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Being Maasai: Ethnicity and Identity In East Africa (Eastern African Studies) Paperback – April 1, 1993

by Thomas Spear (Editor), Richard Waller (Editor)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 1 rating
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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.

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  1. Part of series
    Eastern African Studies
  2. Print length
    336 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Ohio University Press
  5. Publication date
    April 1, 1993
  6. Dimensions
    5.25 x 0.9 x 8.5 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    0821410458
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0821410455
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“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

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.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ohio University Press; First Edition (April 1, 1993)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0821410458
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0821410455
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.16 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.9 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 1 rating

About the author

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Thomas T. Spear

Thomas T. Spear

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Bio Sketch:

While serving in the Peace Corps in Tanzania, I became fascinated with exploring the little known history of Africa and Africans. In pursuit of this, I have conducted extensive fieldwork in Kenya and Tanzania and written widely on pre-colonial history and the methods historians employ to recover, reconstruct, and interpret it. I have taught at Latrobe University in Australia, Williams College, and the University of Wisconsin, where I also served as Director of the African Studies Program and Chair of the History Department. I have served as editor of the Journal of African History, was founding editor in chief of Oxford Bibliographies Online in African Studies, and am founding and current editor in chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. I have received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Council of Learned Societies, among others, for my research.

Research Interests:

Pre-colonial African History, East African History, Southern African history, and historical methods and theory.

Selected Publications:

* East African Expressions of Christianity (ed., with I.N. Kimambo). Oxford: James Currey; Athens, Ohio; Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota: Nairobi: EAEP, 1999.

* Mountain Farmers: Moral Economies of Land and Agricultural Development in Arusha and Meru. Oxford: James Currey, Berkeley: California, Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota, 1997.

* Being Maasai: Ethnicity and Identity in East Africa (ed., with Richard Waller). London: James Curry, Athens: Ohio, Nairobi, EAEP, Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota, 1993.

* The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 800-1500. (with Derek Nurse). Philadelphia: Pennsylvania, 1985.

* Kenya's Past: An Introduction to Historical Method in Africa. London and New York: Longman, 1981.

* The Kaya Complex: A History of the Mijikenda Peoples of the Kenya Coast to 1900. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau, 1978.

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
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Top review from the United States

Jose Melendez
4.0 out of 5 stars the symbiosis sometimes seems to boil down to Maasai looking at their cultivating neighbors and saying "Farming crops is kind of stupid, by the way
Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2017
Verified Purchase
This is really only a book for anthropologists, people particularly interested in pastoralism, and, perhaps... perhaps... Kenya/Tanzania experts, none of which I am. That said, amidst the impenetrable academe, there are a few tidbits that are both interesting and comprehensible to even the dimmest of Africanists. The big one is that, contrary to the popular imagination, lots of "Maasai" have been something other than pure pastoralists for a long time. The catch, of course, is that there has been a tendency by both outsiders and, at times, Maasai themselves to regard those who cultivate or gather (or even hunt) as not Maasai. This is actually quite interesting because it gets into how class differentiations can harden into ethnic identity--think the Hutu and Tutsi.

Nevertheless, there doesn't seem to be the same historical antagonism between the Maasai and their fellow Maa speakers with different economic lives as there is in other regions. In fact, there seems to be a lot of symbiosis. That said, the symbiosis sometimes seems to boil down to Maasai looking at their cultivating neighbors and saying "Farming crops is kind of stupid, by the way, we had a cattle disease epidemic, so can we have some crops?"
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