Review by Choice Review
As Hodgson (Rutgers Univ.) immediately notes, the presumed "traditional" Maasai people straddling Kenya and Tanzania have been the object of both anthropological and developmental attention for over a century. This report adds in a generally positive way to the former concern and attempts to deconstruct the latter on the basis of the author's extensive experience on the ground in northern Tanzania in the 1990s. In a series of chapters on the interrelationships of ethnicity, gender, and "modernity," Hodgson concludes that it is not the Maasai who have remained static, but rather the external images of them. In interesting fashion but still less convincingly, she also argues that the numerous Western development projects emphasizing pastoralism resulted in a now overly "masculine" Maasai identity. These more abstract discussions are separated by shorter portraits of individual Maasai encountered during fieldwork--vignettes that come as welcome relief from the often tortured syntax and occasional pomposity of the other sections. These stylistic features will unfortunately seriously restrict the audience to academic specialists who will, however, profit from this work. W. Arens SUNY at Stony Brook
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
