“Between Mamas”: The Anthropology of a Dispute, or—The Perils of Having Sons in the Field

This article both narrates and analyzes a conflict that my son and I were the center of in 1994 while I was conducting fieldwork with Samburu pastoralists in Northern Kenya. I draw upon a classic anthropological literature on conflict, most notably Gulliver's notion of “prehistory” to enframe a discussion of the participants' motivations, including my own. In discussing the moot held to settle the conflict and its dramatic consequences, I address the issues of inside/outside status and the role of our interlocutors in constructing our ethnographic personae in a mutually transforming process.