In narrating a story from a Ngorongoro olaigwanani,(1) I aim at providing the reader with some insight into the historical and cultural context in which one of my fieldwork experiences took place.(2) By exemplifying a person's perception in one place, the main objective of this paper is to underline the usefulness of narrative as one research method to be used in methodological triangulation in locality studies. In this way, the article may provide some methodological contribution to human geographers and other researchers interested in qualitative methodology. The paper takes a realist viewpoint in arguing that narrative must be informative to theory and thus not be applied only in a descriptive manner.
One person, an European came. After being there for some time he came with the idea that he wanted a small piece of land. He showed me the land. "You see that tree. The area extends from that tree to that tree". The area was about 1 sq.km. When this European asked for the land, we asked "What do you want with this land?". He did not give an explanation, but he brought us to see the place which was called Oloborturroto. This is along the Seronera river in Serengeti. The ilaigwanak(3) he was talking to were Kakawua Nabololukunge and Ngoiren Lemunga and Moronga. I cannot remember his surname, but he was from Purko. When they came there, they saw it was just a lion feeding on a zebra. They said he could have that land. He did not really tell them why he wanted the land, just that he wanted to feed the lion. He compared the lion with the cow. He said "Look, this is just like a cow to me".
He went hunting and brought the male lion meat every fifth day. After some time, after one and a half months, there were three lions in this place, and all of them were fed. After three years he came up withanother suggestion. He now claimed that he wanted another piece of land. That was a bigger piece of land. This land was around the Emakat hill, an extension of the area. That area was almost 15 km2. We refused to give him that land. When we refused we were asked after some few days to have a meeting with a government official from Loliondo. Along with him came Michael Gritzmek and the person who was already there. Then we were ordered that we should give that land away.
We complained "We cannot give up this land because this is where we have the land and water so we donít know where to go then". They said "We know that we can bring you somewhere". They suggested that we could move to Endulen, Kakesio, Gol Mountains and north of Serengeti called Njureta and Lemuta and Oltiarnjarnjar, and to Ormekeke. They established water points there. We couldnít defend ourselves anymore because we had the water and we were promised this would be our land forever, and that we would never be moved again. So we signed the agreement to be evicted, and Serengeti became a National Park.
This conversation took place during my fieldtrip to Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) in Northern Tanzania in 1994, when I was analysing the management of the conservation area. NCA is part of the Serengeti ecosystem, containing a rich combination of savannah grasslands, savannah woodlands, rainforest and highland grazing areas in the Rift valley. The area has through centuries been the homeland for pastoralists, and hosts a spectacular landscape and wildlife. It has been put under various protection management laws since the 1920s, cumulating in the singling out of the eastern part, Ngorongoro, as a multiple land-use area in 1959. The residents, the Maasai, were thus evicted from Serengeti, and had to settle in the highlands of Ngorongoro, thus loosing control over the precious rain season grazing lands in Serengeti. A central person in the process of establishing Serengeti as a national park, and leaving NCA as an area for multiple use, was Michael Gritzmek who is mentioned in the narrative.
The historical events, as the moving of the Maasai from Serengeti to Ngorongoro, may be read in old files and in new management plans. These sources, however, do not contain any information as to how these establishments were experienced by the people who were affected by the new regulations. Those experiences may be told in different ways resulting from various methodological approaches to the issue. One way of doing it is through narrative.
This narrative illuminates one part of a central issue in the human geography discipline, namely the discussion of the relevancy of case and narrative as opposed to surveys, i.e. the detailed information, the story, as it is told by some of the people themselves, versus the general perspectives. These characteristics have commonly termed the qualitative versus the quantitative approach to science.
When conducting research we are often searching for both micro and macro perspectives of a situation, and thus try to make empirical work theoretical informed. In this way, research experience from one area may be of relevance to other areas. However, in order to understand the cultural setting of one place, and then trying to grasp at least something of people's life-world, studies of the specific setting and specific events are useful.
