Reply to Gewald: Isolated Himba settlements still exist in Kaokoland [Letter to the editor]

Sauter, D., Eisner, F., Ekman, P., & Scott, S. K. (2010). Reply to Gewald: Isolated Himba settlements still exist in Kaokoland [Letter to the editor]. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(18), E76. doi:10.1073/pnas.1002264107.
We agree with Gewald (1) that historical and anthropological accounts are essential tools for understanding the Himba culture, and these accounts are valuable to both us and him. However, we contest his claim that the Himba individuals in our study were not culturally isolated. Gewald (1) claims that it would be “unlikely” that the Himba people with whom we worked had “not been exposed to the affective signals of individuals from cultural groups other than their own” as stated in our paper (2). Gewald (1) seems to argue that, because outside groups have had contact with some Himba, this means that these events affected all Himba. Yet, the Himba constitute a group of 20,000-50,000 people (3) living in small settlements scattered across the vast Kaokoland region, an area of 49,000 km2 (4).
Publication type
Journal article
Publication date
2010

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