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Embedded and Re-purposed Technologies:Human Mobility Practices in Maasailand
JESSIKA NILSSON & NOEL B. SALAZAR
IMMRC, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
(Received 27 January 2015; accepted 16 September 2015)
ABSTRACT This article analyses how cultural patterns and social organization shape themeaning-making of human mobility and technology, and vice versa. We extend the definitionof mobile technologies from engineered devices with portable quality to tools supporting peo-ples’ customary mobile practices. Specifically, we analyse the embodiment of contemporarymobile technologies into Maasai culture. Mobile practices have socio-cultural, economic andpolitical meanings. The very fabric of the culture through which mobile practices are negoti-ated here is cattle. In focus are the mobilities shaping Maasailand. We argue that, rather thancausing radical cultural change, novel mobile technologies are embedded, rationalized andre-purposed. Furthermore, a local-to-global cooperation on indigenous rights is facilitated.
KEY WORDS: Mobile technology, Maasailand, Nomadism, Anthropology, Ethnography
Introduction
In the context of this article, we define technology as a set of techniques, systems,practices or methods of organization that serves to control and adapt to thesocio-cultural, political, economic and ecological environment. Mobility refers to anamalgamation of spatial and social elements, broadly understood as movementinfused with meaning (cf. Cresswell 2006). Mobile technologies, then, can be seenas systems enabling, supporting and giving meaning to movement. For reasons ofscope, we focus mainly on the use of mobile phones and the updates, upgrades andtransformations Maasai culture undergoes through the implementation of this tech-nology. Cresswell (2010) warns of a ‘technophilia trap’ when analysing mobility assomething ‘new’. We demonstrate here that the phone is encoded culturally andsocially to fit a continuation of a long history of mobility. Understanding peoples’diverse mobilities is imperative to understanding mobile technology as both havebecome intricately intertwined and are inseparable. Scholarly analysis of the intersec-tion between mobility and technology has focused mainly on ‘spatial, infrastructural
Correspondence Address: Jessika Nilsson, University of Leuven, CuMoRe Parkstraat 45, bus 3615,3000 Leuven, Belgium. Email: [email protected]
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
Mobilities, 2015http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2015.1099831
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and institutional moorings’ (Hannam, Sheller, and Urry 2006, 3) or the ‘ties’ and‘nodes’ through which information is mediated (Freeman 2006). Postill (2013)speaks of a ‘network trap’ regarding technology. In this ‘trap’, both material andintangible mobilities are commonly ignored in favour of analysing connectivitypoints within social and economic networks.1
Harboured within mobility studies is a debate on mobile technologies (Vannini2011). Emphasis is placed on discussing whether technologies create a new culturalsetting or whether they propel or replace already existing ones. Tenhunen (2008) andKatz (2008) argue the former, whilst Glotz, Bertschi, and Locke (2005) claim thatmany people across the globe nowadays live in a ‘thumb culture’ in which mobiletechnology (mobile phones specifically) have radically restructured society into onein which direct contact is neglected in favour of virtual connectivity, giving societyat large a new order. We see ‘new’ mobile technologies as an extension of old ones,often serving a catalysing purpose, compressing time and space. In a ‘moving land-scape’ such as Maasailand, this gives rise to interesting dynamics and restructuredpower relations.The people our research is based on are semi-nomadic Maasai of the Ngorongoro
Conservation Area (NCA) in northern Tanzania. The Maasai, speakers of the EasternNilotic Maa tonal language, are a widely dispersed ethnic group living across centralKenya and north Tanzania. The area, known as Maasailand, dissects, contests andmerges with land used by a large number of other ethnic groups.2 Socio-economicassemblages and cultural patterns shape Maasailand as a network of interconnectedpeople and things rather than as a homogeneous geographic area. For many Maasai,land is inseparable from mobility and mobile practices are imbued with socio-cultural, economic and political meanings. Despite persisting images that heavilyromanticize Maasai’s perceived freedom from authority and closeness to nature(Sobania 2002), the Maasai were forcibly relocated a number of times by colonialpowers and later by Kenyan and Tanzanian authorities (Hughes 2006). These reloca-tions paved the way for game reserves and farm lands whilst the Maasai wereresettled into marginalized land.Rather than applying a programmatic methodology, our ethnographic fieldwork
corresponded to the call by Vergunst (2011) to follow the paths of our research par-ticipants whilst being aware that our destinations can differ. We did experience thatby conducting ethnography ‘on the move’ by foot or car, the (moving) locationinformed what was being said and the relation to the landscape was given more con-text. However, this did not happen to the extent expected by reading the works ofEvans and Jones (2011) or Carpiano (2009) on mobile methodologies. After all,more ‘static’ fieldwork, i.e. semi-structured interviews and participatory observationin informants’ homes, also produced very textured descriptions of landscape, mobil-ity and relation to nature, much similar to what was said whilst Maasai were herdingcattle or walking. This may be related to informants’ close relationship with natureand a sense of traveling or being ‘on the move’ in their minds, even when notmoving.The very fabric that motivates Maasai mobile practices, including herding, sea-
sonal migration and wayfaring of young warriors as a rite of passage, is cattle. Itforms the complex, underlying structure of Maasai culture, manifesting itself forinstance in the layout of bomas (homesteads).3 Nomadic pastoralism, historically atthe core of Maasai cultural identity, declined throughout the twentieth century(Homewood, Kristjanson, and Trench 2009; Spear and Waller 1993). While in the
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pre-colonial era, pastoralist migrations (ranging from daily herd movement toseasonal transhumance) were limited principally by disease and more occasionallyby insecurity, colonial and post-colonial policies added the occupation of land bycultivators, wildlife and new boundaries that impeded ‘free’ passage (Schneider2006). Nomadic mobility, however, is more than a mere reaction to ecological condi-tions (Galaty 1993). We wish to focus here on the role mobile technologies play inrelation to land and today’s Maasai mobilities, as imaginaries of land and mobilityare very much intertwined.4 Here we define imaginaries as ‘socially shared andtransmitted representational assemblages that are used as meaning-making devices’(Salazar 2013, 234).Our research site is the NCA, a UNESCO world heritage site controlled by the
Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA). According to administrativeemployees of the authority, Ngorongoro is home to an estimated 84,000 Maasai.5
The NCA is a multiple land use or ‘man and biosphere’ reserve where the interestsof human development are, in theory, balanced with the conservation of flora andfauna. Rather than separating human livelihood from the protection of wildlife (as isdone in the majority of protected areas) both are promoted by the authorities.6 TheNCAA is often perceived as a hostile ruler by the local indigenous communities.Activism for more autonomy from the NCAA is carried out both on a grassrootslevel and by professional activists using social media as their major tool of support.The concentration of conflict (human-wildlife and governance) makes the NCA aninteresting case study of political resistance and dealings with economic and ecologi-cal restraints. In what follows, we briefly review the existing literature and analysehow contemporary technologies of mobility play into both the organizing andreshaping of livelihoods and political activism.
