Abstract
| This paper analyzes the many questions about the nature of the indigenous Masaai tribes, specifically of subsistence practices today, because only scattered accounts remain from colonial explorers from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The Masaai are groups of people that reside in villages scattered throughout eastern Tanzania. The following interview questions are the research focus questions of this study: What ways are the Masaai obtaining their food today? What are traditional ways of obtaining food in the past? What ways are Tanzanians living on the Zanzibar Islands obtaining their food today? What are traditional ways of obtaining food and other goods for the people of the Zanzibar Islands in the past? What government policies today impact the ways you are allowed to process, to gather, or to trade food and goods? The responses will be processed, interpreted, and analyzed as well as the field notes and tape recordings taken during my observations and interviews conducted with the program’s Swahili/English translator Samson Kiware. The following list of steps were used to process and interpret information obtained during my research: fieldnotes, interviews of Masaai villagers, coding from focused and selective, analyzing and interpreting of coding themes, and a final analysis. My direct observation of the Masaai subsistence patterns will allow for comparisons with metropolitan subsistence patterns of Zanzibar to show how development impacts, or does not impact, once traditional ways of life for Tanzanians. The goal of this project is to research the effects that development and trade have upon indigenous tribes in eastern Tanzania, so that anthropologists can use the results of this research to understand how culture contact around the world increasingly impacts traditional ways of life. |
Use and reproduction restrictions
| This material may be protected by copyright law (e.g., Title 17, US Code). For more information about the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Murphy Library's copyright, fair-use, and permissions policies, please see https://digitalcollections.uwlax.edu/. |