Erasing the Zebu

Anti-Nomadic Narratives, Discursive Resistance and the Moral Economy of Mobility in Northern Kenya

Bibliographic Data

ID7515213
AuthorsGiordano Marmone (0000-0001-8195-4874), Alfred Lenaola
Year2026
Volume30
Issue1
Pages104-128
Publication date2026-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNomadic Peoples (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0822-7942 • E-ISSN: 1752-2366
PublisherLiverpool University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3828/whpnp.63904085203744
OpenAlexW7132844425
LanguageEN
References cited27

This article examines how development initiatives in northern Kenya, led by NGOs, international organisations, missionary groups and state actors, interact with Samburu pastoralist institutions and imaginaries. While external actors often promote sedentarisation and livestock commodification as paths to ‘modernisation’, Samburu responses are shaped by nuanced strategies of adaptation, resistance and discursive negotiation. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the Maralal and Nyiro areas of Samburu County, we explore how mobile pastoralists mobilise criticism, sarcasm and paradox to contest anti-nomadic narratives while selectively engaging with development programmes. We also examine how some local electoral candidates and politicians participate in the effacement of the zebu cow from public debate. Finally, we highlight emerging hybrid forms of governance, such as the integration of bureaucratic roles in the age class system. These dynamics reveal how the Samburu navigate pressures toward sedentarisation and institutional transformation while seeking to maintain control over land, livestock and the moral economy of mobility. This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0

Ambivalence · Bureaucracy · Commodification · CONTEST · Moral economy · Narrative · Pastoralism · Resistance (ecology · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology · Transboundary Water Resource Management · Wildlife Ecology and Conservation

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