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Over centuries, African pastoralist societies have crafted institutions that enable them to survive in their harsh, semi-arid environment. Effectively managing communally held land has been one key to their success and a cornerstone of their social organization. Carolyn K. Lesorogol investigates the puzzling change over the last two decades as a number of pastoralist communities have sought to transform their land tenure system from communal to private ownership. She considers this change through an empirical, multi-method study of the process of land privatization and the economic and social outcomes of privatization at the household and community level. Using a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods, including participant observation, interviews, household surveys, experimental economics games, archival research, and use of new institutional economics, Lesorogol contributes to theories of institutional change by specifying the micro-foundations of change located in individual choices and group strategies as well as demonstrating the dynamic effects of shifts in bargaining power among actors involved in the change process. "Lesorogol's use of experimental economics in this book is exciting and important. It is the only book that I know of that really examines the causes, processes, and outcomes of institutional change using a full complement of these methods. This book genuinely integrates multiple methods, and makes a strong theoretical argument even more believable and stronger because of the diverse data sets and multiple methods drawn on." ---Elinor Ostrom, Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science and Co-Director, Center for the Study of Institutions, Population and Environmental Change (CIPEC), Indiana University. Carolyn K. Lesorogol is Assistant Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology at George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis.

Commons --- Land tenure --- Privatization --- Social aspects --- Social aspects --- Samburu District (Kenya) --- Samburu Distric (Kenya) --- Social conditions. --- Economic conditions.

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This richly drawn ethnography of Samburu cattle herders in northern Kenya examines the effects of an epochal shift in their basic diet-from a regimen of milk, meat, and blood to one of purchased agricultural products. In his innovative analysis, Jon Holtzman uses food as a way to contextualize and measure the profound changes occurring in Samburu social and material life. He shows that if Samburu reaction to the new foods is primarily negative-they are referred to disparagingly as "gray food" and "government food"-it is also deeply ambivalent. For example, the Samburu attribute a host of social maladies to these dietary changes, including selfishness and moral decay. Yet because the new foods save lives during famines, the same individuals also talk of the triumph of reason over an antiquated culture and speak enthusiastically of a better life where there is less struggle to find food. Through detailed analysis of a range of food-centered arenas, Uncertain Tastes argues that the experience of food itself-symbolic, sensuous, social, and material-is intrinsically characterized by multiple and frequently conflicting layers.

Samburu (African people) --- Food habits --- Food preferences --- Food --- Culture conflict --- Social change --- Food. --- Domestic animals. --- Social conditions. --- Symbolic aspects --- Samburu District (Kenya) --- Economic conditions. --- african culture. --- agricultural products. --- agriculture. --- anthropology. --- basic diet. --- blood. --- cattle. --- cultural studies. --- eating. --- ethnography. --- famines. --- food. --- gastronomy. --- government food. --- gray food. --- kenya. --- kenyan culture. --- loikop. --- lokop. --- meat. --- milk. --- moral decay. --- nilotic people. --- north central kenya. --- northern kenya. --- pastoralists. --- samburu cattle herders. --- samburu culture. --- samburu material life. --- samburu social life. --- samburu tribe. --- samburu. --- selfishness. --- semi nomadic. --- struggle for food.