The Maasai and the Lion King: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Globalization in African Tourism

Abstract

In this article, I analyze how the Maasai of Kenya are presented in three different tourist performances—postcolonial, postindependence, and postmodern. Each site tells a different story, an alternate version of history, with its own perspective on the role of ethnicity and heritage within the nation‐state and in the world community. Using a method of controlled comparison, I expand the theoretical dialogue in tourism debates by departing from the monolithic discourse that has characterized so much of tourism scholarship, [ethnic tourism, Maasai, globalization, performance, authenticity, ethnography, media images]

Memory, Mythmaking, and Museums: Constructive Authenticity and the Primitive Blues Subject

“…It is imperative that rhetorical scholars specify the type of authenticity used for analysis, particularly in the light that the term is "a polyvalent concept, presenting different meanings to different people" (Frenkel & Walton, 2000, p. 568). Moreover, while scholars (Bruner, 2001;Grazian, 2003;Wang, 1999;Young, 1999) in a wide variety of disciplines from anthropology to geography to tourism studies have examined the constructive nature of authenticity, rhetorical critics who have studied authenticity have been inadvertently excluded from this scholarly conversation. As a result, the extant literature on constructive authenticity fails to acknowledge that authenticity is, indeed, a rhetorical practice.…”

Kenya's tourist industry and global production networks: gender, race and inequality

“…Maasai men held a unique position in colonial discourses because the colonists romanticized them as beautiful, brave and sexually alluring 'noble savages' (Akama 2004;Bruner 2001;Shaw 1995: 27;Spear and Waller 1993). The male 'white hunter' personified colonial control of Africa's land and animals; he fuelled the socialite settler's vision of the grandeur and symbolism of Maasai territory (Shaw 1995: 212).…”

“…The divergent symbolic values of the Maasai, white hunters and women each have their place on the continuum of appropriate work in Kenya tourism. Hence, the foundations of contemporary upgrading dynamics -the marketing, linkage and labour practices embedded in the GPN -are rooted in this period (Akama 2004;Bruner 2001). Unlike Uganda, Kenya allowed its Kenyan-Asian citizens to retain their economic positions and, consequently, they have remained dominant in the development of tourism.…”

“…The imagery and representations of colonial tourism that these tour © 2015 The Author(s) operators continue to promote and market further validate these disarticulation practices. They are perpetuating the kind of safari companies that began during the heyday of the 'white hunter' and represent an idealized image of a bygone colonial era (Akama 2004;Bruner 2001). Mythologizing and marketing the white hunter, like the Maasai pastoralist, has become as much part of the tourism product as safari wildlife.…”

Encuentros y desencuentros en el desarrollo turístico de la provincia de Buenos Aires (Argentina)

“…Por lo tanto, si en una localidad existían activaciones patrimoniales pre-mercantilizadas, que son una forma de consumo interno, actualmente existe una activación mercantilizada, que dependen del interés de los turistas, y que generalmente favorecen los discursos que refuerzan una imagen estereotipada de la comunidad y lugar que se está visitando (Almirón et al, 2006;Bertoncello et al, 2003;Bruner, 2001;Prats, 2006Prats, , 2011. Ambos tipos de consumo participan del proceso de construcción identitaria de la localidad en cuestión (Prats, 2006).…”