Looking from the outside, narrative and case studies may seem similar. However, they divert in many significant ways. Stake (1993) provides a good overview of what case studies are about. He says that that case studies are not a methodological choice, but a choice of object to be studied. We choose to study a case, and we can do it in many ways, both qualitative and quantitative. A child may be a case, and a doctor may be a case, but his doctoring lacks the specificity and boundedness to be called a case. However, identifying boundaries of a case is not a simple task (Wilson and Gudmundsdottir 1987) because the case can also be an event that is less easily defined that a single individual (Yin 1984:31). According to Stake, case studies can be intrinsic, that is the study is undertaken because we aim for a better understanding a the case. They can also be instrumental, in that a particular case is examined to provide better insight into an issue or refinement of a theory. Finally, a case study can be a collective case study, that is an instrumental study extended to several cases.
Narrative is both the method we use and the event we study (Connelly & Clandinin 1990). Narrative can be a method in itself, such as for instance when personal narratives and life stories are used to analyse specific events (see for instance Vandsemb 1995, on migration). Narrative can also be used in methodological triangulation with other methods, and may in this way give quantitative measures a human face.
Narrative is both phenomenon and method (Connely & Clandinin ibid: 2). It is also "the material", i.e. the story itself. One can both inquire into a narrative and make a narrative inquiry. Narrative may thus be methods of understanding cases when studying cases. Narrative may also be the story about the story; the written narrative of the experience. Thus, it is the story about the human perception of the world. Being a reconstruction of the personal and social experience, narrative accounts for the human experience of incidents that have occurred. The narrative may thus be memories from a collection of human experience. Therefore, narrative is not sequenced; it ends because time is limited, not because we have enough information. A narrative may, at the same time as representing a story in itself, also be an analytical tool for interpreting a society.
Narrative is often associated with poetic language (Swearingen 1990:173) as it is seeking understanding and taking meaning through the rhetoric of narrative. This implies that narrative has a motive. It can be a dialogue, a conversation, or, according to McGuire (1990), a topicalized telling. McGuire (1990:193) suggests that it is topicality more than anything else that marks the often elusive line dividing storytelling from argument. He goes on saying that ´those who do not know our narratives do not participate in the same world we do (pp. 222). This implies that narrative can be used both to provide a contextual understanding of a society. But narrative can also provide evidence of the nature of the mind (Chafe 1990:79), and how the world is perceived and felt. The language is often marked with words of consciousness such as feelings, thinking, supposing, believing, or words of action, as common in folk tales (see Feldman et al 1990).
The narrative is a product of both the object and the researcher. As narrative is study of the way human experience the world (Connelly & Clandinin 1990:2), their perception influences content, patterns of emphasis, and form (Sayer 1989:269) of what they express. The written narrative is furthermore influenced by the interest of the researcher and may thus also be an account for the interviewer's experience of the situation. This is a communication situation where the narrator is narrating; sharing a certain type of information.
This information is culturally coded, and it is in the decoding of this information that the researcher directly influences the product. If this is being used as part of the methodological understanding, the influence posed by the interviewer on the interpretation of the research results may then finally be brought to the surface of methodological inquiry. A narrative can be structured along three different lines, all of importance to its interpretation. These categories are text, story and narration. Firstly, the text is what is written, what the story is about. It concerns the backdrop of attitudes, social practices, and cultural memories in which the text is spoken (Chambers 1990:3).
Secondly, the story is what really happened; the kernel events of the story. Do these events occur in a sequence leading to change? Are they embedded, enchained or joined? The story is a function of the actions that have taken place. Finally, the narration is how the story is told. This concerns the temporality (the order in which we tell the story), agency (a history or a personal experience), focalization (the point of view from which the story is being told), and discourse (categories and codes that tell us what we can/cannot talk about). Thus, every narrative is a text. Not every narrative is also a story, and not every narrative is a narration.
Before venturing into a discussion of the role of narrative in locality studies, the term locality studies will be elaborated. Locality studies in mainly associated with political economy studies analysing the significance of local variations in the impact of economic restructuring, and the different nature of urban and regional change. The studies maintained that localities were not passive recipients of structural change, but rather constitutive in the process of economic restructuring. According to Pratt (1991) the concept has been applied at three stages. The first was the local empirical, social, theoretically informed comparative analysis that aimed at avoiding the idiographic traps of community studies (see Bradley and Lowe 1984).
The second stage institutionalized the concept through the Changing Urban and Regional System (CURS) research programme. Harvey (1987), Gregson (1987) and Smith (1987) raised concern on its emphasis on local variations, empirism, and idiography, while others (Beauregard 1988; Lovering 1989) feared a postmodernist inflection of locality research.
