Richard Borshay Lee

Richard Borshay Lee is a Canadian cultural anthropologist whose research on the Ju/'hoansi of the Kalahari shaped modern hunter-gatherer studies.

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Ju/'hoansi: A San people of the Kalahari whose communities span parts of Namibia and Botswana. Lee’s long-term fieldwork focused on Ju/'hoansi communities and their social life.
Original Affluent Society: A theory that some hunter-gatherers met their material needs with limited work and substantial leisure. Lee’s evidence on Ju/'hoansi subsistence helped support and complicate this influential account.
Irven DeVore: An American biological anthropologist who studied primate behavior and human evolution. DeVore co-organized the Man the Hunter symposium with Lee.
Cultural anthropology: The study of human cultures, social practices, meanings, and forms of organization. Lee’s ethnographic research belongs to this anthropological tradition.
Forager Mode of Production: A framework for analyzing the social relations and resource practices of hunter-gatherer societies. This framework contrasts with accounts that treat San life chiefly as a result of external economic integration.
Dobe Ju/'hoansi: Ju/'hoansi communities centered around Dobe in northwestern Botswana. Lee’s best-known field research was conducted in the Dobe area.
Hunter-gatherer: A person or society that obtains food primarily by hunting wild animals and gathering wild plants. Lee’s research influenced how anthropologists compare foraging societies.
Marshall Sahlins: An American anthropologist known for work on economic anthropology, culture, and colonial history. Sahlins’s account of affluence framed debates in which Lee’s findings were widely discussed.
Ethnography: The systematic description and analysis of a community based on sustained research, often including fieldwork. Lee built his accounts through long-term ethnographic research among Ju/'hoansi.
Primitive Communism: A theory that some early human societies held resources collectively and lacked class divisions. Lee’s findings on sharing were sometimes read through this broader political-economic idea.