George Paul Meiu

In Ethno-Erotic Economies, anthropologist George Paul Meiu looks at how fantasies of sexual difference create what we think of as "ethnicity" in a globalized world. Meiu draws back the curtain on a fascinating case of sexual tourism in Coastal Kenya in which young men deploy stereotypes of African warriors to establish transactional sexual relationships with foreign women. Meiu's deep familiarity with Samburu culture allowed him to explore the long-term effects of the sex trade on things like intimate affiliations, kinship, ritual, gender, and age in rural Kenya. What happens to communities when wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of its young men? How do these men seek to convert fast money into traditional, lasting forms of prestige to become "elders" and thus secure higher moral and social standing? And, crucially, how do others not privy to the sexual encounters themselves understand the circulation of new money? Meiu's exceptional skills as an ethnographer yield riveting testimonies from all quarters of Samburu society, resulting in a compelling look at how intimacy and ethnicity come together to shape the pathways of global and local trade in the postcolonial world.

Sexuality, Money, and Belonging in Kenya

Ethno-erotic Economies

Marion

Yet since 1980, as populations grew rapidly, livestock holdings declined, and the effects of structural adjustment programs further limited government spending, some Samburu (and Maasai) have found new ways to subvert Kenya's ethnic hier-archy. Whereas in Kenya they occupied a basal and marginal position, on the global market, they soon found out, their identity was highly valued as more authentic and more exotic than those of other Kenyans. With otherwise limited access to resources, they consequently turned their marginality into new source of capital.

Gossip, rumor, and scandal are central modes for the production and alteration of belonging. Scholars argue that gossip is not only an efficient means for asserting the "unity" of a group in relation to its outsiders (Gluck-man I963), but also a way of dealing with emerging conflicts and contradictions and generating intimate alliances against oppressive political and economic hierarchies (Besnier 2009; Pietilä 2007; Scott 1990; Sparks 1985;

L. White 2000). Focusing on the wider consequences of gossip practices, anthropologists argue that gossip is often employed as a political tool that can actively reshape social worlds. "Even though initially it is discussed in small informal circles," Tuulikki Pietila (2007, 8) argues, "gossip usually reaches the ears of the subjects of the gossip sooner or later, in effect requiring them to respond in one way or another." In this sense, gossip represents a "metaprag-matic discourse" (Silverstein 1993) through which social values, subject posi-tons, and criteria of belonging are redefined by way ofan "indirect dialogue" between gossipers and the subjects of gossip (Pietila 2007, 8-9). 

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