The Moving Landscape
Whilst expanding the theoretical framework for the analysis of mobility and technol-ogy by focusing on the meaning-making generated by mobile technologies, we drawupon ethnographic fieldwork data from the NCA. We seek to provide a better under-standing of the processes of (re)establishing networks of communication andexchange. In Maasai culture, ‘the network’ was there long before the cell phone. Itwas a complex communication system bound and restricted not by Vodacom bundlesand reception but by cultural codes and rules (many of which apply today).7 Thenetwork of Maasailand can be understood as a form of organization enabling adap-tion to and control of the socio-cultural, political, economic and ecological con-straints or environments found as the moving landscape shifted south and expandedover centuries. Tarrius (1993) speaks of ‘circulatory territories’ to express howmobility effects places and cultures. Maasailand is such a case where the circulatorynature of life and livelihood transcends boundaries and borders and, yet, it is still atightly knit society. Ironically, in Western epistemology, networked societies (Castells1996; Wittel 2001) or ‘nomad’ societies (Knafou 1998) are expressions used to cate-gorize post-modernity, yet these perspectives can be well suited to understandingMaasailand in the present as well as in the past.Here we are examining how contemporary mobile technologies are making and
reshaping the network that is Maasailand, replacing and enhancing the historical net-work of codes and rules that made Maasailand an efficient circulatory territory withfast informational exchange. We seek to disentangle the ‘constellations of mobility’
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(Cresswell 2010), the patterns, representations and practices creating mobility withinthe context of our research. One such constellation is time. With a culture structuredaround age-sets (Rigby 1995) and using a lunar twelve-month calendar to predictenvironmental changes, the Maasai have historically been a time conscious culture.People move not just in response to seasonal change, but in planning ahead towardsit. Space or distance are measured in days walking. The rise of novel mobile andcommunication technologies allows for new planning in terms of time, as these com-press time and space. Mobile networking changes, relates and adapts to alreadyexisting socio-cultural assemblages. Such assemblages are explained as follows byDeleuze and Guattari:
… there are lines of articulation or segmentarity, strata and territories; but alsolines of flight, movements of deterritorialization and destratification. Compara-tive rates of flow on these lines produce phenomena of relative slowness andviscosity, or, on the contrary, of acceleration and rupture. All this, lines andmeasurable speeds constitutes an assemblage’ (1980, 3–4)
Like Deleuze and Guattari, we do not subscribe to a singular theoretic model but,instead, aspire to shift the meaning of ‘network’ to something more elusive andintangible, focusing on the mobilities of all subjects within a network rather than thefixed connectors.Key thinkers within mobility studies (Cresswell 2006, 2010; Sheller and Urry
2006) have examined technology amidst other aspects of mobility. We aim to con-tribute to this literature by disseminating and defining what constitutes a mobile tech-nology, without taking technology as a given. A technology is a set of techniques,systems, practices or methods of organization that serves to control and adapt to thesocio-cultural, political, economic and ecological environment. Our understanding isthat mobile technologies need to be supporting mobile practices. They are muchmore than engineered devices. Hence, understanding peoples’ diverse mobilities isthe core objective to analysing mobile technology and its use. This understanding isbroad, yet it is through this perspective that we exemplify how mobile technologiesare embodied into (semi-)nomadic culture, where mobile technologies play a crucialrole in how strategies of economic and ecologic mobility are negotiated around envi-ronmental and political constraints. The main technologies in focus in this particulararticle are ‘recent’ technologies, primarily mobile phones.