The third phase concerned a theoretically based debate on the spatiality of social relations. Although this debate has focused on how division of labour, state relations and civil society combine to produce specific spatial effects (Pratt 1991: 259), the concept can be extended to reach other variations of spatial relations as well. As space and locality can only be understood as a social relation, several authors (see for instance Jackson 1991; Pratt 1991) argues for a cultural approach through for instance language, ideology and power. As Jackson says (1991:219), a cultural approach to locality studies would be interested in the way that processes of investment, disinvestment and reinvestment are culturally coded. Just as cities and regions attempt to sell themselves through projecting certain images, so do often local communities. It can also be that outsiders, in ´sellingª local culture (for tourism purposes for instance), portray an image of a place in a marketing strategy. Thus, the political economy of a place, let say regional change, cannot be understood without an understanding of its cultural politics. Localities are certainly specific places, but locality studies are not the same as empirical research of a particular phenomena. As urban and regional studies had been criticised for paying little attention to cultural change, so has the locality studies.
Connely & Clandinin (1990:12) trace narrative inquiry back to Aristotle's Poetics and Augustine's Confessions. It is not surprising that Aristotle's name is mentioned in this connection. In fact, narrative inquiry is a close kin to oral traditions, and much of the scientific thoughts were formulated and transferred orally during the early days of scientific history. The understanding of the world up to the more widely distribution of the written text is built upon oral traditions. In historical terms, that is the communication form which has dominated. The difference between oral traditions and narrative, however, is the latter concern with methodology, as well as its value to science. As the paradigmatic focus in the social sciences changes, so does the acceptance of methodological tools. Narrative has a long history in literature and historical philosophy where it is the principal source for theory. Also the nature of the therapeutic fields are in line with that of narrative. These fields have thus been making significant contributions to the methodological development of narrative (Schafer 1976, 1981; Spence 1982; cf. Connely & Clandinin, ibid.). The post-positivist wind seems to slowly blow the dust off old ideas for them to be polished and altered in the post-modernistic era. Narrative inquiry may help the social sciences to further release themselves out of the positivistic straitjacket.
The phenomenological blends of philosophical thoughts may be seen as reason d'étre for the development of qualitative methods in science such as that of the narrative. The fundamental principle of phenomenological method was said to require reflexive rather than straightforward observations. Husserl, the 'founder' of phenomenological observations, say that straightforward descriptions are descriptions of objects per se whereas phenomenological description is descriptions of intentional objects (see Cairns 1968:9).
The various disciplines have contributed to the state of the narrative inquiry. According to Polkinghorne (1988) narrative was part of the psychological discipline at the turn of the century. An anthropologist critical viewpoint of the ethnography of story telling has been presented by Van Maanen (1988). As genuinely occupied with moral pursuit, body language and understanding, publications on narrative from educational researchers have been released since the sixties (see MacIntyre 1966, 1981; Crites 1971, 1975, 1986; cf. Connely and Clandinin, ibid.). The discourse among geographers was raised in the in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and has been through a process of reconstruction in the late 1980s and early 1990.
Within the human geography discipline, the qualitative methods have had their own schools since the beginning of this century. The francophone literature has fostered a number of contributions. Reclus (see Reclus 1990. First published 1905) introduced qualitative analysis at the turn of this century, and discussed human perception and decisions, as well as their geographical understanding. Dardel (1990. First edition 1952), also wrote phenomenological texts. In modern times, certain humanistic variations have been concerned with the issue.
One is cultural geography (see Wagner and Mikesell 1962; Mikesell 1973) which has devoted much effort into study of the origin and dispersal of particular cultural traits. This branch , as historical geography, has been using not only documents, linguistic elements and archaeology, but also oral traditions. Another is perception geography. Tuan (see e.g. Tuan 1977, 1993) belongs to a group of human geographers being preoccupied with perceptual issues, and the life-worlds and experience of people. Also he was using narrative methodology, but never termed it as such. His work on the relationship between culture and nature has inspired human geographers within this field for decades. Also Frémont (1976) has been concerned with the experienced space. Thus, through the whole of this century, phenomenological thoughts and narrative inquiry have been latent discussions.
