Wearing Illkarash: Narratives of Image,Identity and Change among Maasai Labour Migrants in Tanzania

Tanzania Maasai began large‐scale urban labour migration in the mid‐1990s, impelled by livestock losses from disease, drought and land alienation. Although they were readily hired in cities as night watchmen and security guards, many urban citizens expressed condescending views of the migrants, typifying them as ‘unmodern’, and as curious young warriors who were lazy, naive, drunk and dirty. Interviews with about 200 Maasai proved these discursive characterizations to be largely incorrect. Although the State has tried over the last century to ‘develop’ and settle semi‐nomadic pastoralists, the Maasai image is widely used as part of an instrumentalist agenda, to advertise items from telephones to tourism. Lacking political or social capital, the migrants manipulate and reinforce Maasai identity by continuing to wear traditional garments (illkarash), and by engaging in practices that emphasize their difference from the ‘WaSwahili’, bolster cohesion and solidarity among themselves, and increase their chances of urban employment.     

Book reviews

The Persian Gulf: Iran's Role. By Rouhollah K. Ramazani. Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1972. 157 pp. $7.50.

Patrick J. Hurley and American Foreign Policy. By Russell D. Buhite. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973. 342 pp. $14.50.     

Book reviews

PARTY LEADERSHIP AND REVOLUTIONARY POWER IN CHINA. John Wilson Lewis (ed.) Cambridge University Press, 1970. viii, 422 pp. 25s.

CONFLICT ANALYSIS. Michael Nicholson. English Universities Press, 1971. viii, 168 pp. £1.45 (29s.).

PHILIPPINE NATIONALISM. EXTERNAL CHALLENGE AND FILIPINO RESPONSE, 1565–1946. Usha Mahajani. University of Queensland Press, 1970. xv, 530 pp. $12.00.

THE SIEGE OF THE PEKING LEGATIONS: A DIARY. Lancelot Giles. With introduction: CHINESE ANTI‐FOREIGNISM AND THE BOXER UPRISING. L. R. Marchant (ed.). University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, Western Australia, 1970. xxvii, 212 pp. $9.60.

MICROSTATES AND MICRONESIA: PROBLEMS OF AMERICA'S PACIFIC ISLANDS AND OTHER MINUTE TERRITORIES. Stanley A. de Smith. New York University Press, 1970. 193 pp. $7.50.

NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA: FOREIGN POLICY IN THE 1970s. Bruce Brown (ed.). Price Milbum, Wellington, for the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, 1970. 91 pp. $1.50.

LANG AND SOCIALISM. Robert Cooksey. Australian National University Press, 1970. xiii, 96 pp. $2.50.

THE ARMY IN PAPUA‐NEW GUINEA. Robert J. O'Neill. Australian National University Press, 1970. 31 pp. $1.50.

A HISTORY OF MALAYA. J. Kennedy. Macmillan Student Editions, London, 1970. xi, 364 pp. $3.40.

LENIN'S CHILDHOOD. Isaac Deutscher. Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1970. 67 pp. $4.25 hard cover.

SELECTED LETTERS OF HUBERT MURRAY. Francis West (ed.). Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1970. 255 pp. $6.50.     

Connecting global health interventions and lived experiences: suspending ‘normality’ at funerals in rural Tanzania

In this paper, we use the funeral space and its liminal nature as a milieu for exploring how a ‘modern’ health intervention, the mosquito bednet, is negotiated by its recipients in relation to its (non)-usage in such spaces. With a focus on sleeping arrangements at funerals and drawing on empirical data from participants living in rural southern Tanzania, we discuss how the bednet is linked to the notion of being unsympathetic to the death. Viewed as a symbol of modernity and a reflection of wealth and individual pride, the bednet becomes physically and symbolically inappropriate in the more sacred, ‘in-between’ site of the funeral. We also uncover how risk perceptions regarding malaria transmission are re-cast in funeral spaces, with socio-cultural practices and health-related behaviours being simultaneously ‘risky’ for individual mourners and reinforcing in terms of group social cohesion. As individual mourners' concerns about malaria risks are suspended, notions of pain and discomfort come to the fore as part of the mourning process and respect for the deceased.     

Genetic characterization of an archaeological sheep assemblage from South Africa’s Western Cape

The Neolithic Revolution, constituting a shift from food acquisition to food production, came to Africa as it did to most of the rest of the world: through processes of transmission rather than through de novo innovation. In contrast with other regions the pastoral management of cattle, sheep and goats was widespread in Africa thousands of years before settled agricultural communities or the use of domesticated plants were in evidence ( 46, 35 and 10). We report here the discovery of haplogroup B in the first genetic analysis of an African archaeological sheep assemblage.     

Counselling Citizens and Producing Patronage: AIDS Treatment in South African and Ugandan Clinics

Global health interventions to provide antiretroviral (ARV) drug treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries have linked global and local actors in unprecedented ways. These uneven relationships have been described as creating new forms of citizenship that challenge the liberal understanding of rights and responsibilities bestowed by the state. A comparative case study based on fieldwork from South Africa and Uganda suggests different theoretical understandings of the link between technologies of AIDS treatment and relationships of belonging. Yet, ethnographic data from local clinics in both countries point to similarities that exist across AIDS interventions, and to the importance of counsellors in negotiating the rules of ARVs. Neither patients living with HIV nor the local providers of their AIDS treatment are ‘bare life’ subjects to be acted upon by a global development intervention. As ARV technologies are increasingly prescribed in developing country clinics, diverse social relationships are taught and negotiated as part of the pedagogy of biopolitics. The following discussion demonstrates how local counsellors and clients negotiate the rules of AIDS treatment together for mutual benefit. The article concludes that AIDS treatment creates relationships of therapeutic citizenship and clientship in ways that constrain the possibilities of citizenship and development.