Land conflict, murder, and the rise of “timeless culture” and girl blaming (Samburu, Kenya)

The paper examines youthful practices in the Samburu pastoralist age set system as they evolved into tropes of warrior girlfriends inciting masculine violence. Through a close examination of a well-publicized Kenyan court case surrounding the suspicious death in 1931 of Theodore Powys, a British settler, this paper documents the shaping of a discourse about feminine agency and masculine bravado among the youth that eventuated in harsh state-sponsored collective punishment of a pastoralist Samburu community. Colonial officers and European settlers strategically deployed Samburu youth “culture” in the form of girls’ sexuality and young men’s martial role in the tense, globally significant milieus of land policy and conflict in ways that persist in the twenty-first century. Thus, girls’ sexuality has had political implications that far exceed the lives of individual girls.L'article étudie comment, dans le système des classes d’âges des pasteurs Samburu du Kenya, des pratiques propres à la jeunesse ont alimenté des clichés récurrents selon lesquels les jeunes filles seraient poussées à séduire leurs amants, les guerriers, et à les inciter à la violence. L’examen de la mort suspecte en 1931 du colon britannique Theodore Powys, une affaire judiciaire célèbre survenue dans le contexte du Kenya colonial, éclaire l’origine de l’imputation aux jeunes Samburu de ce penchant irrésistible pour la séduction et la bravade guerrière, lequel légitima des représailles violentes à leur endroit commanditées par l'État. Or, la manipulation, dans ces années, par l’administration coloniale et les colons européens de cette « culture » des jeunes Samburu sous la forme de la sexualité provoquante des filles et du rôle martial des jeunes hommes, a des effets encore perceptibles au xxie siècle, dans les conflits fonciers et l’accaparement de terres dont les enjeux politiques sont à la fois locaux et internationaux. Ainsi, la sexualité prêtée aux jeunes filles a eu et a encore des implications politiques qui les dépassent et vont bien au-delà de la vie de chacune d’entre elles

Altered landscapes, shifting strategies: The politics of location in the constitution of gender, belief, and identity among Samburu pastoralists in northern Kenya.

The dissertation examines several of the ways in which the places Samburu pastoralists of northern Kenya inhabit structure their identities in the context of historical and contemporary social change. Central to this discussion of Samburu places and identities is the evolution of fixed town centers that made their appearance in Samburu District during the British colonial period. The dissertation examines the importance of the construction of mission, trade, and administrative centers to the (re)configuration of Samburu identities in the colonial period and the ways in which these centers continued (in the period of fieldwork) to be integral to a complete understanding of changing Samburu identities. The dissertation is based on quantitative and qualitative fieldwork methods employed (1992-94) in three lowland Samburu communities selected based on their proximity to centers of trade, Christian mission, administration, and development. A time allocation survey was conducted in all three communities over the course of a year, and a variety of other surveys were conducted to elicit residence, formal education, and employment histories, as well as Christian mission and church involvement and development project participation. Qualitative methods employed include partial life histories and structured and unstructured interviews on religion, prophets, adornment, beads, work, education, the dispute process, and other topics relevant to the project's themes. Participation observation methods were used throughout the project period, and extensive archival research was conducted to supplement the oral history information obtained during the interview process. Drawing on recent scholarship on issues of identity and ethnicity among East African pastoralist peoples, the dissertation employs a variety of theoretical lenses to develop the notion of border identities constructed through place and practice, against which other Samburu identify themselves. In particular, the study draws attention to contemporary Samburu emic distinctions between Samburu living in rural areas and those whose cultural position is made precarious by their residence in towns. It is suggested that Samburu of the town occupy a position at the margins of Samburu society even as the features of that anomalous, hybrid identity provide useful tools for the reconstitution of Samburu identities generally, in the context of contemporary socioeconomic change.Ph.D.African historyCultural anthropologySocial SciencesWomen's studiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/130840/2/9811198.pd

Documenting the health consequences of endemic warfare in three pastoralist communities of northern Kenya: A conceptual framework

Violent conflict represents the third most important source of mortality around the world, yet violence-related mortality remains profoundly undercounted (Krug, Dahlberg, Mercy, Zwi, & Lozano, 2002). As a step toward documenting the consequences of even the "smallest wars" we offer a conceptual framework for a recently initiated project that comparatively examines the direct and indirect consequences of intercommunity violence among Pokot, Samburu, and Turkana herding communities of Northern Kenya. While a substantial body of work has accumulated on the social responses to this violence very little is known about the differential impacts on community health. Based on our cumulative ethnographic experience in the area, we offer a conceptual framework that merges a context-sensitive ethnographic approach with a comparative epidemiological one centered on documenting the lived experience of violence and inequality. In this paper, we provide evidence for the importance of a contextualized approach detailing how social environments that include chronic episodes of violence produce variations in health. We do so by presenting the results of previous work to highlight what is known and follow this by identifying what remains to be understood about how violence, inequality, and health interact in these communities. While much is known about the importance of access to livestock herds for health, nutrition, and child growth in this difficult physical environment, far less is known about how the social responses to violence interact with access to herds to create new patterns of nutrition and health. With respect to pastoralists, additional areas that remain only nominally understood include age-specific mortality patterns, reproductive health, and psychosocial/mental health, topics that we view as central to the current study. In sum, we suggest that health offers one of the most useful tools for examining the costs of violence by creating opportunities for advocacy.Endemic warfare Social production of health Embodiment Ethnicity Nomadic pastoralism Violence