More recent, the debate on narrative has been particularly important in relation to the 'new' regional geography. Within this field, I may say that narrative inquiry is thus a rediscovery because it is building upon earlier variations over the theme. It is also a reconstruction because the 'new' regional geography theorises the methodological aspects of narrative inquiry to a greater extent that any of the earlier blends ever did. When the concept was re-introduced, the time was more ripe for narrative methodology. The following will focus on the 'new' regional geography and its view of the narrative.
The 'new' regional geography is concerned with locality studies and the need of integrating the ethnographic with political economic accounts. Locality studies have their source in the idea that what is going on seem to be about places and their reconstitution in one way or another (Massey 1991). National structural changes themselves thus involve a geographical restructuring so that people in different places experience things differently (ibid: 268). Locality studies provide the opportunity of portraying the ideology and culture of a place and - in linking it to context - the spatiality of social relations (Pratt 1991: 258). Narrative inquiry is a way of grasping the particularities of the place. This information is useful to planning of particular places as it illuminates micro perspectives. This experience can furthermore be brought from the locality level to illuminate a cultural complexity in society which macro studies and structures are to wide to thoroughly portray.
In the 'new' regional geography the discussion on narrative has particularly been centred around that of analysis versus narrative. In this debate there are echoes of the old idiographic-nomotetic polarity (Sayer 1989:253) which are sometimes more confusing than enlightening. I will argue that the use of both methods has different qualities according to their ideological application, let say in a positivist and a realist manner. The realist manner of applying the narrative will differ substantially from that of the positivist in that the former will strive to examine the narrative to inform theory, whilst the latter may apply it in a descriptive manner. However, the basic problem is always the composition of the text.
Let us first penetrate the analysis-narrative discourse. According to Sayer (1989:263), the power of narrative derives from the way in which the depiction of events chronologically gives the appearance of a causal chain or logic and the sense of movement towards a conclusion. Sayer (ibid: 254) also argues that the attempt to make empirical studies theoretically informed has brought into question the relationship between analysis and narrative, and between law-seeking and contextualising approaches. Analysis would - in a realist manner - be concerned with abstracting common, replicated structures that are general and pivotal (ibid: 263). It would abstract from the particular historical incidents which caused these conditions. In the analysis we will be at risk of committing identification errors in that the effect of the structures we chose to study are the result of other processes. For example, causes that may be attributed to the location itself, may actually be the cause of governmental policy. We may also be at risk of failing to see the structures in that the events we identify is actually the contingency of reproduction of social structures (ibid.)
In the disagreements over whether narrative or analysis are appropriate methods, the analysis camp worry about "(...) the dereliction of method that results from excessive sensity to detail" whereas the narrative camp worry about "(...) the dereliction of scholarship that results from excessive attachment to theoretical generalisation" (Abrams 1982:162). Sayer (1989:263) argues that "narrative suffer from a tendency to underspecify causality in the process they describe".
The reason for this is, he says, that "(...) narrative, unlike analysis, is not primarily concerned with explaining the nature, conditions, and implications of social structures, and that its preoccupation with telling stories of sequences of events tend to gloss over the difference between mere temporal succession and causality". This critique does not imply that explanations of concrete situations through analysis are necessarily better (ibid.). The importance of narrative lies in avoiding them to be merely atheoretical narrations, but rather make their aetiologies explicit and give appropriate weight to the synchronic and the configurational of the episodic (ibid: 266).
Let me continue on to the problems with text composition. If the text is going to be more than an act of interpretation which only need to defend itself against behaviourism, the text due to be put in the context of time and space. This, however, need not be contradictory to the validity of the event, because, as Sayer argues, theory and explanations can be seen as the discovery of necessity. Theory can grasp unique as well as repeated events, by demonstrating the necessity in the world (ibid: 258). He continues by stating that theory need not be associated by generality in the sense of repeated events, but by determining the nature of things and structures. The hallmark of theory is thus the conceptual analysis.
To go beyond story-telling, narrative needs thus to be theoretically informed. However, we still remain with the difficult part, i.e. how empirical research may inform theory. Sayer (ibid: 262) discusses the problems of narrative as (1) the writing of constructing text, and (2) a way of giving an account of social life in terms of a story of successive events. Narrative, as other hermeneutics, are plagued with the confusion of what they are about (Bhaskar 1979). This may be rooted in the lack of examination. The narrative would in this case disqualify to the relevancy requirement of locality studies.
