“Once Intrepid Warriors”: Modernity and the Production of Maasai Masculinities

Abstract

Mentioning “the Maasai” usually invokes images of warriors, of men herding cattle, of proud patriarchs:

The most picturesque people in East Africa are those of a tribe which has changed little of its ways since the advent of the White Man—the Masai. The tourist, when he spots a Masai herding his beloved cattle, or leaning gracefully on the haft of his long bladed spear, cannot but feel the spirit of Africa of yesterday (“Kilusu” 1956–1957:135)

As this quotation indicates, such romanticized images of Maasai,² particularly male Maasai, as immutable icons of traditional Africa have been shared by many Westerners, from the first explorers and missionaries in the nineteenth century to the tourists taking their pictures today Many would sympathize with the sentiments of a 1989 letter to The New York Times that lamented the fate of Maasai in Tanzania:

After reading your … [article] from Tanzania, which asks if the fate of the semi-nomadic Masai people is at last to be fenced in, I was horrified to learn that Tanzania is encouraging subjugation and ultimate obliteration of some of its oldest and noblest inhabitants, the once free and beautiful Masai.

Now they are supposed to be farmers. They know nothing of farming. They are nomadic herdsmen and once intrepid warriors.

Research for this article has been carried out since 1985, supported by awards from Fulbright-Hays, the Social Science Research Council, the National Science Foundation (BNS #9114350), the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and fellowships and grants from the University of Michigan and Rutgers University. I am indebted to the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology for permission to do the research, and to Professor C.K. Omari and the Department of Sociology at the University of Dar es Salaam for research affiliation. I am most grateful to my research assistant Morani Poyoni, and to the men and women in my field sites who have shared their stories, ideas, and lives with me. Belinda Blinkoff, Andrew Bickford, and Lisa Vanderlinden provided research and translation assistance at Rutgers, and numerous friends and colleagues commented on earlier drafts of this article, including Barbara Cooper, Ruthie Gilmore, Craig Gilmore, Cindi Katz, Alice Kessler-Harris, Lisa Lindsay, Kristin Mann, Jane Parpart, Rick Schroeder, Richard Waller and Mayfair Yang. Earlier versions were presented to the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University (1994), the Department of Anthropology Colloquium Series at the University of Georgia (1996), the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women (1996), the annual meeting of the African Studies Association (1996), the faculty seminar “Racial States” at Rutgers University (1996), the conference “Research and the Production of Knowledge in Africa” sponsored by Rice University and Texas Southern University (1997), and the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (1998).