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.
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.
“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
Thomas Spearreceived his doctorate in history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has written histories ofZwangendaba’s Ngoni,the Mijikenda(The Kaya Complex),eastern and central Kenya(Kenya’s Past),The Swahili(with Delƒ9
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