Drought, psychosocial stress, and ecogeographical patterning: Tibial growth and body shape in Samburu (Kenyan) pastoralist children

ObjectivesThis study of Samburu pastoralists (Kenya) employs a same-sex sibling design to test the hypothesis that exposure in utero to severe drought and maternal psychosocial stress negatively influence children’s growth and adiposity. As a comparison, we also hypothesized that regional climate contrasts would influence children’s growth and adiposity based on ecogeographical patterning.Materials and MethodsAnthropometric measurements were taken on Samburu children ages 1.8–9.6 years exposed to severe drought in utero and younger same-sex siblings (drought-exposed, n = 104; unexposed, n = 109) in two regions (highland, n = 128; lowland, n = 85). Mothers were interviewed to assess lifetime and pregnancy-timed stress.ResultsDrought exposure associated to lower weight-for-age and higher adiposity. Drought did not associate to tibial growth on its own but the interaction between drought and region negatively associated to tibial growth in girls. In addition, drought exposure and historically low rainfall associated to tibial growth in sensitivity models. A hotter climate positively associated to adiposity and tibial growth. Culturally specific stressors (being forced to work too hard, being denied food by male kin) associated to stature and tibial growth for age. Significant covariates for child outcomes included lifetime reported trauma, wife status, and livestock.DiscussionChildren exposed in utero to severe drought, a hotter climate, and psychosocial stress exhibited growth differences in our study. Our results demonstrate that climate change may deepen adverse health outcomes in populations already psychosocially and nutritionally stressed. Our results also highlight the value of ethnography to identifying meaningful stressors.Samburu woman in lowland homestead.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/173061/1/ajpa24529.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/173061/2/ajpa24529_am.pd

Epigenetic mechanisms underlying the association between maternal climate stress and child growth: characterizing severe drought and its impact on a Kenyan community engaging in a climate change-sensitive livelihood

Pastoralists in East Africa are among the world’s most vulnerable communities to climate change, already living near their upper thermal limits and engaging in a climate-sensitive livelihood in a climate change global hot spot. Pregnant women and children are even more at risk. Here, we report the findings of a study characterizing Samburu pastoralist women’s experiences of severe drought and outcomes in their children (N = 213, 1.8–9.6 y). First, we examined potential DNA methylation (DNAm) differences between children exposed to severe drought in utero and same-sex unexposed siblings. Next, we performed a high-dimensional mediation analysis to test whether DNAm mediated associations of exposure to severe drought with body weight and adiposity. DNAm was measured using the Infinium MethylationEPIC BeadChip array. After quality control; batch, chip, and genomic inflation corrections; covariate adjustment; and multiple testing correction, 16 CpG sites were differentially methylated between exposed and unexposed children, predominantly in metabolism and immune function pathways. We found a significant indirect effect of drought exposure on child body weight through cg03771070. Our results are the first to identify biological mediators linking severe drought to child growth in a low-income global hot spot for climate change. A better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the association between drought exposure and child growth is important to increasing climate change resilience by identifying targets for intervention

Lifetime stress and war exposure timing may predict methylation changes at NR3C1 based on a pilot study in a warrior cohort in a small‐scale society in Kenya

ObjectivesCandidate gene methylation studies of NR3C1 have identified associations with psychosocial adversity, including war trauma. This pilot study (sample sizes from 22 to 45 for primary analyses) examined NR3C1 methylation in a group of Kenyan pastoralist young men in relation to culturally relevant traumatic experiences, including participation in coalitional lethal gun violence.MethodsAdolescent and young adult Samburu men (“warriors”) were recruited for participation. DNA was obtained from whole saliva and methylation analyses performed using mass spectrometry. We performed a data reduction of variables from a standardized instrument of lifetime stress using a factor analysis and we assessed the association between the extracted factors with culturally relevant and cross‐culturally comparative experiences.ResultsCumulative lifetime trauma exposure and forms of violence to which warriors are particularly susceptible were associated with DNA methylation changes in the NR3C1 1F promoter region but not in the NR3C1 1D promoter region. However, sensitivity analyses revealed significant associations between individual CpG sites in both regions and cumulative stress exposures, war exposure timing, and war fatalities.ConclusionsThis study supports the importance of NR3C1 methylation changes in response to challenging life circumstances, including in a global south cultural context that contrasts in notable ways from global north contexts and from the starkly tragic examples of the Rwandan genocide and war‐associated rape explored in recent studies. Timing of traumatic exposure and culturally salient means to measure enduring symptoms of trauma remain important considerations for DNA methylation studies.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/168441/1/ajhb23515.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/168441/2/ajhb23515_am.pd