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This paper focuses on the nineteenth-century |Xam of the northern Cape to examine the relationship of people to the environment beyond techno-economic parameters. As a lived-in, engaged-with Umwelt, the landscape becomes socially and culturally inscribed and patterned, thereby subjectivizing its features. Two ways in which this epistemological and ontological process plays itself out in the case at hand are considered--in terms of human/other-than-human relationality, and in terms of mythological imprints on the landscape. Also considered are certain epistemological implications of these anthropocenic processes for San cosmology, specifically its core feature of ontological ambiguity and mutability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ethnographic data of the Bleek-Lloyd archive pertaining to the ǀXam Bushmen (San) of the Karoo have been marshalled to great effect in developing understandings of Bushman rock art throughout southern Africa, with implications for archaeological interpretations of hunter-gatherer rock arts worldwide. Rock art from their homelands, however, has received comparatively little attention, and obvious historical content—which would tie the art to the socio-cultural milieu of the Bleek-Lloyd informants—has occasioned relatively little comment. This paper returns to one site (the Strandberg) known to have been a prominent feature in the cultural landscape of the ǀXam to explore the historical imagery present there, examining the ways in which this art demonstrates the ongoing vitality of certain aspects of ǀXam life in the face of the dramatic socio-cultural changes experienced by these groups from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. The paper investigates the range of potential authors for the art, and looks at the context of its production within the expansion of global markets, violent interactions and shifting subsistence options that characterized the late nineteenth-century Northern Cape. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses the efficacy of grassroots comics as a practical and affordable method of realizing localized subject-generated development communication goals that focus explicitly on the interests and capacities of the subject community. The Khwe San, living in Platfontein in South Africa's Northern Cape Province, constitute the subject community. The study is informed by contemporary shifts in development theory, particularly that of participatory communication, which values individuals who live in a community as active participants in the research process. The use of grassroots comics is based on theoretical concepts in current literature regarding the field of development communication that are critical of older, top-down theories of development. My analysis and findings are presented in terms of possible implications that they might have for broader discussions regarding contemporary development theory or visual methodologies with respect to participatory communication practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]