Selling the Serengeti: The Cultural Politics of Safari Tourism

by Benjamin Gardner

Situating safari tourism within the discourses and practices of development, Selling the Serengeti examines the relationship between the Maasai people of northern Tanzania and the extraordinary influence of foreign-owned ecotourism and big-game hunting companies. It contrasts two major approaches to community conservation―international NGO and state-sponsored conservation efforts on the one hand and the neoliberal private investment in tourism on the other―and investigates their profound effect on the Maasai’s culture and livelihood. It further explores how these changing social and economic forces remake the terms through which state institutions and local people engage with foreign investors, communities, and their own territories. And finally it highlights how the new tourism arrangements change the shape and meaning of the nation-state and the village and in the process remake cultural belonging and citizenship.


Benjamin Gardner’s experiences in Tanzania began during a study-abroad trip in 1991. His stay led to a relationship with the nation and the Maasai people in Loliondo lasting almost twenty years; it also marked the beginning of his analysis of and ethnographic research into social movements, market-led conservation, and neoliberal development around the Serengeti.

248 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2016

Reviews

[Desi Pilla · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it’s nice that the author was very well versed in the local politics of a specific area due to years of first hand experience, the book was quite targeted to a single issue and as a result repeated the same three claims over and over again. Many paragraphs through the book make you pause and think, “wait, didn’t I read this already?”.

I appreciate the snippets of primary sources taken directly from government correspondence or local village minutes. Gardner certainly has devoted his career to become well versed in this topic. I just wish the book made for a better read. It’s very dry and hard to read unless you have an academic interest in the topic.

[sylver · Rating 3 out of 5]

very interesting to read while on a safari in tanzania (though not the serengeti). very technical and i wish there was less abbreviations, i spent so long going back figuring out what abbreviations were.

[John Benson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up at the Association of American Geographers conference partly because I know Ben, the research takes place in an area where I lived for about my first five years, and I know some of the other main people written about in the book. When I did sabbatical research in Tanzania, Ben and his family had been living in the house we eventually rented. Ben is a geographer as well and he had been doing research for his dissertation in Arusha and Loliondo where this research takes place. Our landlord grew up in Loliondo, too. Ben's study looks at six villages in Loliondo Division that border on Serengeti National Park and how villagers and the national government and government conservation people worked with outside groups coming into do different types of tourism enterprise. He writes about three case studies. The first is of an Arab organization that came into do big game hunting in this area. The second is the case of the American tour company, Thompson Safaris, who helped set up an exclusive nature reserve in one of the villages and the protests that ensued from this. Finally, he looks at the work at Dorobo Safaris, run by the Peterson brothers who I grew up with in Tanzania, and their joint venture with villages in promoting eco-tourism and walking tours in three villages. The first two case studies show very top down approaches with the Tanzanian government and international organizations pushing their tourism development plans down on these villages. The last one looks at a much more collaborative approach that was used by Dorobo in working with villagers and local government officials. Ben bases his work on the twenty years of research he has done from the mid-1990s to the present day. He brings out this interesting story very well.