The Mountain People - Softcover

Colin M. Turnbull

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671640984 ISBN 13: 9780671640989

Publisher: Touchstone, 1987

Synopsis

In "The Mountain People," Colin The Forest People" - describes the dehumanization of the Ik, African tribesmen who in less than three generations have deteriorated from being once-prosperous hunters to scattered bands of hostile, starving people whose only goal is individual survival.

Forbidden by the Ugandan government to hunt game in the Kidepo National Park, the Ik are compelled to farm and forage for food in the barren mountain heights adjoining the park. Drought and starvation have made them a strange and heartless people, mistrustful of their own kind - their days occupied with constant competition and the search for food. Isolated from one another, each family is separated in its own compound within the village's fortress walls. And each family is itself divided: husbands, wives, and children remorselessly avoid helping one another find food.

Sad, disturbing, and eloquently written, "The Mountain People" is a moving meditation on human nature, our capacity for goodness, and the fragility of human society. It is a brilliant, modern classic of anthropology.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

In 'The Mountain People', Colin M. Turnbull, the celebrated author of the classic 'The Forest People', describes the dehumanization of the Ik, African tribesmen who in less than three generations have deteriorated from being once-prosperous hunters to scattered bands of hostile, starving people whose only goal is individual survival.

About the Author:

Colin M. Turnbull was born in London, and now lives in Connecticut. He was educated at Westminster School and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied philosophy and politics. After serving in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during World War II, he held a research grant for two years in the Department of Indian Religion and Philosophy at Banaras Hindu University, in India, and then returned to Oxford, where he studied anthropology, specializing in the African field.

He has made five extended field trips to Africa, the last of which was spent mainly in the Republic of Zaïre. From these trips he drew the material for his first book, The Forest People, an account of the three years he spent with the Pygmies of Zaïre.

Mr. Turnbull was a Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He is a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and a Corresponding Member of Le Musée Royal d'Afrique Centrale.

About this edition

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0671640984
• ISBN 13: 9780671640989
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320