POLITICS AND GASTROPOLITICS:

GENDER AND THE POWER OF FOOD IN

TWO AFRICAN PASTORALIST SOCIETIES
Jon Holtzman
Kalamazoo College
Male-centred aspects of political behaviour have generally remained the explanatory and
interpretive focuses in analyses of the social organization of African pastoralists. While
recent work on African pastoralists has shed increasing light on the lives of women, I
argue that key assumptions underlying anthropological models of male dominance in
these societies have been insufficiently challenged. Drawing on recent approaches in
gender and social organization that highlight the mutual constitution of domestic and
political domains, I examine comparative material from two well-known pastoralist societies: the Samburu of northern Kenya and the Nuer of southern Sudan. In doing so, I
suggest strong linkages between male-dominated political spheres and areas of domestic
life in which the role of women is more significant particularly processes of domestic
food distribution. In re-examining central facets of Samburu politics which are best
known through Paul Spencers seminal analysis of the gerontocratic aspects of Samburu
political life I suggest that the status and identities of Samburu men are in fundamental ways defined through their relationship to women as providers of food within
Samburu households. Comparative material from the Nuer suggests, additionally, the
strategic use of food by women in influencing male political spheres. In comparing these
cases, I suggest a more general model through which domestic processes of food allocation as realms of female-centred social action may be seen to play a central role in the
forms and processes of pastoral political life.

Introduction
Look around you, Nyarial, and you will see that the bravest Nuer men are always
hen-pecked husbands.
Gaajok Nuer man (Hutchinson 1996: 200).

The dissolution of the analytical separation of domestic and juro-political

domains has been a central feature of recent feminist-inspired approaches
to social organization. While in Fortess (1958) seminal formulation of this
distinction, the domestic and political were conceived of as largely distinct
spheres of social action the former being concerned with activities within
the family and household, and the latter concerned with the linkages of these
units and their members to broader social units and activities empirical and
theoretical studies have shown the two to be intimately intertwined within a
broad range of cultural contexts. On the one hand, the separation of the
domestic and political has been broadly criticized as an artificial distinction
Royal Anthropological Institute 2002.
J. Roy. anthrop. Inst. (N.S.) 8, 259-278

260

JON HOLTZMAN

grounded in Western notions of family and household (Yanagisako 1979). On

the other hand, empirical studies have demonstrated that activities and relationships which have generally been defined as domestic are frequently critically involved in the construction of alliances and other aspects of political
activity (e.g. Lamphere 1974). The most compelling outgrowths of this
approach seek to synthesize the domestic and political as mutually constituting aspects of social systems (Collier & Yanagisako 1987). This is seen most
comprehensively in Colliers (1988) analysis of inequality in classless societies,
which suggests that features intrinsic to the conjugal bond are the driving
force behind systems of differential power and moral evaluation (Peletz 1995).
Within such an approach the domestic and political are not only inexorably
linked, but the former is, in some sense, logically prior.
Despite the substantial theoretical attention brought to these issues, I argue
here that Yanagisakos realization that domestic relationships are part and parcel
of the political structure of society (1979: 191) has not significantly recast
anthropological understandings of the social systems of African pastoralists.
Pastoralists have long been viewed as quintessentially male-centred societies,
with elders in particular at the core of social action (Spencer 1965; 1997), and
males constructed ideologically as the true pastoralists (Galaty 1979). Certainly, a growing literature has made important strides in problematizing what
Hodgson (2001) has termed the myth of the patriarchal pastoralist. Particularly since the 1980s there has been a marked increase in attention paid to
the role of women in pastoralist societies (e.g. Ensminger 1987; Fratkin &
Smith 1995; Talle 1988), and such studies have shed important new light on
the role of pastoralist women in a variety of domains, ranging from livestock
production (Dahl 1987) to religious systems (Broch-Due 1999; Straight 1997)
to kinship (Bianco 2001). At the same time I will suggest that, while these
are important in providing a more nuanced view of pastoralist gender relations, they rarely challenge the central assumptions upon which models of
male dominance are predicated.
In this essay I argue that, in order to move beyond long-standing conceptions of pastoral social systems as driven by the machinations of patriarchs and
warriors, it is necessary to recognize the extent to which the masculine roles
and identities of these patriarchs and warriors are constructed in relation to
women as active agents. Drawing on primary research and published sources
on two well-known pastoralists societies, the Samburu of northern Kenya and
the Nuer of southern Sudan,1 I focus specifically on processes of domestic
food allocation as a crucial domain for a reordering of our understandings of
the domestic and political domains. Food allocation is a crucial arena which
is largely the purview of pastoral women, and it has critical and wide-ranging
significance for pastoral men. I will suggest that taking seriously the role of
women as food-providers not only necessitates a rethinking of the relative
power and status of women and men, but also demands a rethinking of the
linkages between the domestic and political in these societies.

Assessing gender relations

Assessing the relative status of men and women in any society is a less than
straightforward endeavour. While intuitively it seems both reasonable and

JON HOLTZMAN

261

important to seek to understand the relative statuses of men and women, this,
in fact, involves not only multiple (and not necessarily interlocking) sets of
complex data, but value judgements concerning what is important in regard
to status. Emphasizing varying facets of gender relations may generate very
different pictures. Susan Rogers (1975), for instance, suggests that among
French peasants, notions of male dominance are discourses which are important to prestige among men a conceit which women willingly afford their
husbands while actual gender-based power is relatively balanced. In the light
of such observed contradictions, anthropologists have generally moved beyond
a need to analyse societies through the singular lens of the question of female
subordination to analyses couched in more nuanced terms (Hodgson 2001).
Ortners (1996) concept of gender hegemonies provides a useful means of
approaching gender status in a more fragmented way. She writes:
Every society/culture has some axes of male prestige and some of female, and some of
gender equality, and some (sometimes many) axes of prestige which have nothing to do
with gender at all the most interesting thing about any given case is precisely the multiplicity of logics operating, of discourses being spoken, of practices of power and prestige at play (Ortner 1996: 146).

This concept of gender hegemonies is an effective tool for synthesizing the

plethora of frequently contradictory discourses and practices concerning the
relative status of men and women. It shifts the project away from a single
assessment of gender relations to an attention to the messy and complex interaction of a variety of discourses and practices concerning gender. At the same
time, however, there remain problematic elements related principally to the
notion that the analyst can identify a gender hegemony through which
certain aspects of gender relations may be found to be culturally dominant
and relatively deeply embedded (Ortner 1996: 147), despite the inevitable
existence of alternative, possibly counter-hegemonic elements.2 Most centrally,
the question remains of how the analyst determines the ordering of competing discourses and practices in concluding that a particular complex of these
is culturally dominant. Ortner (1996), while partially qualifying her emphasis
on prestige systems over actual power in assessing gender relations in earlier
formulations (Ortner & Whitehead 1981), largely retains this emphasis in her
more recent formulations. Thus she criticizes those (e.g. Rogers 1975) who
suggest that prestige may be balanced by power, by arguing that the two
cannot offset one another because they are of a fundamentally different order.
This, however, does little to resolve the question of what to prioritize in ordering gender relations. It is certainly possible for there to be a disconnection
between prestige and power (see e.g. Dumont 1970, for a well-known example
outside gender), but this does not tell us why we should prioritize prestige
systems in our assessments of gender dominance.
Certainly, the usefulness of an analysis of prestige systems is strengthened
(as are claims concerning their hegemonic nature) through an understanding
of how varying agents actually or potentially make use of prestige. Yet this is
problematic, because in Ortners formulation (as well as in most analyses of
pastoralist gender systems) there is a strong bias towards public forms of prestige, which are most frequently employed for male ends. Thus, while in principle Ortner treats prestige as a diffuse system of social valuation in which
any gender-centred discourse might be potentially relevant, in practice those

