Always Here, Even Tomorrow

About the Book

“As a post-modernist myself, I loved Carstens’ approach to the Nama material: the mixed genres (letters, official documents, narrative, autobiography), the intertextuality, the split subject, the reversal of time's arrow, the indeterminate end/thesis, the self-reflexive complicit author, and the flattening of distinctions between the written and the oral.” Sandra Chait, PhD Lecturer on African Literature & Associate Director of the Program on Africa University of Washington “This work should be read by anyone preparing to enter the field. It is a real-life statement on the ethnographer's methodology. In narrative form rather than in the usual dry textbook form, Carstens clearly points out the process of observing, listening, asking questions, taking and analysing notes, and returning to check conclusions.” John Jackson Professor Emeritus of Sociology Concordia University “Thank you very much for letting me read a moving account of the Nama people. It was a precious reading experience to share the journey of discovery along a painful history of the people. Carstens has skilfully meshed anthropology and personal accounts of the people who shared his stay and who helped him, as Ouma said, ‘to meet real people with proper ideas based on their knowledge and experience of the actual world’.” Shuichi Nagata Professor of Social/Cultural Anthropology University of Toronto

About the Author

Peter Carstens is a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. He was born in South Africa where he received his academic training as a social anthropologist. He immigrated to Canada in 1965.