Sayer (ibid: 262) discusses the relationship between the object and the writer in saying that the 'academic' narrative stands in a relationship to the lay narrative, and that (ibid: 267) lay knowledge or practical consciousness are only atheoretical in the sense that their conceptualisations and claims are relatively unexamined. Since lay knowledge is both part of our object, and a rival account for it, our response to it should not be to dismiss it, but rather to examine it (ibid.).
The narrative inquiry has always had to defend itself against critique. As narrative portrays a subjective experience, the validity has been questioned not only by the positivist camp, but also among others. As he discusses this problem of text writing in a thorough way, I will in the following use examples from Sayer (ibid: 269). It should be kept in mind that a number of these obstacles presented below can be referred to as difficult elements in other research methods as well.
These points may all be read as structuring influences on texts. Only rarely do we find them spelled out the way Sayer does it, maybe except from the first two points, although they are all quite present in most research. I will argue that narrative both illuminate and occludes, but in this way it does not necessarily differ from any other linguistic structure. I will furthermore argue that narrative inquiry can be used at two stages.
One is as background information in trying to understand the cultural codes in a society. However, one should take particular care, and avoid a situation whereby narrative inquiry is actively interpreted and used as the opinion of the object when such inquiry is isolated from a certain basis of cultural knowledge. Another usage is in the decoding process when a researcher could use narrative to deepen his or her knowledge of a society. In other words: the decoding and interpretation of any methodological tool may benefit from narrative. To sum up, narrative inquiry can only be used as an isolated tool if the researcher has a good knowledge of the society in question. We need to be aware of certain problems with narrative inquiry, and apply it in a considerate manner. We must remember its potential to be conceptually and contextually informative, and that this potential is at its peak in relation to methodological triangulation.
Methodological triangulation is quite common to most research communities. The idea behind triangulation is to pull together, by different methods, data that will connect. Narrative may be used as a method of bringing together different information. In this way, the narrative is being used to make evident the development and sequential aspect of a story; both the phenomenon and the methodology; both the case and the way of analysing it. A narrative may also be one piece that stands for itself. The use of narratives as a case in itself is not very common, except for literature studies and perhaps variations of historical research, but the methodology is increasingly gaining acceptance in certain sub-disciplines in the social sciences.
In most social sciences and humanities the use of quotations is a frequent and moreover a methodological accepted way of exemplifying. This may be useful for a deeper insight into the case. However, I guess we all have experienced page after page dotted with small quotations. This reading is often tiring either because their connecting points are hard to find, or due to them being overstuffed with information. Some of the information tend to be irrelevant, too. When poring over these quotations we are repeatedly looking for a deeper understanding of what is beyond the quotation. With the use of narratives these quotations may be transformed into a more interesting reading because a narrative puts the story into a context that elucidate the message. This is often due to the inclusion of own fieldnotes, which is possible.
Narrative may be used as an analytical tool in regional planning in at least two ways. Firstly, it may be a background for understanding the life-world of people. This is particularly interesting in regional planning which may involve significant effects on both cultural sites and land resources. The second aspect directs the utilisation of narrative as a background for development of comprehensive surveys. In this way, inquiry into narrative may provide the conditions of the social environment in which a survey is intended to take place. Narrative may thus be applied in a well-planned manner allowing the human experience of the place to make some input on the structure and composition of a survey. Does this argument collide with the notion that a narrative can tell its own story? My answer is no. I will rather claim that this utilisation demonstrates the multifaceted character of narrative which may be no contradiction to its validity as independent from other methods, although I believe it is in the combination with other methods that narrative has its particular strength.
The actual narration may thus tell the reader something about the respondent and the case without having to explain with details that may possibly bore the reader or eradicate the atmosphere in which historically important situations take place. This context is vital to the understanding of the locality. It also gives the perspective of two different understandings and values put to a place.
