Bureaucratizing the indigenous

The San peoples, Botswana, and the international community

Bibliographic Data

ID6136515
AuthorsMaria Sapignoli (0000-0002-1241-2315, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume25
Issue2
Publication date2023-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueArchivio antropologico mediterraneo (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2038-3215 • E-ISSN: 2038-3215
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/aam.7563
OpenAlexW4390636777
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited51

This article examines the relationship between the San people and the post-colonial Botswana state as manifest in bureaucratic practices. These practices illustrate the dynamic between the state’s control and care toward its most discriminated groups and indigenous resistance, incorporation, and cooptation. It considers how Botswana, through the introduction of development policies and laws to regulate hunting, has encapsulated the San into state institutions and practices; it also illustrates, though the example of San activism, how indigenous peoples try to appropriate state institutions and international development models to formalize their resistance through non-governmental organizations. Bureaucratic processes have, on one hand, been experienced by the San as part of the problem of state-sponsored assimilation and control, while, on the other hand, they have been also utilized as part of the solution for seeking basic rights and recognition

Bureaucracy · Colonialism · Economic growth · Economics · Indigenous · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · State (computer science · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · Law · Public Administration · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology · South African History and Culture · Ecology