Imagining Serengeti: a history of landscape memory in Tanzania from earliest times to the present (review)

Jan Bender Shetler has written an exceptionally erudite work that contributes in seminal ways to the fields of both African and environmental history and provides an innovative new model for analysing oral histories through an environmental lens. While the book’s ultimate goal is not especially new – to provide a critique of Western visions of, and conservationist policies towards a particular wildlife reserve in Africa (the world-famous Serengeti) – the methods she uses to construct her ‘corrective’ are absolutely unique. Unlike many environmental works on Africa, this one pays as much attention to the pre-colonial as to the colonial and post-colonial eras. As a result, the book provides invaluable insights into the way a particular group of African peoples have conceptualized and interacted with their lands over the longue durée. Equally important, the book introduces readers to the major themes of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial history, and presents powerful alternatives to Western visions of the environment, which have traditionally focused on ideas of ‘pristine’ environments and the nature/culture divide.

Drawing from an impressive body of oral data collected in Tanzania during the mid-1990s and early 2000s, Shetler focuses on the ‘history of landscape memory’ among peoples she defines as the ‘Western Serengeti’ (the Ikoma, Nata, Ishenyi, Ikizu and Ngoreme groups of Tanzania). These populations are situated in the western woodlands of the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, and hold historical claims on lands enclosed by the Serengeti National Park. However, as the author chronicles in her final three chapters, peoples of this region have suffered greatly (since the nineteenth century) from a series of ecological disasters and ‘historical challenges’ including drought, famine, Maasai raiding, colonial rule and the creation of the Serengeti National Park. By undertaking a ‘spatial analysis’ of the variety of genres of oral data she collected, Shetler is able to identify a series of ‘core spatial images’ that have been foundational to Western Serengeti peoples’ conceptualizations of themselves and their land since 300 CE. The book illustrates how these core spatial images have been transformed, adapted, and even discarded in the face of historical change, or, alternatively, how new ones have come to be created. By identifying and chronicling a history of these images, she identifies a ‘durability of spatial memory that is linked to social identity’ (p. 5), and presents a fascinating example of the way that studies of memory can help to reconstruct environmental, social and even psychological elements of both the distant and recent past.

The first three chapters are grounded in analyses of origin stories, clan histories, and religious rituals related to the land. We learn of the variety of ways in which the ancestors of Western Serengeti peoples have conceptualized and interacted with their environment since the era of their arrival in the region (c. 300 CE). Core spatial images from these early periods include visions of the environment as fully humanized, conceived of as discrete ecological zones useful for hunting, herding and farming (Chapter 1); as a blueprint for social relations established through practices of resource diversification, the integration of ‘strangers’ and distribution networks used to ensure food security (Chapter 2); and, finally, as sacred spaces where ritual activities are carried out to ensure continued productivity of the land (Chapter 3). Shetler inserts these core spatial images into a broader historical narrative derived from linguistic, archaeological and ecological works. In doing so she provides an important example of how non-specialists might begin to utilize the vast body of historical data derived from historical linguistics over the past thirty years. While Shetler’s arguments for the periodization and emergence of these core spatial images are convincing, they would be greatly enhanced if they could be further substantiated by reconstructed vocabularies related to the topic at hand.

The second half of the book deals with recent history and more conventional...