And it seethed with self-righteousness. By not recognizing the San for what they are an underclass, the poorest of the poor under comprador capitalism all other anthropologists were ideologically complicit in their subjugation. Since all anthropologists who have lived with the San are strongly committed to some notion of their rights and autonomy, naturally they were infuriated to be castigated as the dupes or tools of neo-colonialism. Rebuttals were soon forthcoming, and the controversy still rages. His linguistic, archeological, historical and ethnographic researches all converged on the same or on congruent conclusions.
Academics are the timid type in the best of circumstances.
By temperament they prefer to be the big fish in a pond however small. Specialization is the source and the limit of the academic s authority. The expert in one subfield, such as ethnography, cannot help but lose self-confidence something he probably never had very much of when his certitudes are impeached by researches in three other subfields. Wilmsen, by purporting to possess expertise in so many areas, intimidates the experts in all of them at first, anyway. But scholars have started checking up on Wilmsen, just as anarchists have started checking up on Bookchin, and with similar consequences.