The Mobile Phone in Everyday Life
The Pastoralist Council’s main land rover was returning to HQ from anaccounting trip to Nayobi, a remote market village on the north eastern edge ofthe Ngorongoro highland, perched just before a dramatic drop onto the plateaustretching out towards Ol Donyo Lengai, an active volcano and the mountainof God.8 A disgruntled mood lingered in the car, occupied by the chief driver,head accountant, a mechanic, friends and acquaintances looking to go on a lit-tle excursion and myself. The mood manifested itself in the driver’s refusal topick up hitch hikers. He’d slow down as if to pick people up, then speed away.The village book keeper had been nowhere to be found and this wasn’t the firsttime. It was nearly six pm when the driver, Tsululu, received a rather distressed
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phone call from a village that boys had lost a larger number of cattle in thehighland forest on the crater rim.9 We rerouted to the village where we pickedup some ten warriors, the sun hung low half an hour before sunset, and spedaround the rim to the place where the cattle had gone astray. We were met bythe boys, who had called the warriors who had called our driver. There was notime for scolding the youngsters, instead the warriors entered the forest, cellphones ready. The forest itself is so dense you cannot see beyond ten meters,and due to the thickness of the bush any sounds are dampened dramatically.Being home to a large amount of leopards, lions, elephants and buffalo, it israther risky to enter. The warriors organized and kept in touch via mobilephone as they combed through the rainforest, warning each other as theysighted buffalo. The cattle were found just as the sun set and then taken homein the dark. (Jessika’s field notes, April 2013)
The mobile phone is well incorporated into the organization of everyday Maasai life(Mwangi and Rutten 2012; Sife, Kiondo, and Lyimo-Macha 2010) and it also helpspeople organize efficiently during distressing events or unplanned circumstances.Cell phone coverage, provided by a large number of companies, is spotless not onlyin inhabited areas, but also on the plains most frequently used by Maasai herdsmento graze cattle. Being able to communicate, instantly, with persons not within theirdirect vicinity, aids in the organization of their life on several levels. These newcommunication systems are tools in sustaining and developing economic livelihood,in organizing social life and entertainment, in displaying social status and in formingpolitical awareness. The mobile phone as a non-human agent of contact enables peo-ple to be in several places at the same time, and as our fieldwork in Ngorongoro sug-gests, Maasai do not necessarily value the indirect experience as being inferior to theone where a place is experienced physically. Rather, the overall experience of socia-bility is enhanced and made more efficient.As much as it is useful in situations of emergency, prosperous livestock trading
has become difficult without mobile technology as both trading parties, the sellerand buyer, wish to stay informed about the market prices across northern Tanzaniaor to use asymmetrical information to their advantage. If a trade is very big, theaccountants of the Pastoralist Council (PC) double as mobile banks. For smallertransactions, mobile commerce systems are used and most commonly M-pesa is theservice applied to transfer money instantly from one bank account to the other bythe sending and receiving of text messages. M-pesa is more versatile than a creditcard. The SMS based technology in many ways covers the essentials of what goodtechnology is understood to be both in Maasailand in particular and in Eastern Africain general: It is simple (not a smart phone app like versions currently launching inthe US and Europe), efficient, versatile, practical and mobile. A recent survey by atelecommunications company suggests that over 10% of Tanzania’s GDP is gener-ated in mobile commerce and that the systems finds higher usage in rural areas thanurban areas.10 M-pesa, first introduced in Kenya, is a strong example of mobiletechnology both created within and influencing Africa.
Sociability in the Digital and Mobile Phone Age
In Ngorongoro (and the rest of Tanzania), you need to buy vouchers, or vochas, inorder to call or text someone. These can be complemented by a large variety of
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bundles or short term subscriptions for calling, texting and Internet surfing. 10 000Tanzanian Shilling (TZS); roughly 5 Euro, is the most expensive vocha you can buyat any wakala (selling point) and just for Vodacom there are well over 150,000wakalas around Tanzania. In Ngorongoro, you rarely find vochas for more than 1000TZS (50 Euro cent) meaning that if you wish to buy a monthly Internet bundle, youneed to scrape together 40 vochas, and you might need to visit several wakalas inorder to gather enough vochas. Travelling by car entails a constant stopping at waka-las to recharge phone credit. Often Maasai will stop somewhere, buy vochas for3000 TZS and then proceed making phone calls until the credit is finished, only tobuy another few thousand TZS worth of airtime somewhere else. Since wakalasoften run out of credit and most Maasai are on foot, transferring air time via M-pesais a popular alternative, yet there is adversity to tapping your bank account to getcredit. Whilst there is no real plan behind buying credit, and many people complainthey are spending a great amount of their income on their mobile phone, muchthought is given to how a person might optimize their network reception and savemoney, and it is common to have at least two phones from two providers, sometimesdual SIMs, so that your contacts can reach you regardless of where you are and whatnetwork you are using. With the recent surge in smart phones having WhatsApp is anew sign of prestige. The short life span of smart phone batteries is an additionalargument in favour of carrying many phones, especially in the absence of a powergrid or solar energy at every boma.Research participants vouched that calling, texting and Facebooking, both via
smart phone and computer, has dramatically impacted social life and seems to someextent to be replacing face-to-face sociability. It is difficult to speak to someone formore than 10 min without their phones ringing or without the person suddenly pick-ing up his or her phone to make a call in the middle of a conversation. What we ini-tially mistook for phone calls completely without substance was culture recodedthrough a new medium. The caller can ask (they will address us in either English orSwahili instead of Maa) ‘habari za asubuhi, habari za leo, habari za watoto, habariza wewe, habari za bibi habari za …’ or ‘what is the news regarding the morning/theday/the children/you/the grandmother …’ you answer ‘good’ to every question andas soon as the ritual is over they hang up on you. It took several calls like these andmany inquiries to understand the ritualistic nature of making these phone calls; theyare just an extension of a long history of informational exchange built upon strictsocial rules. Long, extended greetings, which vary depending on hierarchy, genderand age difference are a prerequisite for sociability, regardless of whether anexchange of substantial information will follow or not. It is a pro-active ‘checkingin’ on people, which may or may not lead to news being exchanged, now or in thefuture. Not engaging in these greetings, in a physical meeting or via a non-humanmedium, will however exclude a person from accessing information.
