular historical moment and the interpretive frames offered to make sense of such data.

Reviews

[a]n eloquently written account of how people impose coherence in a world in which their material, ethnic, and political marginality is central to their exsistence. It will be of interest to scholars of Africa, feminism, and politics of representation.-African Studies Review
[R]emarkable, rich, and grounded.-The International Journal of African Historical Studies
This book will prove vital reading for hisorians, anthroplogists, political scientists, and activists interested in Botswana. Furthermore, as contemporary realities necessitate that we move beyond challenges to the dominaant colonial narratives and into a more thorough analysis of power, difference, and the production of identities within postcolonial Africa, a much broader audience of historians and anthropologists will also benefit from the insightful ethnography of Fragmented Worlds.-International Journal of African Historical Studies
This highly readable ethnography explores the variety of ways in which lives of the poor and marginal in Africa are fragmented.-African Affairs
[R]emarkable, rich, and grounded.The International Journal of African Historical Studies
"an eloquently written account of how people impose coherence in a world in which their material, ethnic, and political marginality is central to their exsistence. It will be of interest to scholars of Africa, feminism, and politics of representation."-African Studies Review
"Remarkable, rich, and grounded."-The International Journal of African Historical Studies
"[a]n eloquently written account of how people impose coherence in a world in which their material, ethnic, and political marginality is central to their exsistence. It will be of interest to scholars of Africa, feminism, and politics of representation."-African Studies Review
"[R]emarkable, rich, and grounded."-The International Journal of African Historical Studies
"This highly readable ethnography explores the variety of ways in which lives of the poor and marginal in Africa are fragmented."-African Affairs
"This book will prove vital reading for hisorians, anthroplogists, political scientists, and activists interested in Botswana. Furthermore, as contemporary realities necessitate that we move beyond challenges to the dominaant colonial narratives and into a more thorough analysis of power, difference, and the production of identities within postcolonial Africa, a much broader audience of historians and anthropologists will also benefit from the insightful ethnography of Fragmented Worlds."-International Journal of African Historical Studies

Author Bio

PNINA MOTZAFI-HALLER is Senior Research Fellow at the Blaustein Institute for Desert Research and Lecturer in Anthropology in the Department of Behavioral Studies at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva, Israel.