Nisa essays

Nisa essays 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. Id be with her when she met them. But my father, if he had them, I didnt 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! The...