Spirituality, shifting identities and social change: Cases from the Kalahari landscape

Abstract

Storytelling, art and craft can be considered aesthetic expressions of identities. Kalahari identities are not fixed, but fluid. Research with present-day Kalahari People regarding their artistic expression and places where it has been, and is still, practised highlights that these expressions are informed by spirituality. This article explores this idea via two Kalahari case studies: Water Stories recorded in the Upington, Kakamas area, as well as research on a specific rock engraving site at Biesje Poort near Kakamas. The importance of the Kalahari People’s spiritual beliefs as reflected in these case studies and its significance regarding their identities and influence on social change and/or community development projects is discussed. The article thus highlights ways in which spirituality can be considered in relation to social change projects that are characterised by partnerships between local community, non-government and tertiary education representatives and researchers and that highlight storytelling as an integral part of people’s spirituality.

Rethinking the researcher-researched relationship

“…In spite of this, the research area and its people reflect the diversity of roots within southern Africa (Adhikanri, 2009). Studies with people of Khoisan 4 descent have found that shifting identities are largely due to displacement, social, political and religious influences, access to resources, and development or social change opportunities (Lange & Dyll-Myklebust, 2015:2; also see White, 1995). Whether performing a traditional Bushman identity, or a contemporary hybridised identity many ǂKhomani place importance on managing the representation of their own identity, either to gain an income or as a strategic impulse to combat exploitative representations (Bester & Buntman 1999;Buntman, 1996a;1996b;Tomaselli, 2012), as will be discussed in this article.…”

“…Our question is: how does one do this when research participants insist that their names be part of the public record and when the stories they tell us often take the form of self-narratives, slipping into storytelling that is imbued with local metaphors and meaning? (Dyll-Myklebust, 2014;Lange & Dyll-Myklebust, 2015). If academia ignores this nuance where research participants perform their local identities it becomes exclusionary as it produces a discourse that "author-ises certain people to speak and correspondingly silences other, or at least makes their voices less authoritative" (Usher & Edwards 1994:90).…”

“…Research with present-day Kalahari people regarding their artistic expression and places where it has been, and is still practiced highlights that these expressions are informed by spirituality 10 (Lange & Dyll-Myklebust, 2015). Although the spiritual beliefs of the community are as real to them as food in their stomachs, as researchers we needed to ask ourselves how we make sense of these oral narratives which speaks in imagery and reflect both the tangible and intangible.…”

“…However, a "determinist view of the Kalahari People's relationship with the land denies agency" (Lange & Dyll-Myklebust;2015:7). In order to facilitate agency we, as researchers, need to engage with the original role of orality as a needed non-judgmental space for the sharing of spiritual beliefs, especially where they may differ from those held by the majority (Crisp & Beddoe, 2013).…”

Towards a multi-method approach to addressing violent protest action in South Africa: A practical theology perspective

“…Life narrative research 10 can also help to reconstruct the tragic life story of Mambush -a rock-drill operator with no official rank who emerged from the mass of black workers -to gain insight into his vision for better employment conditions and human well-being (cf. Lange & Dyll-Myklebust 2015). The visional dimension relates, therefore, to a normative perspective of life and informs a new humanity.…”