262

JON HOLTZMAN

things that are treated as prestige are principally confined to the public, political sphere. Thus, for instance, the gender of ritual specialists is considered to
be a significant aspect of the differential valuation of men and women in a
society. Private forms (for example, differences in the extent to which children love and respect their mothers and fathers) do not figure into a system
of differential gender valuation.3 Ortners dominant focus on public forms of
prestige is not wholly unintentional, but is grounded theoretically in Rosaldos
(1974) notion of encompassment. Rosaldo suggested that the politicaldomestic division (Fortes 1958) is fundamental to what she sees as the universal (or near-universal) subordination of women, in so far as it creates a
largely female domestic sphere which is encompassed (and hence less prestigious) by an encompassing political (largely male) sphere.4
This principal emphasis on public forms of prestige is, however, problematic on a number of counts. If those forms of prestige located in the public
sphere may be imbued with a greater potential for ordering social and
symbolic systems more generally, being public does not inherently render
valuations more widely held, more deeply felt, or more socially significant.
Gender valuations may, indeed, be widely held not only in the absence of
public validation, but sometimes in contrast to public valuations. Thus, for
instance, Samburu elders justify their relatively lower labour expenditures by
reference to their managerial role in overseeing the livestock operation for
the general welfare, yet Samburu women frequently construe the same role
as doing nothing and laziness. It is worth considering the extent to which
Ortner inadvertently places undue weight on the encompassing discourses of
men, despite womens ability to recognize the dubious nature both of discourses of female inferiority and of the universality of a male perspective.5 Yet
Ortner argues that female forms of power exercised in the absence of validation from a public (often largely male) sphere are not fully legitimate and can
only be exercised in hidden and/or distorted (manipulative) ways (Ortner
1996: 142). In contrast, male power and male forms of prestige are treated as
intrinsically valid, not requiring legitimation from women or the domestic
sphere. I suggest that by couching womens exercise of domestic power within
such a framework, Ortner diminishes its import in shaping the lives of both
men and women.
Colliers (1988) analysis is a useful corrective to this position, in ostensibly
turning the domestic-political distinction on its head. Rather than the political sphere encompassing the domestic, it is largely derivative of the logically prior
concerns of the domestic sphere. What is most fundamental to gender
relations in her view is the male need for access to female products and
sexuality (i.e. the domestic), while fundamental to male social relations (i.e.
the political) are those systems whereby men negotiate access to these aspects
of femininity. Seen from this perspective, public forms of prestige would seem
to be a uniquely poor medium through which to understand the relative status
of men and women. Prestige systems (regardless of the assumption of some
degree of multivocality) do not constitute a free-floating, abstract structure to
which all members of a society cannot help but relate, albeit in different ways
and with differing degrees of concordance. Rather, these discourses exist only
for particular agents for particular ends, with the perceived significance of their
public forms being, perhaps, as much an artefact of the ethnographers process

JON HOLTZMAN

263

of observation as it is reflective of their centrality to the totality of social relations (see also Collier & Yanagisako 1987). In short, I suggest that in many
societies those things which are identified as key indices of prestige are not
gender neutral, but rather reflect the specific concerns of men, and not necessarily those of women. These are linked centrally to public valuation for
public ends which, as in Colliers formulation (as well as in classic
structural-functionalist formulations of the domestic-political distinction),
centres to a significant degree on male distribution of rights in women. A
well-developed structure of male prestige in a particular society may, then, be
less an index of the relative status of men and women than it is a function
of mens need to construct discourses about themselves for one anothers consumption. This is not to say that systems of public prestige cannot be implicated in unequal gender relations. In some instances this is undoubtedly the
case. Gender subordination, for instance, may be a consequence of mens need
to control female labour for prestige-oriented surplus production ( Josephides
1985; Meillassoux 1981), while elsewhere (for example, in conceptions of
machismo) gender dominance may itself be an important component of masculine prestige. In these senses, however, gender relations are implicated in
publicly validated prestige as a means to an end, rather than as a consequence
of the valuations that the prestige system constructs.
What is needed, then, is a careful consideration of the ways in which power,
privilege, and prestige may or may not be articulated within the total range
of gender relations. As I turn now to an analysis of gender relations in two
pastoralist societies, my intent is not fully to reverse assessments of pastoral
gender relations. I propose instead that understandings of pastoralist gender
relations have suffered from the frequent acceptance, more or less at face value,
of male prestige discourses which say less about gender relations than they do
about relations among men. I do not see the outcome to be in any sense an
inversion of patriarchal images of pastoralist life which may be valid in regard
to some domains, from some perspectives but rather a fuller and more balanced view of the totality of gender relations.

Ethnographic background
This essay focuses on two African pastoralist societies, the Samburu of northern Kenya, who comprise the primary case-study, and the Nuer of southern
Sudan, from whom comparative material is drawn. The Samburu are a highly
pastoral people, and have only recently adopted small-scale agriculture in the
most well-watered parts of Samburu District (Holtzman 1997). Culturally and
linguistically they are closely related to the better-known Maasai, and are best
known through Paul Spencers (1965) ethnography, The Samburu: a study of
gerontocracy in a nomadic tribe (see also Spencer 1973; 1988; 1997; Sperling 1988;
Straight 1997). Spencers principal emphasis was on intergenerational dynamics, and the ways in which the age set system (the most prominent feature of
which is delayed marriage for bachelor warriors, or moran6) serves to create
and maintain a socio-political system in which elders enjoy power and privilege, particularly widespread polygyny. The Nuer are, of course, well known
within anthropology. While they practise seasonal cultivation, anthropologists

264

JON HOLTZMAN

have generally categorized them with purer pastoralists because of their heavy
economic and social emphasis on cattle. Their socio-political system is familiar to anthropologists not only from the classic work of Evans-Pritchard (1940;
1951; 1956) and recent accounts (Hutchinson 1996; Johnson 1994) but also
from a wealth of secondary analyses (e.g. Beidelman 1966; 1971; Kelly 1985;
Newcomer 1972; Sahlins 1961; Southall 1986).
As with most African pastoralists, the Nuer and Samburu have generally
been analysed within a male-centred framework.7 While recent scholarship
on pastoralist women has provided a much-needed corrective to earlier
approaches, only in rare instances (e.g. Broch-Due 1999; 2001) have scholars
suggested that received models are based on a fundamental misreading of
pastoralist gender relations. While some studies have had the ironic effect
of actually reinforcing patriarchal images of pastoralist societies (e.g.
Llewelyn-Davies 1981), others have simply not gone far enough in challenging underlying assumptions. Several important studies, for instance, have suggested that unequal pastoralist gender relations are an historical product of
capitalism and colonialism (Hodgson 1999; Kettel 1986). While these provide
an important historicized reading of pastoralist gender relations, they inadvertently confirm contemporary readings of pastoralist patriarchy. Other studies
(e.g. Bianco 2001) have argued for the greater salience of female kin ties in
constituting pastoralist social organization but have rarely pushed these to a
programmatic rethinking of pastoralist social dynamics (cf. Hutchinson 1996).
Scholars have also shown that female action penetrates pastoral male politics
(e.g. Blystad 1999; Snyder 1999), but the intermittent nature of such incursions and their ties to specifically female concerns in some senses naturalizes
the distinct and separate natures of these domains.
Read as a whole, these studies move us towards an understanding of the
ways in which pastoralist womens lives are woven in a sphere which is complementary (rather than subordinated) to the concerns of men, and illustrate
the importance of understanding womens roles and activities to a comprehensive reading of pastoral life. At the same time, I argue that these do not
significantly challenge the centrality of male spheres of social action to analyses of pastoral social and political organization. What is needed is a reading of
these spheres which integrates women as active agents in ways which are
central to the very constitution of male spheres of action. I suggest here an
approach to pastoralist socio-political life which, beyond acknowledging the
important roles which women play, focuses attention on the mutually constituting role played by men and women in constructing the roles and identities of their counterparts.

