Introduction to From Mukogodo to Masai

1. Introduction to From Mukogodo to Masai

2. Some Basic Facts about Kenya Independence in 1963 from Britain About twice the size of Nevada 37 million people Major exports: tea, horticultural products (flowers shipped to Europe), coffee Democracy although last presidential and parliamentary election (2007) marred by fraud and riots Provides shelter to almost a million refugees from Somalia and Uganda

3. The Laikipia Plateau

4. Lee Cronk Anthropology Department, Rutgers University (NB) Lived among the Mukogodo, 1986-87, 1992, 1993 His interest: human behavioral ecology

5. Oil Consumption per person, 2006

6. What did it mean for the Mukogodo to be hunters and gatherers?

7. �The Original Affluent Society�

8. Some anthropological terms Exogamy = marrying outside your group Endogamy = marrying inside your group Lineage exogamy = marrying outside your lineage Patrilocal = answers the question of where the married couple live: they live with the husband�s family or where the husband grew up after marriage

9. Aidan Southall�s Definition of �Tribe� �A whole society with a high degree of self-sufficiency at a near subsistence level based on a relatively simple technology without writing or literature, politically autonomous and with its own distinctive language, culture, and sense of identity.� Would you add anything to this definition? Do you see anything wrong with this definition given the reading so far?

10. Tribe vs. ethnicity

11. Ethnicity in Africa and European Colonialism Europeans grouped people together; they spoke similar languages but didn�t think of themselves as a single tribe Europeans grouped them into tribes and created chiefs on the basis of physical features to control them through indirect rule This allowed elders to have more control in determining �tradition� to control the younger men and women. European missionaries and African intellectuals involved in language translation Migrant men were more prone to tradition to control women in the rural areas---through hometown associations

12. �It was not that people were an undifferentiated mass, but that they were differentiated in many subtle and complex ways for different purposes� (Southall, p. 43) �Most Africans moved in and out of multiple identities, defining themselves at one moment as subject to this chief, at another moment as part of this cult, at another moment as part of this clan, and at yet another moment as an initiate in that professional guild� (Ranger, p. 603).