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In a cup of tea: Commodities and history among Samburu pastoralists in northern Kenya
Author(s) -
Holtzman Jon D.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.2003.30.1.136
Subject(s) - pastoralism , commodity , consumption (sociology) , geography , capitalism , sociology , social science , political science , economics , livestock , market economy , law , forestry , politics
In this article, I explore the 20th‐century history of Samburu pastoralists through the lens of a particular beverage, tea. In classic anthropological analyses, "drug foods" such as tea have been taken as emblematic of the spread of global capitalism. Tea, however, is a rare example of a commodity that Samburu have adopted as a central component of a self‐defined "traditional" culture specifically counterposed to change. Tracing historical transformations in practices and meanings associated with tea use, I consider both the processes underlying its acceptance and their import in explicating broader processes through which Samburu agents have negotiated contexts of change. [Kenya, consumption, pastoralism, food, tea, history]