Politics and gastropolitics in Samburu social life

In the thirty-seven years since its publication, Spencers (1965) model of
gerontocracy has remained the dominant means for understanding Samburu
social dynamics, and has been influential not only to understandings of other
African pastoralists but to broader theoretical perspectives on intergenerational
conflicts (A. Foner & Kertzer 1978; N. Foner 1984).8 The key feature of
Samburu socio-political organization is their age set system, in which approxi-

JON HOLTZMAN

265

mately every fourteen years a new group of youths is initiated, all of whom
will live as bachelor warriors (moran) until the initiation of the next age set.
Spencer most heavily emphasized the implications of delayed male marriage
incumbent in this system. At any given time there are significantly more marriageable females than males, allowing elders to be polygynous at the expense
of the bachelor moran. What emerges in his analysis is a society with elders
on top, the moran a disenfranchised stratum awaiting their turn in the gerontocracy, and women little more than material concerning which true social
action is undertaken.
A gerontocratic interpretation is consistent with some, though not all,
aspects of Samburu social dynamics. Samburu elders are culturally constructed
as having unquestionable authority, although the power, control, and privilege
which this confers are in practice limited. Some domains are beyond their
purview (Holtzman 2001b), some knowledge inaccessible, and their ability to
enforce their wishes subject to a range of limitations. While a detailed discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this article, a contemporary critique of Spencers thorough and incisive ethnography points to important
discrepancies between his model and aspects of both the objective nature and
lived-in experience of Samburu power relations (see Holtzman 1996; 1999).
In this sense, the power of elders should be seen not as pervading all facets
of the social system, but rather as salient only in those particular (albeit broadly
ramifying) domains which are their purview.
Central to a critique of Spencers model is the recognition that he constructs a Samburu politics which is fundamentally concerned with the ways
in which elders control and dispense jural rights in ostensibly passive women.
This view, though not wholly inaccurate, leaves unexamined important questions underlying the male, juro-political regulation of marriage. What are the
meanings of marriage? What is the nature of the conjugal relationship and
how does it serve to constitute gender- and age-based identities of Samburu
men and women? Further, how does the agency of women shape these
processes? In short, I am suggesting that to identify the essential function of
key aspects of the socio-political system as being concerned with the regulation of marriage begs the question, in the absence of a nuanced reading
of what marriage is, of what it means to be married or unmarried, how the
conjugal relationship is constructed and enacted between men and women
in everyday life, and the implications of this for broader areas of Samburu
social life.
I will build from a central contention that suggests both a reassessment of
the relative status of men and women in Samburu society, and also a rethinking of the issues at play in male intergenerational politics that the age-gender
identities of Samburu men are in fundamental ways defined through their
relationship to women as providers of food within Samburu households.
Central to Samburu males movement from youth to moran and moran to
elder is their shifting relationship to practices of food consumption, defined
in relation to the house (nkaji), which is the domain of women. To a
great extent this process bears on issues of manhood and masculinity which
have received increasing attention within contemporary anthropology (e.g.
Guttman 1997; Herdt 1994; Herzfeld 1985). What is a man and how is a man
made? Indeed, the concept of the patriarchal pastoralist has embedded within

266

JON HOLTZMAN

it unproblematized assumptions concerning manhood and its construction in

relation to women. If Samburu womens lives are encompassed by the broader
political sphere of men, Samburu men live their lives to a great extent in relation to a domestic sphere ordered by women. Elders sleep and eat in the
houses (nkaji) built by their wives, who also claim ownership over them
(napeny nkaji). In contrast, moran, though sleeping in the houses of their or
their age-mates mothers, follow an eating regime which distances them from
the sphere of women. With the exception of milk, which may be drunk in
the company of age-mates, no food may be consumed which has been seen
by women. Their quintessential mode of eating is to consume livestock with
other moran in the bush,9 with these animals coming from the family herds
of one of the moran, as a gift from other relatives of a moran, or through
stock theft. A moran maintains some rights in the food of his mothers home
a portion of milk should be set aside for him but if resources are insufficient he will be expected to find food elsewhere.
The rituals which serve as performative acts to induct a youth into moranhood, and inevitably to end an individuals status as a moran, are specifically
concerned with these eating practices. These rituals are, of course, complex,
operating at a variety of levels which construct and communicate a broad
range of meanings which may not be essentialized into a single message.
None the less, the key ritual act which instates a youth as a full moran is the
general acceptance of the lminong (eating prohibitions) and the specific dissolution of his mothers role as his food-provider.10 In the second instance, full
elderhood is attained through the re-creation of this role in the person of his
new wife.
Circumcision though the most dramatic aspect of male initiation leaves
a youth neither a boy nor a true moran. He spends a month in a liminal period
between boyhood and moranhood, sleeping on a specially prepared bed in his
mothers house, and continuing to eat there, albeit on special foods (especially
a mixture of milk and blood). He dresses in a black skin, and spends his days
hunting birds which he wears on his head. Only at the end of this period of
approximately a month is he inducted into full moranhood through lmuget lekweeni, in which the birds are thrown away, and an ox slaughtered in the absence
of women. Portions are left behind for women to collect particularly the
initiates mother, who brings back the head, comparing its heaviness to the
many things her newly mature son will bring back to her house. Moran bring
their share of the ox to the bush, where a fatty piece from the underside (nkioo)
is rubbed on the initiates body, and fed to the initiate by an elder moran who
is sponsoring him into moranhood. Following the roasting of the meat the
new moran breaks a bone with his rungu (club). He takes half of this broken
bone back to his mother, telling her that he is now returning what she has
given him, and that he wants nothing more from her. From this point on his
eating behaviour is governed by the lminong of moranhood.
Upon marriage a man must reverse this status. Normally, he does not
immediately eat food prepared by his wife, but waits several months until the
ritual which Spencer (1965) termed the blessing of the elders, and which
Samburu currently refer to as killing the lminong. This ritual involves a direct
reversal of initiation into moranhood, employing the same nkioo cut of meat
used in the first ritual. The ritual occurs within the home, and in the pres-

