Description
Book SynopsisThe indigenous rights movement in Africa
Trade ReviewHodgson . . . investigate[s] . . . the political struggles of groups such as the Maasai to assert their rights to resources and political recognition. [S]he is successful in this endeavor as readers gain an understanding of the motivations, limitations, conflicts, and ironies that constrain and facilitate this movement.
* Intnl Journal African Historical Studies IJAHS *
[S]erves as an important reminder of the ongoing struggle for political representation and recognition of rights and resources faced by marginalized pastoralist communities throughout Africa.
* Bulletin of S.O.A.S. *
In this excellent book, Hodgson examines how and why, in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries, Maasai activists in Tanzania positioned and then repositioned themselves as indigenous and then as pastoralists in their struggles for representation, recognition, resources, and rights.
* PoLAR *
Dorothy Hodgson has taken a complex subject and presented it in an engaging and highly readable account. I recommend her book to anthropologists, historians, and anyone interested in how modern Africans deal with the legacies of colonialism. Scholars teaching graduate and postcolonial survey courses will find it especially useful.
* African Studies Quarterly *
The book is a wonderful achievement and evident in it is the author's genuine hopefulness and sensitivity about the goals and future of Maasai in Tanzania. For this reader, ethnographic description of Maasai distributed throughout the chapters working in ways to scaffold larger arguments was done extremely effectively. This adds to the book's readability and careful assembling of the author's arguments. It deserves a wide readership in anthropology, African studies and Indigenous studies.
* Pastoralism *
[P]rovide[s] invaluable insight into the regional context, as well as useful analyses for those researching ethnic conflict and policy implications in other parts of the world.
* Leeds African Studies Bulletin *
The discovery of indigeneity and the intersection of the local and global are no longer new; nor is the study of NGOs and development. But few accounts are as ethnographically informed and assured—and readable and absorbing—as Hodgson's.
* Journal of Southern African Studies *
[This] book . . . comprehensively and accurately portrays a struggle for rights and resources that addresses quintessentially what it means to be ethnically marginal and postcolonial in the early 21st century.
* Anthropological Quarterly *
This book is at once a fascinating ethnographic work in its own right, an object lesson for anyone with an interest in the socio-political context of development issues, and an immensely useful practical guide for anyone working in this particular region. . . I [Katherine Homewood] personally will use the insights from this book for years to come.
* African Affairs *
Hodgson looks at why some marginalised groups in Africa decide to identify themselves as 'indigenous', and what 'indigenous identity' means in an environment of economic liberalisation, transnational capitalism, state restructuring and political democratisation.
* Survival *
Highly recommended.
* Choice *
Hodgson's book will never be a must read for game park visitors, but it should be a must read for anyone interested in the study of the construction of pan-continent indigeneity and relationships with internal and external politics.
* Journal of African History *
Table of ContentsPreface
List of Key Organizations and Documents
Introduction: Positionings—The Cultural Politics of Representation, Recognition, Resources, and Rights
1. Becoming Indigenous in Africa
2. Maasai NGOs, the Tanzanian State, and the Politics of Indigeneity
3. Precarious Alliances
4. Repositionings: From Indigenous Rights to Pastoralist Livelihoods
5. "If We Had Our Cows": Community Perspectives on the Challenge of Change
Conclusion: What Do You Want?
Notes
Bibliography
Index
