The social anthropologist Paul Spencer, who has died aged 83, was best known for his work on the peoples – principally the Samburu and Maasai – speaking the Maa languages and living in the central Rift Valley from northern Kenya to northern Tanzania. His initial interest lay in age organisation: how these livestock-rearing communities assembled groups of boys of around the same age and managed their passage to maturity through a succession of initiation ceremonies. The young men developed a lifelong bond by living and eating together apart from their families, dancing and raiding as one, and, later on, acting as patrons and mentors for junior groups in their turn.
Age and the passage of time remained at the core of Paul’s work, but he expanded his interests to include gender relations within the household, systems of belief and the social significance of dance. Despite his focus on men, he displayed an understanding of the predicament of women in a patriarchal world. They played a crucial role in upholding the core values that defined the community by shaming errant husbands and sometimes collectively punishing men whose delinquent behaviour transgressed the moral order. As Paul pointed out, relations between men were always mediated through women, despite the latter’s apparently subordinate position.
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