Introduction
Nisa: The life and words of a! Kung woman is a novel about a! A Kung woman that the author uses to conduct her research about the people of northwest Botswana in Africa. As the story begins, the author gives the audience an overview of her research and her expectations. She describes the people of Botswana as Bushmen, implying that they are hunters and gatherers (Shostak, 2014). From a critical perspective, the practice of feeding on game meat does not improve their health.
Nisa is not only used as a part of the title of the book but is also the central character in the novel that the author uses to do her study. The story, therefore, mainly revolves around the narratives of Nisa and her life, as she opens up to the author and answers all her questions, some of which an individual may consider private.
Nisa narrates to the author her life as a! Kung woman, her childhood life, her many lovers, and other stories (Shostak, 2014). From the stories, one can notice how culture has impacted Nisa’s life and her people in general. This paper focuses on the culture of Nisa’s people and impacts on them. It uses the novel to show how cultural adaptation is necessary when there is a change in one’s life.
Culture
Culture is what a group of people considers normal, and it could be a system of governance of people (Fiske & Taylor, 2013; Visweswaran, 2003). Also, a collection of customs and beliefs put individuals together in society.
In the novel, Nisa narrates some stories that may seem weird to other persons who do not subscribe to her culture, but to her community, they are considered normal. Indeed, it is hard to understand other people’s ways of life, especially if they live in different geographical locations. It is more difficult if they are from different continents (Visweswaran, 2003).
Nisa, for example, tells Shoshtak about her lovers and she confesses that is normal too!Kung people to have secret lovers even when they are married. A person from a different cultural background who reads the narration might find it awkward and even absurd, not because it is wrong, but because he or she could have different cultural inclinations. It is important, therefore, to look at culture objectively because as we judge other people’s cultures, some might be judging ours the same way (Fiske & Taylor, 2013).
We can also learn a lot from other people’s cultures by taking some aspects that we might view them positively and incorporate them into our ways of life. For example, in chapter 12, Nisa says, “Zhun/two men say that women are the chiefs, the rich ones, the wise ones. Because women possess something crucial, something that enables men to live: their genitals” (Shostak: 257). The quote puts forward the importance of women in society and explains why cursing a woman using her genitals in Botswana would be a significant issue.
When reading this quote for the first time, one might judge the people of the nation to be immoral and disrespectful to women, but this is not the case. From the quote, thus, we can learn the importance of respecting women in our society. When looking at other people’s cultures, we can also learn some similarities with our own, leading to relatively high levels of comfort.
For instance, the writer says “Here, in the society of ancient traditions, men and women live together in a non-exploitative manner, displaying a striking degree of equality between the sexes-perhaps a lesson for our society” (Shostak: 213). From this quote, we can use other people’s cultures to build our own.
Culture change and adaptation
Culture tends to change with time due to influence from new people and other dynamics in life. For one to survive in society, adjustment is crucial. From the novel, Nisa’s narrative brings out the concept. The Tswana people have intruded the area, making settlements and interfering with local culture in general. The Tswana people have even taken over the leadership, and have become the rulers of the land.
These changes affect Nisa’s life, bearing in mind that she only knows one way of life, i.e., of the!Kung people. Nisa has to choose among three options, i.e., adapting to the changes, getting married to a village man, or getting employment from a woman living in the European settlement. Finally, she adapts to farming, which is a new way of life that has been introduced to her people to replace hunting and gathering.
Relevance of culture
Every human being has a culture. When people live together as a society, there should be some rules and practices that bind them together (Fiske & Taylor, 2013). From the novel, it is clear that culture helped to bring the people of!Kung together. People could meet and share meat, and this practice ensured unity among them. From that perspective, culture can be viewed as uniting, but this is not always the case. Some practices in the context of promoting culture can be harmful.
The practice of the!Kung people, for instance, whereby a woman is allowed to have several lovers outside marriage, could be misleading. Nisa says that when she got pregnant outside her marriage, her husband was annoyed. This could bring about negative impacts on society since the relationship between spouses in a marriage could be affected.
Some other practices, such as witchcraft, may give rise to high levels of suspicion among members of a community since people may not trust an individual after he or she is a branded a witch. Overall, it is important to respect other people’s cultures and to understand why they behave the way they do (Fiske & Taylor, 2013).
Comparison between my culture and that of the!Kung people
From the different cultural practices seen in the novel, some are completely new to me. Some are even unbelievable. Only a few of the practices, though not completely the same, are practiced by my people as well. The practice of people coming together to share a meal, for example, is widely practiced by my society.
Persons in my community also have well-defined gender roles, just like Nisa’s society. In my community, however, if a married woman engages in sexual intercourse with another man, then that would be the end of the marriage. We might also be having some “weird” practices, which I may be found very comfortable until people from other cultural backgrounds would say that they are not normal ways of life.
Conclusion
In conclusion, cultural aspects are vital practices in people’s lives. Individuals should choose aspects that impact them positively. Persons need to learn that changes are unavoidable in today’s life. Therefore, they should be able to adapt to them.
It will not make sense, for example, for a mother to kill one baby to nurse the other one, which is clearly shown in the novel. At first, the author doubts Nisa’s story, especially when she talks about the incident (killing the baby), but her storytelling techniques surpassed the author’s doubt. We should all be proud of our cultures since they give us a sense of identity.
References
Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (2013). Social cognition: From brains to culture. Hoboken, NJ: Sage.
Shostak, M. (2014). Nisa: The life and words of a! Kung woman. London, United Kingdom: Routledge.
Visweswaran, K. (2003). Defining feminist ethnography. Turning points in qualitative research: Tying knots in a handkerchief, 3(12), 73-94.