Modernity – an Imaginary Time
In Mobile Technology in the Village (2008), Tenhunen explores mobile phone usagein rural India, placing it into a process of communication transformation that bothdraws on traditional forms of communication and replaces these. Any exchange ofinformation can only follow after a specific and long drawn out form of greeting,varying depending on age and context. If there is no news to be exchanged, the pro-cess is just repeated as a form of ritual, the ritual becoming so intrinsic that there is
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no expectation of actual contents or deeper message. With Maasai, there is not muchdistrust of the medium itself, but more as to what is said through it. For instance,some herders report that they were given false information over the phone as towhere to graze cattle. Overall, the distrust in mobile phone technology is rather lim-ited in Maasailand and is not necessarily experienced as an inferior form of sociabil-ity than direct contact. O’Doherty, Rao, and Maio Mackay (2007) presents findingssuggesting that teenagers in Australia try avoiding mobile phone related costsbecause they view direct sociability as superior to phone contact. Campbell (2007)argues that the cultural acceptance of extensive mobile phone use differs globally,with Taiwanese or Japanese citizens being more tolerant and positive, whilst Westernusers, including Swedes and U.S. Americans find it impolite to use phones in varioussocial settings. Cultures that skipped the use of landlines may be more positivetowards using mobile phones in various social settings. The idea of indirect commu-nication being ‘less real’ and more impolite does not persist within Maasai society.Sociability and mobility have always been negotiated around a non-human fabric,namely cattle. One could argue that communicating via mobile technology is evensuperior to direct communication. If someone calls, a conversation is interrupted, theperson you are face to face with is not going anywhere. The phone call howevertransports you to another place and an unknown situation and research participantsrespond that both pragmatism and curiosity (and avoiding to pay the calling costs)spurs someone to pick up a call. It is the people and their already establishednetworks and rituals of information sharing that shape and take ownership overtechnology.
Solomon, a senior warrior and car mechanic, was going through the ritual ofbecoming a traditional leader.11 Together with another leader-to-be he wastaken into the cattle-kraal where senior traditional leaders applied a mixture ofcow milk and dung all over them. Solomon did not yet have a smart phone,the other leader-to-be however texted, recorded and phoned throughout thedung-smearing process. After this public ceremony (recorded by more than 50mobile phone cameras) he was led into his house together with senior tradi-tional leaders for a night-long secluded congregation where a lot of wisdomand even more alcohol was shared while the party continued outside. Solomonphoned people on the outside every 15 minutes to know exactly what wasgoing on, who had arrived, who was having a good time and whether therewas enough food and alcohol.
As with most ceremonies in Maasai culture, the person at the centre of the cere-mony is soon completely secluded from the rest of the party, to prepare him or her forthe stage in life into which they are transitioning. Age-sets (applied to boys and men)are a vital concept to Maasai social organization where one graduates into a new age-set after a certain period of years (Morton 1979). Each age-set has an individual nameand every seven years a new set is introduced, meaning that some will fall into an ageset at a much younger age than others. The most significant age-sets are ‘warrior’ and‘elder’ (each with sub-divisions). Upon graduating into a new age-set, a Maasai manwill take on new responsibilities and tasks. For this, new knowledge is required and itis the responsibility of men of a higher age-set to pass down this knowledge. Often,the most vital lessons are passed on during the ceremony. However, the phone trans-forms this ritual into one in which the secluded person has direct access to all aspects
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of the ceremony. And equally, people ‘outside’ get an insider’s take on the proceed-ings. It highlights just how valued the phone is to its user, and that constantly cuttingoff traditional leaders who have travelled for days is not impoliteness but taken forgranted with little objections from the traditional leaders. The phone allows for tradi-tions to become transformed when someone, who was originally supposed to be ‘cutoff’ for a while, is enabled to follow curiosity and be everywhere at the same time.Physical seclusion is now a mere ritual upheld out of tradition.In Mobile Phones, the New Talking Drums of Everyday Africa (2009), De Bruijn
highlights the dialectic process between culture and technology in societies in whichM-pesa is perhaps one of the strongest African technological outcomes of mobile phoneculture. Whilst information and computer scientists such as Williams, Anderson, andDourish (2008) recognize that societies where the mobile phone was the first success-fully introduced communication technology provide great intellectual resources for thecreators of technology to enhance their products, few innovations stem from collabora-tions between African and Western or Asian tech companies. Innovations in fields ofmobile technologies often stem from Africa. These include M-pesa, Mxit (a smart phone‘micro world’ much like WhatsApp), and DsTV as a pan-continental cable TV viasatellite system (and the most advanced and wide-spread of its kind) or portable solarenergy systems. Failing to take into account the creative and sometimes revolutionaryapproaches to technology that cultures in Africa have adapted, international networkcompanies or producers of mobile phones have long neglected or mistrusted thesemarkets. Vodafone only fully merged with the highly profitable Vodacom in 2008.Equally, few scholars recognize the actual potential stemming from African cultures todrive the technological revolution forward. This may be based on a ‘modernity bias’ thathas long perpetuated the more exact sciences (Díaz Andrade and Urquhart 2012).What is modernity and what does it mean to different cultures? As Haraway
(1997) points out, modernity is merely an imaginary time. In popular culture, moder-nity is an ideal laden with judgment centring on the Western and far-eastern hemi-sphere. Ulaya (Swahili for Europe, also used in Maa) is a popular word inMaasailand to characterize the origins of foreign and non-East African technologies,objects and ideas. While what comes from Ulaya is interpreted as ‘modern’ andadvanced it is also often understood as lacking of culture, and a pragmatic distrust isbrought towards it. At the same time techniques understood as ‘modern’ or comingfrom Ulaya are vigorously indigenized if found to be beneficial in economic, politicor social terms. Often these techniques are Western/East African hybrids. Forinstance M-pesa or lion lights – mobile lights to steer lions from the kraal.12 Sahlins(1999) wrote about the ‘indigenization’ of modernity. His approach defines moder-nity as a framework of globally shared institutions and ideas. This working definitiondoes not discriminate against cultures, instead it explores the ‘multi-levelled institu-tional interactions between local, state and global influences’ (Galaty 2013, 474),framing pastoral existence in the contemporary world. In this approach, the pastoral-ist interacts not with a rigid top-down framework of state interference and neoliberal-ism, but as a pragmatic agent with a conscious choice in what cultural strategies toadopt and adapt to in securing their livelihood.
