Traditional societies & commercial farming
Long before tractors, fences and shops, people in Namibia and across Southern Africa fed themselves in a completely different way — hunting, gathering, herding cattle and growing a little food for their own family. In this lesson we meet the traditional societies (hunter-gatherers like the San, pastoralists like the Himba, nomads and settled agriculturalists), look closely at how traditional society worked — communal land, simple tools, seasonal farming and strong cultural life — and see how colonialism, peasant farming and cash cropping changed it. Then we cross over to modern commercial farming: machines, monoculture, plantations, large projects like Namibia's Green Scheme, and crop rotation. We finish with a clear side-by-side comparison of subsistence and commercial farming.
By the end you should be able to (NSSCO Development Studies 5.1):
- Describe traditional societies with reference to hunter-gatherers, nomadic people, pastoralists and agriculturalists, using Namibian examples (San, Himba/Ovahimba, nomadic herders)
- Describe the nature of traditional society: communal land use and ownership, division of labour by age and gender, simple tools, seasonal agriculture, social and cultural activities, dependence on the local environment, changes to traditional farming in pre-colonial times, the impact of colonialism, and the development of peasant farming and cash cropping
- Describe and illustrate examples of commercial farming — modern tools and technology, monoculture, large-scale projects, plantations and crop rotation — and contrast subsistence with commercial farming
Miss Catherine and Mike talk through the whole topic — with the figure and working drawn live.