Thus, a narrative can portray two vital issues. Firstly, the narrative can portray some of the particularities of the place not only in a cultural and historical perspective, but also a political one. This is a locality wherein the action and consciousness can be put in a time-space context, and seen as constitutive rather than passive (Thrift 1983). Secondly, a narrative can also characterise the meeting between the researched and the researcher, e.g. the building of trust. In this context I choose to focus on the first aspect, namely the role of narrative in understanding a place.
Why is this important? The importance of a narrative lie in its ability to encounter the perspectives of people. Without engaging myself in discussions on local participation, which is beyond the scope of this paper, I will underline that, to human geographers, often engaged in planning, it is of vital importance to be aware that planning in the environment will almost always affect people, and therefore it cannot work effectively without taking their way of looking at the world into consideration. One way of capturing this, is by putting their narrations in a cultural, historical, and political context. However, unless they are informative to theory in portraying necessity, the narratives may be nothing more than unexamined descriptions.
The methodological aspects of narrative provide both opportunities and difficulties. The opportunities and difficulties are related to the weight given to the episodic, and the requirement of the episodic to be informative to theory. Thus, the requirement for it to be accepted as an analytical tool is that its function goes beneath the rhetoric of a story (Abrams 1982) and illuminates the context of locality in time and space.
What can then be said about our narrative? What can this narrative tell the reader? First and foremost, alternative interpretations may be possible. It is therefore important to attempt to avoid simplified interpretations. What seems clear is that the narrative portrays the insiders experience of the priorities of the outsiders. I may also say it signifies local willingness to accommodate certain wishes, although maybe not understanding the priorities, but all the same respecting the will of the stranger. This accommodating atmosphere seemed to be present as long as the desire of the stranger posed no perceived threat to their livelihood. Traditionally, land inquiries have been discussed by the enkigwana(4) which had their own ways of dealing with land issues, i.e. to attempt to accommodate the needs of the people. However, at this point in time, before the eviction from the huge grazing lands in Serengeti, land scarcity was not the hot issue it is today. Thus, the easiness by which the European was allocated the land he asked for at the first incident must be seen in the light of the land issue.
The presentation of the happening, as experienced by the resident, and not explanations and judgements, brings out the drama of the situation, and underlines the rhetoric and dynamic character of the narrative. The hidden influence of the narrative may lie in its presentation of knowledge in an unjudgemental way. This also affects how it is read, i.e. the support the story obtains. The details of the story are just sufficient for the descriptions of the atmosphere.
How can this narration illuminate the context of locality in time and space? Firstly, we are given the impression that the locality in question is a huge area of land where wildlife and livestock graze. This can be read through the way the European, when asking for an extension of the area for his lions, makes the connection to cows. This, in turn, underlines the value of cows to the people of whom he is asking for land, as well as his awareness of this value. The fact that he brings the ilaigwanak to the field for discussions, portrays an ethnographic aspect of the residents, namely who are their negotiators. It also portrays the European's awareness of this fact. Then the European returns together with Michael Gritzmek. He was a central person in the setting up of Serengeti as a national park, and the following eviction of the Maasai to the Ngorongoro highlands.
The events which have been narrated here, indicate, especially in the light of what we know today, that social structures are reproduced through the power exhibited in the meeting between agents of wildlife conservation and agents of local development. The causality of the eviction lie not so much in the request of land nor the following denial of the request, but in the social and political structures by which the society is governed. Also, in the light of what we know today, it is attempting to emphasise the linkage of this happening to that of the eviction, although it might be the case that it mattered very little those days. Therefore, in retrospective, one may easily either oversimplify or neglect the causality of an action.
The narrative tells us that the Maasai were promised water in the places referred to in the text. Also, they were told the land would be their forever. Being a people of cattle, grazing lands and water points were of their utter concern, and when promised the availability of both, they found it hard resisting the eviction. The story may thus be put in a political perspective, and seen as a forerunner to the negotiations the Maasai elders had with the Governor of Tanganyika, and the promises he made before the elders, which led to the signing up of the agreement to vacate Serengeti (see Rugumayo 1994:3).
The narrative informs us about the reconstitution of a place, the change from common grazing lands to protected wildlife sites. Moreover, it can give information of the context in which the social relations take place. For instance, the way the meetings with the Europeans are experienced and passed on by the narrator, is coloured by the recognition of how little impact their protests had.
