Situating safari tourism within the discourses and practices of development, Selling the Serengeti examines the relationship between the Maasai people of northern Tanzania and the extraordinary ...influence of foreign-owned ecotourism and big-game hunting companies. It contrasts two major approaches to community conservation—international NGO and state-sponsored conservation efforts on the one hand and the neoliberal private investment in tourism on the other—and investigates their profound effect on the Maasai's culture and livelihood. It further explores how these changing social and economic forces remake the terms through which state institutions and local people engage with foreign investors, communities, and their own territories. And finally it highlights how the new tourism arrangements change the shape and meaning of the nation- state and the village and in the process remake cultural belonging and citizenship. Benjamin Gardner's experiences in Tanzania began during a study-abroad trip in 1991. His stay led to a relationship with the nation and the Maasai people in Loliondo lasting almost twenty years; it also marked the beginning of his analysis of and ethnographic research into social movements, market-led conservation, and neoliberal development around the Serengeti.
In Africa, why have so many more women converted to Christianity than
men? What explains the appeal of Christianity to women? What does religious
conversion mean for the negotiation of gender and ...ethnic identity? What role does
religious conversion play as a tool for empowering women? In The Church of Women,
Dorothy L. Hodgson looks at how gender has shaped the encounter between missionary
priests and Maasai men and women in Tanzania. Building on her extensive experience
with Maasai and the Spiritan missionaries, Hodgson explores how gendered change
among Maasai has shaped women's notions of religious faith, religious practice, and
spiritual power. Hodgson explores the appeal of Catholicism among women in East
Africa, the enmeshing of Catholic practice with Maasai spirituality, and the meaning
of conversion to new Christians. This rich, engaging, and original book challenges
notions about religious encounter and the role of ethnic identity, female authority,
and power among Maasai.
In the last century, mobile pastoralists around the world have transitioned to more sedentary lifestyles. Traditionally mobile people can be both pushed to settle by environmental or political ...forces, and pulled by new economic activities. While researchers have examined the causes and consequences of growing sedentarization, few contemporary studies have focused on the spatial patterns of settlement. This study examines settlement site selection using GIS and remote sensing techniques to quantify patterns and correlates of settlement location in four Maasai communities in northern Tanzania. We identify landscape scale factors that shape settlement locations and test the competing hypotheses that settlement is associated with: (1) resource access; (2) environmental constraints; and (3) infrastructural amenities. Spatial models offer support for each hypothesis, with slight variations. However, a combined model offers the greatest predictive power suggesting significant heterogeneity in site selection and/or a transition in selection criteria over time. These findings characterize a poorly understood aspect of the settlement of mobile groups, and point to new questions regarding the spatial drivers and consequences of sedentarization.
•Settlement location is presented as an important but under-examined aspect of sedentarization.•Agro-pastoralist Maasai, like other groups, have increasingly settled in recent decades.•We use GIS and remote sensing to quantify patterns and correlates of settlement location in 4 Maasai communities in Tanzania.•We evaluate 3 hypotheses: location is associated with resource access, environmental constraints, and infrastructure.•Spatial models offer support for each hypothesis, with slight variations, characterizing a poorly understood issue.
This paper examines the ways in which Tanzanian conservation authorities utilise biodiversity “extinction narratives” in order to legitimise the use of violence in redrawing protected areas’ ...boundaries. Militarisation and violence in conservation have often been associated with the “war on poaching”. Drawing on the history of conservation and violence in Tanzania, and using an empirical case from Loliondo, the paper suggests that violence in conservation may be legitimised when based on extinction narratives and a claim that more exclusive spaces are urgently needed to protect biodiversity. It argues that the emerging militarisation and use of violence in Tanzania can be associated with both global biodiversity extinction and local neo‐Malthusian narratives, which recently have regained predominance. When combined with “othering” of groups of pastoralists by portraying them as foreign “invaders”, such associations legitimise extensions of state control over contested land by any means available, including violence.
The aim of this book is to give the first large-scale typological investigation of pluractionality in the languages of the world. Pluractionality is defined as the morphological modification of the ...verb to express a plurality of situations that can additionally involve a plurality of participants and/or spaces. Based on a 246-language sample, the main characteristics of pluractionality are described and discussed throughout the book. Firstly, a description of the functions that pluractional markers cross-linguistically express is presented and the relationships occurring among them are explained through the semantic map model. Then, the marking strategies that languages display to express such functions are illustrated and some issues concerning the formal identification are briefly discussed as well. The typological generalizations are corroborated showing how pluractional markers work in three specific languages (Akawaio, Beja, Maa). In conclusion, the theoretical conceptualization of pluractionality is discussed referring to the Radical Construction Grammar approach.
