This paper examines how the way of life of a little known group of hunter–gatherers, the Waata Oromo, was brought to an end through British colonial wildlife conservation laws and the creation of national parks in Kenya. Through this policy and that of the containment of ethnic groups to ‘tribal reserves’, the Waata lost their place in the regional economic system and suffered loss of cultural identity. It also meant that when Kenya gained independence, the Waata were not recognised as a distinct entity with rights to their own political representation. Instead, they became appendages of the dominant pastoral groups with which they had been associated. They were thus doubly marginalised, in both economic and political terms. The paper describes how this situation has led some Waata in northern Kenya to claim separate ethnic status. It discusses the problem from the point of view of a Waata social activist and of an anthropologist. These two perspectives raise further issues for the etic/emic debate in anthropology.
In her deconstruction of the category ‘ritual’, Bell (1992: 6) suggests that all theoretical discourse on this subject is based on the opposition between thought (beliefs, symbols and myths) and action (the enactment of such cultural templates). Bell further demonstrates that this basic distinction has generated two other homologized structural patterns in ritual theory. In the second pattern, (represented in the works of Durkheim, Tambiah and Turner), there has been an attempt to produce a synthesis of the initial dichotomy. In the third pattern (represented in the studies of Geertz), this opposition and integration has led to another permutation of the original pattern, in which ‘ritual participants act, whereas those observing them think’ (Bell, 1992: 28).
In this autobiographical essay, I reflect on my practice as an anthropologist through the medium of a dream experience. This dream occurred shortly before I was due to attend a ritual among the Booran Oromo in northern Kenya. In my discussion, I draw on analytical materialfrom anthropology, psychology, literature and philosophy. Using these different, but complementary approaches, I give three interpretations of the dream. The first two were provided to me by members of the culture, and are based on the indigenous Oromo knowledge system. The third proposes a self-analysis of the dream in terms of its structure and function. The entire exegesis is underpinned by an essay on dreams and dreaming by Foucault (1984). The analysis of the dream serves to situate my work in both theoretical and existential terms. The classic in this genre of writing is, of course, Levi-Strauss's (1973) Tristes Tropiques.
The “ethnic” origins of the Gabra camel pastoralists who live on the Kenyan-Ethiopian border and their relationship to the territorially adjacent Borana cattle pastoralists are matters of ongoing academic debate. This article, which is based on Gabra clan traditions, suggests that the five phratries are an aggregate of some of the communities that live in the Lake Turkana region and beyond it. It describes the precolonial relationship of the Gabra and Borana, which is expressed by the latter in the idiom of kinship as a territorial one.
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