Kung People

¶ … People Feed Themselves?" The authors discuss global hunger problems and food insecurity as a direct result of colonialism. Colonialism left a legacy of exploitation of both human and natural resources. "One side was on top largely because the other side was on the bottom," (Lappe and Collins 182).

Colonialism dismantled traditional social and political structures successively over multiple generations, disrupted the transmission of knowledge related to the natural world, led to patterns of forced migration of laborers to work on plantations as slaves or slave-like laborers, and systematically preventing people from growing their own food on a small subsistence scale. Through a collection of nefarious interventions, colonial governments and their successors in modern nation-states have maintained an imbalance of power.

The answer to the question "why can't people feed themselves" cannot be answered with the overly simple response of "overpopulation." Instead, the answer lies in a deeper examination of social, political, and economic injustice. People cannot feed themselves because of the "heritage of a colonial order," (Lappe and Collins 183). Two important statements or points made by the authors in support of their overall argument include the concept of colonies as "agricultural establishments," and the "overemphasis on export productions" that later arose from the capitalist agricultural model.

On the first point, Lappe and Collins argue that colonial powers like France and England treated their colonies as extensions of themselves. As "agricultural establishments," the colonies were deemed ripe for the taking. All natural and human resources were thereby repossessed, misappropriated, and exploited. On the second point, Lappe and Collins note that the rise of agribusiness relied on a system in which labor was devalued and laborers dehumanized. The "divorce of agriculture from nourishment" was essential to the capitalist model (Lappe and Collins 184). 2.

Filmmaker John Marshall began filming the !Kung people in northern Namibia in the 1950s, and follows up on N!ai's life several decades later. The first portion of the film is therefore decidedly different from the second portion, after which N!ai and her family have been forced to live on a small parcel of government land. In the 1950s, when the documentary was first being filmed, N!ai lived a more traditional life, whereas now, they can no longer practice their traditional means of hunting and gathering for food.

Instead of connecting their labor with their food, the !Kung people now have to earn money in the capitalist way, completely divorced from the means of production. Men join the army and women pose for tourists in order to make money, and Lappe and Collins would note that all the !Kung people are being exploited. N!ai: The Story of a !Kung Woman shows that the systematic exploitation of people around the world did not necessarily end when colonialism ended.

As Lappe and Collins put it, there is still a "heritage of a colonial order," (183). Traditional means of subsistence living are no longer viable, which is why people cannot feed themselves. People like N!ai and other people in her village are tacitly forced to sell their bodies; for men, their bodies are sold to the army and for women, their bodies are sold either to tourists who want photos or.