‘The concrete house is for the chicken’, Saitoti explained to Jessika as they wereinstalling a mobile solar panel at his mother’s house, a traditional mud/dung hut,so that her phone could be charged at all times. A larger concrete structure, withlarge windows and a stable roof (his mothers’ house does not have these
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features) had been erected right behind it. Saitoti and his mother make a veryconscious selection of which technologies to implement and which not to regardas an advancement and to discard. (Jessika’s fieldnotes, July 2013)
Maasai often skip certain technologies taken for granted as ‘elements of moder-nity’ in most of the world. Some of these have been implemented only to facilitatethe use of mobile technologies (getting electricity so you can charge your phone) orused selectively (a building structure designed by an engineering bureau fromArusha built for chicken instead of humans). For the Maasai, a ‘healthy suspicion’towards Ulaya may be explained through the many attempts by foreigners tointerfere and ‘enhance’ their lifestyle, only leading to further marginalization, bothterritorially and economically.
Extending Oneself and Herding by Phone
In an informal conversation about our research project and the Maasai’s applicationof mobile technologies, Cameroonian anthropologist Francis Nyamnjoh reacted ‘ButMaasai are a mobile technology!’ Sharing this statement with Maasai research partic-ipants online, their feedback was: ‘My phone is an extension [of myself]’. Describ-ing a person as a mobile technology might be one step too far. However, seeingmobile phones or other technologies as an extension explains the fast and smoothtransition into the digital age and the eager embodiment of these technologies as aform of optimizing oneself and one’s livelihood. Most Maasai move by foot. Saitoti,has a good job (accountant), a car and a decent number of cattle (50) and explainedto us that he can hardly turn down doing favours as it is socially and culturallyexpected of him to share his success. The burden of having to accommodate manyrequests has had him invest in coastal land where, disconnected from the expecta-tions of his community, he can let his new cattle herd roam. Expectations like theone brought upon him see Maasailand being expanded, both south and to the coast,defying government pressure to have the Maasai abandon cattle herding. The expan-sion eastwards to Bagamoyo, a Swahili coastal town far east of traditional Maasai-land, also highlights the pragmatic stance towards land. Land can be holy, mysticaland intertwined with family histories, yet it is nothing without cattle. The land pur-chase in Bagamoyo (Swahili Coast) came on the eve of a Chinese-Tanzanian deal toturn Bagamoyo into one of the largest and most high-tech harbours in the world, adeal which has property prices downtown soaring.13 Maasailand is wherever itmakes most sense to herd your cattle. Cattle management is largely a male duty.Hodgson (2000), however, argues that this was not the case historically and thatMaasai women were disenfranchised and devalued by British (or imperialist) inter-ference in Maasai livelihood. Although access to education and new mobile tech-nologies shifts power relations, educated girls often fall back into ‘traditional’ roleswhen they return home from schools or universities. While women can manageherds of cattle, typical tasks and responsibilities include raising children, buildinghouses, collecting water and fire wood and trade. However, mobile phones havemade it easier to outsource herding duties and slowly women are benefitting fromthis. Female research participants reported they could perform all their home-makingtasks, acting as moorings to a mobile system, whilst keeping control over smaller
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herds by staying in close touch with herders via their phones, whom they also payby phone.Cattle transactions are still largely dealt with at markets and participants report that
markets in NCA have grown over the years. Yet, phones and the internet are increas-ingly used to replace work done at markets (examining, price negotiations, etc.).Due to transfer limits of M-pesa, larger transactions require traditional banking. Asbanks are far away, accountants and mobile banks come to markets to settle trade.Owners of large herds, such as Saitoti, herd by phone, delegating tasks and responsi-bilities to others by phone. Herders in turn rely on their phones to exchange informa-tion on where to graze or not. Whilst hired herders rely less on these networks,cattle owners who herd have a higher incentive to participate, and as some say, attimes falsify information on where to herd to gain advantages over others. Forcedmigration aside, Maasai presence has shifted in areas across Kenya and Tanzaniaover time. It is a network of relative cultural unity and economic exchange. It is amoving landscape, movement generated by socioeconomic and political restraints aswell as imaginaries of promising land (such as Bagamoyo in this instance). Asrevolutionary as mobile technologies are, strategies of economic and ecologic deci-sion-making are bound by both an inner-socio-cultural context and by the politicalrealities and histories of oppression and further militarization of many Maasailandprotected areas by the Tanzanian and Kenyan governments. Maasailand has beencontested for centuries (Morton 1979). Cresswell (2010) emphasizes an approach tomobility studies which acknowledges and analyses historical factors. Although rela-tively novel, the phone is encoded culturally and socially with values and meaningscreated through an ongoing discourse with the past. Practices involving the mobilephone, such as the outsourcing of herding tasks, attest to this relation. Herding hasin the past been delegated, problems with herders reporting correct facts haveexisted, yet the phone simplifies the delegation, providing both tools of further con-trol and opportunities to report lies. In the context of Maasailand being a contestedspace, the phone is a political tool replacing physical messengers in reporting landdisputes or evading rangers.A social class shift is emerging, with upwardly-mobile Maasai accumulating large
herds and outsourcing tasks and a cattle-less class often tending to cattle of wealthierMaasai. Outsourcing enables the owner to both pursue a career not germane toMaasai culture, and expand a herd of cattle through which they can still exert controldue to novel technologies. The herder, or ‘livestock manager’, that takes care of live-stock from multiple parties may not have the means to own livestock and be a cat-tle-less professional herder or may herd his cattle together with that of others.Outsourcing herding tasks also often brings the benefit of allowing your livestock tomigrate. Migratory herding has been in steep decline and cattle are often left to(over)-graze on limited land as Maasailand has been marginalized, there is notenough migratory land for the increasing number of Maasai. Having your livestockmigrate as you stay sedentary often sees your livestock migrate between three or fourdifferent bomas in Ngorongoro. Unlike make-shift bomas made for semi-nomadicpastoralism, these are often occupied by family members who welcome the cattleinto their boma when it is most ecologically rational to let them graze in that specificarea. Owners stay in daily contact with herders and often visit their herd duringthe weekend or when they are on leave. Rather than investing in a mainstreamTanzanian lifestyle, many career-Maasai use their income to build up complex andoften successful structures of delegated migratory or nomadic pastoralism. These
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developments suggest a close relation between mobile technologies and socialmobility and how they influence new class relations.
