Hunting Justice: Displacement, Law, and Activism in the Kalahari by Maria Sapignoli (review)
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Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral institutions such as the United Nations have focused increasingly on the rights of indigenous peoples. With the passage of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in September 2007, the United Nations committed itself to the promotion of indigenous peoples' rights. Maria Sapignoli's Hunting Justice: Displacement, Law, and Activism in the Kalahari is a well-conceived, well argued, and innovative study of a Southern African indigenous peoples' social justice and human rights movement, which is assessed at a variety of different scales: local, national, regional (the African continent), and international. The book is beautifully written, without jargon, well organized, and follows a logical set of arguments.
The book takes on in great detail the contested topics of indigeneity as a legal and economic category and activism in Africa. The concept of indigeneity has been a focus of extensive debate regionally and internationally since the late 1980s and continues to be a major source of discussion both in academia and in the indigenous world up to the present. This in itself makes the book significant.
Sapignoli's fine book explores wider issues of indigenous peoples' rights through the case of the Central Kalahari using a comparative and multi-sited analysis rich in theoretical connections. It also examines trends in the fields of socio-legal studies, indigenous peoples' rights, and anthropology. It considers debates about indigenous peoples, individual and collective (group) rights, the relationship between recognition and redistribution, environmental conservation, claims-making processes, and the effects of legal activism in people(s) everyday lives.
There are several qualities of this book that make it significant. While Sapignoli is dealing with some of the most studied people in all of anthropology, her approach in this book is groundbreaking in its consideration of the lengthy quest for justice by the San peoples of Botswana—and of its widely ramifying effects. The book follows San representatives and activists in a process through which the categories and templates of state and international law are appropriated, incorporated, and resignified in making justice claims, while at the same time new legal norms are created through these practices. The ethnographic analysis of the San perceptions and practice of rights, their relationship with the dominant legal systems, and their activism and political engagement, are all topics that are understudied in the San literature. Her analysis considers how both global and local forces were driving enormous social, economic, and political change in the Central Kalahari. At the same time, her approach and insights underscore the resistance, resilience, and engagement of the San and their neighbors to many of these forces.
Dr. Sapignoli weaves into her book the life stories of several memorable San individuals, John Hardbattle, Roy Sesana, and Jumanda Gakelebone, two of whom she worked with closely over a decade.1 She places these individuals in rich historical, sociological, and political contexts. In the process, she deals with complex issues such as egalitarianism [End Page 202] and inequality, the complexities of indigenous leadership and of the institutionalization of indigenous peoples' movements, the attempts of co-option by the state, and the conflicts that sometimes arise among individuals and organizations with diverse agendas, leading to the development of "indigenous elites."2 The book also shows indigenous peoples attempts to influence the development of international law through their participation in UN meetings over several years.
What is refreshing about this volume is that it pulls no punches. It discusses the steps and missteps that were taken by the San and Bakgalagadi in the Central Kalahari and those of the organizations and individuals working with them. It looks critically at all of the NGOs, both local and international, that played significant roles in the extended battle over San and Bakgalagadi rights in Botswana.
Sapignoli points out that the San and other indigenous peoples are increasingly seeking recourse to the law, and she theorizes this observation as a wider problem that applies not...
