Hitchcock provides a detailed analysis of anthropological research into the hunter-gatherer societies of southern Africa. In the second half of the twentieth century this region emerged as the epicentre of debates about hunter-gatherer bands, their social and political organiza- tion, subsistence strategies, gender roles, and general work ethic. In the Man the hunter era of the late 1960s and early 197os, the Ju Hoansi were taken to exemplify one of humanity's oldest kinds of adaptation, a way of life captured by the concept of nomadic style and serv- ing to illustrate the notion of foragers being the original affluent society' By the mid-198os, these groups were again playing a central role, but this time within savage purist-revi- sionist debates about the degree to which these modern hunter-gatherers represented an older and rather timeless way or life, or the extent to which they were better understood as being members of a rural underclass that had been marginalized through long-term culture-contact and integration with the wider region's political economy. As this 'Kalahari Debate slowly unfolded, increasing attention was paid to historical and also archaeological evidence to better understand some of these deeper patterns of regional interaction and long-term change. The intensity ofethnographic interest and debate has also been paralleled by long-term field research-today, the Jul hoansi are some of the best documented people on the planet, with much contemporary work also focusing on addressing developmental issues
in a similar vein, Hewlett and Fancher provide a comprehensive critical analysis of the highly internationalized work conducted among hunter-gatherers in central Africa. This scholarship is also rather diverse, has likewise been broadly dominated by ecological and scientific approaches, but also includes a concern with understanding the deep cultural affinity that these groups have with the forest More recently, there have been increases in develop ment and conservation work, and growing interest in exploring culture-contact dynamics. The latter has included research into the "carbohydrate question, that is, the extent to which hunter-gatherers can actually survive in tropical forests without supplementary foodstuff acquired through exchange networks that link them with farmers. culture-contact is a fundamental prerequisite to foraging adaptation to tropical forests, how old can this way of life actually be? Hewlett and Fancher conclude their review with an outline of direction future work. Basic ethnographic fieldwork is still required among some groups, and much more humanities orientated research could be done to better understand how these for ager cultures think and feel about sharing, egalitarianism, gender relations, family, religion and the spiritual world, all of which would offset the predominance of ecological research themes noted above.