Sampling method and research sites

My sampling method was participant-driven; I started with a small pool of initial informants (the key informants being my research assistant as well as Solomon and Sululu, employees of the Pastoralist Council, junior elders in their early to mid- thirties). Through their wide-reaching social networks, I was quickly led to new informants and to all corners of the Ngorongoro. The high mobility and well- connectedness of these three initial research participants (all junior elders) also enabled both the geographic coverage and the wide range of participants in terms of social status and age.17 As junior elders, all three key initial informants manage cattle. Solomon and Sululu are even involved in strategic and managerial decisions on a daily basis. However, being employees of the PC, these initial informants, also adopted somewhat exceptional and atypical Maasai roles. As employees of the Pastoralist Council, and in having access to the Pastoralist Council Land Cruiser, my

closest research participants were, to a certain extent, privileged; authority comes with working for what is essentially a body of the NCAA. I only truly realised this after a wedding function (see 3.1. and 3.3.) when these research participants opted to attend a wedding by staying inside the car, being serviced with cold beverages without ever having to leave the vehicle. It was at this stage that it became clear to me that I had to place more of an emphasis on conducting field research beyond the initial pool of informants (which I did all along, though it was at this point that I realized that relying too heavily on their voices alone would mean that I could skew the data, given their authoritative positions). A secondary key source was the people at Rhino Lodge, the venue at which I stayed, given that the majority of the employees were Maasai and so, in turn, were their social networks. The lodge is situated near the crater rim and is some 15 minutes’ drive from Solomon’s and Sululu’s bomas. A receptionist (warrior) introduced me to his mother, who introduced me to the women behind the bead trade in Ngorongoro.

I concur with Mannheim and Tedlock (1995) that ethnography (except

autoethnography) is an intercultural phenomenon (re-)produced in dialogue between the ethnographer and research participants. There should be no evident hierarchy between research derived from scholarly discourse and ethnography produced in dialogue with research participants. On a similar note, Lindquist (2009) urges anthropologists to take the concepts of their research participants as point-of-

departures in anthropological inquiry. Anthropology is inherently comparative; it can never erase the background of the anthropologist, to which he or she relates, nor can it ignore the interaction and mobility of cultures prior to the arrival of the anthropologist to the field or site of research. Although the extent to which research can be accepted as anthropological, is the extent to which it depends upon ‘the field’.

Gupta and Ferguson (1997) argue that ‘the field’ has been left obscure for far too long. Central to anthropologists’ identities, ‘the field’ has been taken for granted, the ‘what’ is often given precedence over the ‘where’. Furthermore, ‘the field’ is not just increasingly multi-sited, it is also increasingly ‘virtual’ with the global expansion of ICT technology. Boellstorff (2012) argues for a thorough ethnographic method that does not need to distinguish virtual from non-virtual sites in terms of quality of

produced work. Here, Facebook was, and remains, an important ‘site’. In line with the critique of Gupta and Ferguson (1997), I have attempted to explore both the

possibilities and limits of the field, recognizing that my experience of the field is influenced and limited by my own identity, a topic explored further in the next section. My master’s thesis research, exploratory with respect to the doctoral thesis, was carried out in Ngorongoro.

The NCA is unique in terms of its land use schemes and the interaction between Maasai, the government and tourism. It is not only heavily populated by Maasai, but is also a wildlife conservation area with the world’s largest density of large game and tourist-crowded wildlife reserves. With different stakeholders pursuing interests in sustaining livelihoods, conservation and tourism, Ngorongoro is the backdrop for intense struggles over land use and political power. Karatu, bordering the NCA, is a town with a greatly diversified population and Arusha, the centre for pastoralist NGOs, is home to many Maasai indigenous rights activists as well as tour guides (see map in Appendix 3). Loliondo (Ngorongoro district) has, in recent years, experienced an internationally widely documented land rights dispute between the

Maasai communities, on the one hand, and a Dubai-based corporation linked to the al Maktoum royal family, the Tanzanian government and conservationist organizations

seeking to evict the pastoralist community to enlarge the private hunting grounds of the Prince on the other.18

The high degree of media attention generated by the land rights dispute is the consequence of local Maasai documenting the process on their mobile phones and of (Maasai) indigenous rights activists spreading information on the internet primarily. My motivation to focus fieldwork mainly on Tanzania was based upon my expertise concerning the region and feasibility, but I believe that there is no argument for limiting the study to a particular setting within a political border that is actively contested and challenged by Maasai. Hence, online research was carried out too, and which included Kenyan Maasai, making the political dimensions clearer and

highlighting the impacts that this political separation has had upon Maasai identity and the scope and ways in which Maasai work to contest borders and gain access to land, cross border cattle trade, politics and to society as a whole.

The ethnography I ultimately came to practice in Ngorongoro is close to what Geertz (2000) calls ‘deep hanging out’. I walked, went to the markets, to offices, weddings and coming of age ceremonies, learnt how to craft jewellery, shared freshly slaughtered beef or goat over camp fires with warriors and elders, dozed in the sun, herded cattle, drank traditional brews and gradually immersed myself into what was, predominantly, male Maasai society.