Paper short abstract:

An insight into the “affective trajectories” through which Maasai express their unwillingness to accept climate change as a new hegemonic explanatory framework, reveals that – as they argue – it is not the climate they fear, but the politics of land perpetuated by the Tanzanian government.

Paper long abstract:

In the course of time, an array of transnational (development) discourses has travelled to Maasailand, ideas that have, in some way or another, played into conflicting ideas about justice that have often been underpinned by binary imaginations of "tradition" and "modernity". One such new travelling development discourse is the Adaptation to Climate Change Paradigm, which has sparked heated debates about justice, the value of different knowledge systems, and more crucially, about land rights. On the basis of fourteen months of fieldwork carried out among the Maasai in northern Tanzania, I wish to explore the conflicting "sentiments of justice" that are brought about by this new discourse between NGOs, the national government and the Maasai at the grassroots. While the Tanzanian government appeals to the industrialized world for international climate justice, the Maasai instead strive for national justice. An insight into the "emotional and affective trajectories" through which Maasai from the grassroots express their unwillingness to accept climate change as a new hegemonic explanatory framework, reveals that - as they argue - it is not the climate they fear, but the politics of land perpetuated by their own government.