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by Kaj Arhem (Author)
The Maasai: Essays on Culture, Conservation and the Pastoral Predicament is a richly illustrated exploration of Maasai life in Tanzania's Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Combining ethnographic essays with full-color and black-and-white photography, the book offers both cultural depth and striking visual impact.
Highlights include:
- Penetrating portrait of age-old Maasai culture and pastoral lifeways
- Close study of the Ngorongoro Maasai living under "conservation rule"
- Analysis of homestead symbolism, pastoral diet, and plant-based medicine
- Critical discussion of the politics of wildlife conservation in Maasailand
- Epilogue on the Maasai's current struggle against eviction from their homeland
This volume gathers a selection of anthropological essays on the pastoral Maasai, based on the author's fieldwork in Ngorongoro, Tanzania, during the 1980s. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area, world-famous for its rich wildlife, is also home to a large population of Maasai livestock herders. The essays provide a penetrating portrait of Maasai culture and the predicament of the Ngorongoro Maasai who, evicted from the adjoining Serengeti National Park in the 1950s, now live under "conservation rule." The book is richly produced and illustrated with the author's color and black-and-white photographs.
Drawing on both published sources and extensive fieldwork, the first three essays examine little-studied aspects of Maasai culture, including the symbolic meanings of their apparently simple homesteads (kraals), their unique pastoral diet of milk, meat, and blood, and their ideas about medicine-based almost entirely on wild plants.
The final essays critically explore the politics of wildlife conservation in Tanzanian Maasailand, focusing on its consequences for the Maasai pastoralists living in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The Epilogue provides an update on the precarious situation of the Ngorongoro Maasai who, constrained by grazing restrictions and expanding safari tourism, face imminent eviction from their ancestral lands.
Altogether, the book offers a rare combination of accessible ethnographic analysis and engaged critical research-amounting to a powerful plea for the Maasai's right to continue their pastoral way of life. Although centered on the Maasai, the essays address issues confronting many of the world's indigenous peoples. The author's work among the Ngorongoro Maasai is recognized as an early and seminal contribution to political ecology, exploring the often conflictive relationship between indigenous peoples and conservationists.
About the Author: Kaj Århem is emeritus professor in Social Anthropology at the University of Gothenburg and Senior Research Associate at the Dept. of Cultural Anthropology, Uppsala University. His books include Pastoral Man in the Garden of Eden: The Maasai of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania (1985), Makuna: Portrait of an Amazonian People (1998), and Animism in Southeast Asia (2016), coedited with Guido Sprenger.