JON HOLTZMAN

267

ence of the wife, who is an active participant.The meat is applied to the mans
body by elders as in moran initiation, preferably by age-mates who have
already killed their lminong. His wife feeds him this meat, as well as milk and
beer. He may then eat food in the presence of women, particularly his wife,
who is now his primary food-giver. The lminong of moranhood are vanquished, and he is now in a true sense an elder. This does not merely alter
his position in relation to eating in the home, but is central to the transformation of his identity in wide-ranging ways. A story circulating in 1993, for
instance, concerned an elder who perhaps because of long-term residence
away from home had inadvertently failed to kill his lminong. Faced with his
unexpected demise while travelling with an age-mate, he revealed that he had
never performed this ritual, and enlisted his companion to attempt to aid him
on the spot with its completion, in order to avoid unpropitious implications for his descendants.
The lminong are not simply a symbolic manifestation of moranhood, but
are in fact central to its constitution, and relatedly to the constitution of male
identity more generally. Samburu explanations for the institution of moranhood, for instance, frequently centre upon elements of domestic organization
and eating practices, particularly the need to reduce competition with children for food in the home. The centrality of eating practices to understandings of moranhood is evident from the fact that few if any offences not
concerning food can put a morans social status to such deep questioning.11
Being unusually rude or disrespectful, violent, or ill tempered in inappropriate ways, a notorious thief, or even possessing some degree of cowardice will
have a negative effect on a morans status, but will not threaten an individuals very status as a moran in the way that food offences will. By being a
lanya ndaa someone who has eaten food seen by women, or who eats
without his age-mates his claim to moranhood is itself put into question.
Further, the features of moranhood which are typically emphasized such as
the absence of marriage and control of property are certainly characteristic
of moranhood, but in no way define it. Marriage, for instance, is not uncommon during senior moranhood, but an individual will remain a moran until
he has killed his lminong. Moran frequently have significant control over their
own livestock, or even the livestock of the entire household if their father is
not alive. A moran does not, however, eat food seen by women. In doing so,
he is no longer a moran.
What this discussion points to is the extent to which Samburu male identity is defined in regard to their relationship to women, particularly in their
role as food-providers. The issues raised from this relate directly to the
meaning of marriage, and touch on Colliers (1988) model of classless societies. In formulating her argument she suggests that only men, rather than
both men and women, truly need marriage. Women may find other social
avenues through which they gain access to male products and labour, but men
need women in order to gain access to their labour, and to food in a manner
which is not demeaning. Although this one-sided characterization does not
describe Samburu marriage in a wholly accurate way the allocation of
livestock at marriage is the central means through which Samburu women
gain access to productive resources, and the small number of Samburu women
who do not marry are typically both poor and have low social status Colliers

268

JON HOLTZMAN

perspective is useful to the extent to which it illuminates the nature of male

relationships to female-centred houses. Not being a part of a female-centred
group has negative implications for males of all ages. Being raised by a mothers
co-wife (for instance, if ones mother has run away or died) is seen as having
potentially disastrous consequences for boys in particular, due to neglect and
psychological abuse.12 A boy raised by another woman will be marginalized
within the house, and numerous folk-tales centre upon the ill-treatment of
boys by the co-wives of their dead mother. In the contemporary context, not
having a mother may motivate families to send a child off to school where
he may be forgotten about, and the problems experienced at home by a boy
without a mother may drive even uncircumcised youths to leave home and
seek employment in Nairobi.
Not having a mother is, in fact, considered to be the principal legitimate
reason for a moran to marry prematurely, compelling him to do so as soon
as he has become a senior moran. The crucial issues here are both his marginality within the house, and the management of his livestock. With ones
own mother there is a degree of co-ownership of livestock. In the case of a
co-wife, however, the animals are not shared, but, rather, may be coveted. Marriage, then, in these cases allows a moran to start an independent unit, focused
on a different woman. His place in the house is legitimate, and the interest
in the livestock shared to a much higher degree. These cases are illustrative of
the position of men generally.While they are ostensibly in positions of authority, this position is contingent upon their rights in a female-centred unit within
which their authority may be exercised. Without women it is difficult to be
a man, both from the standpoint of exercising ones proper social status, and
in physical aspects of ones livelihood the care of ones property and the
acquisition of daily sustenance.

Gastropolitics and the gerontocracy

Thus far I have been arguing that Samburu male identity is centrally constituted through the relationship of men of different social ages to women,
particularly in their role as food-providers. The distinction from traditional
analyses of pastoralist social systems implied in this is perhaps subtle, but is
also crucial to reassessing the relationship of the political and the domestic
and the ways in which both constitute gender relations. While the gerontocratic model examines the ways in which males their identities embedded
in the political sphere act to control the distribution of women among
themselves, the interpretation presented thus far suggests that the cultural
construction of these male actors is itself centrally constituted through their
relationship to female-centred domestic groups. Yet this observation, while
significant, is not alone sufficient to warrant a full reassessment of male-centred
views of Samburu social dynamics. To observe that male identity is critically
defined through relationship to women no more demands a more femalecentred interpretation of pastoralist social dynamics than the importance of
cattle moves one towards a bovicentric model of pastoralist social dynamics
a comparison which, if crude, is germane to a critique of social analyses focusing on the circulation of passive women among male actors.What is required,

JON HOLTZMAN

269

rather, is a turn to the role played by female agency in the construction of

gender relations.13
How, then, does the nature of domestic relationships shape the statuses of
both men and women within the conjugal bond, as well as the statuses of those
men who were excluded from it? While Samburu women lack decision-making
power in forming a marital relationship, this does not necessitate disempowerment within the actual dynamics of social practices within the household. A
central arena within which to consider this is what Appadurai (1981) has termed
gastropolitics, the everyday domestic politics of the allocation of food within
the home. Since food distribution is the domain of women, and since I have
argued that this female role is intimately tied to Samburu maleness, it is a
critical arena in which to reassess the relative power and status imbued in the
positions of various groups within the age-gender system. Moreover, given
the pervasiveness of food scarcity in the past seasonal and cyclical, and in the
present chronic control of and access to food must be seen to be an intrinsically central component of the relative status of elders, women and moran
within the age-gender system. Indeed, from this standpoint, elders, women, and
moran possess relative advantages and disadvantages, and I will argue that attention to these, and the power relationships immanent within them, presents a
picture significantly different from the gerontocratic model.
Except in unusual and specific ritual contexts (such as ndorosi: see
Lesorogol 1991; Llewelyn-Davies 1981), Samburu women rarely assert authority beyond their own households and close kinship groups. Within the household, however, women exert principal control over the distribution and
consumption of food. This is no small matter, given both the long-standing
significance of recurrent droughts and famine, and the extent to which scarcity
has become chronic in contemporary Samburu life. Women are responsible
for the collection and distribution of milk (although children may do much
of the actual milking), and for most of the cooking.
Though there is significant debate cross-culturally concerning the implications of womens roles as gatekeeper of the family larder (Counihan 1999;
McIntosh & Zey 1989), both Samburu women and men attach significance
to this role. In principle, rules of food distribution suggest that the elders
should receive a privileged share as the owner (lopeny) of the family, and
all the people and property which constitute it. In practice, however, this is
generally meaningful only for resources beyond daily subsistence needs (such
as slaughter stock), which may be available infrequently if at all for the
vast majority of elders. As a consequence, elders are generally highly dependent on womens distribution of food, in which they may exercise considerable and culturally legitimate latitude. Significantly, elders are frequently
absent when food is prepared and, while a fair share should be set aside,
in practice an elder has no way of knowing how much food was prepared
in his absence. Because food preparation is the domain of their wives,
Samburu men frequently display little knowledge about the food which may
be available within the home. Though they may be reluctant to admit this
personally, Samburu women readily admit that wives generally take advantage
of this situation in order to give extra food to their children, and/or to take
extra food for themselves. Beyond the possibility of inequitable divisions of
known meals, the surreptitious self-provisioning of Samburu wives and the