Shifts in Information Exchange and Access
Olikapi, a senior elder from the village of Endulen, an important market townin the North-West in the NCA, went on a long tirade regarding cell phones ashe was waiting for a friend at the PC. He was charging a set of high techequipment including two smart phones, a tablet and a pc. His anti-mobilephone monologue was interrupted by two calls he received. He lamented howmobile phones erase the rituals surrounding how news is exchanged. Cattlemay be the fabric of Maasai culture, but exchanging information is paramountto keeping the culture together. The importance of instant informationalexchange becomes clear for instance in restricted areas of the Maasai Mara andareas surrounding the Serengeti, where the mobile phone is a key strategicsource to outsmart park wardens and graze cattle on confiscated land.
Speaking to senior elders I often hear that I would be surprised at how fastnews used to circulate in the days before cell phones and cars. I am oftenreminded that news can only travel fast and efficiently if channelled via strictrules, these rules however are no longer known to younger generations.(Jessika’s fieldnote diary, August 2013)
The vantage point we take on this network culture is that it is warranted by systems ofland use rather than being a mere response to environmental constraints. This echoeswith Noyes (2000) work on nomadism, portraying the nomad as an agent acting onrational, economic grounds rather than as a victim of environmental hardship. Onecould argue that the mobile phone does not automatically strengthen intricate struc-tures or systems of land use. The critique voiced by elders on news spreading viaphones and Facebook is that it is partial, rumour-based and that there is just too muchinformation flowing for people to channel out what is relevant. Also there is no agerestriction on who can know what. If before, to gain access to certain knowledge youneeded to graduate to a specific age-set, now massive amounts of intelligence arestored online and accessible universally. In addition, several male research participantslamented the increased popularity of smart phone and computer use by women, asfemale users are perceived to be more emancipated and more likely to be lured awayfrom Maasailand. The consequence is arguably a cultural change, a case whereby(mobile) technologies have actively influenced culture rather than were they areadapted into the culture. Knowledge is power, gaining knowledge outside traditionalforms changes structures. Yet activists argue this is symptomatic for our day and age.Activists for education and the democratization of access to (mobile) technologiesmaintain that those (predominantly senior elders) who experience this as threateningthe culture, use culture as an excuse to maintain their traditional power.The stance is that power relations and social mobility are undergoing a change
from within, heavily driven by access to education and interaction with Tanzaniansociety, whereby age is no longer the driving factor for hierarchy or knowledge.Social mobility is further detached from ageing and time. Following this argument,the case of increased knowledge access is embedded into already ongoing changes
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rather than a radical culture change in itself. Novel mobile technologies are to someextent perceived as a threat by senior elders in turning traditional hierarchy structuresaround, yet they admitted that youth have always challenged these structures. Mobilephones should thus be seen as new tools in an ongoing dialectic between generationsrather than revolutionary devices.
I asked Olikapi just how information would have been restricted to a certainage set, and how a ritual to transport knowledge would have looked like andhe gave me the example of a death in the family: ‘Now, you may receive aphone call from any random person saying: “Hey, did you know your uncledied?” You ask them how and they answer they do not really know and theyheard it from someone else. The information may either be false or if true, youare likely to receive a dozen calls over the next two or three days from randompeople. In the past, if a close relative died, senior elders, who are the first to beinformed, would come by your house in the early morning hours, wheneverything is still peaceful and quiet and sit down with the family over Chaiand explain in detail what had occurred, leaving out no questions or room forspeculation.’(Jessika’s fieldnotes, July 2013)
In her study on youth and their every-day cell phone use in Mozambique,Archambault (2012) describes how youngsters challenge notions of respect towardselders through their mobile phone customs. Stories, such as Olikapi’s, show a similarchange in perception of what ‘respectful’ communication is, with young Maasai, andwhich is embedded in a larger process of youth challenging their elders.In the past, information would always move together with a person moving
physically. Some mobile phone sceptics maintain that in the loss of physical move-ment, accountability is lost too. As Maasai become more sedentary in terms of fewfamilies still shifting between bomas following seasonal change, mobile technologyis replacing some of the need to displace yourself in space. Let us briefly explain thesedentarisation processes. Parks and protected areas decrease grazing grounds.Simultaneously, the Maasai population has increased dramatically in the past fiftyyears and schooling contribute equally to sedentarism. Furthermore, with the diversi-fication of income, nomadic tasks are being outsourced to groups of young men withlittle personal assets. In other words, herding is being carried out as a practice lessby the warriors of their own family and instead outsourced to professional herderswho may watch over the herds of a large family or group of friends. These herdersare given airtime by their employers so that they can warn and inform on any mat-ters regarding grazing or disease and are often paid by M-pesa. The task of herdingis being carried out by less people as many young Maasai seek higher education orjobs in the tourism sector, either in the region or in coastal areas.Senior elders, often portrayed the past in a very poetic, romantic way, pointed out
that when Maasai were still constantly ‘on the move’, in search of greener pastures,visiting people, or simply for the joy of walking, you could meet someone as youwere walking, establishing who you knew in common, and then proceed to givedetailed accounts of the news from your home. Senior elders generally portray thepast in a very nostalgic way, laden with rich contextual anecdotes of freedom, roam-ing and moving about. Yet, these stories constantly clash with the livelihood chosenby these elders today. In order to assess how political activism is negotiated aroundmobile technologies, one needs to situate these in an already existing struggle against
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marginalization and access to land. A geo-political context where land is not simplytaken or conquered as a response to a shifting ecology but where land is territorial-ized by outside forces.
