Being Maasai is probably the most accomplished and certainly the most comprehensive volume produced thus far among the many recent historical studies of ethnicity in Africa. It is an unusually well-integrated and tightly organized collection, with consistently high quality in its many chapters; there is no stray or weak paper among them. It works, in effect, as a hybrid textbook...The study will likely become a benchmark for future studies of African ethnicities in general and East African pastoralists in particular. The book contains a formidable body of scholarship... -

• PART I - Introduction by T. Spear - PART II: BECOMING MAAS AI - Dialects, Sectiolects, or Simply Lects?: The Maa Lang uage in Time Perspective by G. Sommer & R. Vossen - Be coming Maasailand by J.E.G. Sutton - Maasia Expansion and the New East African Pastoralism by J.G. Galaty - Aspects of 'Becoming Turkana': Interactions and Assimilation Betw een Maa- and Ateker-Speakers by J. Lamphear - Defeat & Dispersal: The Laikipiak and their Neighbours at the End of the Nineteenth Century by N. Sobania - Being 'Maasai', but not 'People of Cattle': Arusha Agricultural Maasai in the Nineteenth Century by T. Spear - PART III - BEING MAAS AI - Becoming Maasai, Being in Time by P. Spencer - The Wo rld of Telelia: Reflections of a Maasai Woman in Mataparo by T. Chieni & P. Spencer - 'The Eye' that Wants a Per son, Where Can It Not See?': Inclusion, Exclusion, and a B oundary in Maasai Identity by J.G. Galaty - Aesthetics, E xpertise, and Ethnicity: Okiek and Maasai Perspectives on Personal Ornament by D. Klumpp & C. Kratz - PART IV: C ONTESTATIONS & REDEFINITIONS - Acceptees and Aliens: K ikuyu Settlement in Maasailand by R. Waller - Land as Ours e, Land as Mine: Economic, Political and Ecological Margin alization in Kajiando District by D.J. Campbell - Maa-Spea kers of the Northern Desert: Recent Developments in Ariaal and Rendille Identity by E. Fratkin - PART V - CONCLUSION S by Richard Waller - Bibliography - Index