Palms, Wine, and Witness: Public Spirit and Private Gain in an African Farming Community

This well-known, theoretically informed ethnography continues to offer a valuable examination of economic development among the Giriama of Kenya. In a society in which an ideal of contingent and conspicuous expenditure is followed by all, individual enterprising farmers struggle with the dilemma of subscribing to the common custom while satisfying their own goals of expanding and diversifying their economic enterprises. The mediatory roles of elders, the developing chasm between accumulators and losers of property, the customary spheres of bridewealth and funerary expenditures, and the pains of intergenerational conflict are all featured in this look at a people's economic transition.