270

JON HOLTZMAN

feeding of children also occur in the absence of husbands, and without their
knowledge.
Elders may perceive at times that their share of food is neither fair nor adequate, but complaining is problematic. First, a man often cannot know if the
division was actually unjust, or if his share simply reflected an inadequate food
supply. Secondly, though men may quarrel with their wives about food in
extreme instances even threatening to curse one of her children to death to
ensure that food will be left for his share this seriously threatens their prestige in the community. An elder is supposed to be responsible for watching
over the well-being of his family. His manhood, based on the discipline which
his moranhood served to inculcate within him, requires that he withstand suffering without complaint, particularly for the sake of those under his care. If
it is publicly known that he has been quarrelling with his family over food,
his reputation will suffer from the perception that he is concerned only with
his own stomach, and not with the well-being of the family for which he is
responsible.
The position of moran is significantly different from that of either elders
or women. Samburu society places them outside household gastropolitics,
feeding on livestock in the bush, or drinking milk at home only when food
is adequate. If resources are adequate, they maintain ties to the household food
supply through milk, and in the contemporary context sometimes through
allotments of cash.Yet the rights of moran to their families food is essentially
dissolvable. If there is not enough food for them, a moran may be asked to
fend for himself, or he may simply take it upon himself to go off on his own.
Traditionally, this seems to have been a major motivation for stock theft (especially small stock) and, while cattle-raiding is now fairly limited, moran continue to steal sheep and goats for the purposes of eating them. More significant
in the contemporary context is the option of migratory wage labour.
The position of the moran, then, carries with it both advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, the household does not take ultimate responsibility
for the well-being of a moran. In the end, he alone will ensure that he is fed.
On the other hand a moran is not expected to be tied suffering to a sinking
ship. If his household does not have enough food, the moran is free to go out
and find a share for himself elsewhere by whatever means may be necessary.
Gastropolitics, then, provides a rather different perspective on the relative
power and privilege of women, elders, and moran in Samburu society.
The most striking aspect of this is that, while the wealthiest elders have greater
access to discretionary resources than women or moran, within everyday
practice the access of most elders to resources generally may be more problematic than those of either women or moran. This is particularly the case
within contexts in which resources are inadequate to meet basic nutritional
needs a situation in which elders may be disadvantaged vis--vis women
because of their lesser role in food distribution, while lacking the freedom of
moran to seek their share elsewhere. Indeed, nutritional data (though inconclusive due to methodological difficulties in their collection) indicate higher
levels of undernutrition among elders as compared to both women and moran
(Kielmann et al. 1994). Comparison with the neighbouring Turkana shows
that men, though receiving greater amounts of prestige foods (presumably due
to their position of authority) are not better off nutritionally, and actually lose
relatively more body mass than women in times of drought, and recover it

JON HOLTZMAN

271

more slowly in times of plenty (Galvin 1985). Regardless of whether future

findings confirm the undernutrition of Samburu elders vis--vis women and
moran, nutritional levels are low for all sectors of Samburu society as they
are for many African pastoralist societies (Borgerhoff Mulder & Sellen 1994;
Galvin, Coppock & Leslie 1994) such that a relative lack of control in this
key area should be seen as seriously calling into question the ubiquitous discourse of the authority of elders. It also renders problematic the extent to
which authority might be translated into tangible privilege.

Nuer gastropolitics
In re-examining Samburu social relations I have suggested that a gerontocratic
interpretation is inadequate because it emphasizes the political manoeuvrings
of elders in maintaining a monopoly over marriageable women, while paying
inadequate attention to the domestic in constituting the identities and status
of Samburu men. I have presented an alternative reading focusing on processes
of food distribution, in which women have considerable agency, while suggesting that attention to gastropolitics leads us to rethink the relative status
of women, elders, and moran within the age-gender system.
I will now turn to comparative material from the Nuer of southern Sudan,
drawing on published sources as well as primary research (Holtzman 2000;
2001a). There are important parallels between Samburu and Nuer in regard
to the significance of food and eating practices, and both the similarities and
the differences between Samburu and Nuer gastropolitics provide important
insights concerning the general applicability of this approach to other pastoral
societies. This comparative approach is also useful in exploring dimensions
of the relationship of politics to gastropolitics beyond those found specifically
among Samburu. As with the Samburu, among the Nuer food is a cultural
domain which is integrally tied to gender roles and identities, with profound
social and symbolic implications associated with its preparation and consumption. These are similarly tied deeply and directly to the transformation
of Nuer youths into initiated men. While there are profound differences in
the age set organization of Samburu and Nuer (particularly the absence among
Nuer of a prolonged and closely prescribed period of bachelor warriorhood),
there are marked similarities in the ways in which food prohibitions, and the
reconfiguring of relationships to female food-providers, serve to construct
transitions to manhood.
Just as the passage of Samburu youths into moranhood constructs a new
relationship to female food-providers, Nuer male initiation involving scarification of the forehead ( gaar) similarly reconfigures the relationship of men
to nutritional resources. A number of specific eating prohibitions are associated with gaar, and more generally an initiated man should not be greedy
(daar) in regard to food, to the point of showing a degree of shame towards
the act of eating. Most central is the milking interdiction, which prescribes
that initiated men should no longer milk cows. To do so for ones own consumption would result in death from nueer (ritual pollution). The centrality of
this transformation to Nuer manhood is inscribed in the names of two of the
scars of gaar, never again to suck the udder, and never again to lick milk
froth from ones fingers (Hutchinson 1996: 201). Hutchinson notes that ini-

272

JON HOLTZMAN

tiation transforms a youths relationship to cattle, shifting the emphasis to their

[cattles] dependence on him as herder and sacrificer, rather than his dependence on them as sources of milk and meat (1996: 189). This transforms his
relation not only to cattle, but also to women, who now are necessary mediators between cattle and food. Because initiated men may not cook, they are
dependent upon women for their food, and are encouraged to see women
as being of two mutually exclusive types, distinguished by the presence or
absence of a kinship relationship those who may provide food, and those
from whom they may seek sex.
The significance to the conjugal relationship of the role of women as mediators of food emerges both in Hutchinsons work, and in research on transformations in gender relations among Nuer refugees in the USA (Holtzman
2000; 2001a). Both male and female informants cited womens failure to
prepare food as both cause and result of marital conflict in Sudan. While men
become angry if a woman fails to cook in a timely manner (particularly for
guests), not cooking is an important form of retaliation in the context of
domestic conflict. Informants noted that, since women are not strong enough
to fight physically with men, food is the most potent weapon available to
them in the context of disagreements. These statements mirror Hutchinsons
(1996) observation of the ways in which Nuer women express anger and
disdain for men through refusals to cook, at times in co-ordination with other
women (for instance, between co-wives.)
Food-provisioning (or its absence) is the primary mechanism through
which wives may exert significant, though perhaps not always overt, influence
over their husbands. Moreover, this influence blurs the boundaries between
areas of social life which were traditionally placed within domestic and political spheres. Notably, womens cooking provides not only physical sustenance
for men, but also social capital. The fact that the failure of women to cook
for guests was noted by my informants as a central source of conflict in Sudan
is significant in this regard. While Hutchinson does not explicitly make the
connection between womens role in food-provisioning and male political
identities, there is much in her rich ethnography upon which to base this
inference. Most significantly, she notes the extent to which providing food for
others is central to the status of men. She writes:
Nuer metaphors of power and authority were likewise expressed in terms of peoples
willingness or unwillingness to share food. A community leader was, first and foremost,
someone who helps others to eat by freely extending hospitality to all and sundry while
simultaneously restricting his reliance on the hospitality of others (Hutchinson 1996: 168).

This strongly suggests that the role of women in providing food to guests
or in actively or passively refusing to do so freely has profound implications
for the political status of Nuer men. Further ethnographic elaboration of this
process in the Sudan would serve to substantiate this point.
Intriguingly, Hutchinson also suggests that food provides a mechanism for
womens control over their husbands in domains which would traditionally
be considered overtly political in their nature most significantly, the feuding
and warfare which have figured so prominently in analyses of Nuer life. She
writes:

JON HOLTZMAN

273

[W]hen I asked one young man in Leek Nuer country why he had rushed off to a spear
fight before having any idea what it was about, he confided that his greatest fear was for
his supper. Well, if I hadnt joined in, he confessed, the porridge might have run short
(Hutchinson 1996: 200).

The connection between food-provisioning and warfare was posed to Nuer

informants in interviews I conducted in the USA. Both men and women
expressed ambivalence concerning the extent to which the influence of
womens role as food-providers extends into the domain of feuding and
warfare particularly that mens concerns for their stomachs could be a significant impetus for taking part in warfare but there was in most cases some
degree of sympathy for Hutchinsons position. Few felt that concern for ones
food would be a significant reason for running to fight to the extent that
doing so is necessitated by a constellation of factors within male identity (for
instance, bravery or the necessity of supporting other men) but most agreed
(as Hutchinson suggests) that failure to go might well result in a coward not
being fed. The idea that women might prevent fighting through the use of
food evoked stronger agreement. They noted, for instance, that it is not
uncommon for club fights between men to be stopped by women, and that
the threat of food deprivation often figures in these interventions. An incident with broader implications which Hutchinson cites became a subject of
more spirited debate among my informants. This occurrence was said to have
taken place in the 1940s, when an inter-village feud among Gaajaak Nuer
ended when all the women in the region refused to cook for their husbands.
While some informants simply stated they had not heard about the event,
others felt that it was impossible particularly because it would have been
difficult for women from different villages to communicate during serious
warfare. Others, however, confirmed that they had heard of this event, with
one Gaajaak woman explaining the logic behind such an action. Men like to
fight when the grain has been harvested and there is a lot of food and beer,
she said. By refusing to cook, women were essentially making it like a different season, which was unfavourable for warfare.
In some senses, the ways in which gastropolitics link and blur the boundaries between domestic and political domains are more overt in Nuer life
than among the Samburu. While I have argued that relations to female foodproviders are a crucial aspect of the construction of Samburu maleness, and
that attention to domestic gastropolitics necessitates a reassessment of the
relative status of Samburu men and women, Samburu women do not venture
significantly into realms of social action which would traditionally be defined
as political. Rather, the strong linkages between what is usually defined as
political and domestic vitiate any pronounced analytical distinction between
them. In contrast, the influence of Nuer women clearly penetrates domains
which would generally be regarded as male, public, and political. As with the
Samburu, Nuer maleness is constructed in important ways through the ways
in which men eat, practices which are inherently defined through their relationship to female providers, and which have real or potential implications for
both their physical and social well-being. Additionally, Nuer women have been
found to overtly enter the political through the use of their food-centred
relationships to men as an important axis of influence over their husbands.14

274

JON HOLTZMAN

Conclusion
Anthropological analyses of food have rarely attempted to place the everyday,
domestic aspects of its use within the socio-political processes of a society.
While food and eating have been analysed from a wide range of perspectives
for instance, in its symbolic, political, economic, and, of course, nutritional
aspects (e.g. Goody 1982; Mintz 1985; Richards 1939; Weismantel 1988; Weiss
1996) its actual preparation and distribution within the home has most often
been seen as a mundane activity of the domestic sphere which, if perhaps
crucial to economic life (e.g. Whitehead 1981), is ostensibly outside the political processes governing the broader society. I have argued here that among
the Samburu and the Nuer, there is a strong linkage between the domestic
activity of food provision and domains which have generally been regarded
as aspects of the political sphere. Links to female food-providers which are
constructed and defined through political institutions are not only essential to
the everyday life of males in these societies, but are also fundamental to the
constitution of male identity. In reassessing the ways in which the domestic
and the political each serve mutually to construct the other, one is forced
not only to rethink assumptions concerning the processes which underlie
each, but to reassess the status of the men and women involved in these
processes, as well. I would note, further, that the issues raised here concerning the relationship of domestic food provisioning to wider political structures are worth examining, not only within other pastoralist societies, but for
their more general applicability to a wide range of societies.
The image of the patriarchal pastoralist is dependent upon assumptions concerning the relative detachment of pastoralist women from meaningful social
action within their societies, which suggest that decision-making and political
processes are governed by men, for the purposes of men, towards goals and
processes defined by men. While the significance of male-centred political
institutions and processes, and ideologies of male (particularly gerontocratic)
supremacy should not be underestimated, these are only aspects, rather than
defining features, of pastoral social life. As such, the tendency to place explanatory primacy in the political domain is explicitly at the expense of aspects of
domestic life with which they are intimately linked most centrally the dependency of men upon women both physically and in the creation of their social
identities. I would note, finally, that failing to take into account these types of
processes not only underestimates the status of women and the significance of
their agency in shaping pastoral social life, but has broader implications for the
understanding of gender issues through a failure to problematize the position
of men and the meanings of maleness in these societies.

NOTES
Funding for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation (Award
#9211892); a Social Science Research Council International Migration Program Postdoctoral
Fellowship; and, at the University of Michigan, the Horace G. Rackham School of Graduate
Studies, the Center for African and Afro American Studies, and the Population-Environmental
Dynamics Program. Sharon Hutchinson, Bilinda Straight, Dorothy Hodgson, Conrad Kottak,
Raymond Kelly, and Tom Fricke and anonymous JRAI reviewers have generously provided
comments on this or closely related manuscripts.

JON HOLTZMAN

275

1
Research with the Samburu was conducted from January 1992-July 1994 in northern
Kenya. The Nuer component of this paper is based on informant interviews conducted in the
context of research among Nuer refugees in Minnesota (USA) between December 1995 and
August 1998, as well as published sources.
2
While outside the scope of this paper, Oyewumis (1998) contention that in some societies
gender is not even a salient category points to the danger of assuming that gender hegemonies
may be found in any society.
3
Ortner and Whitehead (1981: 19) certainly acknowledge that prestige is a principally male
attribute, but suggest that this leads to a hierarchical ordering which is significant throughout
the cultural system.
4
In making the present argument I neither accept the reality of the domestic-political distinction in its original and widely critiqued formulation, nor seek to resolve the many problematic aspects of this dichotomy identified by a wide range of scholars (e.g. Collier 1988; Collier
& Yanagisako 1987; Comaroff 1987;Yanagisako 1979). Whether there is something intrinsically
domestic about the supposed domestic sphere or something intrinsically political about the
political sphere is less significant here than the ways in which activities which are typically
consigned to each sphere serve to construct the range of gender relations within a society.
5
The dismissiveness with which Nuer women treat male myths concerning the necessity for
domestic violence is a good example of this (Holtzman 2000; 2001a).
6
The anglicized moran is used here because of the extent to which it has entered both
scholarly and popular parlance.
7
Notably, the Nuer have been the subject of more rethinking of this perspective than perhaps
any other pastoral group. Gough (1971) and di Leonardo (1979) are two earlier examples, while
Hutchinson (1996), discussed extensively below, provides the fullest and most incisive reanalysis of pastoral gender relations to date.
8
Similarities between Spencers and Meillassouxs (1981) highly influential model might also
be noted.
9
In the contemporary context, livestock shortages have reduced the frequency of this.
10
For comparative perspectives on transformations in male initiation of the relationship of
youths to women see, for instance Godelier (1986); Guttman (1997); Herdt (1982).
11
Perhaps the only worse offence might be (almost unimaginably) displaying pain during
circumcision. While a discussion of the parallels between these two domains is outside of the
scope of this article, the extent to which each is based in a denial or control of negative bodily
sensations might be fruitfully explored.
12
The most frequently cited problem for girls raised without their mothers is simply that
they become rude due to lack of discipline Samburu fathers may not beat girls.
13
I would acknowledge here the extent to which this essay devoted to a reassessment of
the role of pastoral women focuses more on the cultural construction of Samburu manhood
than on Samburu women. While recognizing a degree of irony in this, a re-evaluation of the
nature and meaning of manhood is a necessary component of a rethinking of Samburu gender
relations, as well as other important aspects of Samburu socio-political organization and process.
Certainly other, more female-focused analyses would further illuminate these issues in ways not
examined here.
14
Hutchinson (personal comm.) notes that among Western Nuer, women will also go to the
battle-front in order to prevent warfare if they deem it appropriate.

REFERENCES
Appadurai, A. 1981. Gastropolitics in Hindu South Asia. American Ethnologist 8, 484-511.
Beidelman, T.O. 1966. The ox and Nuer sacrifice. Man 1, 453-467.
1971. Nuer priests and prophets: charisma, authority and power among the Nuer. In
The translation of culture (ed.) T.O. Beidelman, 375-415. London: Tavistock.
Bianco, B. 2001. Gender and material culture in West Pokot, Kenya. In Rethinking pastoralism in
Africa: gender, culture and the myth of the patriarchal pastoralist (ed.) D. Hodgson, 29-42. London:
James Currey.
Blystad, A. 1999. Dealing with mens spears: Datooga pastoralists combating male intrusion on
female fertility. In Those who play with fire: gender, fertility and transformation in eastern and southern Africa (eds) H. Moore, T. Sanders & B. Kaare, 187-224. London: Athlone Press.

276

JON HOLTZMAN

Borgerhoff Mulder, M. & D. Sellen 1994. Pastoral decisionmaking: a behavioral ecological

perspective. In African pastoralist systems: an integrated approach (eds) E. Fratkin, K. Galvin &
E. Roth, 205-39. Boulder, Colo.: Lynn Rienner.
Broch-Due, V. 1999. Creation and the multiple female body: Turkana perspectives on gender
and the cosmos. In Those who play with fire: gender, fertility and transformation in eastern and
southern Africa (eds) H. Moore, T. Sanders & B. Kaare, 153-84. London: Athlone Press.
2001. The fertility of houses and herds. In Rethinking pastoralism in Africa: gender, culture
and the myth of the patriarchal pastoralist (ed.) D. Hodgson, 165-85. London: James Currey.
Collier, J. 1988. Marriage and inequality in classless societies. Stanford: University Press.
& S.J.Yanagisako 1987. Introduction. In Gender and kinship: essays towards a unified analysis (eds) J. Collier & S.J. Yanagisako, 1-13. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Comaroff, J. 1987. Sui genderis: feminism, kinship theory and structural domains. In Gender
and kinship: essays towards a unified analysis (eds) J. Collier & S.J. Yanagisako, 53-85. Stanford:
University Press.
Counihan, C. 1999. The anthropology of food and the body: gender, meaning and power. New York:
Routledge.
Dahl, G. 1987. Women in pastoral production: some theoretical notes on roles and resources.
Ethnos 52, 246-79.
di Leonardo, M. 1979. Methodology and misinterpretation of womens status: a case study of
Goodenough and the definition of marriage. American Ethnologist 6, 627-37.
Dumont, L. 1970. Homo hierarchichus: the caste system and its implications. Chicago: University Press.
Ensminger, J. 1987. Economic and political differentiation among Galde Orma women. Ethnos
52, 28-45.
Evans Pritchard, E. 1940. The Nuer. Oxford: University Press.
1951. Kinship and marriage among the Nuer. Oxford: University Press.
1956. Nuer religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Foner, A. & D. Kertzer 1978. Transitions over the life course: lessons from age set societies.
American Journal of Sociology 83, 1081-1104.
Foner, N. 1984. Ages in conflict. New York: Columbia University Press.
Fortes, M. 1958. Introduction. In The development cycle in domestic groups (ed.) J. Goody, 1-14.
Cambridge: University Press.
Fratkin, E. & K. Smith 1995. Womens changing roles with pastoral sedentarization. Human
Ecology 23, 433-54.
Galaty, J.G. 1979. Pollution and pastoral anti-praxis: the issue of Maasai inequality. American
Ethnologist 6, 803-11.
Galvin, K. 1985. Food procurement, diet, activities and nutrition of Ngisonyoka Turkana in an
ecological and social context. Ph.D. dissertation, SUNY Binghamton.
D.L. Coppock & P. Leslie 1994. Diet, nutrition and pastoral strategies. In African
pastoralist systems: an integrated approach (eds) E. Fratkin, K. Galvin & E. Roth, 113-31. Boulder,
Colo.: Lynn Rienner.
Godelier, M. 1986. The making of great men: male domination and power among the New Guinea
Baruya. Cambridge: University Press.
Goody, J. 1982. Cooking, cuisine and class. Cambridge: University Press.
Gough, K. 1971. Nuer kinship: a re-examination. In The translation of culture (ed.) T.O.
Beidelman, 79-121. London: Tavistock.
Guttman, M. 1997.Trafficking in men: the anthropology of masculinity.Annual Review of Anthropology 26, 385-409.
Herdt, G. 1982. Rituals of manhood: male initiation in Papua New Guinea. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
1994. Guardians of the flutes: idioms of masculinity. (Second edition). Chicago: University
Press.
Herzfeld, M. 1985. The poetics of manhood: contest and identity in a Cretan mountain village. Princeton: University Press.
Hodgson, D. 1999. Pastoralism, patriarchy and history among Maasai in Tanganyika, 1890-1940.
Journal of African History 40, 41-65.
2001. Gender, culture, and the myth of the patriarchal pastoralist. in Rethinking pastoralism in Africa: gender, culture and the myth of the patriarchal pastoralist (ed.) D. Hodgson, 128. London: James Currey.

