Grounds for Appeal: Maasai Customary Claims and Conflicts

Authors

  • John G. Galaty McGill University

Abstract

In a 1994 episode, Maasai herders from Ewuaso were prevented from watering livestock at wells along the border between two group ranches, but, before strife escalated, the police established control. After such events, talk puts a "local construction" on the event, framing, highlighting, justifying and reinterpreting it to certain aims and purposes. This article discusses the backdrop to conflict in Ewuaso: the subdivision and privatization of group lands, competition for land by political factions and age-sets, claims by the locally powerful and the high Kenyan politics of grabbing land and forging electoral alliances, as global forces appear as local faces.

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Author Biography

John G. Galaty, McGill University

John Galaty is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Society, Technology and Development at McGill University. He has pursued research on pastoral societies in East Africa, currently collaborates with the ALARM network in Eastern Africa in pursuing regional research on rangeland tenure and co-ordinates a research team at McGill concerned with agrarian land tenure and development. He is the author and/or editor of a number of books, monographs and articles dealing with nomadic pastoralism and issues in development, including Herders, Warriors, and Traders? Pastoralism in Africa (edited with Pierre Bonte), Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991.

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Published

2022-06-07

How to Cite

Galaty, J. G. (2022). Grounds for Appeal: Maasai Customary Claims and Conflicts. Anthropologica, 39(1-2), 113–118. Retrieved from https://cas-sca.journals.uvic.ca/index.php/anthropologica/article/view/2057

Issue

Vol. 39 No. 1-2 (1997)

Section

Fictions of Law

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