Completion of the text edition "The World of the Khwe Bushmen in Southern Africa. A self-portrait in their own language" by Oswin Köhler: Volumes 4.2, 5.1 and 5.2

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Rainer Voßen
• Subject Area: African, American and Oceania Studies
• Term: from 2021 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 492503248

The manuscripts for volumes 4.2, 5.1 and 5.2 of the encyclopaedia "The World of the Khwe Bushmen in Southern Africa" [Die Welt der Kxoé-Buschleute im südlichen Afrika] with vernacular texts on various aspects of Khwe culture and language (12 parts in five volumes) were produced as part of the the previous DFG-funded project. The primary aim of the project was to make the text material accessible for further research.The publication of the last three volumes (4.2, 5.1, 5.2) of the vernacular encyclopedia “The World of the Khwe Bushmen in Southern Africa” brings to a close a unique project of Africanist research, namely the undertaking to document comprehensive encyclopedic knowledge on as many areas of Khwe culture as possible through Khwe texts.In its entirety, Köhler’s Khwe encyclopedia represents an exceptionally rich collection of documents on Khwe cultural heritage as well as on their understanding of and being in the world, which should be made accessible not only to scholars but also to interested Khwe themselves. For the purpose of better accessibility and transparency concerning the process of its formation for both, Khwe and the scientific community, the texts were translated into English, enriched with grammatical glossing, detailed texthistorical analyses, concise tables of contents and extensive glossaries.The manuscripts provide valuable and comprehensive source material for further research in many fields of social and cultural anthropology as well as linguistics. This includes comparative Khoisan studies, recent research on relational ontologies of hunter-gatherer societies, reconstructive regional history of the Kalahari Basin, as well as Africanist history of science in general and the history of science in Namibia in particular. The texts present content that is missing in previous comparative research on Khoisan and hunter-gatherer societies.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants