Mara J. Goldman

• PhD Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Professor (Associate) at University of Colorado Boulder

In East Africa, pastoralist systems are undergoing rapid transformation due to land enclosures, benefit distributions associated with new land uses, shifting social relations, and changing authority and governance structures. We apply a critical analysis of the institutions that mediate access and benefits across a complex mosaic of property relati...

Categorically distinct instrumental values and non-instrumental "cultural" values of "nature" are central to ecosystem services assessments and many wildlife conservation interventions alike. However, this approach to understanding the value of nature is at odds with social scientific understandings that see value as produced through social-ecologi...

Around the world, Indigenous peoples have stories about wildlife that reflect knowledge and feelings about animals and their relationship to humans. Different people's experiences speak to the variety of interactions people have with animals in the spaces where humans and non-human animals live and interact. These stories are often told by women, r...

The current environmental crises demand that we revisit dominant approaches for understanding nature-society relations. Narrating Nature brings together various ways of knowing nature from differently situated Maasai and conservation practitioners and scientists into lively debate. It speaks to the growing movement within the academy and beyond on...

In the search for successful community-based conservation models there has been a substantial focus on payment for ecosystem services. Such payments are measurable inputs that are often associated with conservation success. A closer look suggests a more complex, historically and culturally contingent picture. We argue that a focus on payment for ec...

Indigenous technical knowledge (ITK) refers to knowledge about the local environment that is produced, held, and used by indigenous peoples and communities. The acknowledgment of ITK challenges the dominance of Western science, recognizes the plurality of knowledge claims, and provides indigenous peoples with representation on resource management i...

Gardner Benjamin . Selling the Serengeti: The Cultural Politics of Safari Tourism. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2016. xxxii +210 pp. Preface. Acknowledgments. List of Abbreviations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $25.95. Paper. ISBN: 978-0-8203-4508-6. - Volume 59 Issue 2 - Mara J. Goldman

Formal rights to land are often promoted as an essential part of empowering women, particularly in the Global South. We look at two grassroots non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working on land rights and empowerment with Maasai communities in Northern Tanzania. Women involved with both NGOS attest to the power of land ownership for personal emp...

Drawing on ten months of qualitative research from 2009/10, we present a case study of situated HIV transmission knowledge claims among wildlife conservation actors in northern Tanzania. Utilizing feminist standpoint theory and epistemologies of ignorance, this article explores why a single professional group consistently articulated divergent expl...

here has been increased focus within the human dimensions of climate change on understanding the complex and multiple ways of ‘knowing’ climate. While these discussions are important in recognising different ways of knowing the climate and climate change processes already underway, we argue that this epistemological approach is limited and challeng...

We argue that women's empowerment is an ongoing, incremental, and relational process that occurs across scales and pathways. Using a contextualized mixed methods approach, we measure empowerment processes unfolding across Maasai villages in northern Tanzania as related to the interventions of two innovative grassroots NGOs. Our results indicate inc...

Participatory methods for conservation and development have been critiqued on practical, political, and theoretical grounds. In this article, we address these critiques but move beyond critique to propose ways to improve participatory techniques with local communities. We discuss a customary model of communication used by Maasai communities in Tanz...

Book details Reid, RS Savannas of Our Birth: People, Wildlife, and Change in East Africa. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; 2012. Hardcover, 416 pages; ISBN: 9780520273559

Despite a decade of rhetoric on community conservation, current trends in Tanzania reflect a disturbing process of reconsolidation of state control over wildlife resources and increased rent-seeking behaviour, combined with dispossession of communities. Whereas the 1998 Wildlife Policy promoted community participation and local benefits, the subseq...

This study examines the ways in which the adaptive capacity of households to climatic events varies within communities and is mediated by institutional and landscape changes. We present qualitative and quantitative data from two Maasai communities differentially exposed to the devastating drought of 2009 in Northern Tanzania. We show how rangeland...

Populations of the African lion Panthera leo are declining dramatically, with the species’ survival in some areas closely linked to levels of tolerance by rural communities. In Tanzania and Kenya several of the remaining lion populations outside protected areas reside adjacent to rural communities, where they are hunted. As many of these communitie...

What are the different components of the process of empowerment, and how are they defined, measured, and achieved? In this paper we present findings from research conducted in two districts in Northern Tanzania involved to different degrees in similar women’s empowerment projects. We look at different pathways to empowerment, categorized as persona...

Political ecology and science studies have found fertile meeting ground in environmental studies. While the two distinct areas of inquiry approach the environment from different perspectives - one focusing on the politics of resource access and the other on the construction and perception of knowledge - their work is actually more closely aligned n...

Despite dramatic transformations in conservation rhetoric regarding local people, indigenous rights, and community-oriented approaches, conservation in many places in Tanzania today continues to infringe on human rights. This happens through the exclusion of local people as knowledgeable active participants in management, policy formation, and deci...

Research and conservation efforts often occur in areas outside of national parks where people live, often side-by-side and sometimes in conflict with large carnivores. In Tanzania and Kenya much of this work employs a human–wildlife conflict perspective and is based in Maasai areas, where many of the few remaining lions exist. We argue that while M...

We developed a “continual engagement” model to better integrate knowledge from policy makers, communities, and researchers with the goal of promoting more effective action to balance poverty alleviation and wildlife conservation in 4 pastoral ecosystems of East Africa. The model involved the creation of a core boundary-spanning team, including comm...

Conservation corridors are perhaps the most visible expression of the new landscape conservation boom. Seen as the essential connecting structure across increasingly fragmented landscapes, corridors offer a structural solution to the complex problem of maintaining functional ecological connectivity. Yet the ability of corridors to connect landscape...

In this paper I argue for building dialogues between scientific and Maasai knowledge articulations, utilizing knowledge of wildebeest as an example. By locating Maasai and scientific knowledges regarding a particular subject (wildebeest) in relation to each other-in discourse and in practice - my intention is to create the space for their active en...

Community Based Conservation (CBC) has become the catch–all solution to the social and ecological problems plaguing traditional top–down, protectionist conservation approaches. CBC has been particularly popular throughout Africa as a way to gain local support for wildlife conservation measures that have previously excluded local people and their de...

Thesis (M.A.)--University of California, Los Angeles, 1998. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-184).