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Periodical article Periodical article
Title:'Mombasa Morans': Embodiment, sexual morality, and Samburu men in Kenya
Author:Meiu, George PaulISNI
Year:2009
Periodical:Canadian Journal of African Studies
Volume:43
Issue:1
Pages:105-128
Geographic term:Kenya
Discipline:Sociology
Subjects:Tourism
Sexuality
Samburu
Abstract:With the growth of the Kenyan tourism industry in the 1980s, numerous young Samburu men migrated seasonally to coastal tourist resorts in Kenya seeking the niche of tourism for material gains. By developing relationships with white female tourists, many of these men have rapidly accumulated wealth, and came to form a new social group within their home communities. This article, which is based on ethnographic research undertaken in 2005, argues that these men, often referred to as 'Mombasa morans', came to embody the effects of (post)colonial representations of their identity, and the effects of the moral criticism of their age-mates. Their attempt to perform a specific bodily paradigm of the 'Maasai warrior' in the context of female sexual travel led to conflicts generative of new bodily dispositions. Here, the moral criticism targeting the sexuality of these men constituted not only a discursive means of discrediting rising material inequalities but also a symbolic resource for fashioning new masculinities while refiguring bodies. (Source: Author Abstract)
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