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A Cold Wind: Local Maasai Perceptions of the Common Health Landscape in Narok South

Casucci, Brad A
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1436799334

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, Anthropology.
This dissertation examines and explores the popular health landscape, or lay health beliefs and models, held by Maasai people in the Siana Plains of Southern Narok. Specifically it is an investigation of the most common illnesses identified by community members and how these illnesses and the accompanying practices and beliefs reflect and illustrate the community’s perspectives on hygiene, or the practice of being and staying healthy. Local hygienic ideas of illness prevention and avoidance, represented in the way Maasai talk about common and significant health problems, are found to be shaped by the cosmological underpinnings of Maasai society through superficially inchoate “common sense” perspectives that embody the foundational premises shared across much of Maasai society. This dissertation employs ethnographic methods of participant observation and semi-structured, open-ended questions, agreement surveys, and free listing in four series of interviews. These interviews were conducted with 107 people in 76 interviews. Response frequency tables were generated from the 27 interviews with Maasai in the series that employed free listing. Findings demonstrate that the relationship the Maasai have with Enkai, the creator god, is both represented and reified in the language of the popular health sector through the metonymic symbols of olari, the rainy season, enkijebe, the cold wind, and with the specific disavowal of metaphysical presumption, which I refer to as “etiological agnosticism”. The explanatory model that emerges from this analysis is not merely descriptive, but represents a significant re-presentation of Maasai understandings of health and illness. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the influence cosmological premises have on everyday perspectives that form a community’s shared “common sense”, particularly in the sector of popular health. It contributes more broadly to development studies, African studies, and the ethnography of the Maasai.
Atwood Gaines, PhD, MPH (Committee Chair)
Lee Hoffer, PhD (Committee Member)
Vanessa Hildebrand, PhD (Committee Member)
Jonathan Sadowsky, PhD (Committee Member)
237 p.
African Studies; Health; Public Health; Religion; Sanitation
anthropology; Maasai; Kenya; hygiene; cosmology; world view; cultural landscape; religion; health; illness; illness prevention; health maintenance; Africa; East Africa; medical anthropology; cultural domain; popular health sector; development studies; ngo

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Casucci, B. A. (2015). A Cold Wind: Local Maasai Perceptions of the Common Health Landscape in Narok South [Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1436799334

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Casucci, Brad. A Cold Wind: Local Maasai Perceptions of the Common Health Landscape in Narok South. 2015. Case Western Reserve University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1436799334.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Casucci, Brad. "A Cold Wind: Local Maasai Perceptions of the Common Health Landscape in Narok South." Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1436799334

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

case1436799334
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© 2015, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies and OhioLINK.