Maasai Land as Foodscape of Anticapitalist and Decolonial Resistance

Maasai land is the ancestral territory of Maasai pastoralists, extending over the so-called Maasai Mara ecosystem, an ecological and landscape unit across southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, home of Maasai pastoralists. Pastoralism can be defined as a socio-ecological system based on extensive livestock grazing, where the droving of livestock is informed by local, century-old ecological knowledge rooted in local culture (Razzano et al., in press; FAO - PKH), and UNESCO recognizes the practice as World Intangible Heritage (Montanè, 2018). This system understands pasture-animals (both wild and domesticated) ecological interactions, and respects the regeneration of grasslands. In Maasai Land, grazing is based on the collective management of land and resources, and the herder-animal-grassland relationship is non-hierarchical, and informed by care-inspired practices. Thus, pastoralism can be understood as a non-extractive food production and landscape management system (Scoones, 1995; Homewood et al., 2009; FAO -POKH). Scholars from different disciplines retrieved “foodscapes” as an analytical framework to understand the intersection between landscape, people, food, and culture, as foodscapes represent the “socio-spatial manifestation of the relationship between humans and the environment, intermediated by food activities” Fontefrancesco et al., 2023:677), where the entanglement between food practices, landscape, identity, culture, local knowledge systems, and governance becomes evident. In a similar perspective, my co-authors and I have argued “grazing landscapes are not abstract territories but living and evolving cultural entities endowed with memory, meaning, and spiritual significance, shaped by the multigenerational ecological knowledge of pastoralists. Pastoral mobility preserves complex cultural and ecological landscapes where tangible and intangible heritages intersect with ecologically significant practices.” (Razzano et al., in press) This contribution draws on critical agrarian studies (mainly informed by agroecology and food sovereignty perspectives), studies of political ecology of conservation, socio-anthropological literature on foodscapes, and semi-structured interviews with Maasai communities in the Kilimanjaro area (Northern Tanzania, Enduimet Wildlife Management Area). Interviews took place in Jan-Feb2023, and the schedule and the content of interviews were decided with the participation of villagers and village leaders, in an attempt to counter colonial and extractivist data-gathering activities, respecting the time and priorities of respondents. The objective of this contribution is to frame Maasai Land as a cultural foodscape of decolonial and anti-capitalist resistance. Unlike dominant agribusiness paradigms rooted in extractivism, Maasai pastoralism represents a low-external-input, care-based food system, deeply attuned to ecological variability and resource uncertainty (Scoones, 1995). It exemplifies resistance to two fronts of capitalist, colonial accumulation (Harvey, 2004): (1) agribusiness intensification, which promotes feedlot-based meat production and sedentary land uses (Steinfeld, et al., 2006), and (2) colonial fortress conservation paradigms, which reframe culture-shaped savannas as pristine wilderness, displacing communities through fence-and-fines protected areas and green grabbing (Fairhead et al., 2012; Currier and Mittal, 2021). Working outside the logic of commodification of nature (whether it is for food production or biodiversity conservation), Maasai pastoralists become stewards of ‘resistance-shaped landscapes’. However, Instead of being recognized as co-creators of resilient ecosystems and active landscape shapers, pastoralists are depicted as threats to biodiversity (UNESCO-IUCN, 2009; Homewood et al., 2009), legitimizing militarized evictions and spatial exclusion. In the rural development narrative, they are identified as backward food producers, unsuitable for reaching rural development objectives (Homewood et al., 2009; Van der Ploeg, 2012). Against this colonial narrative that undermines their agency, Maasai communities have been mobilizing and self-organizing as a movement of resistance and advocacy for the respect of their customary, human, and indigenous people's rights (Hodgson, 2011; Cameron, 2001; Okland Institute, 2022). The violence, brutality and rights violations Maasai people faced due to evictions (Currier and Mittal, 2021) attracted international mediatic attention and trans-national solidarity . Re-reading Maasai territories as resistance-shaped foodscapes reveals their role as biocultural stewards, sustaining rangeland health, biodiversity, and local economies. Their mobile livestock systems, shaped by intergenerational ecological knowledge and collective governance, actively co-produce landscapes that are as cultural as they are ecological. The exclusion of Maasai from decision-making spaces reflects the broader dynamics of accumulation by dispossession (Homewood et al., 2009; Harvey, 2004), wherein conservation and agribusiness interests align with state and private capital to reframe communal lands as frontiers of commodification and dispossesion. Maasai foodscapes must be acknowledged not only as cultural landscapes but also as territories of resistance. They contest the dominant models of food production and environmental governance while offering regenerative alternatives grounded in relationality, resilience, collective land governance, and ontological and cultural plurality. Recognizing Maasailand as a foodscape of resistance opens up pathways for reimagining food sovereignty, environmental justice, and plural modes of inhabiting land and producing food.