This research is an outstanding piece for me. I had been seeking a study that dissects a complex phenomenon through multiple critical lenses — cultural, historical, colonial, political, and economic. Meiu’s Ethno-Erotic Economies offers precisely that. His work exemplifies the kind of interdisciplinary, politically engaged ethnographic methodology that aligns with the kind of American Studies scholarship I hope to produce. As Deloria and Olson suggest in their American Studies guide, research should operate on multiple levels: Text, Archive, Genre, Formation, and Power (Deloria & Olson, 2017). Meiu does so by building an extensive archive of legal documents, interviews, advertisements, spatial analysis, and media discourse. Through these “texts,” he uncovers patterns that explain how sex work among Samburu Morans, a matter of personal choice, is not merely, but rather a consequence of historical dispossession and systemic marginalization.

Belonging

A central analytic in Meiu’s ethnography is belonging, which he disaggregates across multiple overlapping levels. First, there is national belonging, which is shaped by a temporal hierarchization of ethnicities (Meiu, 2017) wherein certain groups, like the Samburu, are cast as traditional, underdeveloped, and thus undeserving of full citizenship or infrastructure. These narratives position Samburu Morans as simultaneously exotic and backward, allowing the state to marginalize them economically while commodifying their identity for tourism.

Then, there is ethno-regional belonging, which is closely tied to kinship and land. Morans’ access to social recognition and economic participation is shaped by their proximity to local notions of autochthony — being seen as rooted in Samburu land and traditions. As Meiu writes, when Morans “converted money into belonging and belonging into money,” they “intensified their struggles to define ethno-regional attachments and autochthony” (Meiu, 2017, p. 244). This is especially significant given the historic dispossession they experienced through land adjudication and modernization programs.

Sexual belonging is another axis, one that becomes contested and commodified in the tourist economy. As Morans engage in sex-for-money exchanges, their eroticized ethnic identity becomes both a survival strategy and a site of moral panic. Meiu shows how national and global discourses of “human-security governance” and sexual propriety frame these men’s sexualities as perverse and dangerous (Meiu, 2017, p. 27, citing Paul Amar), which, in turn, delegitimizes their claim to state resources and national inclusion. Sexuality becomes a key terrain through which belonging is policed.

Further, belonging to the age-set and ritual system is at stake. The Moran figure carries immense symbolic capital in Samburu society. Yet the commodification of that figure unsettles traditional generational hierarchies and expectations. Young men, instead of moving into elderhood through ritual and labor, are redirected toward coastal tourism economies. This reconfigures their masculine subjectivities and challenges the very terms of ritual belonging (Meiu, 2017).

Finally, there is a moral and affective belonging, which is especially visible in Meiu’s discussion of money returning from the coast. Local elders and women (like Mama Priscilla) judge this wealth as morally contaminated — “polluted” by immoral sexual labor and disconnected from communal reciprocity. The money becomes socially visible, but morally unstable. As Meiu writes, people “position themselves in relation to local gossip,” engaging in a kind of affective and ethical boundary-making around who is seen as truly belonging (Meiu, 2017, p. 143).

In all these registers — national, regional, sexual, generational, and moral — belonging is a negotiated position, shaped by systems of power and moral evaluation. Meiu’s ethnography shows how commodified sexuality both enables and forecloses recognition across these different social domains.

Mieu’s ethnography in the context of the course Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Rather than pathologizing sex work, Meiu situates it within broader neoliberal and postcolonial processes. His critique of moral panic — particularly how the state and media construct Morans as both sexually dangerous and culturally valuable — recalls Lila Abu-Lughod’s argument in “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?” Abu-Lughod cautions against using moral discourses to justify intervention and domination (Abu‐Lughod, 2002). Similarly, Meiu shows how the Kenyan state capitalizes on the exotic image of Morans for nation-branding and tourism, while simultaneously vilifying them as irresponsible and dangerous. Both scholars question how discourses of morality and development function as forms of power that discipline racialized and sexualized bodies.

A parallel can also be drawn to Gayle Rubin’s “Thinking Sex.” Rubin critiques the hierarchical valuation of sexual practices and identities — a system she calls the “sex/gender system” (Rubin, 2007). Morans are constructed as hypersexualized “Others” within this hierarchy. Their sexuality is policed by national law and through NGO health campaigns that frame them as vectors of disease. Meiu analyzes an English-language advertisement, inaccessible to most Morans, to reveal how health promotion can serve as a tool of cultural discipline rather than empowerment. This illustrates Rubin’s claim that anxieties about sex are often anxieties about social order.

The dichotomy between domestic and public spheres, critiqued by Louise Lamphere and Michelle Rosaldo, is also destabilized in Meiu’s ethnography. The Morans’ performance of eroticized tradition in tourist spaces blurs the line between private and public, ritual and labor. Lamphere notes how ethnographers often overstate this dichotomy and impose Western categories on non-Western societies (Lamphere, 2024). Meiu’s work resists this by showing how Samburu masculinity is formed through multiple, overlapping domains — ritual age sets, kinship expectations, national development, and global tourism.

Finally, Meiu’s nuanced treatment of agency deserves mention. Rather than presenting Morans as victims or heroic resisters, he shows how they navigate a field of constrained possibilities. His analysis echoes Judith Butler’s notion that agency is exercised through and against the norms that shape us (Butler, 2011). Morans negotiate their masculinity and economic survival through embodied performances that are both strategic and vulnerable. Their actions expose the contradictions of global development and postcolonial modernity.

Conclusion

On a personal level, what resonated most with me was Meiu’s ability to move between structural critique and intimate portraiture. He not only maps systems of power but also gives voice to the aspirations, dilemmas, and affects of his interlocutors. His work reminds me why ethnography remains such a vital method in feminist and queer research: it holds open space for complexity, contradiction, and refusal.

References

Abu‐Lughod, L. (2002). Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others. American Anthropologist, 104(3), 783–790. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2002.104.3.783

Butler, J. (2011). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex.” Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203828274

Deloria, P. J., & Olson, A. I. (2017). American studies: A user’s guide. University of California Press.

Lamphere, L. (2024). The domestic sphere of women and the public world of men: The strengths and limitations of an anthropological dichotomy. In Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective (8th ed.). Routledge.

Meiu, G. P. (2017). Ethno-erotic Economies: Sexuality, Money, and Belonging in Kenya. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226491202.001.0001

Rubin, G. S. (2007). Thinking sex: Notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality. In Culture, Society and Sexuality. Routledge.

by Maxim Bulanov, PhD Student / American Studies and Philanthropy at Indiana University, Indianapolis