Being Maasai
Subtitle: ethnicity & identity in East Africa
By: edited by Thomas Spear & Richard Waller.
Contributors: Spear, Thomas T.; Waller, Richard; African Studies Association. Meeting
Series: Eastern African studies; Eastern African studies (London, England)
Publisher: J. Currey; Mkuki na Nyota; EAEP; Ohio University Press
Published: 1993
Place of publication: London; Dar es Salaam; Nairobi; Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 322
Subjects: Masai (African people) -- Ethnic identity -- Congresses; Masai (African people) -- Social life and customs -- Congresses; Ethnicity -- Kenya -- Congresses; Ethnicity -- Tanzania -- Congresses
Description: "Everyone 'knows' the Maasai as proud pastoralists who once dominated the Rift Valley from northern Kenya to central Tanzania." "But many people who identify 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."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 303-316) and index.
Chiefly papers presented at the African Studies Association Meeting in Atlanta in 1989.