The narrative may also provide a new perspective on place-identity. Until the eviction from Serengeti, the Maasai had not been severely restricted in their seasonal movements, and therefore probably had a more relaxed relation to place-attachment than today. As they were evicted from large portions of land and forced to enter a more sedentarized settlement, the incident with the European is seen, again in retrospective, as a forerunner to the crises as to land availability they experience today. It seemed to be quite easy to remove the Maasai as long as they believed that their pastoral way of life could continue. They did not foresee that the time would come when it was simply not enough land available for the movements of a pastoral people.
Thus, looking back, the story seem more dramatic today than it did at that time. Hence, I may say that place-attachment and place-identity is closely connected to access to a place, or access to the qualities of a place. If the availability of, in this case, water and pasture is sufficient at another quite similar place, the attachment is more relaxed than if the opposite is the case. Place-attachment and place-identity is thus closely connected with the economic and cultural visions of the place. The connection is not so much related to the absolute place, as to the environment in which they can move. Space matters, not place. They seek a certain environment not a certain place.(5) They plan according to way of life, according to water and pasture. It is of less importance if they end up with that plot or that plot. What matters is the possibility of exploiting pastures in different areas at different times of the year.
To the Maasai, it seems as if the real cause for the European to ask for the land (note that the narrator explicitly says the European did not give them any explanation as to why he wanted the land), was the desire to keep the land for the lions. Regarded in the context of what the Maasai know today, we may say that the craving for the small pieces of land, and the later negotiations that were held with the Maasai on the land issue, were both of significance as heralds to what happened later.
The atmosphere of the narrative is vital to discuss. Note that the text is free of bitterness and blames. There is a certain distance to the happening and a sense of sobriety. Discussions I had with other ilaigwanak were also featured by that same sobriety. The narrative also reminds me of the common clichÈs of the Maasai. The easiness by which the European's wish was accommodated may give a new perspective on the myth of the Maasai communities as hostile and closed.
Finally, a narrative may also be interpreted according to what is not included. In the discussion with the European they do not use arguments that indicate that they own the land, that it is ours. At the contrary, they settle for negotiations on the land issue.
This narrative is vital in the building up of a deeper view of what lies beyond the mere facts of the establishment of the Serengeti National Park and the following eviction of the Maasai pastoralists. To my research work, it is in the methodological triangulation with other data that I believe narrations as this one can be informative beyond storytelling. It is informative to theory in that it gives, as presented above, a view of some social relations in time and space.
To the interpretation of the story about the lion, I would benefit from texts put down by the other part, or even narrative. The only files I have found originating from those days discussions of the Maasai eviction contain comments on their so-called ignorant resource use, and the only information on the negotiations is the above mentioned speak by the Governor of Tanganyika. The inclusion of the perspective from the other part is however a challenge to narrative inquiry.
For human geographers, narrative inquiry and inquiry into narrative can prove to be useful. This is so particularly if we use the opportunity of putting people in relation to space and context. In this way, the researcher may recognise the locality as constitutive rather than passive. The life world of people will affect the way they receive, interpret and make input to planning priorities. In localities where the community rationality differ from that of the planning agent or the government, the merging of views from both sides is important so that the planning can strive to mirror the needs of both worlds.
Narrative and analysis do not necessarily portray controversy. Narrative may inform theory in methodological triangulation. Although its interpretation is problematic, it should play a more important role in this triangulation than it hitherto has been offered. Narrative inquiry and inquiry into narrative may be used as a basic methodological tool for information on rationality. Regional planning will certainly gain from this type of inside information.
1. Ilaiwanak (pl.) is the Maasai term for spokesmen of each particular age-set of men. An olaiwenani (sing.) is chosen for his life-time as a political leader for his age-set in a given section.
2. I want to thank Professor Axel Baudouin for useful comments and fruitful discussions, and the anonymous referees for valuable comments. I also want to thank Sigrun Gudmundsdottir and Freema Elbaz for raising my interest in narrative methodology. I am grateful to t he Norwegian R esearchCouncil for financial support. Finally, I want to thank Oloolchumuya Shangai for spending time with me and narrating the story about the lion, and William Ole Seki for his translation.
4. Enkigwana is a meeting of elders.
5. This is not to say that no particular place is of specific value. Maasai have for instance burial grounds of precious value to them.
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