JON HOLTZMAN

277

Holtzman, J.D. 1996. Transformations in Samburu domestic economy. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan.
1997. Gender and the market in the integration of agriculture among Samburu pastoralists in northern Kenya. Research in Economic Anthropology 18, 161-205.
1999. Households, gender and age sets: domestic processes and political economic
organization among Samburu pastoralists in northern Kenya. In At the interface: the household
and beyond (eds) N. Tannenbaum & D. Small, 41-54. Lanham, Md.: University Press of
America.
2000. Nuer journeys, Nuer lives: Sudanese refugees in Minnesota. Needham Heights, Mass.:
Allyn & Bacon.
2001a. Dialing 911 in Nuer: gender transformations and domestic violence in a midwestern Sudanese refugee community. In Immigration and immigration research in the U.S. (eds)
N. Foner, R. Rumbaut & S. Gold, 390-408. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
2001b. The food of elders, the ration of women: brewing, gender and domestic
processes among Samburu pastoralists in northern Kenya. American Anthropologist 103, 118.
Hutchinson, S. 1996. Nuer dilemmas: coping with war, money and the state. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Johnson, D. 1994. Nuer prophets. Oxford: University Press.
Josephides, L. 1985. The production of inequality: gender and exchange among the Kewa. London &
New York: Tavistock.
Kelly, R. 1985. The Nuer conquest. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Kettel, B. 1986. The commoditization of women in Tugen social organization. In Women and
class in Africa (eds) C. Robertson & I. Berger, 47-61. New York: Africana Publishing Co.
Kielmann, A., N. Kielmann, A. Jansen, D. Njama, G. Maritim, R. Mwadime & K. Saidi 1994.
Nutritional profile of the population in a food-forwork project area: a case study from
Samburu District, Kenya. Food and Nutrition Bulletin 15, 215-26.
Lamphere, L. 1974. Strategies, cooperation and conflict among women in domestic groups.
In Women, culture and society (eds) M. Rosaldo & L. Lamphere, 97-112. Stanford: University
Press.
Lesorogol, C.K. 1991. Pastoral production and transformations among the Samburu of northern Kenya. M.A. thesis, University of California-Los Angeles.
Llewelyn-Davies, M. 1981. Women, warriors and patriarchs. In Sexual meanings (eds) S. Ortner
& H. Whitehead, 330-58. Cambridge: University Press.
McIntosh, W.A. & M. Zey 1989. Women as gatekeepers of food consumption: a sociological
critique. Food and Foodways 3, 317-22.
Meillassoux, C. 1981. Maidens, meals and money. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Mintz, S. 1985. Sweetness and power. New York: Viking Press.
Newcomer, P.J. 1972. The Nuer are Dinka: an esssay on origins and environmental determinism. Man 7, 5-11.
Ortner, S. 1996. Making gender: the politics and erotics of culture. Boston: Beacon Press.
& H. Whitehead 1981. Introduction: accounting for sexual meanings. In Sexual meanings: the cultural construction of gender and sexuality (eds) S. Ortner & H.Whitehead, 1-28. Cambridge: University Press.
Oyewumi, O. 1998. Deconfounding gender: feminist theorizing and western culture, a comment
on Hawkesworths Confounding gender. Signs 23, 1049-62.
Peletz, M. 1995. Kinship studies in late twentieth-century anthropology. Annual Review of
Anthropology 24, 343-72.
Richards, A. 1939. Land, labour and diet in Northern Rhodesia. Oxford: University Press.
Rogers, S. 1975. Female forms of power and the myth of male dominance. American Ethnologist 2, 727-57.
Rosaldo, M. 1974. Women, culture and society: a theoretical overview. In Women, culture and
society (eds) M. Rosaldo & L. Lamphere, 17-42. Stanford: University Press.
Sahlins, M. 1961. The segmentary lineage: an organization of predatory expansion. American
Anthropologist 63, 322-45.
Snyder, K. 1999. Gender ideology and the domestic and public domains among the Iraqw. In
Those who play with fire: gender, fertility and transformation in eastern and southern Africa (eds) H.
Moore, T. Sanders & B. Kaare, 225-54. London: Athlone Press.
Southall, I. 1986. The illusion of Nath agnation. Ethnology 25, 1-20.

278

JON HOLTZMAN

Spencer, P. 1965. The Samburu: a study of gerontocracy in a nomadic tribe. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
1973. Nomads in alliance. Oxford: University Press.
1988. The Maasai of Matapato. Manchester: University Press.
1997. The pastoral continuum. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Sperling, L. 1988. The labour organization of Samburu pastoralism. Ph.D. dissertation, McGill
University.
Straight, B. 1997. Altered landscapes, shifting strategies: the politics of location in the constitution of gender, belief and identity among Samburu pastoralists in northern Kenya. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan.
Talle, A. 1988. Women at a loss: changes in Maasai pastoralism and their effects on gender relations.
Stockholm: University of Stockholm.
Weismantel, M. 1988. Food, gender and poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press.
Weiss, B. 1996. The making and unmaking of the Haya lived world. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Whitehead, A. 1981. Im hungry Mum: the politics of domestic budgeting. In Of marriage and
the market: womens subordination in international perspective (eds) K.Young, C. Wolkowitz & R.
McCullagh, 88-111. London: CSE Books.
Yanagisako, S.J. 1979. Family and household: the analysis of domestic groups. Annual Review of
Anthropology 8, 161-205.

Politique et gastro-politique: les relations entre les sexes et

le pouvoir de la nourriture dans deux socits pastoralistes
africaines
Rsum
Les aspects du comportement politique centrs sur les hommes continuent dans lensemble
dfinir lexplication et linterprtation dans les analyses de lorganisation sociale des pastoralistes africains. Tandis que les travaux rcents sur les pastoralistes africains ont jet de plus
en plus de lumire sur la vie des femmes, je soutiens que les ides de base qui servent de
fondement clef aux modles anthropologiques de la prdominance masculine dans ces
socits nont pas t suffisamment contestes. En mappuyant sur les tudes rcentes des
relations entre hommes et femmes et de lorganisation sociale qui font ressortir le domaine
politique et le domaine domestique comme rciproquement constitutifs, jexamine des
matriaux comparatifs provenant de deux socits pastoralistes bien connues: les Samburu au
nord du Kenya et les Nuer au sud du Soudan. En ce faisant, je suggre quil existe des liens
troits entre les sphres politiques domines par les hommes et les aspects de la vie domestique dans lesquels le rle des femmes est plus significatif, en particulier la faon dont la distribution de la nourriture est effectue dans les foyers. En rexaminant les facettes centrales
de la politique samburu surtout connues par lanalyse sminale qua fait Paul Spencer des
aspects grontocratiques de la politique samburu je suggre que le statut et lidentit des
hommes samburu sont dfinis de faon fondamentale par leurs rapports avec les femmes en
tant que pourvoyeuses de nourriture dans les foyers samburu. Des matriaux comparatifs
provenant des Nuer suggrent en outre que lutilisation stratgique de la nourriture par les
femmes exerce une influence sur les sphres politiques masculines. La comparaison de ces
cas me permet de proposer un modle plus gnral dans lequel les processus domestiques
dallocation de la nourriture, comme domaines daction sociale centre sur les femmes,
peuvent tre envisags comme jouant un rle central dans les formes et les courants de la
vie politique des pastoralistes.
Dept of Sociology and Anthropology, Kalamazoo College, 1200 Academy St., Kalamazoo, MI 49006,
USA. holtzman@kzoo.edu