Background The Amref Alternative Rites of Passage (ARP) model was initiated in 2009. To date, about 20,000 girls have been supported by their communities to denounce female genital mutilation/cutting ...(FGM/C) and graduate into ‘maturity’ through ARP. While this intervention has been implemented for decades, there is limited evidence of its effectiveness in ending FGM/C. In order to ascertain the effectiveness of this intervention, Amref has developed a digital tracking tool to follow up on girls who have and haven’t gone through the ARP. The key research question is: what effect does ARP have on incidences of FGM/C, teenage pregnancy and child, early and forced marriages among adolescent girls and young women? Methods The study will adopt a stepped-wedge cluster randomised controlled trial design to assess the effectiveness of the ARP model on the incidence of FGM/C; teenage pregnancy; child, early and forced marriage; and educational attainment. We selected one cluster in Kajiado County where recent ARPs have been conducted as the intervention site at the beginning of the study and 3 wards/clusters in Narok County as control sites. Approximately 604 girls aged 10-18 years who reside in selected sites/clusters in Kajiado and Narok counties will be recruited and followed up for 3 years post-exposure. Quantitative data analysis will be conducted at bivariate and multivariate levels. Content/thematic analysis approach will be used to analyse qualitative data. Ethics and dissemination The study obtained ethical approval from the Amref Ethics and Scientific Review Committee (AMREF-ESRC P1051-2021). The findings of this study will be shared with local, national and regional stakeholders working in ending FGM/C, teenage pregnancy, and child, early and forced marriages. Registration – Pan-African Clinical Trials Registry (PACTR202208731662190).
The present study assessed the roles of Village Land Councils (VLC) in mitigating land conflicts before they got out of their control. Data was collected through questionnaire surveys, key informant ...interviews, and document reviews. A total of 136 participants were involved. The qualitative and quantitative data were analyzed using content analysis and SPSS, respectively. Findings show that village land councils had a minimal role in mitigating land conflicts due to the low literacy level of their members, a lack of VLC capacity building, a lack of chain of command in the conflict mediation and resolution process, biased decisions, ethnism, and corruption. As a result, communities use public courts of law to resolve land conflicts, contrary to the directives of the Village Land Act of 1999. It is concluded that, despite the shortcomings of the Village Land Act, village land councils that were designed to conduct reconciliation meetings and be village courts for reconciliation at the village level have failed to achieve the set objectives. The study recommend a review of the Village Land Act, capacity building for VLC members, setting secondary level education as one of the eligibility criteria for council membership, and weeding out corruption.
Animal health service providers can play an important role in limiting drug resistance by promoting responsible and prudent use of veterinary drugs. Recognizing this potential, international agencies ...and governments have called for these providers to receive drug stewardship training, particularly providers in low- and middle-income countries where top-down regulations (e.g., national regulation of veterinary prescriptions) are largely unfeasible. The success of these stewardship trainings to promote responsible and prudent use will depend on many factors, including understanding how livestock-keeping communities currently interact with animal health service providers. Here, we use a mixed methods approach to identify and understand animal health seeking practices among Maasai pastoralists in Tanzania. Combining qualitative interviews (N = 31) and structured surveys (N = 195), we show the majority of Maasai respondents (≈80 %) do not frequently consult animal health service providers with most relying on advice from family and friends. Logistic regression models of health seeking practices find that increasing age, education, observance of treatment failure, and herd disease burdens are associated with greater odds of seeking out health services. Quantitative results were supported by data from focus group discussions and in-depth interviews that showed Maasai view animal health service providers as measures of last resort, whose input is largely sought after self-treatment with veterinary drugs fail. We argue patterns of animal health seeking among the Maasai are partially the consequence of their high confidence in their own abilities in livestock disease and treatment and generally low confidence in the skills of animal health service providers. We link this high sense of self-efficacy to the culturally engrained process by which Maasai develop mastery in animal health and how the roles and norms in Maasai culture surrounding animal health influence Maasai perceptions of animal health professionals. Our results highlight the need for more research to understand Maasai perceptions of animal health service providers as well as the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of these providers. Finally, our study emphasizes that the success of drug stewardship trainings will require efforts to first understand the cultural and historical contexts driving health seeking practices that impact perceptions of animal health service providers and animal health practices more generally.
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