The hunter, the Maasai and the State machinery: a critical analysis of a clash of the modern and the traditional

This paper examines a long-standing conflict between foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) and an indigenous Maasai community in Tanzania whose ancestral grazing lands have been appropriated for commercial tourism, and the... [ view full abstract ]

This paper examines a long-standing conflict between foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) and an indigenous Maasai community in Tanzania whose ancestral grazing lands have been appropriated for commercial tourism, and the Maasai evicted, often forcibly. Drawing from geography, we explore the roles that physical spaces and topophilia play in an indigenous institutional context, and proceed to generate new theoretical insights given what we consider the inadequacy of modern management theory. The MNCs find their compensations and modernizing mission rejected by a community which simply wants its land back. To explain this impasse, we found that the curation of physical spaces and topophilia is mediated and even complicated by the existence of profoundly different institutional systems between Maasai traditional values versus the MNCs’ corporate values. Our findings have significant implications for the role of institutional context in negotiating community-business relations, and for enhancing theory-building in this neglected context.