George Paul Meiu

In Ethno-Erotic Economies, anthropologist George Paul Meiu looks at how fantasies of sexual difference create what we think of as "ethnicity" in a globalized world. Meiu draws back the curtain on a fascinating case of sexual tourism in Coastal Kenya in which young men deploy stereotypes of African warriors to establish transactional sexual relationships with foreign women. Meiu's deep familiarity with Samburu culture allowed him to explore the long-term effects of the sex trade on things like intimate affiliations, kinship, ritual, gender, and age in rural Kenya. What happens to communities when wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of its young men? How do these men seek to convert fast money into traditional, lasting forms of prestige to become "elders" and thus secure higher moral and social standing? And, crucially, how do others not privy to the sexual encounters themselves understand the circulation of new money? Meiu's exceptional skills as an ethnographer yield riveting testimonies from all quarters of Samburu society, resulting in a compelling look at how intimacy and ethnicity come together to shape the pathways of global and local trade in the postcolonial world.

Sexuality, Money, and Belonging in Kenya

Ethno-erotic Economies

John L. Comaroff

Jean Comaroff

In the economics of everyday life, even ethnicity has become a potential resource to be tapped, generating new sources of profit and power, new ways of being social, and new visions of the future. Throughout Africa, ethnic corporations have been repurposed to do business in mining or tourism; in the USA, Native American groupings have expanded their involvement in gaming, design, and other industries; and all over the world, the commodification of culture has sown itself deeply into the domains of everything from medicine to fashion. Ethnic groups increasingly seek empowerment by formally incorporating themselves, by deploying their sovereign status for material ends, and by copyrighting their cultural practices as intellectual property. Building on ethnographic case studies from Kenya, Nepal, Peru, Russia, and many other countries, this collection poses the question: Does the turn to the incorporation and commodification of ethnicity really herald a new historical moment in the global politics of identity?

George Paul Meiu

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