Paper long abstract:

Aspects of pastoralist culture and heritage have been used to promote tourism in East Africa since the early decades of the 20th century. Pictures of Maasai murran, frequently seen either dancing, herding cattle or standing leaning on a spear, are some of the most iconic images of East Africa on a par with images of the ‘Big Five’ game animals, landscape vistas and sunsets. Such images are often placed in proximity with each other, and so work to naturalise Maasai (and by default other pastoralists) by making them seem to be at one with, and a part of, the elements of the natural world with which they are juxtaposed. As tourism has intensified in East Africa, so increasingly more pastoralist groups have been drawn into the market economy and into performing and portraying aspects of their ‘culture’, ‘tradition’, ‘indigenous knowledge’, and ‘heritage’. Simultaneously, more and more aspects of pastoralist (and especially ‘Maasai’) ‘culture’, ‘tradition’, ‘indigenous knowledge’, and ‘heritage’ have been appropriated by non-pastoralist communities as part of their own marketing strategies. The aim of is to examine how these indigenous constructs of a pastoralist heritage compare with the models of pastoralist heritage that are presented as part of the tourist industry, as exemplified by the recent creation of ‘cultural bomas’ as a device for showcasing pastoralist ‘traditions’, ‘culture’ and ‘heritage’.