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Against a backdrop of calls for a more layered understanding of the dominant societal concerns which influence anthropologists' thinking, and thus the need to address the philosophies and assumptions that for so long misrepresented those characterized as 'primitive' along with others marked out as culturally or biologically inferior, I reflect on the existential crisis that engulfed Euroamerica in the early Cold War years. This was a threat anthropology was well placed to relieve; it did so in part by framing a natural 'primitive man' in opposition to 'civilized' humanity to restore the 'family of man' to psychic security. An image of 'Bushmen' etched by ethnographers rapidly emerged as a centerpiece of anthropological practice. I show how that image is indistinguishable from the fictional version popularized by Laurens van der Post and that both forms of it derive ultimately from the work of Jung. I argue that the image feeds readily into racialist discourse; thus, the time to render it obsolete has long passed. [primitiveness, Bushmen, modernity, race, academic-public discourse] Earlier versions of this essay were read as a Horizons of Knowledge lecture at Indiana University (1996), a Taft Lecture in Anthropology at the University of Cincinnati (2000), and as part of a faculty lecture series in the Department of Anthropology, University of California-Berkeley (1996). As well, between 1994 and 2001 versions were presented in seminars at the following universities:

Despite the important role that intra-party democracy plays in democratic consolidation, particularly in third-wave democracies, it has not received as much attention as inter-party democracy. Based on the Zambian polity, this article uses the concept of selectocracy to explain why, to a large extent, intra-party democracy has remained a refractory frontier. Two traits of intra-party democracy are examined: leadership transitions at party president-level and the selection of political party members for key leadership positions. The present study of four political parties: United National Independence Party (UNIP), Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), United Party for National Development (UPND) and Patriotic Front (PF) demonstrates that the iron law of oligarchy predominates leadership transitions and selection. Within this milieu, intertwined but fluid factors, inimical to democratic consolidation but underpinning selectocracy, are explained.