The New Shepherd: A Paradigm Shift in an Age-Old Tradition

Abstract

Across sub-Saharan Africa pastoralists live alongside large densities and distributions of wildlife. Today, the relationships between pastoralists and spaces dedicated to wildlife are changing. Pastoralists are losing communal land due to changes in land tenure and an increase in wildlifebased tourism. This has led to shifts in land access and use, as well as in the political economy of labor for livestock production. The objective of this research is to understand how new land tenure arrangements and shifts in the tourism economy are affecting access to grazing resources and restructuring herd management. This case study from southwest Kenya employs qualitative methods including semi-structured interviews, informal conversations, and ethnographic observations gathered from accompanying individuals on their daily routines. In the first chapter, I argue that there are both positive and negative effects to the shifts in land tenure with respect to livestock production strategies for pastoralists who reside on the borders of protected areas. Some of the effects explored in this chapter include changes in social capital, increased fences, and private wildlife conservancies. The second chapter answers the question of how Maasai women’s identities have changed to become livestock managers. I explore how women are engendered, occasionally by default, to care for cattle herds and hired herders, and in successfully doing so, they gain trust in themselves and from their male family members as capable and competent contributors to their families’ predominant livelihood. This research seeks to provide a comprehensive understanding of how changes on these shared landscapes are affecting relationships within pastoralist societies; it is also an effort to produce useful studies on women in marginalized and underrepresented societies in order to provide place-based and societally appropriate explanations of and recommendations for increasing women’s roles and responsibilities towards a goal of gender equality.