Activism and Global-to-Local Cooperation
Maasailand, as a ‘moving landscape’, has been territorialized from pre-colonial timesuntil today; by raids (on other cultural groups or between Maasai factions) as well asnegotiations between groups as shared land use between Maasai and agriculturalistshave led to (albeit fragile) alliances of mutual benefit (Galaty 1993). In colonial andpost-colonial times, game reserves, national parks, long term leases of mininggrounds, semi-industrial farming, sharp increases in human population and a nationalborder have added to the complexity of land use. Inhabitants relating to this landthrough a mobile way of life are marginalized and forced to rethink and repositiontheir relationship towards land, even adapting their imaginaries towards a conceptualapproach that harbours notions of ‘ownership’, ‘claiming’ and a romantification oflost land such as the Serengeti. The approach taken to ‘securing’ or ‘reclaiming’ landrights is one that engages heavily with discourses concerning indigenous rights andeven intellectual property rights.14 These frameworks clash with original notions ofland use and traditions, yet they are heavily utilized by Maasai rights activists. Theframework is one that has been set by the international community, an agenda borneout of a Western discourse on human rights and ownership. Senior elders advocatingfor Maasai rights (such as the founders or current members of the PC) maintainstances such as ‘we have traditions; others, other Tanzanians, foreigners, they donot’. Or they express a sense of belonging in the Serengeti, paired with the experi-ence of victimization by both colonial rule and the current government. Youngeractivists embrace current discourses, including one on intellectual property rights onanything labelled or related to ‘Masai’ or ‘Maasai’, to a much more vigorous extent.This results in a distancing both from Maasai culture and from the support of seniorelders. On this path, the support of the global online community has becomeimperative. With the de-regulation of information access, younger generations areincreasingly politically mobile and eager to challenge power relations within Maasaiculture.Global-to-local cooperation concerning Maasailand is established via Facebook,
YouTube, blogs, Twitter, crowd sourcing initiatives and online petitions. Success isheavily dependent upon the capabilities of educated young Maasai activists to com-municate in the jargon of indigenous rights discourse (Hodgson 2011) and to induceimaginaries of a pure and noble lifestyle at peril. This is a balancing act. Whilewithin the indigenous rights discourse, activists will try to position their cultures as‘progressive’, the agency and right to decide the fate of their own culture is stressed.Communicating to a global audience of potential donors and supporters of ‘theMaasai cause’, imaginaries of the noble savage need be upheld. Yet, activism isequally carried from within communities, with film clips of injustices snapped byeveryone’s mobile phone camera: Women practicing sit-ins; cattle being confiscatedby park wardens, heavily armed security personnel shouting insults and pushingback crowds.15 The success of activism depends upon the relationship betweenactivists, who are often young Maasai pursuing careers outside Maasailand. Whilstdiscrepancies between the two cannot be overlooked, many ‘modern Maasai’(a Maasai expression) keep livestock with professional herders and are hence
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actively involved in keeping Maasailand mobile. It must be noted here that theMaasai have a relatively low social status in Tanzania, mistrusted for their culturaldistinctiveness and mobility. The Maasai cultivate a similar disdain for mainstreamTanzanian culture with a popular wisdom being that God created three races: Black,White and Maasai.16 ‘Modern Maasai’ manage to both move upward socially withinmainstream Tanzanian society and counter-balance the mistrust they have gainedwithin Maasai culture. Initially deviating from ‘classic’ Maasai roles, many are nowamassing large herds of cattle.
