Antonio Allegretti

• PhD Social Anthropology, The University of Manchester
• Senior Research Associate at Lancaster University

Planning for climate resilience growth is increasingly important for the natural resource dependent economy of Tanzania. Central government does not have the knowledge, reach, skills or resources needed to plan for the range of livelihoods within Tanzania; but local governments, if granted the authority and resources, could plan with communities in...

The strong cultural and ethnic identity awareness among the Maasai of Tanzania is very well known, as are the recent diversification and market integration processes that Maasai are undertaking. It has seldom been highlighted, however, how the first is involved in the second, i.e. if and how being Maasai ‘matters’ in market exchange. Here I argue t...

The livestock sector in Tanzania has had and continues to have a major role for the overall national development. Historically, it has been an important arena for the debate over the appropriate development the country should undertake. Ideas of ‘tradition’ and ‘modern’ livestock production system(s) continue to influence policy making processes wi...

This article spotlights Maasai ethnic identity in Tanzania as a site of social, cultural, and political transformations triggered by urbanization and market liberalization. Important social and cultural changes have occurred among east African pastoralists as they have entered the ‘cash economy’. Research done since the 1980's on the integration be...

Fishing communities are at the heart of policies of co-management in small-scale fisheries around the world, including Lake Victoria. The assumption is that, fish and the activity of fishing being carriers of locally shared values and identity underlying ‘fishing communities’, devolution of power (to the communities) will initiate a virtuous circle...

This article proposes the case of Kenyan coastal fisheries as a potentially crucial reservoir of food-related benefits for the marginalised and those living in poverty, but where a food-centred lens or approach is seldom mainstreamed in local and national governance. Borrowing insights from post-structuralist marine social sciences, this article pr...

Food environments are rapidly changing globally, both in developed and developing contexts, contributing to poor dietary habits and environmental concerns. As a result, more than 80% of countries in the world face different forms of malnutrition, while the environment faces further degradation due to unsustainable production and consumption pattern...

Here we propose a framework and agenda for nutrition-sensitive governance (NSG) of fisheries that rethink dominant paradigms of fisheries governance and propose measures to incorporate nutrition-related objectives into fisheries governance. Fish, rich in micronutrients, have potential for improving the nutritional status of coastal and riparian com...

Water access is the cornerstone of livelihoods for most rural communities in Tanzania. Yet limited capacity for effective planning, management and governance of water sources is deepening vulnerability to the increasing and often unpredictable impacts of climate change. This paper assesses Tanzania’s recently centralised approach to rural water pla...

Who are the rural people of Africa? What does it mean to be part of a rural community in contemporary Tanzania? And why is it important to debate questions of African rurality beyond the mere GDP contribution of rural land-based production? This book seeks to address questions like these. Rural people(s) in contemporary Africa are often conceived o...

This paper analyzes local and global factors determining rural people's life satisfaction in Tanzania. The concept of life satisfaction is used to overcome the shortcomings of existing livelihood studies approaches such as a focus on local conditions at the expenses of (perception of) global factors, and conceptions of 'good livelihoods' supersedin...

The Journal of Sociology and Development is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes scholarly original empirical research, theoretical contributions, and book reviews in the fields of sociology and development studies with a multidisciplinary and global perspective, and with a focus on the African continent. The vision of the journal is to stimulate...

Affiliation to Christianity among the Maasai of Tanzania is relatively a recent phenomenon when compared to the quite long history of Christianity in the rest of the country. It is, however, a phenomenon that is rapidly spreading with new churches mushrooming in Maasai villages and transforming the social, cultural and material landscape of Maasail...

The Journal of Sociology and Development is a peer-reviewed, international and multidisciplinary piece of work, with a focus on Africa and based on empirical research.

This thesis is a study of ethnicity with specific regard to the pastoral Maasai group of Tanzania, East Africa. I frame the analysis proposed in this study within two sets of anthropological theory: economic anthropology and the literature on African pastoralism, with the former working as the primary theoretical framework to contribute and add kno...