Being Maasai: Ethnicity and Identity In East Africa

by Thomas Spear, Richard Waller (Contribution by), Thomas Spear (Editor), Richard Waller (Editor)

Overview

Everyone “knows” the Maasai as proud pastoralists who once dominated the Rift Valley from northern Kenya to central Tanzania.

But many people who identity themselves as Maasai, or who speak Maa, are not pastoralist at all, but farmers and hunters. Over time many different people have “become” something else. And what it means to be Maasai has changed radically over the past several centuries and is still changing today.

This collection by historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and linguists examines how Maasai identity has been created, evoked, contested, and transformed from the time of their earliest settlement in Kenya to the present, as well as raising questions about the nature of ethnicity generally.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780821445686
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	04/01/1993
Series:	Eastern African Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Thomas Spear received his doctorate in history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has written histories of Zwangendaba’s Ngoni, the Mijikenda (The Kaya Complex), eastern and central Kenya (Kenya’s Past),The Swahili (with Derek Nurse); and the Meru and Arusha peoples of Tanzania (Mountain Farmers). Formerly at La Trobe University and Williams College, he is professor of history emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Richard Waller is Professor Emeritus of History at Bucknell University.

Table of Contents

Cover Series Page Title Copyright Contents Maps, Figures & Illustrations Contributors Acknowledgements I. Introduction Introduction 1. Dialects, Sectiolects, or Simply Lects? The Maa Language in Time Perspective 2. Becoming Maasailand 3. Maasai Expansion and the New East African Pastoralism 4. Aspects of 'Becoming Turkana': Interactions and Assimilation Between Maa- and Ateker-Speakers 5. Defeat and Dispersal: The Laikipiak and their Neighbours at the End of the Nineteenth Century 6. Being 'Maasai', but not 'People of Cattle': Arusha Agricultural Maasai in the Nineteenth Century Introduction 7. Becoming Maasai, Being in Time 8. The World of Telelia: Reflections of a Maasai Woman in Matapato 9. 'The Eye that Wants a Person, Where Can It Not See?': Inclusion, Exclusion, and Boundary Shifters in Maasai Identity 10. Aesthetics, Expertise, and Ethnicity: Okiek and Maasai Perspectives on Personal Ornament Introduction 11. Acceptees and Aliens: Kikuyu Settlement in Maasailand 12. Land as Ours, Land as Mine: Economic, Political and Ecological Marginalization in Kajiado District 13. Maa-Speakers of the Northern Desert: Recent Developments in Ariaal and Rendille Identity V. Conclusions Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

"The editors have succeeded in assembling a remarkably integrated set of essays that is at once the most historical study of the Maasai yet published and a significant contribution to the growing volume of literature on ethnicity and identity in Africa." --Charles Ambler, University of Texas, El Paso

"This is a rich collection, crammed with information presented from several different analytical perspectives, and the pieces repeatedly offer valuable critical insights on each other."--Justin Willis, British Institute in Eastern Africa

From the Publisher