Conclusion
This article analyses ethnographically the various mobilities, or movements infusedwith meaning, that shape Maasailand. Mobile practices such as herding or seasonalmigration are motivated primarily by cattle and have socio-cultural, economic andpolitical implications. We explore the embodiment of technology, defined as a set oftechniques, systems, practices or methods to control and adapt to these implications.We focus on the embedding of contemporary mobile technologies such as the mobilephone into Maasai culture. We argue that, rather than causing radical cultural change,novel mobile technologies are embedded, rationalized and re-purposed. Furthermore,a local-to-global cooperation on indigenous rights is expedited as images from pro-tests or government actions are snapped up with mobile phones and shared online inFacebook groups, often leading to global online petitions with the aim to secure landrights, sparking reaction from authorities.The Maasai case shows how technology is adopted into a socio-cultural, political
and economic network where it becomes an extension of well-established and histor-ically influenced practices. We aim to advance mobility studies by expanding thedefinition of mobile technologies from engineered devices or ‘gadgets’ with portablequality to tools supporting peoples’ customary practices. Customary mobile practiceshave paved the way for the successful integration of mobile technologies such as themobile phone in Maasailand. Although younger Maasai research participants reporthow their lives are improved, senior elders often lament how mobile technologiesaid younger generations in climbing traditional hierarchy structures. This enablesnew social mobilities, within both Maasai culture and Tanzanian society in general.Yet, rather than assuming it is technology that radically changes culture, this processshould be viewed as an ongoing (historical) dialectic between generations.The mobile phone has been integrated into Maasai culture at an interesting time in
history. Increased pressure from the government through the imposition of land useplans stress the land. Additionally, population growth has forced many Maasai into asedentary lifestyle. The phone opens up possibilities of cultural re-invention and newkinds of mobility as well as ways around government control. For the causes of eco-nomic independence and indigenous rights, mobile technologies are an additional toolproviding access to an international arena. The potential to make substantial changesin land rights is however limited. Strategies of economic and ecological decision-making are bound by the political realities of oppression and further militarization ofmany Maasailand protected areas by the Tanzanian and Kenyan governments.Zooming out of the Maasai case study, this article has shown how larger cul-
tural patterns and social organization shape the meaning-making of practices ofmobility and technology and how nomadic life is ‘updated’ in global-to-localonline cooperation. Whilst mobile technologies have an impact on culture itself
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and the organization of everyday planning, their use also influences politics ofresource access, land rights and the ways in which nomadic cultures are sanc-tioned to use their land. Mobile technologies compress time and space and theuser does not often differentiate between physical or ‘face to face’ and virtual or‘over the phone’ interactions. One is propelled into different social settings simul-taneously. If one equals land or space with mobility, a transcending of time andspace increases the experience of one’s land. Distance does not make an interac-tion less real or less important and sociability or interaction that allows physicaldisconnection is often seen as increasing efficiency or the experience. Rather thantaking technological determinism for granted, we find that it is people and theiralready established networks and rituals of information sharing that shape and takeownership over technology. In a culture where land and mobility are near-synonyms, imaginaries of mobility become a transformative force within a movinglandscape.We believe that there is a great opportunity for scholars within mobility studies to
further deconstruct the meaning of technology rather than taking it for granted.Whilst the scope of this article was to focus primarily on mobile phones, we haveaimed to set precedence for a broader understanding and engagement with (mobile)technologies within mobility studies. We call for scholars to further examine bothtraditional and novel technologies and how these co-exist, complement or replaceeach other in enabling mobilities.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Material mobility refers here to visible, physical mobilities such as moving cattle to a marketplace with the purpose of selling them, whereas intangible mobility refers to immaterial mobilitiessuch as receiving money on one’s phone when trading cattle.
2. No collectively acknowledged map exists of Maasailand, yet it is constantly referred to by bothMaasai and non-Maasai alike. Maasailand was never an isolated area; rather, it comprises a net-work of economic and cultural exchanges, of mobilities and nodes being both recipients anddonors to the broader East African society. Maasailand was historically constructed by ‘displacingand assimilating’ (Sutton in Spear and Waller, eds. 1993) earlier populations, involving severalstages spread out over hundreds of years, including the making of ‘confederations’ and other alli-ances.
3. Homes are scattered across a plot, typically not fenced, whilst the cattle kraal is in the very cen-tre, shielded from wild animals and human theft by the buildings and fencing (usually acaciathorn branches).
4. This relationship is comparable to that of seafarers and the sea. Seafarers move through deterrito-rialised hyperspaces (Sampson 2011). Their home is in continuous movement, place and spacebearing meaning and purpose if their territory has no steadiness.
5. As a World Heritage site and Man and Biosphere reserve, the NCA falls under special protectionand sponsorship from UNESCO. In order to keep this status, the Tanzanian governing regimeimplements guidelines that often have a radical impact on Maasai livelihood.
6. The NCA was ‘given’ by British rule to Maasai people as ‘consolidation’ for their 1959 evictionfrom the nearby Serengeti plains.
7. Since the 2005 liberalization of the Tanzanian cellular data network, a large number of actorsincluding Tigo, Celtel and Vodacom compete for market dominance. Vodacom is the largestprovider. However, many Tanzanians carry multiple cell phones and SIM cards to ensure cover-age, battery life and being able to call someone at the best rate.
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8. The Pastoralist Council (PC) represents the Maasai (and minority Datoga) at the Ngorongoroauthorities. The PC was created to further promote the goal of human development and for theMaasai to take agency over this goal.
9. All names have been changed to respect the privacy of research participants.10. http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/1556454/tanzania_telecoms_mobile_broadband_and.pdf.11. Traditional leaders are in charge of affairs regarding religion and traditions. With the demise of
the original Maasai religion, the appointment has symbolic power.12. Lion Lights, now adopted by various community organizations and NGO’s throughout East
Africa, were first invented by a young Maasai boy. https://www.ted.com/speakers/richard_turere13. See http://mpoverello.com/2013/06/09/chinese-president-has-sealed-tanzanias-bagamoyo-mega-port-
project/ and http://www.tzrealestate.co.tz/Listing/Houses_for_Sale/2076.html.14. No land is under private land ownership in Tanzania, instead it is leased out by the state for up to
99 years. The NCA is an exception to this as it is recognized as indigenous land.15. Maasai driven news outlet: http://www.shomonews.com.16. Race biologists and turn-of-the-century ethnologists popularized beliefs regarding ‘Hamitic peo-
ple’ being ‘nomadic Caucasians’. These understandings may have been adopted by the Maasai.See Seligman (1930) Races of Africa and Maasai stories such as: http://maasaimedia.com/2014/11/22/why-all-cattle-are-a-gift-from-god-to-the-maasai/.
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